ancient cities

Un e v e n De v e l o p m e n t
The concept of uneven development provides a
dialectical understanding of the evolution of
society across space. It has been applied both in
broad descriptive senses and as an analytical
toolkit, and in this lies much of its explanatory
power. It offers a way of conceptualizing the
interpenetration of general social processes and
structural conditions with immediate local events
and experiences, producing a characteristic and
shifting pattern of development and inequality.
In analyzing cities as sites of uneven development,
we are drawn to understand observable
urban phenomena and trends as global–local
problems at the nexus between general processes
of change (flows of capital, economic restructuring,
technological change, etc.), state interventions
and local experiences, values and resistances.
For this reason, theories of uneven development
have become important in some approaches to
urban studies in recent decades, particularly
with reference to questions about global economic
restructuring and urban change, urban
land markets and gentrification, and the relationships
between capital, state, and citizens.
This entry first explores the evolution of the
concept in classical social theory before summarizing
some of the most recent theoretical
advances of recent decades. It concludes by summarizing
some of the strengths of this approach
and its implications for research methodology.
U
833
Classical Origins: The Political Economy
of Capitalist Development
The concept of uneven development has its origins
in classical Marxist thought, and much of its later
development has been in the work of various neo-
Marxist scholars and critical social theorists.
Though the precise phrase is not central to Karl
Marx’s work, the questions it raises are an important
component of, for example, Volume 1 of
Capital. In the analysis of changing English society
from 1846 to 1866 (chapter 25), a striking historical
period for the study of capitalist accumulation,
the detailed local patterns of economic and social
change are situated within the context of an emergent
world economy and free trade system. The
observed changes are remarkable for the extraordinary
concentration and centralization of wealth and
capital alongside the relative immiseration of the
direct agents of this industry and the producers of
this wealth, the working class. Thus, the accumulation
of wealth has as its necessary counterpart the
accumulation of misery, and this is the basis for the
characteristic pattern of unevenness associated with
the emergent industrial economy.
This contradictory process underpins the political
arguments of The Communist Manifesto, as
the antagonisms between oppressing and oppressed
classes are identified as the historical conditions
for revolutionary change. This becomes more
intense with the uneven development of modern
industry with its exploitative logic and increasing
tendency to concentrate wealth in the hands of the