Workers, Space, and Labor Geography

Abstract

In this paper I argue that adopting an explicitly spatial theoretical framework can add significantly to our understanding of working-class life. Specifically, I argue that workers are spatial as well as historical social agents and that they seek to shape the economic landscape in ways which facilitate their political and economic goals, though they clearly do not have free range to do so—workers make their own geographies, though not under the conditions of their own choosing. The paper explores how capitalism functions as a spatial system, what this means for workers' spatial praxis, and how workers can try to shape capitalism's geography to their own ends. The paper is in three main sections. The first section lays out the conceptual basis for understanding capitalism as a spatial system. In the second section I examine a number of ways in which a sensitivity to matters spatial can help us understand workers' social praxis. The third section explores some issues related to how the changing geography of capitalism is providing new challenges to workers and organized labor.