Staff Profiles

Books

• Hesketh, C, Spaces of Capital/Spaces of Resistance: Mexico and the Global Political Economy, University of Georgia Press (2017)
  ISBN: 9780820351742
  Abstract Based on original fieldwork in Chiapas and Oaxaca, Mexico, this book offers a bridge between geography and historical sociology. Chris Hesketh examines the production of space within the global political economy. Drawing on multiple disciplines, Hesketh’s discussion of state formation in Mexico takes us beyond the national level to explore the interplay between global, regional, national, and subnational articulations of power. These are linked through the novel deployment of Antonio Gramsci’s concept of passive revolution, understood as the state-led institution or expansion of capitalism that prevents the meaningful participation of the subaltern classes. Furthermore, the author brings attention to the conflicts involved in the production of space, placing particular emphasis on indigenous communities and movements and their creation of counterspaces of resistance. Hesketh argues that indigenous movements are now the leading social force of popular mobilization in Latin America. The author reveals how the wider global context of uneven and combined development frames these specific indigenous struggles, and he explores the scales at which they must now seek to articulate themselves.--Supplied by publisher.Website 

Journal articles

• Hesketh C, 'Clean Development or the Development of Dispossession? The political economy of wind parks in Southern Mexico'
  Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space x (2021)
  ISSN: 2514-8486 eISSN: 2514-8494
  Abstract

  Through an investigation of the political economy of wind park development in Oaxaca, southern Mexico, I explore the contested meaning of environmental justice. I contend that, despite their seemingly benign image, wind parks in Oaxaca operate within a spatially-abstracted, colonial epistemology of capital-centred development. This involves a remaking of space and an appropriation of nature on behalf of capital. Concomitantly, it also involves a process of dispossession for Indigenous communities, foreclosing alternative pathways of development. I contrast this project of place-making with a subaltern-centred conception of environmental justice informed by Indigenous resistance.

  Website 
• Hesketh C, 'Between Pachakuti and Passive Revolution: The Search for Post-Colonial Sovereignty in Bolivia'
  Journal of Historical Sociology x (2020)
  ISSN: 0952-1909
  Abstract

  From the period 2000-2005, Bolivia experienced a profound political convulsion as social movements rose-up to contest the neoliberal model of development.  This was most markedly inspired by contestation over the control of natural resources, namely water and gas. The period of mobilisation brought down two successive governments and propelled the MAS, led by Evo Morales, to power in 2006.  This period also helped to revalorise indigenous culture and held out hope for a reimagining of power, politics and political economy. The transformation that would result from this uprising, effectively re-founded Bolivia as a ‘pluri-national state’, recognising 36 separate national groups with their own languages and cultures. This was, furthermore, a process based on the convergence of national-popular and indigenous struggles. However, following his disputed election for a fourth successive term in office, Evo Morales and other key leaders of the MAS have gone into exile, while right-wing, revanchist social forces are seemingly in the ascendency. How do we begin to make sense of this turn of events, which include the swirling combinations of reactionary capitalist interests but also left-indigenous critiques of development from marginalised sectors? In this article, I argue that we need to situate indigenous social movements in the struggle between Pachakuti (an Andean term referring to the desire to turn the world upside down and forge a new time and space) and passive revolution (a state-led process of modernisation that seeks to expand capitalist social relations whilst incorporating limited demands from below, ultimately diffusing their radical potential).

  Website 
• Hesketh C, Sulllivan J, 'The Production of Leisure: Understanding the Social Function of Football Development in China'
  Globalizations x (2020)
  ISSN: 1474-7731 eISSN: 1474-774X
  Abstract

  In this article, we utilise the social theories of Antonio Gramsci and Henri Lefebvre to explore the role that leisure activities such as football play within contemporary China in relation to issues of class. We argue that the recent promotion of football in China can be viewed as a continuation of broader top-down processes of ‘modernization from above’ that serves as a microcosm of the wider class contradictions inherent in Chinese approaches to development since the 1980s. The issue of class has been strangely absent from the literature dealing with the development of football in China. However, given the importance of class in 20th Century Chinese society, the re-emergence of inequality and stratification in the reform era and the implicit connections between class and state discourses around the “rejuvenation of the great Chinese nation,” it is clear that class is closely implicated in Xi’s vision for football. We explore the major role of the middle classes as the target for the promotion of leisure activities and consumerist lifestyles patterns as part of the Party-State’s effort to integrate them into a transformed historical bloc.
  

  Website 
• Hesketh C, 'A Gramscian conjuncture in Latin America? Reflections on violence, hegemony and geographical difference'
  Antipode 51 (5) (2019) pp.1474-1494
  ISSN: 0066-4812 eISSN: 1467-8330
  Abstract

  This article addresses whether the concepts of Antonio Gramsci still “travel” to Latin America. During the 20th century, Gramsci was one of the most important social theorists invoked to understand forms of social order in Latin America, as well as providing resources to reflect upon subaltern culture, resistance and the construction of alternatives. However, over the past two decades there have been several theoretical and practical challenges to the hegemony of Gramsci. These challenges are multifarious, but can be reduced to several important contentions that are explored in this article. These include the enduring role of violence, the alleged decline of ideology and finally the challenge of state‐centrism in the face of geographical difference. In the current regional conjuncture, marked by the return to power of right‐wing social forces, I therefore examine whether Gramscian concepts are still apposite for understanding the political economy of Latin America in the 21st century.
  

  Website 
• Chris Hesketh, 'Lost in Space: Putting the Transnational State in its Place'
  Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power 25 (5) (2018) pp.576-591
  ISSN: 1070-289X eISSN: 1547-3384
  Abstract This article explores the notion of a transnational state (TNS) as advanced by scholars working within Historical Materialism. In recent decades, Historical Materialist approaches to the Social Sciences have enjoyed a major intellectual renaissance. Fittingly, the reasons for this renaissance can be found in some major developments within contemporary capitalism. The first of these developments can be located in a renewed interest in the topic of imperialism as an interpretive category of geopolitics, especially following military interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq. The second development concerns the viability of the capitalist system itself - or at least its neoliberal iteration - following the global financial crisis of 2007/8. One major attempt to comprehend these issues has come through the postulation of an emergent TNS apparatus as part of a new global capital relation. This article explores this thesis but argues that it fails to adequately account for continued plurality, contingency and struggle at the nation-state scale which in turn provides the basis for potential conflict.Website 
• Hesketh C, 'Passive revolution: a universal concept with geographical seats'
  Review of International Studies 43 (3) (2017) pp.389-408
  ISSN: 0260-2105
  Abstract In this article, I argue that Antonio Gramsci’s concept of passive revolution makes a foundational contribution to International Relations (IR), yet has been relatively under appreciated by the broader discipline. Within the Historical Sociology of International Relations, uneven and combined development has recently been postulated as a key trans-historical law that provides a social theory of the ‘international’. Drawing from, but moving beyond these debates, I will argue that passive revolution is a key conditioning factor of capitalist modernity. I will demonstrate how the concept of passive revolution is the element that explains the connection between the universal process of uneven development and the manner in which specific combinations occur within the capitalist era as geo-political pressures, in tandem with domestic social forces become internalised into geographically specific state forms. It therefore offers a corrective to the frequently aspatial view that is found in much of the literature in IR regarding uneven and combined development. Additionally, passive revolution provides a more politicised understanding of the present as well as an important theoretical lesson in relation to what needs to be done to affect alternative trajectories of development.
   
  Key words
  Gramsci, passive revolution, uneven development, capitalism, revolution 
  Website 
• Hesketh C, 'The survival of non-capitalism'
  Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 34 (5) (2016) pp.877-894
  ISSN: 0263-7758 eISSN: 1472-3433
  Abstract This article explores the importance of non-capitalist space within the global political economy. The issue of how to categorise and understand space in so-called peripheral regions such as Latin America has been a contentious one. Whilst many radical analyses have focused on the dynamics of capitalism in relation to the geography of development, explaining how it has been able to survive and grow, this article makes the case for a more multi-linear theoretical framework with which to view the socio-economic landscape. This is inspired not only by the later writings of Marx but also the specific Marxian class analysis of those involved in Rethinking Marxism. Via a focus on Oaxaca in southern Mexico, this article highlights both the survival and the recreation of spaces of non-capitalism, and provides an argument for why we should consider these to be important for transformative action more broadly, whilst also discussing their potential limitations.Website 
• Hesketh C, 'Producing State Space in Chiapas: Passive Revolution and Everyday Life'
  Critical Sociology 42 (2) (2014) pp.211-228
  ISSN: 0896-9205 eISSN: 1569-1632
  Abstract This article examines processes of state formation in Chiapas, Mexico, from the time of the Revolution (1910–17) to the present. The purpose of the article is threefold. First it demonstrates how differing modes of production attempt to alter the production of space, yet at the same time, how pre-capitalist spaces and social relations, as well as movements of resistance, both alter the topography of capitalism as it unfolds. Second it explores ‘everyday’ processes of state formation linked to localized class cultures. In doing so, it makes claims to originality by providing a spatially sensitive account of Antonio Gramsci’s notion of hegemony, and indeed breaks new ground by demonstrating a sub-national articulation of passive revolution as a means of constructing state space. Finally, it considers the importance of counter-spaces formed in opposition to the state and what the response has been in turn to these ‘spaces of resistance’.Website 
• Hesketh C, Morton AD, 'Spaces of Uneven Development and Class Struggle in Bolivia: Transformation or Trasformismo?'
  Antipode 46 (1) (2014) pp.149-169
  ISSN: 0066-4812 eISSN: 1467-8330
  Abstract This article engages with the politics of class struggle and state formation in modern Bolivia. It examines how current forms of political contestation are shaped by the legacy of the Revolution of 1952 and the subsequent path of development. In so doing, we therefore explore spaces of uneven and combined development in relation to ongoing transformations in Bolivia linked to emergent class strategies of passive revolution, meaning processes of historical development marked by the overall exclusion of subaltern classes. With this in mind we argue that state formation in Bolivia can be read as part of the history of passive revolution in Latin America within the spatial conditions of uneven and combined development shaping the geopolitics of the region. However, the expansion of passive revolution as a mode of historical development has been and continues to be rigorously contested by subaltern forces creating further spaces of class struggle.Website 
• Hesketh C, 'The Clash of Spatializations: Geopolitics and Clash Struggles in Southern Mexico'
  Latin American Perspectives (2013)
  ISSN: 0094-582X
  Website 
• Hesketh C, 'From passive revolution to silent revolution class forces and the production of state, space and scale in modern Mexico'
  Capital and Class 34 (3) (2010) pp.383-407
  ISSN: 0309-8168 eISSN: 2041-0980
  Abstract This article draws on Antonio Gramsci’s key concepts of passive revolution and hegemony to explore how specific scalar and spatial configurations have been historically produced in Mexico, within the conditions of worldwide capitalist development. It argues that passive revolution—understood as the state-led reorganisation of social relations that seeks to maintain or restore class domination—can be seen as a recurring theme of Mexican history in the 20th century. In order to make this case, the author examines the Mexican Revolution and elaborates the case for labelling it as a ‘passive revolution’. Following this, the contradictory character of Mexico’s development trajectory is explored, and the resulting restructuring of the economy along neoliberal lines is interpreted as a second phase of passive revolution. Through an analysis of changing state formation and the spaces and scales associated with it, the article thereby highlights the key antinomies of capitalist development that have augured the recurrence of passive revolutions.Website 

Book chapters

• Hesketh C, 'The Urban Revolution(s) in Latin America: reinventing utopia' in Michael E. Leary-Owhin (Editor), John P. McCarthy (Editor) (ed.), Routledge Handbook of Henri Lefebvre: The City and Urban Society, Routledge (2019)
  ISBN: 9781138290051 eISBN: 9781315266589
  Abstract

  This chapter explores Lefebvre’s key ideas about class struggle taking place through the production of space. It does so by examining the transition from import-substitution industrialisation (ISI) to neoliberalism in Latin America using his spatial triad as a key tool of research. Moreover, it subsequently explores the contestation of neoliberalism in the region by subaltern classes, examining how this can be linked to Lefebvre’s broader notions of differential space, urban revolt and autogestion.
  

  Website 
• Hesketh C, 'Defending place, remaking space: Social movements in Oaxaca and Chiapas' in Colin Barker, Laurence Cox, John Krinsky, and Alf Nilsen (ed.), Marxism and Social Movements, Brill (2013)
  ISBN: 9789004211759 eISBN: 9789004251434
  Abstract This chapter seeks to address this lacuna with a focus on the novel forms of resistance that articulated in the southern Mexican states of Oaxaca and Chiapas. Social movements in this region have, therefore, increasingly sought to defend their rights to land and territory through the creation of a differential form of space. This politicisation of space by subaltern actors and the demand to have the right to control and shape one’s lived environment is a profoundly democratic issue, but at the same time, one that goes beyond its common understanding. The remaking of space by social movements is, therefore, at the same time a remaking of democracy, as it calls for the permanent participation of people in civic life. As pointed out, ‘the greatest challenge to capitalism would be an extension of democracy beyond its narrowly circumscribed limits.Website