Kevin Cox’s (2013) paper makes a strong case for a historical–geographical materialism, based in what he calls ‘classical Marxism’, as a better means to engage the world than critical realism. In demonstrating why this is so, he defends a Marxism that is caught in a trap much like that Nicos Poulantzas labelled ‘historicist’. This leads Cox to ignore a large part of the best work in contemporary Marxist geography, and thus also to underestimate what a more complex historical geographical materialism can help us to understand.
CoxKR (2013) Notes on a brief encounter: critical realism, historical materialism, and human geography. Dialogues in Human Geography3(1). doi: 10.1177/2043820613485041.
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