Neil Smith (geographer)

Neil Robert Smith(18 July 1954 – 29 September 2012) was a Scottish geographer andMarxistacademic. He was Distinguished Professor ofAnthropologyandGeographyat theGraduate Centerof theCity University of New York,and winner of numerous awards, including the Globe Book Award of theAssociation of American Geographers.

Neil Robert Smith
Born	(1954-07-18)18 July 1954 Leith,Scotland
Died	29 September 2012(2012-09-29)(aged 58) New York City,United States
Nationality	British
Academic background
Alma mater	University of St. Andrews(B.Sc.,1977) Johns Hopkins University(Ph.D.,1982)
Doctoral advisor	David Harvey
Academic work
Discipline	Geography,Anthropology
Doctoral students	Ruth Wilson Gilmore,Don Mitchell (geographer)

Background

Smith was born in 1954 inLeith,Scotland.He was one of four children of a schoolteacher, and spent most of his childhood inDalkeith,southeast ofEdinburgh.He attended King's Park Primary School andDalkeith High School.

Smith earned his 1st class BSc from theUniversity of St. Andrewsin 1977 (with a year at the University of Pennsylvania, 1974–1975), and his PhD fromJohns Hopkins Universityin 1982, where his advisor was noted Marxist geographerDavid Harvey.

He took up a tenure-track position atColumbia Universityin New York (1982–1986), but Columbia closed its Geography Department and he moved toRutgers Universityin New Jersey (1986–2000). At Rutgers he was Chair of the Geography Department (1991–94) and a senior fellow at the Center for the Critical Analysis of Contemporary Culture.

Smith lived in New York, latterly splitting his time between New York and Toronto, Canada, where he owned a house with his partner, Deb Cowen. From 2008 to 2012 he held a 20 percent appointment as Sixth Century Professor of Geography and Social Theory at theUniversity of Aberdeenin his native Scotland.

He was known for cultivating a new generation ofcritical geographers.Though an advocate for a stronger feminist approach to the practice of critical geography, some female students characterized his behavior towards them as sexual harassment, as "more than one woman student left departments Neil taught in because of his unwelcome and persistent advances."

Scholarship

Smith's research explored the broad intersections between space, nature, social theory, and history. His dissertation at Johns Hopkins University was supposed to have been on urban processes, but was in fact a major theoretical treatise that became the bookUneven Development: Nature, Capital and the Production of Space(1984). In this major work of social theory, Smith borrowedHenri Lefebvre's theory of thesocial production of spaceand proposed that uneven spatial development is intrinsic tocapital markets:capitalism needs to "produce" unevenness to keepaccumulatingand sustain itself.

Smith is credited with theories about thegentrificationof the inner city as an economic process propelled by urban land prices and city land speculation, rather than by cultural preferences for living in the city in his seminal articleToward a Theory of Gentrification: A Back to the City Movement by Capital, not People(1979).

Smith's curiosity about why such critical study of space and place came so late to the discipline of geography lead to his study of early 20th-century geographerIsaiah Bowmanand the bookAmerican Empire: Roosevelt's Geographer and the Prelude to Globalization(2003), which traced America's rise to global power through geographical ignorance. The book won several awards, including the Henry Adams Prize of theSociety for History in the Federal Government.Smith's critique of American-led, capitalist neoliberalism was further developed inThe Endgame of Globalization(2005).

Recognition

• Los Angeles Times Book Award,Biography, 2004
• Henry Adams Book Prize, Society of Historians in Federal Government, 2004
• Globe Award for Public Understanding of Geography,Association of American Geographers,2004
• Distinguished Scholarship Honors, Association of American Geographers, 2000
• John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship,1995–1996
• Board of Trustees Research Fellowship Award, Rutgers University, 1988–89
• The Scottish Geographical Medal, awarded by theRoyal Scottish Geographical Society,1977
• Robert Lincoln McNeil Scholar, University of Pennsylvania, 1974–75

Death

Smith died on 29 September 2012, fromliverandkidney failure.He was survived by his three siblings; his partner, geographerDeborah Cowen,his former wife, geographerCindi Katz,and his daughter Isabella DeRiso.

Cultural references

The Edinburgh-based band New Urban Frontier took their name from the title of Smith's bookThe New Urban Frontier: Gentrification and the Revanchist City.Their 2015 albumGame of Capitalalso commemorates him.

Publications

Books

• 2009.Democracy, States, and the Struggle for Global Justice.Routledge (edited with Heather Gautney, Omar Dahbour and Ashley Dawson).
• 2006The Politics of Public Space(withSetha Low). Routledge.
• 2006La Produccion de la Naturaleza; La Produccion del Espacio.Mexico City: Sistema Universidad Abierta, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, 2006
• 2005The Endgame of Globalization.Routledge.
• 2005Capital Financiero, Propiedad Inmobiliaria y Cultura.MACBA & Publicacions de la Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, Barcelona (with David Harvey)
• 2003American Empire: Roosevelt's Geographer and the Prelude to Globalization.University of California Press (winner, Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Biography).
• 2000Globalización: Transformaciones urbanas, precarización social y discriminación de género(with Cindi Katz). Nueva Grafica, S.A.L. La Cuesta, La Laguna.
• 1996The New Urban Frontier: Gentrification and the Revanchist City.Routledge.
• 1994Geography and Empire: Critical Studies in the History of Geography(edited withAnne Godlewska). Basil Blackwell, Oxford.
• 1986Gentrification of the City(edited with Peter Williams). George Allen and Unwin, London.
• 1984Uneven Development: Nature, Capital and the Production of Spaceat theWayback Machine(archived 3 February 2013). Basil Blackwell. 2nd ed. 1990, 3rd Ed. University of Georgia Press, Athens, GA, 2008; London: Verso, 2010. (Translated and published as Desenvolvimento Desigual, Editora Bertrand Brasil, Rio de Janeiro, 1988)
• 1977.Geography, Social Welfare and Underdevelopment.University of St. Andrews (edited with Malcolm Forbes and Michael Kershaw).

Articles

• 2011 “Ten Years After,” Geographical Journal 177,
• 2011 “Uneven Development Redux,” New Political Economy 16: 261–265.
• 2010 “’Martial Law in the Streets of Toronto’: G20, Security and State Violence,” Human Geography 3.3:29–46,
• 2010 “The Revolutionary Imperative,” Antipode 41: 50–65.
• 2009 “After Geopolitics? From the Geopolitical Social to Geoeconomics,” Antipode 40: 2–48 (with Deborah Cowen)
• 2008 “The Shock Doctrine: a discussion,” Society and Space 26:582–595 (withNaomi Klein)
• 2008 "Review Essay: David Harvey: A Critical Reader,” Progress in Human Geography, 32,1:147–155.
• 2007 “Gentrification, Displacement, and Tourism in Santa Cruz de Tenerife,” Urban Geography, 28, 2007, 276–298 (with Luz Marina García Herrera and Miguel Angel Mejías Vera)
• 2007 “Another Revolution is Possible: Foucault, ethics and politics,” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 25:191–193
• 2006 “Nature as Accumulation Strategy”, Socialist Register, 16–36
• 2006 “The Endgame of Globalization”, Political Geography, 25,1:1–14.
• 2003 “Global Executioner”, The South Atlantic Quarterly, 105,1: 55–69.
• 2003 “Neo-Critical Geography, Or, The Flat Pluralist World of Business Class”, Antipode, 37, 5: 887–899.
• 2003 “After Iraq: Vulnerable imperial stasis”, Radical Philosophy, 127, September/October: 2–7.
• 2003 “After the American Lebensraum: ‘Empire’, Empire, and Globalization”, Interventions, 5:2:249-270.
• 2003 "Geographies of Substance" inEnvisioning Human Geography,Paul Cloke, Philip Crang, and Mark Goodwin, eds.
• 2003 "Gentrification Generalized: From Local Anomaly to Urban 'Regeneration' as Global Urban Strategy" inFrontiers of Capital: Ethnographic Reflections on the New Economy,M. Fisher and G. Downey, eds.
• 2003 "Generalizing Gentrification" inRetours en ville,Catherine Bidou, Daniel Hiernaux, and Helene Riviere D'Arc, eds. Paris: Descartes & Cie. January.
• 2002 "Scale Bending" inRethinking Scale,E. Sheppard and R. McMaster, eds.
• 2002 "Remaking Scale: Competition and Cooperation in Prenational and Postnational Europe" in State/Spaces.
• 2002 "Scales of Terror: The Manufacturing of Nationalism and the War for U.S. Globalism", pp. 97–108 inAfter the World Trade Center,Sharon Zukin and Michael Sorkin, eds. New York: Routledge.
• 2002 "New Globalism, New Urbanism: Gentrification as Global Urban Strategy",Antipode34 (3): 434–57. Reprinted in "Neo-Liberal Urbanism", Neil Brenner and Nik Theodore, eds., Malden, MA: Basil Blackwell.
• 2002 "Ashes and Aftermath",Studies in Political Economy67. Spring, pp. 7–12.
• 2002 "Ashes and Aftermath",Philosophy & Geography5 (1): 9–12.
• 2002 "Kontinuum New York", pp. 72–86 inDie Stadt Als Event,Regina Bittner, ed. Dessau, Bauhaus.
• 1979 "Toward a Theory of Gentrification A Back to the City Movement by Capital, not People".Journal of the American Planning Association45 (4): 538–48.doi:10.1080/01944367908977002

External links

• Center for Place Culture and Politics
• Neil Smith's Blogat theWayback Machine(archived 8 April 2013)
• In conversationwithErik Swyngedouw,2012