Towards a historical geographical materialism
| DOI | 10.1177/0047117821991610 |
| Published date | 01 March 2021 |
| Author | Sébastien Rioux |
| Date | 01 March 2021 |
| Subject Matter | A Necessarily Historical Materialist Moment? Forum on Global Capitalism, Global War, Global Crisis |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0047117821991610
International Relations
2021, Vol. 35(1) 162 –165
© The Author(s) 2021
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DOI: 10.1177/0047117821991610
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Towards a historical
geographical materialism
Sébastien Rioux
Université de Montréal
With Global Capitalism, Global War, Global Crisis, Andreas Bieler and Adam David
Morton have written a rich and original book arguing for the necessity of a ‘historical
materialist moment’ in the study of international change and development. The book
raises several key theoretical, conceptual and methodological questions about the nature
and scope of IR and IPE, and offers innovative responses to long-standing debates. Of
particular importance is their argument for a relational ontology that recognises the
extent to which entities do not stand on their own, independent and external to one
another.1 On the contrary, seemingly disconnected social categories are in fact internally
related precisely because they are elements of the same social whole. Given the tendency
within the field to conceptualise states and markets as independent and exogeneous
structures, the authors’ case for the philosophy of internal relations represents a refresh-
ing proposal that holds the promise of a truly integrated theoretical framework capable
to account for the interaction between global capitalism and the states system.
Another key contribution of the book is its ability to give conceptual traction to the
‘theory’ of uneven and combined development, which has suffered from its theoretical
inflation and conceptual vacuity for too many years. In order to make more than a banal
statement about the impossibility of even development, one must be able to account for
the ways in which the structuring conditions of capitalism – competition and crisis – are
produced and reproduced in and through the states system. To this end, Bieler and
Morton mobilise Gramsci’s concept of passive revolution to articulate how states medi-
ate the capitalist space economy. ‘The concept of passive revolution’, they argue, ‘offers
a mode of theorising both the inner dynamics of capitalist modernity within states
across space and time and how these processes of developmental catch-up are internally
related to the geopolitical pressures of the states system’.2 While proponents of the
Corresponding author:
Sébastien Rioux, Université de Montréal, Complexe des sciences, 1375 Avenue Thérèse-Lavoie-Roux,
Montréal, QC H2V 0B3, Canada.
Email: s.rioux@umontreal.ca
991610IRE0010.1177/0047117821991610International RelationsRioux
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