New State Spaces: Urban Governance and the Rescaling of Statehood

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In this synthetic, interdisciplinary work, Neil Brenner develops a new interpretation of the transformation of statehood under contemporary globalizing capitalism. Whereas most analysts of the emergent, post-Westphalian world order have focused on supranational and national institutional realignments, "New State Spaces" shows that strategic subnational spaces, such as cities and city-regions, represent essential arenas in which states are being transformed. Brenner traces the transformation of urban governance in western Europe during the last four decades and, on this basis, argues that inherited geographies of state power are being fundamentally rescaled. Through a combination of theory construction, historical analysis and cross-national case studies of urban policy change, "New State Spaces" provides an innovative analysis of the new formations of state power that are currently emerging. This is a mature and sophisticated analysis by a major young scholar.

New State Spaces: Urban Governance and the Rescaling of Statehood Review

It is hard to believe this book is the author's first. This book has the rigor and sweep of a mature scholar, and potentially a major one. Brenner's grasp of the literature of his field is astonishing.

The central argument of the book is also quite solid. Brenner shows that states in the current round of global restructuring (post 1970; also note he refuses to use the term "globalization" for a number of reasons he articulates early in the book) are not withering away, but are rather "re-scaling". Contemporary competitive states advance uneven development (*) to suck down global capital flows, investment, and commenrce, and they do so by articulating uneven legal regimes, infrastructures and much else to create jurisdictions and spaces open to trapping the economy they seek. This argument is made with good social scientific data on a Euroregion between Germany and Holland. The result is a much more nuanced view of contemporary global capitalism than the many people discussing the withering of the nation state provide. The view is dialectical and real.

There are many other areas to discuss in this book, including Brenner's preliminary categories for levels of social theory and their scope. But I do not feel qualified to present many of them, and this review would be too long if I tried.

However, I do wish to note that Brenner's use of boxes and diagrams is helpful and filled with intellectual energy and theoretical perception. Although his work is sometimes too jargon-filled (a common feature of the literature with which he engages), his presentation is clear and exciting. There is a love of making sense of the world here, and pride in good presentation that attests to a genuine teacher and scholar.

Reading this book, I felt I had met with a major new voice in social theory in the broad Marxist tradition. I am excited to see where Brenner goes with his next research.

(*) The adjective "uneven" in the literature Brenner engages concerns the way development occurs unevenly across regions. For instance, in America, our urban areas have become increasingly developed when near major financial, media, informational or legal services, but have deteriorated or lessoned around rural or urban areas formerly based in small agriculture or industry. Industry has gone overseas or south of the border. Moreover, our national policy has been to privilege the developing urban sectors while not spreading development evenly across the country, as happened during the central part of the 20th century.

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