Ferenc Gyuris: The Political Discourse of Spatial Disparities


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L I T E R A T U R E

Hungarian Geographical Bulletin 63 (2) (2014) pp. 221–223.

Ferenc Gyuris: The Political Discourse of Spatial Disparities. Geographical Inequalities 
Between Science and Propaganda (Contributions to Political Science Series). Springer 
Verlag, Berlin–Heidelberg–New York, 2014. 381 p. 

The issue of spatial disparities has been in the forefront of geographical thought and enquiry 
for a long time, along with a number of other disciplines contributing to the topic. Beyond 
the otherwise obvious core concern of these analyses, however, there have always been 
(and still there is) a massive load of ballast, either explicitly political or ‘only’ obliquely 
ideological. Taking this into consideration, yet quite surprisingly, this volume is the very 
fi rst att empt to provide a comprehensive, in-depth overview of the political discourse on 
geographical inequalities, based on the author’s doctoral dissertation submitt ed to (and 
defended at) Ruprecht-Karls Universität Heidelberg. As the subheading of the book sug-
gests, the analysis of such a topic is never ‘neutral’, nor apolitical; on the contrary, the 
results of scientifi c enquiry have always been tightly connected to political and economic 
power and, therefore, might be considered as a set of socially constructed and/or negoti-
ated claims, cloaked in a scientifi c (dis)guise. To put it very briefl y, the principal aim of 
the author is to unveil these intricate relationships. 

In order to do so, Ferenc Gyuris fi rst 
provides concise defi nitions for the con-
tested concepts of ‘spatial unevenness’, 
‘spatial differentiation’, ‘spatial inequality / 
disparity’, and ‘spatial inequity / injustice’, 
thereinafter focusing on ‘spatial dispari-
ties’ which are understood by him as ‘the 
spatial aspects of social disparities, thus, those 
forms of unevenness in space that can be traced 
back to human agency’ (p. 13.). Aft er that, he 
presents a wide-ranging historical overview 
of the conceptualisation of social dispari-
ties spanning from the Antiquity (Ancient 
Greece and Rome) through Christianity and 
the Age of Enlightenment in England and 
France (with a short Central and Eastern 
European outlook) to the Marxist and Anti-
Marxist interpretation of Darwin’s ideas on 
natural selection and the post-WWII prob-
lematisation of social disparities. 

In Chapter 2.6, as a case study from the 
recent years, the author analyses the exten-
sively debated 2009 book entitled ‘The Spirit 
Level’, writt en by epidemiologists Richard 
Wilkinson and Kate Pickett . With left -wing 
reviewers tending to present its fi ndings as 



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‘scientifi c truths’, whereas right-wing critics questioning its validity (and thus, labelling it 
as an ‘unscientifi c’ work), the diverse receptions of the book clearly demonstrate the politi-
cally constructed nature of such contributions to the debate. 

Beyond the conceptualisation of inequalities in general, the emphasis is then shift ed 
from social to spatial disparities (from Chapter 3 to 9), with a particular emphasis on the 
actors shaping the dominant discourse(s). Just as in the case of the previous compendium on 
social inequalities, this contextual analysis is also embedded in a broader historical context, 
from the early social surveyors relying on ‘moral statistics’ in the wake of the Industrial 
Revolution through the ‘classical’ Marxist tradition to Non-Marxist and Neo-Marxist ap-
proaches. Concerning the 19th century French and British contexts, the author fi rst provides 
an overview of the pioneering work of Adolphe Quetelet, Charles Dupin, André-Michel 
Guerry and Charles Booth, along with the latt er’s far-reaching infl uence on the other side 
of the Atlantic, especially on the subsequent work of the Chicago School of urban sociology. 
However, even before (and partly parallel with) their ecological approach, another highly 
infl uential tradition emerged from the mid-19th century; the Marxist conceptualisation of 
spatial disparities. 

Within the confi nes of the ‘classical’ Marxist tradition, Ferenc Gyuris thoroughly analy-
ses the spatial aspects of the work of Marx and Engels, Rosa Luxemburg’s concept of ‘un-
even spatial development’, as well as the related writings of Lenin and Stalin. In connection 
with this particular strand of thought, he concludes that the issue of spatial unevenness 
gradually became one of the focal points of their arguments and hence, made the entire 
Marxist discourse inherently spatial. Moreover, under the umbrella of ‘scientifi c socialism’, 
the above-mentioned thinkers almost exclusively presented their concepts as scientifi c ones 
(aimed at providing legitimacy against capitalism). 

In reaction to the Marxist authors’ problematisation of spatial unevenness, however, sev-
eral Non-Marxist voices also emerged from the mid-20th century. Concerning the early Cold 
War context, Ferenc Gyuris comprehensively examines a number of important (yet confl ict-
ing, both neoclassical and non-neoclassical) theoretical contributions published within only 
one decade, i.e. the works of Myrdal (1957), Hirschman (1958), Easterlin (1958), Borts and 
Stein (1964), Williamson (1965), and Friedmann (1966). Aft er this initial heyday fuelled by 
the ‘big science’, there has been a sudden decline in spatial disparity research in the Western 
world during the 1970s, caused by the changing circumstances of global geopolitics on the 
one hand, and the harsh criticism of these concepts on the other. Nevertheless, this tempo-
rary devaluation was soon followed by another signifi cant re-appreciation of the topic in 
the rapidly neoliberalising economic environment of the 1980s, primarily marked by the 
works carried out on β and σ convergence, along with endogenous growth theories and 
Paul Krugman’s ‘New Economic Geography’ (NEG), not to mention the booming neoclas-
sical spatial disparity research connected to the policy-making (planning and monitoring 
system) of the European Union. 

Largely building on Scheler’s (1926) distinction between factual and orientation knowl-
edge, the author att empts to deconstruct ‘objective’ research results throughout the entire 
book and demonstrate how they alter(ed) in favour of diff erent political claims requiring 
scientifi c legitimacy. In addition, most of the abstract – yet oft en taken-for-granted – models 
of spatial inequalities formulated in the above-mentioned works (for instance Williamson’s 
inverted U model or the later concepts of β and σ convergence) are also critically (re-)ana-
lysed. Ferenc Gyuris provides clear and thoroughly elaborated arguments, and eventually 
comes to the conclusion that over this long-standing tradition, the problematisation of 
spatial disparities has almost always gone hand in hand with the legitimisation and de-
legitimisation of certain political powers. 



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As its main tools, several strategies are presented, such as the selective use (or in some cases 
the complete negligence) of case studies, the acceptance of hypotheses as explanations, 
or – perhaps less intentionally – the misinterpretation of the actual causes of inequalities. 
To recapitulate the main fi ndings of the book, fi gures 9.1 and 9.2 (pp. 332–334.) provide 
an excellent synopsis of this extraordinary discourse analysis. 

Obviously, this monograph fi lls a signifi cant theoretical gap, therefore it is strongly 
recommended for Hungarian readers from the fi eld of social sciences, mainly human ge-
ographers (and those familiar with regional science), sociologists, economists and political 
scientists. Nonetheless, even for the international academia, the work of Gyuris also points 
far beyond the usual theorisation of the subject from a rather unconventional, (post)socialist 
perspective by throwing light on the theoretical and empirical shortcomings of Western 
mainstream Neo-Marxist approaches (various kinds of left ist ‘dependency theories’ and 
especially the concept of ‘uneven development’ worked out primarily by David Harvey 
and the late Neil Smith). 

The true novelty of the book undoubtedly lies in the arguments elaborated in Chapter 
8.2 (and particularly in 8.2.2 and 8.2.3., pp. 270–330.): here, the author provides the critique 
of the re-discovered concept of ‘uneven development’ supplemented by a wide array of 
empirical examples spanning from the former Soviet Union to post-World War II China and 
Hungary. (Even by the publisher, Springer Verlag, the book is labelled as ‘the fi rst work to 
test Harvey’s uneven development concept on »real existing socialism«’.) In connection with the 
massive body of Neo-Marxist literature on the topic of geographical inequalities, although 
underlining that these accounts should defi nitely not be thrown to the garbage heap of 
pure political propaganda, Ferenc Gyuris convincingly argues for an urgent need of the 
international recognition and a greater appreciation of the context of the actually existing 
socialism(s) (or, as he puts it, ‘the real existing socialism’). 

Indubitably, this comprehensive volume is highly recommended for researchers, lectur-
ers and university students interested in the contested research history of spatial disparities 
from all fi elds of the social sciences. 

Márton BERKI