David W. Harvey is a famous British professor of anthropology and geography at The Graduate Center of City University of New York (CUNY) and the author of several best-selling books. He got his Ph.D. in Geography from the University of Cambridge in 1961. Since then, he has taught and written many important books, essays, and articles about geography, urbanization in capitalist economies, urban planning, Marxism and social theory, the environment and social change, ecological movements, etc., all of which have helped Modern Geography grow as a field. He has taught at some of the best universities in the world, including the University of Bristol and the University of Oxford in England, as well as the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, USA. Karl Marx’s “Capital” has been one of his most important teaching topics for more than 40 years. This makes him one of the most well-known Marxist scholars of the last 50 years. He is also one of the social scientists who is most often cited around the world. In the humanities and social sciences fields, he was the 18th most-cited author in 2007. Earlier, he was also the most-cited academic geographer in four English-speaking countries from 1984 to 1988, according to a study. The Ways of the World is the name of his most recent book (2016).
Early years and childhood
Harvey was born on October 31, 1935, in the English town of Gillingham, Kent.
In his youth, he went to Gillingham Grammar School for Boys. Later, he went to St. John’s College in Cambridge, England, to take both undergraduate and graduate courses.
In 1957, he got a First Class in his B.A. in geography. In 1961, he got an M.A. and a Ph.D. in geography. From 1960 to 1961, he did post-doctoral work at the University of Uppsala in Sweden.
David Harvey’s Career
Harvey taught geography at the University of Bristol in England from 1961 to 1969. By the middle of the 1960s, he had made important contributions to space science and positivist theory.
In 1969, he moved to Baltimore, USA, to work as an Associate Professor of Geography at Johns Hopkins University. Around that time, he became very interested in the new field of Marxist and radical geography.
At that time, racism and abuse were common in Baltimore, and there were often protests against these social problems. “Antipode” was started at Clark University, and he was one of the first people to write for it. During the Boston Association of American Geographers meetings in 1971, he and his peers began to question the ways things had always been done.
He was an Associate Professor until 1973. After that, he became a Professor of Geography at Johns Hopkins University, where he stayed until 1989.
He was also the Halford Mackinder Professor of Geography at the University of Oxford from 1987 to 1993. He went back to Johns Hopkins University in 1993 as a professor of geography and stayed there until 2001.
In 1996, he gave the well-known Ellen Churchill Semple lecture at the University of Kentucky’s Department of Geography. In 2001, he took a job as Distinguished Professor of Anthropology and Geography at The Graduate Center, City University of New York.
His research interests include geography and social theory, geographical knowledge, urban political economy and urbanization in advanced capitalist countries, architecture and urban planning, Marxism and social theory, cultural geography and cultural change, environmental philosophies, environment, and social change, ecological movements, social justice, geographies of difference, and utopianism, among other things.
He has been teaching important classes on Marx’s “Capital” for more than 40 years. He has also been a supporter of student activism and community and labor movements, especially in Baltimore. Since June 2008, more than 700,000 people have looked at his “Capital” lectures online.
In the middle of his long and very successful academic career, he went to a few foreign universities for short scholarly appointments. Several well-known doctoral students, such as Neil Smith, Richard Walker, Erik Swyngedouw, Michael Johns, Maarten Hajer, Patrick Bond, Melissa Wright, and Greg Ruiters, have gotten help from him.
In 2013, the Republic of Ecuador asked him to help set up the National Strategic Center for the Right to the Territory (CREDIT), which he now co-directs with urbanist Miguel Robles-Durán.
Works of note
Harvey’s first book, “Explanation in Geography,” came out in 1969 and quickly became a key text in the field of geography. In this book, he showed how the philosophy of science can be used to understand geography. After it came out, he moved on to talk about unfairness in society and the capitalist system.
In “Social Justice and the City” (1973), he made it clear that Geography can’t just be “objective” as long as there is urban poverty and other bad things. He made a big change to Marxist theory when he said that capitalism destroys spaces in order to make room for its own growth.
While he was a professor at Oxford, he wrote: “The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change” in 1989. The best-selling book was a materialist evaluation of postmodern ideas and opinions that come from problems with capitalism itself.
In 1996, the book “Justice, Nature, and the Geography of Difference” was all about social and environmental justice. “Spaces of Hope,” which came out in 2000, had a Utopian theme and made people think about how a different world might be set up. “Paris, Capital of Modernity,” which came out in 2003, was his most detailed work on history and geography.
In his 2003 book “The New Imperialism,” he criticized the war in Iraq. He said that the US neo-conservatives were able to distract people from the failures of capitalism “at home” because of the war. “A Brief History of Neoliberalism,” published in 2005, looked at the theory and different ways that neoliberalism has been used since the mid-1970s.
In his book “The Enigma of Capital and the Crises of Capitalism” 2010, he looked at the current financial crisis and explained how capitalism came to control the world, which led to a disaster in the economy.
His most recent books are “Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution” (2012), “A Companion to Marx’s Capital,” Volume 2 (2013), “Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism” (2014), and “The Ways of the World” (2016).
Awards & Achievements
Harvey’s books have been translated into many different languages, including Korean, Spanish, Japanese, Italian, Arabic, Turkish, Norwegian, Portuguese, Russian, German, Greek, Chinese, Polish, Swedish, Persian, and Romanian.
He has been given honorary doctorates from Roskilde (Denmark), Buenos Aires (Argentina), Uppsala University and Lund University (Sweden), Ohio State University (USA), and the University of Kentucky.
He has won a number of awards, including the Outstanding Contributor Award from the Association of American Geographers in 1982, the Anders Retzius Gold Medal from the Swedish Society for Anthropology and Geography in 1989, the Patron’s Medal from the Royal Geographical Society in London in 1995, and the Vautrin Lud International Prize in Geography from France in the same year.
In 1998, he was named a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy. In 2007, he was named a Corresponding Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Personal History and Legacies
Harvey is married, and in January 1990, his daughter Delfina was born.
Estimated Net worth
David Harvey is one of the Anthropologists with the most money and is on the list of the most popular Anthropologists. Based on what we’ve found on Wikipedia, Forbes, and Business Insider, David Harvey’s net worth is about $1.5 million.