Social Sciences in China (Chinese Edition)

No.10, 2018

 

The Spatial Justice Narrative in the Light of Historical Materialism—Based on the Thought of Marx and Engels

(Abstract)

 

Hu Xiao

 

The issue of spatial justice has become increasingly prominent in the areas of social life and academic research. Due to large-scale high-speed urbanization and the deep nationwide concern over real estate issues, spatial justice has gained unprecedented and immediate urgency. The expression of spatial justice, as a model of social justice, engenders social justice. The understanding and interpretation of spatial justice must follow the principles of historical materialism founded by Marx and Engels; in clarifying the relationships between human rights and property rights that limit spatial justice, it must formulate theories from the standpoint of social economy on the basis of the mode of production; in the interaction between man and nature and between space production and material production, it must undertake in-depth exploration and interpretation of the internal unity of spatial continuity and discontinuity and the dialectical relationship between the holistic universality and local particularity of the spatial value thus determined; and it must reveal the thought-provoking features of the experience of justice in our dwelling places, as well as the reductionist mechanisms of the social cognition of spatial justice. The pursuit and deployment of this narrative logic will help deepen and expand the study of spatial justice and will demonstrate its academic and practical significance.