Peet, Richard (1940-)

One of radical geography's most passionate and vociferous promoters, Richard Peet has devoted his career to exposing the ways in which power and inequality are manifested in global society. Although in some senses Peet's career reveals remarkable consistency and stability—since receiving his PhD at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1968, he has been a professor at Clark University, and his commitment to Marxism has been unwavering—the focus of his analysis has shifted over the decades.

Peet was an early promoter of Marxism in geography, founding the radical geography journal Antipode in 1970, which he edited until 1985, as well as editing an early collection of radical geography essays in 1977. Peet's own version of Marxist geography had (and continues to have) a strong environmental focus, as he sees Marxist geography as particularly well suited for understanding the social conditions that arise out of the productive transformation of nature. This focus has led him to forge strong links with political ecology and development studies, two areas of geography that attempt to understand how nature is transformed at the local scale and how the extraction and transformation of nature are organized globally.

In the 1980s, Peet was on the frontlines of a battle between Marxists and postmodernists, whose understanding, in Peet's view, was insufficiently grounded in the material conditions of production and reproduction. Waging this battle drove Peet deeper into geographic thought and its philosophical underpinnings, as well as leading him to alternative theories of culture and meaning, culminating in the publication of Modern Geographical Thought in 1998.

The 1990s saw Peet return to his core interests in the global economy and in the relationship between nature and society, but now from a theoretical perspective that, although still rooted in Marxism, incorporated a broader range of theorists, notably Cornelius Castoriadis and Michel Foucault. His work in international political economy and development theory led to the publication of Global Capitalism (1991) and Theories of Development (coauthored with Elaine Hartwick, 1999/2008), while his work in political ecology resulted in the publication of Liberation Ecologies (coedited with Michael Watts, 1996/2004).

In the 21st century, as countries throughout the world abandoned socialist development strategies, Peet shifted his focus to the global institutions through which neoliberalism permeates the decisions made by governments, corporations, and individuals around the world. A collaborative research project with a collective of undergraduate students resulted in the publication of Unholy Trinity: The IMF, World Bank, and the WTO (coauthored with 16 students, 2003) as well as his book Geography of Power: The Making of Global Economic Policy (2007).

Whether huddled with graduate students pasting up copies of Antipode in the basement of Clark University, inciting students to think about the geographies of power in their lives, or challenging a speaker at a professional meeting, Peet brings an exceptional level of enthusiasm and passion, as well as academic rigor, to radical geography.