“The hinterland is fundamentally planetary”
A. Neel, Phil
“The hinterland is fundamentally planetary” - 2025.
94
Phil A. Neel, a thirty-five-year-old American geographer, analyzes the contradictions of globalized capitalism from the point of view of center-periphery relations. In this interview, he explores the concept of “the hinterland.” This term is a complex notion with various meanings. Here, it refers to remote areas, often beyond the reaches of academic research, where the contradictions of the current economic system crystallize. Far from hyperconnected urban centers, the hinterland is becoming the stage for a recomposition of political and social forces.Looking back on his childhood in the precarious housing of the American hinterland, Phil A. Neel recounts how his trajectory as an itinerant worker led him to frequent these landscapes punctuated by exclusion, violence, but also solidarity. His experience of police repression, notably through the Occupy movement, has contributed to his thinking in defense of a “communist geography” that distances itself from radical-academic postures while remaining deeply connected to the material and social realities of struggles. In this interview, he invites us to rediscover these peripheral spaces, where the stirrings of a challenge to contemporary capitalism can be found.
“The hinterland is fundamentally planetary” - 2025.
94
Phil A. Neel, a thirty-five-year-old American geographer, analyzes the contradictions of globalized capitalism from the point of view of center-periphery relations. In this interview, he explores the concept of “the hinterland.” This term is a complex notion with various meanings. Here, it refers to remote areas, often beyond the reaches of academic research, where the contradictions of the current economic system crystallize. Far from hyperconnected urban centers, the hinterland is becoming the stage for a recomposition of political and social forces.Looking back on his childhood in the precarious housing of the American hinterland, Phil A. Neel recounts how his trajectory as an itinerant worker led him to frequent these landscapes punctuated by exclusion, violence, but also solidarity. His experience of police repression, notably through the Occupy movement, has contributed to his thinking in defense of a “communist geography” that distances itself from radical-academic postures while remaining deeply connected to the material and social realities of struggles. In this interview, he invites us to rediscover these peripheral spaces, where the stirrings of a challenge to contemporary capitalism can be found.
Réseaux sociaux