TY - JOUR AU - Chatterjee, Ipsita AU - Ahmed, Waquar PY - 2019/05/24 Y2 - 2024/03/28 TI - Dialectical Materialism: Marx’s method in human geography? JF - ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies JA - ACME VL - 18 IS - 2 SE - Research DO - UR - https://acme-journal.org/index.php/acme/article/view/1637 SP - 364-393 AB - <p>Dialectical materialism, we argue is a philosophical praxis that guided Marx’s critique of capitalist political economy. In this article, we have attempted a self-critique of human geography by explicating that dialectical materialism has been largely used as a metaphor within the discipline. The article has been inspired by the over-whelming use of the terms ‘dialectics’ and ‘dialectical’ in human geography. The purpose has been to lay down some of the basic tenets of dialectical materialism in Marx’s work, and then lay down some human geography research that engages with dialectical materialism. We believe that philosophical introspection on methodology, particularly within the Marxist circles, is scarce. We argue that to develop a truly dialectical materialist human geography we must push dialectal materialism from metaphor to methodology. We also think that methodology and philosophy are inseparably tied and therefore, choice of research methodology is a reflector of the researcher’s philosophy about reality and hence research praxis should be an important matter of discussion and introspection.</p> ER -