Manuel Castells ’ The Urban Question A Review Essay*

bution to the growing Marxist critique of urban studies. The book’s central criti-cism is that the histoncal relativity of the term "urban " makes the urban field one without a rigorously defined object. As such, urban studies becomes an ideology which masks social relations with environmental determinism. Castells puts for-ward the hypothesis that the term "urban " refers to the ideological apprehension of the collective reproduction of labor power in capitalist societies. He under-takes several empirical and theoretical studies that are not very useful because they rely on an eclectic, formalistic empiricism. The hypothesis that the "urban " is an ideology reflecting reproduction requires a rigorous formulation of the specificity of "reproduction, " "ideology, " and the "urban " in relation to the mode of production. The so-called "ideological instance " actually refers to particular relations produced in the capitalist mode of production. I suggest that the "urban " simultaneously refers to the processes of socialization of production, realization of surplus value, and collective reproduction of labor power. &dquo;The City&dquo; is somewhat of a paradox for th