Revisiting the “Articulation” of Capital and Difference: Louis Althusser, Stuart Hall, and the Built Environment

In the context of ongoing debates in the social sciences on the relationship between race, gender, and the reproduction of capitalist society, many scholars have turned to the concept of “articulation.” However, it remains unclear how, exactly, capital and ascriptive difference are articulated and why particular articulations of race, gender, and capital remain so enduring. This article undertakes a critical reading of Stuart Hall’s landmark writing on articulation to engage these themes. I begin by contextualizing Hall’s “articulationist” approach, situating it in relation to Louis Althusser’s writing on articulation and in relation to the “modes of production debate.” Against the backdrop of Hall’s account, I then argue that the built environment is a mechanism through which the articulation of capital and difference occurs and a critical “line of tendential force” that holds articulations together over time and space.