ABSTRACT
Them atic demarcation and point o f departure Reflecting upon much o f the recent theoretical literature on urban and regional development, and especially those studies which have applied a broadly conceived Marxist m ethod o f enquiry, it seems clear that the advanced capitalist societies have been retained at the thematic centre o f investigation. This observation m ust not be overemphasized since it is also evident that from the early 1980s interest and concern for global trends and processes o f international ization have been increasingly inserted into the contem porary research agenda. M oreover, there definitely does seem to be a greater awareness o f the existence and specificities o f peripheral societies than a decade ago. Nevertheless, there still remains an underlying, perhaps unconscious, tendency towards universalism or Euro-Am ericanism in the form ulation and priority given to topics for theoretical discussion. Even though this tendency is not only to be located in the realms o f M arxist urban and regional analysis, its presence in this sphere has received far less interrogation than elsewhere.1
