Staff profile

Javier Moreno Zacarés works on two different, but interrelated, strands of research. The first strand revolves around the political economy of housing provision in capitalist economies, with a focus on mass property speculation. Building on the financialisation literature, it addresses how cheap finance and house-price increases have become a substitute for wage-growth in neoliberal economies, but also on the role of urban governance in forming and sustaining house-price bubbles. The second strand of his research explores the history of capitalist development, with the aim of theorising what capitalism itself is. From the historical puzzle around the origins of capitalism to the ongoing process of secular stagnation, the question of how capitalism came about and has evolved over time is used to foreground what is historically specific about it, as well as what its institutional requirements are.

Both strands are permanently in conversation: they shape each other’s research questions and inform each other’s findings. Javier’s first book, Residential Capitalism: Rise and Implosion in Modern Spain (1834-2020), traces the development of capitalist housing provision in Spain, from the origins to present. The book uses a rigorous historicisation of the Spanish case to theorise how capitalism shapes residential relations, from the point of production all the way down to the household as a site of consumption and social reproduction.

Javier joined the School of Government and International Affairs at Durham University in 2021. Prior to that he was a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the University of Warwick, where he earned his PhD.

• Capitalist Development
• Housing and Real Estate
• Financialisation
• Land Rent
• Agrarian Change
• Transitions to Capitalism
• Politics and History of Spain
• Historical Materialism

Book review

• Moreno Zacarés, J. How the West Came to Rule? [with António Ferraz de Oliveira]. Antipode: A Radical Journal of Geography,

Chapter in book

• Moreno Zacarés, J. The Catalan Transition to Capitalism. In X. Lafrance, & C. Post (Eds.), Case Studies in the Origins of Capitalism. Palgrave Macmillan

Journal Article

• Moreno Zacarés, J. Euphoria of the Rentier?
• Moreno Zacarés, J. (2024). Residential Accumulation: A Political Economy Framework. Housing, Theory and Society, 41(1), 4-26. https://doi.org/10.1080/14036096.2023.2292567
• Moreno Zacarés, J. (2024). Land, Abstraction, and Housing Provision. Housing, Theory and Society, 41(1), 54-68. https://doi.org/10.1080/14036096.2023.2292584
• Moreno Zacarés, J. (2021). Two Historicisms: Unpacking the Rules of Reproduction Debate. Historical Materialism: Research in Critical Marxist Theory, 29(2), https://doi.org/10.1163/1569206X-12342030
• Moreno Zacarés, J. (2020). The Iron Triangle of Urban Entrepreneurialism: The Political Economy of Urban Corruption in Spain. Antipode: A Radical Journal of Geography, 52(5), 1351-1372. https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.12637
• Moreno Zacarés, J. (2018). Beyond Market Dependence: The Origins of Capitalism in Catalonia. Journal of Agrarian Change, 18(4), https://doi.org/10.1111/joac.12263