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HENRI LEFEBVRE: SPACE, TIME, AND CHANGES IN THE REGIONAL ECONOMY
  • Goran Mutabdzija
Goran Mutabdzija
University of East Sarajevo

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Abstract

This paper emphasizes Lefebvre’s interpretation of relational space as a social construct that enabled a “spatial turn” in the social sciences in the late 1960s. This is evidenced by his most important essays and books (1968, 1991, 2003) on space, the results of which have been transposed into other disciplines, as evidenced by works from a wide range of social sciences, from geography (Harvey, 1973; Soja, 1989; Peet, 1998; Dear, 2000; Elden, 2004; Castree, 2004; Shields, 2011; Gregory, 2015), spatial planning, urbanism and urban studies (Kipfer, 2008; Goonewardena, 2008) to economics (Berend, 2009; Nijkamp, ​​2012, Capello, 2016, Suwala, 2021). This led to theoretical bases for new disciplinary directions in geography (radical and postmodern geography) and regional economy by introducing a new classification of relational space (diverse-stylized and diverse-relational). Understanding this epistemological transition is possible through different concepts of space and absolute, relative, relational. Broader ontological reasoning is needed, and this has been provided by numerous theorists, such as sociologists (Blaas and Foster, 1992; Schmidt, 2008) to philosophers and social theorists (Bachelard, 1969; Foucault, 1984; Prigge, 2008; Cusset, 2015; Knoblauch and Löw, 2017). In this way, the theory of the social production of space became widely accepted. Still, the ideological component of that concept (material social practice as a Marxist thesis) became the antithesis of the emerging poststructuralist antithesis (fragmentation of socio-cultural issue of nations, through cultural studies, into numerous identity micro groups) led to a neoliberal synthesis (privatization and deregulation of the market, to strengthen the role of financial capital in socio-economic relations).