Source: Mutabdžija, 2020.
The quantification of geographical phenomena and processes was an expression of the need to simplify geography’s meaning and practical needs, which began to lose its academic significance and disappear as a permanent course at well-known universities. It was similar to the relationship between the terms space and place in the 1970s or, to a lesser extent, as space and the natural environment in the 1970s and 1980s.
2. HENRI LEFEVBRE AND THE CONCEPT OF RELATIONAL SPACE
Henri Lefebvre is credited with defining the relational concept of space, which stemmed from social practices. To properly understand these terms, it is essential to immediately mention two capitally critical essays from 1968. The first essay was written by M. Foucault is called ”Other Places” (Des espaces autres ), while the other ”Right to the City” (Le droit a la ville ) was written by Lefebvre. According to Prodanović and Krstić (2011: 426), through the notion of heterotopia, Foucault opened ”a completely new field of analysis, in which space gained a crucial role in trying to gain insight into how society functions” because space ”cannot be part an abstract theoretical system, but rather a socially constructed network of meanings that are inextricably linked to our (every day) actions.” This introduced into geography a relational concept in which space is ”folded into” social relations through practical activities. This was allowed not only for the ”socialization of spatial analysis” but also crucial for the ”specialization of social analysis,” which stepped into the world of postmodern geographies. To gain that insight, it is necessary to return to Lefebvre and his ”production of space.”
According to Kipfer et al. (2008: 2-3), he introduced Hegel’s and Marx’s early works into the contemporary academic debate, resulting in his ”original heterodox Marxism through a series of critical engagements related to French phenomenology, existentialism, structuralism, surrealists, Dadaists, and avant-garde situationists”. . According to them, Lefebvre’s most notable contribution includes a critique of everyday life and the study of urbanization and space, with ”his influence in critical theory fading,” but in broad fields of academic research, from architecture to urbanism and radical geography, he still enjoys celebrity status personalities. They emphasize three lines of understanding of Lefebvre’s work, the first of which refers to the spatiality that arose from the ”urban economic-political” representations developed by D. Harvey (1973). Based on this, Mutabdžija (2020: 23) states that Harvey introduced this social practice into geographical research, so instead of asking ”What is space?”, He asked the question ”How can different human practices create and use characteristic concepts?” lysis of space” or why space is condensed. The second concerns the teachings of E. Soja (1989), who directly connects the emergence of the concept of postmodernity with relational (social) space, while the third derives from contemporary works of S. Elden (2004) and E. Merfield (2006) and concerns Lefebvre’s observations on distance, time, and urbanization. Such an interpretation of Lefebvre connects urban-spatial debates with the ”open appropriation of his meta philosophical epistemology shaped by continental philosophy and Western Marxism.” It rejects the ”weakening dualism between political economy and cultural studies” that marked the difference between the ”first” and ”second” waves. Instead, the differences within these theories during the 1980s and 1990s led to ”bifurcations of theoretical debates that identified Marxism with studies of material, social relations, classes, and political economy, while considerations of subjectivity, identity, differences, and culture shifted to poststructuralist versions of cultural studies.”
At the end of this introduction to Lefebvre, it is essential, in addition to interpreting relational space, to highlight the broader creative work of this neo-Marxist philosopher and existentialist, whom Shields (2011: 279) says was a sociologist of urban and rural life and a theorist of state and international currents. Capital and social space. As a witness to the modernization of everyday life, industrialization of the economy, and suburbanization of cities, he noted that different methods were combined to ”destroy the traditional life of the French peasant.” He wrote about it from different angles, thus advancing various disciplinary research, so without referring to his arguments, it is ”difficult to discuss concepts such as everyday life, modernity, mystification, social production of space, humanistic Marxism, or even alienation.”
2.1 Lefebvre’s interpretation of space
Lefebvre’s significance and influence on human (social) geography should not be overestimated, but it cannot fit into narrow geographical frameworks alone. As Shields (2011: 279) notes, he was a critic of ”excessive disciplinary specialization in economics, geography, and sociology,” which has ”parceled out” the study of space. This assessment results from his collaboration with the group Situationist International and Guy Deborah, which focused his attention on ”the urban environment as a context for everyday life and an expression of the social relations of production.” He later extended his critique of domestic life to the neighborhood and urban life, asking a fundamental question: what does urbanity consist of? He answered that the urban is not even a specific population, geographical size, or set of buildings; it is neither a hub, a transfer point, nor a production center. ”For him, urbanity does it all together, and every definition must look for the essential quality of all these aspects. This shows that in this definition of the urban, he sees a ”phenomenological basis with a Hegelian form” in which the urban is ”a social centrality in which many elements and aspects of capital intersect in space.” Three phases in the development of his interpretation of space can be identified. The first is characterized by social centrality, developed in the ”Right to the City” (1968). The second concerns the study of social space as a national and global expression for the mode of production that best reflects the notion of specialization in ”Production of Space” (1974). The third phase refers to the multidimensionality of his thesis, which was ”in direct contrast to the more common reduction of space to one segment of the triple process (production, exchange or accumulation)” and in which he views space as a fourth area of ​​social relations ”in which production, exchange, and accumulation of wealth and surplus-value.” From this, he concludes that space is not given, nor that a city is an object, but that space is also urban ”immaterial but constitutive aspects of society, its virtual image,” which he presented in ”Urban Revolution” (2003).
According to Schmidt (2008: 27), Lefebvre’s interpretation of space created a ”spatial turn,” which affected the social sciences, and space spread beyond geography. In essence, this is related to the combined processes of urbanization and globalization, which at all levels of space, from micro to macro, have led to the creation of new geography and new spatio-temporal configurations. This determined our world through the reference to new concepts of space, which correspond to current social conditions, which were explained in a very acceptable way by Lefebvre’s theory of space production. Its importance is that it ”systematically integrates the categories of city and space into a single, comprehensive social theory that enables the understanding and analysis of spatial processes at different levels.” Therefore, Schmidt’s work aims to clarify the ”formative elements of its basic structure and epistemology” through a comprehensive analysis and reconstruction of the theory of space production, which shows that three (so far neglected) aspects of understanding Lefebvre’s theory.
First, the specific concept of dialectics can be considered its original contribution. During his extensive oeuvre, Lefebvre developed a version of the dialectic that was original and independent in every respect. This dialectic is not binary but triadic and based on Hegel, Marx, and Nietzsche. This is still not adequately understood and has led to significant misunderstandings. Another deciding factor is language theory. The fact that Lefebvre developed his theory of language, relying on Nietzsche, is hardly ever considered in the reception and interpretation of his works, from which the linguistic turn arose. Here, he first understood and concretely applied his triadic dialectic—the third essential element in French phenomenology. While Heidegger’s influence on Lefebvre’s work has already been discussed in detail, the contribution of French phenomenologists (Merleau-Ponty and Bachelard) has generally not received due attention (Schmidt, 2008: 28).