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).