scholarly journals The Social Production of Interiority:

IDEA JOURNAL ◽  
2010 ◽  
pp. 90-101 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lubomir Savov Popov
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Design Research ◽  
Symbolic Interaction ◽  
Alternative View ◽  
Social Production ◽  
Production Of Space ◽  
Space Planning ◽  
Major Mechanism ◽  
Social Nature ◽  
The Social

Postmodern transformations in philosophy, the humanities and the social sciences have led to new ways of interpreting the social production of space and the spatialisation of social and cultural phenomena. Emergent discussions about interiors and interiority typically emphasise the social nature of space, while related research examines the complexities of socio-spatial phenomena. This paper contributes to this growing body of literature by introducing an alternative view of interiority. More specifically, the phenomenon of interiority is viewed as a by-product of the processes of the social production of space and the appropriation of space through instrumental activities and symbolic interaction. Interiority is seen as first emerging with considerations for comfort and convenience; later branching out to embrace concerns related to experience, productivity, and efficiency. More concretely, interiority can be viewed as providing the necessary conditions for social agents to undertake their activities, as well as protecting them from undesirable influences. Activity is perceived as the major mechanism for the appropriation of space and also for endowing it with the quality of interiority. By interpreting interiority this way, it becomes possible to dematerialise it and liberate it from the constraints of structures, building shells, and technical systems, as well as the problems associated with them. This alternative approach will facilitate the incorporation of knowledge and methodologies developed in the social sciences and cultural studies for the purpose of producing knowledge in the areas of design research, programming/briefing, and space planning.

The production of space at Nineveh

Iraq ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 66 ◽  
pp. 187-197 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Lumsden
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Active Role ◽  
Alternative View ◽  
Social Production ◽  
Production Of Space ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Spatial Production ◽  
The Social ◽  
Objectively Measured

Space, or spatiality, has generally been relegated to the background by historians and social scientists (Soja 1989). The Cartesian worldview demands a separation between thinking and the material world, between mind and matter. In this view space is seen simply as something that can be objectively measured, an absolute, a passive container (Merrifield 1993: 518).An alternative view, propounded mainly by postmodern geographers, regards space as a “medium rather than a container for action”, something that is involved in action and cannot be divided from it (Tilley 1994: 10). Space is not an empty, passive container, but an active process that is both constituted and constitutive (Merrifield 1993: 521). So, in this view the social, historical, and the spatial are interwoven dimensions of life (Soja 1999: 263–4). History and society are not understood if space is omitted; there is, in fact, no unspatialised social reality (Soja 1989: 131–7; 1996: 46, 70–6).The philosopher Henri Lefebvre's concept of the social production of space plays an important part in this latter view of the active role of space in social processes. Lefebvre criticises the notion that space is transparent, neutral and passive, and formulates in its place an active, operational and instrumental notion of space (Lefebvre 1991: 11). He argues that it is the spatial production process that should be the object of interest rather than “things” in space, and that space is both a medium of social relations and a material product that can affect social relations (Lefebvre 1991: 36–7; Gottdiener 1993).

Marxism as a tool for uncovering hegemonic discourses on nature

2021 ◽  
pp. 194277862110548
Author(s):  
Fernando González
Keyword(s):  
Power Relations ◽  
Antonio Gramsci ◽  
Social Production ◽  
Production Of Space ◽  
Geographic Analysis ◽  
The Social ◽  
Dominant Classes

Since its origins, geography has prioritized the study of nature. However, more recently the discipline has made advancements in studying power as a fundamental element in the social production of space and territory. What can Marxism offer to such investigations? In this brief article, I highlight some of the contributions of Marxist thought that I have found useful for geographic analysis and that stand out from the discipline’s other forms of analysis. Firstly, I recover elements from the thinker Antonio Gramsci that I consider important for debates regarding the social production of space and territory as an expression of power relations. Secondly, I retrace some aspects of Marx's concept of nature to examine certain notions that prevail in today's environmental debates. In this way, I look to denaturalize the hegemonic thought with which institutions and dominant classes exercise power in this area.

scholarly journals ‘What is infrastructure? What does it do?’: Anthropological perspectives on the workings of infrastructure(s)

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lav Kanoi ◽  
Vanessa Koh ◽  
Al Lim ◽  
Shoko Yamada ◽  
Michael R. Dove
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Field Research ◽  
Social Processes ◽  
Unintended Consequences ◽  
Human Relations ◽  
Social Nature ◽  
Nature And Culture ◽  
The Social ◽  
Growing Body

Abstract Infrastructure is often thought of in big material terms: dams, buildings, roads, and so on. This study, instead, draws on literatures in anthropology and the social sciences to analyse infrastructures in relation to society and environment, and so cast current conceptions of infrastructure in a new light. Situating the analysis in context of President Biden’s recent infrastructure bill, the paper expands what is meant by and included in discussions of infrastructure. The study examines what it means for different kinds of material infrastructures to function (and for whom) or not, and also consider how the immaterial infrastructure of human relations are manifested in, for example, labour, as well as how infrastructures may create intended or unintended consequences in enabling or disabling social processes. Further, in this study, we examine concepts embedded in thinking about infrastructure such as often presumed distinctions between the technical and the social, nature and culture, the human and the non-human, and the urban and the rural, and how all of these are actually implicated in thinking about infrastructure. Our analysis, thus, draws from a growing body of work on infrastructure in anthropology and the social sciences, enriches it with ethnographic insights from our own field research, and so extends what it means to study ‘infrastructures’ in the 21st century.

scholarly journals THE ENVIRONMENTAL DIMENSION OF SLUM UPGRADING

2018 ◽  
Vol 21 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
ROSANA DENALDI ◽  
LUCIANA NICOLAU FERRARA
Keyword(s):  
Metropolitan Areas ◽  
Environmental Policies ◽  
Social Production ◽  
Production Of Space ◽  
Environmental Dimension ◽  
Regulatory Frameworks ◽  
Environmental Recovery ◽  
The Social ◽  
Slum Upgrading ◽  
The Right

Abstract In metropolitan areas, a significant share of precarious settlements is located in environmentally protected areas. They have high levels of complexity and socio-environmental inequality compared with other areas of the overall territory. For this reason, any intervention in areas with such characteristics has to be managed by integrating social, urban and environmental dimensions. With regards to the evolution of slum upgrading policies and developments in the legal and institutional frameworks that regulate urban and environmental policies, the challenge to articulate these dimensions in order to guarantee both the right to housing and promote environmental recovery still remains. This paper is based on the theoretical panorama that problematizes the social production of space and divided approach to society and nature. It discusses the developments, limits and conflicts that emerge in the practice of slum upgrading. Two issues stand out: the management of the environmental dimension in upgrading projects and works; and the enforcement of the new regulatory frameworks to promote the regularization of these settlements.

scholarly journals Lefebvre’s Politics of Space: Planning the Urban as Oeuvre

2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 5-15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrzej Zieleniec
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Design Theory ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Production Of Space ◽  
Space Planning ◽  
Planning And Design ◽  
The Social ◽  
Politics Of Space ◽  
The City

Henri Lefebvre’s project, developed over decades of research produced a corpus of work that sought to reprioritise the fundamental role of space in the experience and practice of social life. His assertion that there is ‘politics of space’ provides a challenge to the planning and design of the built environment by emphasising the need to understand the complex of elements involved in ‘the production of space’. Lefebvre’s approach and his ‘cry and demand’ for a ‘right to the city’ reflects the fundamental focus and importance he imparts to the practices, meanings and values associated with the inhabitation and use of the social spaces of everyday life. It will be argued that planning and design theory and practice should seek to address more fully and incorporate Lefebvre’s spatial theory as a means to reinvigorate and regenerate the urban as a lived environment, as an oeuvre, as opportunity for inhabitation, festival and play and not merely as a functional habitat impelled by the needs of power and capital.

scholarly journals The gentrification approach as an analytical tool in assessing the effects of participatory urban policy

2018 ◽  
Vol 60 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-22
Author(s):  
Łukasz Drozda
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Urban Policy ◽  
Policy Science ◽  
Analytical Tool ◽  
Social Production ◽  
Production Of Space ◽  
Participatory Techniques ◽  
The Social ◽  
Spatial Dimensions ◽  
The Impact

Abstract The objective of the article is to present the assumptions of the gentrification approach, which allows one to assess the impact of public spatial actions undertaken by various actors in the process of social production of space. The study proposes a research methodology that distinguishes the social, economic and spatial dimensions of gentrification. The author makes use of source literature on the subject of gentrification and public policy theories as well as the results of the author’s gentrification research conducted in Warsaw, New York and Istanbul on examples of places that were planned using various types of participatory techniques. The study performs the operationalisation of the measurement of gentrification as a useful analytical tool in policy science.

Henri Lefebvre

Urban Studies ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andy Zieleniec
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Right To The City ◽  
Social Production ◽  
Henri Lefebvre ◽  
Production Of Space ◽  
The Social ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Right ◽  
The University ◽  
The City

Henri Lefebvre is now established as one of the most important social theorists of the 20th century. Over a long life (b. 1901–d. 1991) he wrote and published prodigiously more than sixty books and several hundred articles on a range of issues and themes. His legacy and lasting impact not only includes being the most influential and seminal theorist on the reprioritization of space in social and critical analysis but also recognition for his contribution to the analysis of everyday life, modernity, the Right to the City, and the urban. He continues to influence and inspire research across a number of disciplines and fields; these include rural and regional studies, sociology, geography, politics, philosophy, and urban studies. Lefebvre’s commitment Marxism; his nondogmatic and humanist approach to the definition, discussion, extension, and application of key concepts; and his integration of those concepts into his various analyses of the rural and the city, of the state, of space and politics, and of modernity and everyday life led him to a conflicted relationship and at times marginalization within the structuralist-influenced French Academy and the Communist Party of France in which he was a member for thirty years. His anti-Stalinist stance and nonconformist opposition to the structural determinism prevalent within the party led to his expulsion, but throughout the 1960s, as professor of sociology at the University of Strasbourg and latterly at the new university at Nanterre, he became one of the most respected teachers and intellectuals inspiring and influencing the May 1968 student revolt. Lefebvre’s work after that, still influenced and committed to Marxist dialectics and critique, increasingly focused on the urban, the social production of space, everyday life, modernity, and the survival of capitalism. Of these his introduction of the concept of the right to the city and the social production of space have been immensely influential for a range of urban scholars and theorists and his work as a whole is being increasingly adopted, adapted, and extended by a variety of researchers of the city in a range of disciplines. The works selected below reflect Lefebvre’s long career and extensive corpus of work. However, only those books and articles that have been translated into English are included here. They represent his exegesis of Marxism and its application to a range of themes that were applied or are important for urban analysis. The secondary literature cited is organized thematically and while not comprehensive provides an overview of the expanding literature on, about, and applying Lefebvrian analysis.

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