Social Production Of Space Research Articles

The Limits of Domestic Spatiality in the Information Age – A Secondary Publication

The limits of spatiality have blurred in the information age; a phenomenon that can be observed through thesocio-spatial implications of Internet use in the domestic sphere. How and why are the use and organization of space-time around the Internet shaping a new domestic spatiality that intertwines the digital space with the production of social space through the practice of habits, presence, and interaction of individuals? What are the repercussions of the superimposition of digital space on human existence? The units of analysis were integrated through the sum of people and middle-class housing in the face of the digitalization process in the city of San Luis Potosi, Mexico. The questionnaire consisted of 35 questions designed from the Likert scale under the thematic order of presence, interaction, and habituality. The data were analyzed using SPSS software. This research contributes to explaining the current period in the history of inhabitable space, dominated by the simultaneous interrelationships between individuals, digital space, and architecture, which result in the detachment and devaluation of physical domestic space, while also highlighting the lack of control and regulation of individuals over the Internet.

Places

In this panel, focusing on place in terms of Landscapes of Care, Richard Wiliams, Sotiria Alexiadou with Vassilis Colonas, and Joao Gadelho Novais Tavares examine urban architectures through a shared aperture of film, thereby showing an engagement with the historical, spatial and ‘social production of space’.1 The temporal dimension of film opens up for analysis of the places of their individual studies in historical, real-time and fictitious dimensions, showing how visual images contribute to understandings of the care of places and peoples. Lars Rolfsted Mortensen’s photographs of dams in the Swiss Alps raise broader questions about place and our need for care of the landscape. The photographs present us with the ambivalence of sublime infrastructures that are both destructive and removable interventions in Alpine ecosystems but vital for green energy.
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For other ways of life: cosmopolitics in regulations, utopias and spiritualities

This article critically approaches our anthropocentric relationship with the planet and raises alternatives to think about cosmopolitical regulations and utopias as potentialities for the reestablishment of the planet's equilibrium. To do so, it is necessary to understand the Earth as a living organism, Gaia, as in fact various peoples and cultures already recognize it. We try to imagine how other worlds, other ways of living and relating to other beings and natural elements would be possible. We thus aim to think about, question, and eventually regulate the rights of nature and its relations with health and spirituality in the appropriation and production of social space, of living spaces. In spite of the advances observed in Latin America in the regulation of society/nature relations, Brazil is still characterized by an anthropocentric legislation that references human domination over other beings and elements. The apparent advances in the line of ecological modernization, or 'green stamps', in fact do not address the issues and causes that determine or contribute to the destruction of the planet, or even to the threats posed today to all organisms, including Gaia herself. Cosmopolitical regulations and utopias can be empowered to achieve other ways of life, changing the hegemonic anthropocentric perspective to an ecocentric approach, and perhaps even changing the dominant materialist paradigm to a new paradigm that recognizes the spiritual-materialist dialectical relationship and the necessary sacralization of everyday life.

Investigating Agrotourism Aesthetics and Social Production of Space from Local Stakeholders’ Perspective: A Case Study of Grape Festival in Abhar City, Darsjin Village, Iran

Investigating Agrotourism Aesthetics and Social Production of Space from Local Stakeholders’ Perspective: A Case Study of Grape Festival in Abhar City, Darsjin Village, Iran

Gender-queere Perspektiven auf Raum-Zeit-Konstellationen in der Literatur: Virginia Woolfs Orlando

Abstract This paper takes its cue from research on the social production of space and time in recent decades and outlines major feminist and queer perspectives emanating from this field of investigation and their productivity for cultural and literary studies (Part 1). Part 2 offers a gender-queer reading of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando. A Biography (1928) based on the concepts and ideas presented in the first section. It shows how Woolf’s experimental take on time, space and gender exposes the patriarchal and heteronormative underpinnings of Victorian biographical writing and projects a performative notion of gender that refutes the gender essentialism still prevalent in her day. The concluding part (Part 3) considers the literary text itself as a heterotopia in the sense of a counter-site that can critically reflect the norms of existing spaces and open up alternative worlds of being for the reader to inhabit.

At the fringes of transitions: socio-spatial constitution of transitions within early childhood education and care institutions in Finland

ABSTRACT This study focuses on transitions that emerge between the child’s first transition from home to early childhood education and care (ECEC) and the transition to pre-primary education in Finnish centre-based ECEC. Group-based organisation of Finnish ECEC produces transitions between groups within settings but children transition between centres also. The aim is to reach the fringes of transition focusing on other change processes children encounter during their years in ECEC. Thus, transition is defined as a relationally constituted change process framed by educational institutions and their practices. We examine how children’s lived spaces of transition are socio-spatially constituted. Two analytical narratives from a longitudinal, multimethods multi-case study dataset are presented as examples of relational socio-spatial constitution of transitions. Henri Lefebvre’s theory about production of social space is applied. We discuss how educational transitions within ECEC as relational processes concerns children who are not designated to move from one group or centre to another. For them, the relationality of transitions rearranges groups and centres as networks of socio-spatial relations in various, context-specific ways, constituting lived spaces of transitions.

Reshaping water-related urban places with collaborative participation: a critical examination of the Kabataş waterfront

PurposeThis study aims to draw a general framework for recreating water-related urban places. It discusses design criteria and processes that will strengthen people's and the city's relationship with the waterfront. It also explores the functional requirements of a participatory process to incorporate social and functional relations into place making.Design/methodology/approachThe study is based on a comprehensive case study of the Kabataş project process. Data collection methods include archive searches, questionnaires, interviews and analysis. The study analyses the architectural decisions, the role and perspectives of the key actors and the current dynamics that shape the process. It points out shortcomings and needs of communication and collaboration with different stakeholders, especially with the users.FindingsThe results show that political and power dynamics play an important role in shaping the process. Non-transparent processes increase the gap between the aspects of community and decision makers in current practices. Establishing holistic, waterfront-specific and collaborative approaches is a necessity. The results also show that the success of participation depends on procedural dynamics such as scope, method, timing, representativeness of the community, institutionalisation level, transparency and deliberation.Originality/valueDespite the intense interest in waterfront regeneration, few studies have focused on the potential of the participatory process. The study examines the intersections of waterfront design decisions and collaborative participation at various scales and emphasises the importance of local actors in the social production of space.

Cultural Mapping Tools and Co-Design Process: A Content Analysis to Layering Perspectives on the Creative Production of Space

This study draws on the lessons learned during a summer school on cultural mapping (CM), which linked these methodologies and the co-design process to the city’s re-application to the UNESCO creative city designation. The event implemented artistic and participatory approaches, such as experimental initiatives that focused on the involvement of artists—the main creative producers of space—to foster participatory governance processes and reflect on the validity of the UNESCO label and its inherent monoculture emphasis. A content analysis of the course was done to provide a conceptual analysis of the theory and practice of cultural mapping that is generally under-theorized. By situating the course’s exercises in the theoretical triad of Lefebvre’s social production of space, the article indicates a possible structure for multi-perspective layering toward the participatory practices on the creative production of space. The results show that there is still no consistent way of presenting CM methodologies and processes, and for that CM remains not fully integrated into the planning and development practices of places. The study suggests further investigation on the links between cultural mapping and design science for co-design process crafting, and cultural mapping tool selection according to the different stages of multi-stakeholder work on articulating people-place meanings.

Sticky and Stuck: The Lift as a Vehicle in the Production of Social Space in Livi Michael’sUnder a Thin Moonand Loretta Ramkissoon’s “Which Floor?”

AbstractThis essay analyzes Livi Michael’s novel Under a Thin Moon (1992) and Loretta Ramkissoon’s short memoir “Which Floor?” (2019) to examine representations of female experience of living in high-rise social housing. My analysis draws on the work of Henri Lefebvre and Doreen Massey to investigate the production of the tower block as a social space. The lift is employed as a lens to study the structuring and shaping of the high-rise narrative and explore how fiction can both reinforce and challenge dominant mythologies of social housing. The lift’s role is considered through themes of gendered experiences of disgust (stickiness) and mobilities (getting stuck). In Under a Thin Moon, the tower block lift embodies the narrative of the failure of the utopian solutions to the postwar housing crisis in the UK and its consequences. In “Which Floor?,” although the lift is a space inherent in the facilitation and nurturing of community, it nevertheless similarly captures a narrative of the immobility of high-rise life.

Transforming Life for Young People

The article makes a posteriori contribution as part of the active place-making discourse in the African context within two dimensions: First, it substantiates how public spaces can be transformed when shifting the focus from place-based to a process-oriented approach framed around the empowerment of the human condition to improve subjective wellbeing. Second, it provides rich insights into a case study on several informal settlements in urban Sierra Leone, West Africa, based on our project aspiration to create safe and conducive spaces for one of the most under-prioritized population groups - the urban youth. Together, both dimensions provide an invitation to evaluate way's how the UN-Habitat Public Space toolkit 13 can be effectively implemented at a local level and upscaled to achieve the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 11.7.Philosophically, the mixed method action-research project received inspiration from Henry Lefebvre's social production of space which informed the design of the dream-catching process and was translated into a unique social research methodology that bridges the disciplinary divide from public health, anthropology, and urban design. The role of process-oriented approaches to place-making, in this context called space-making, is the key element of this paper. However, the empirical baseline data on subjective wellbeing collected from 1091 young people function as the foundation method to identify and validate the possible impact factor of the public space interventions to improve their environmental conditions. The conclusion reflects on the emergence of new epistemologies associated with the idea of urban loveability as it embraces the public space as an open-ended process to place-making in the African context to transform not just a place but the human condition - in this case, marginalised urban youth.

The Bulkeley Market

Olivia Chen has conducted research into the transient dawn markets of Hong Kong in which hawkers secretly operate second-hand markets, forming a liminal space in which objects of inconsequential value are sold and exchanged. Through this Chen has built an understanding of the web of the social relations and hierarchies that underpin poorer areas in Hong Kong, exposing the socio-economic disparities in Bulkeley Street, Hung Hom and giving the lie to the prosperous facade of Hong Kong. The reality that she captures is a vanishing one, with street markets giving way to shopping malls. Through protracted observation, Chen has found that such markets contribute to the recycling and exchange mechanisms of a material economy of the city, and that such spaces of production build social cohesion through weaving webs of social connections. As a wish to manifest these social webs, Chen’s work The Bulkeley Market explores storytelling as a spatial practice in ways that highlight the importance of such issues in the production of social space.

The urban form under patrimonialism: the limits of state action in the production of urban space in Brazil

Urban public policies in Brazil are based on an exaggerated belief in the transformative potential of the state apparatus and urban planning. This is because the State model, which is used, is the model structured within the context of the regulated economies of the welfare state, where the production of urban space is the result of action by a strong State. The problem with this is that this model does not correspond to Brazilian sociability, nor to our urban form. It is therefore necessary to create a theory of the State for the urban, which is capable of covering the specificities of our patrimonialist society. Using the theory of State derivation, it may be inferred that the urban form derives from this specific sociability, defining a process that is not the social production of space, but a patrimonialist production of space, a pattern of domination through space that sustains the elite society.

Social Production of an Internal Colony: Urban Space in Black Chicago, 1945-1970

Utilizing an internal colonial model combined with Henri Lefebvre’s ideas about the social production of space, this paper argues the urban space in Black Chicago was intentionally constructed to maximize the control and exploitation of Black Chicagoans. Driven by material interests, primarily, and inextricably tied to America’s race-based hierarchy, hegemonic institutions confined and restricted Black space via discriminatory housing practices to ensure continued economic exploitation. To enforce the spatial barriers they had erected, hegemonic institutions weaponized the police force, using it to occupy and control Black space. This essay establishes theoretical background of internal colonialism and social production of space, then applies these concepts to an analysis of housing and policing in Black Chicago to demonstrate both its intentionality and the devastating effects it had on Black Chicagoans.

Social Production of an Internal Colony: Urban Space in Black Chicago, 1945-1970

Utilizing an internal colonial model combined with Henri Lefebvre’s ideas about the social production of space, this paper argues the urban space in Black Chicago was intentionally constructed to maximize the control and exploitation of Black Chicagoans. Driven by material interests, primarily, and inextricably tied to America’s race-based hierarchy, hegemonic institutions confined and restricted Black space via discriminatory housing practices to ensure continued economic exploitation. To enforce the spatial barriers they had erected, hegemonic institutions weaponized the police force, using it to occupy and control Black space. This essay establishes theoretical background of internal colonialism and social production of space, then applies these concepts to an analysis of housing and policing in Black Chicago to demonstrate both its intentionality and the devastating effects it had on Black Chicagoans.

Debtor spaces: Austerity, space, and dispossession in Michigan’s emergency management system

In recent years, debt has become a major focus of geographic research as debt relations have become increasingly central to today’s financialized capitalist economy. This paper bridges two aspects of the debt literature: (1) the emergent literature on debt spatiality, which argues that space plays an active role in the creation and maintenance of debt relations, and (2) the broader literature examining processes of debt-driven dispossession (e.g., foreclosure, eviction, austerity, etc.). Recent literature in geography, led by Harker’s work on debt spaces, has argued that debt should not only be understood as a temporal relation (a promise of future labor) but a spatial relation as well. This literature has examined the active role of space in creating debt relations but has been less attentive to the ways in which debt is a key mechanism of dispossessive economies. Analyzing Michigan’s emergency management laws, a system of forced, localized austerity, I chronicle how the social production of space is central to dispossessive debt projects. I conclude by offering a new concept, debtor spaces, to characterize the socio-spatial formations which enable practices of debt-based dispossession.

SOME INSIGHTS OF NEOLIBERALISM IN BRAZIL FROM A GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE

Abstract Aiming to raise the debate and new interpretations, we rehearse a reflection to understand different, apparently, unrelated processes through an articulating effort of current issues, whose theoretical formulation and empirical apprehension still generate confusion. To underline that Brazil is not a particular case, we make some critical remarks on the neoliberalization of life and the social production of space. (a) To clarify the financialization mechanisms, (b) highlight some interactions among financial capital actions, backed by the State, the media, and right-wing political movements, and (c) underline how the persistence of patrimonialism and unconcluded modernity intensify such processes. Events unfolding around the world, changes in the Brazilian political and economic conjuncture, since late 2015, suggest the imperative to consider: a) the character of the capitalist State in the current phase of financialization and accumulation; b) the very meaning of neoliberalism; c) the association of financial capital and the State; d) the societal and sociability crisis established, given the dehumanization of the Other and the potential of financialization transform all elements and aspects of life and social space into financial assets.

Marxism as a tool for uncovering hegemonic discourses on nature

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.

O Quarto de Carolina : O gênero, a moradia e os direitos sociais em Quarto de Despejo

The urban ethnography, written in informal language by a slum dweller, brings the verbal outlines of the thoughts of someone who has suffered the marks of social segregation, aporophobia, racism and misogyny. Quarto de Despejo, written in the format of a diary, raises the interweaving of the themes of gender and housing, allowing us to identify the intersectionality of gender, race, and class in the social production of space. Prior to the formulation of the feminist theoretical scope on fighting inequalities, Carolina emerges from poverty, alien to academia, identifies pertinent social issues, and produces archetypes that allow for confrontation with later postulated theories. More than half a century after her first publication, it is still possible to see in practice how these issues remain entangled and without adequate confrontation, adding other components. Thus, using the literature review method and centered on a historical-descriptive understanding, the considerations presented are about gender theories, which can be debated from the perspective of social rights and the public policies produced, comparing the literary work and the sociological perspective

The production of social spaces for children with profound and multiple learning difficulties: a Lefebvrian analysis

There is on-going debate about whether mainstream education is desirable for children with profound and multiple learning difficulties (PMLD). Whilst some hold that ‘inclusion’ is a human right, and that interaction with mainstream peers leads to socio-cognitive gains, others argue that profoundly disabled learners require developmental curricular provided by special schools. Despite such claims, there is little evidence to support either view. This paper contributes to the debate by presenting research that examined how mainstream schools and special schools, across nursery, primary, and secondary settings, provided alternative social spaces for children with PMLD. It applies a Lefebvrian lens to illuminate how social engagement depended on the extent to which prescribed practices (‘abstract spaces’) dominated the interaction (‘spatial practices’), and the conditions which allowed novel forms of engagement to emerge (‘lived spaces’). Novel forms of engagement correlated with positive social development. The conclusion challenges the ‘mainstream-special’ binary presupposed in inclusion debates.

European football televisual spectatorship and social identity in Eldoret, Kenya

ABSTRACT In the recent times, European football has become popular in the Sub Saharan world. Most studies have explored what is perceived as the European cultural influence on local societies and cultures and attributed this to the improved global media technology. Some studies have also explored what is described as new and innovative socio-cultural patterns of fandom. This article examines one particular social trend: the construction and performance of elite social identity. It examines the interplay between local processes of performing social identity and European football televisual spectatorship (EFTS). The argument has been made that in Eldoret, EFTS has been appropriated in a local process of social identification. This is part of a long-term ethnographic study but which narrows down to EFTS experience in one place, Sunjeel Restaurant, and examines the experience of a social group that developed in the context EFTS experiences here. The article uses aspects of Lefebvre’s theory of the social production of space and Bourdieu’s concept of cultural fields to describe the social contexts in which this group emerges and how it adapts EFTS to its larger project of performing the identity as members of an elite social category.