Theories of Social Space: Lefebvre and the Sociology of Space

Theories of Social Space

Introduction

This lecture explores the sociological theories of space, focusing on Henri Lefebvre's influential work on the production of social space. It situates Lefebvre's ideas within the broader context of human geography and social theory, examining how space is produced, structured, and contested in modern society.

Recap: Human Geography and Social Space

• Human geography studies how people organize society, interact, and create meaning in places.

• Physical geography examines Earth's spheres (lithosphere, atmosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere), while human geography focuses on the spatial organization of human activity.

• Three main spatial social theories:

  • Space Syntax (Hillier & Hanson): Architectural/urban focus.

  • Structuration (Giddens): Sociological perspective on the duality of structure and agency.

  • Production of Space (Lefebvre): Politico-economic and sociological approach (main focus here).

Henri Lefebvre: Life and Work

• French Marxist theorist (1901–1991); published extensively on social space, Marxism, modernity, everyday life, and the state.

• Identified as a politically engaged Marxist, not limited to one discipline.

• Best-known work: The Production of Space (1974), which critiques both structuralism and existentialism.

• His work on the state and globalization remains less studied in English.

The Production of Social Space

Core Ideas

• Humans produce their own life, consciousness, and world—and in doing so, they also produce social space.

• Space is not a passive container but a product and means of production; it is both the result and cause of social relations.

• Space is dialectical: it is simultaneously a field of action and a basis for action.

Boundaries of Space

• Spaces have both physical borders (e.g., mountains, rivers) and socially produced conceptual boundaries (e.g., passports, maps, border posts).

• Nation-state borders are historical products, maintained by political power and distinctions between citizens and non-citizens.

Lefebvre's Three Levels of Social Space

Lefebvre identifies a dialectical triad for understanding social space:

Level	Subjects	Objects	Activities
Spatial Practice	Members of society, family, working class	Everyday spaces, urban routes, local-global links	Perceiving, daily routines, reproduction of social relations
Representations of Space	Experts, planners, architects, technocrats	Knowledge, codes, maps, abstract space (commodities, property, money)	Conceiving, calculation, representation, construction
Representational Space	Inhabitants/users who experience space	Social life, art, culture, symbols, memories	Living, everyday activities

• Spatial practice mediates between conceived and lived space, holding the triad together.

Dominated vs. Appropriated Space

• Dominated space: Shaped by external power ("a master's project"). Under capitalism, the nation-state forms political space, while workplaces and markets form economic space.

• Abstract space: The space of capitalism—organizes abstract labor, exchange, and commodities; characterized by calculation and quantification.

• This creates tension between conceived/planned space and the lived space of everyday life; lived experience is often marginalized.

• Users' space: Lived, concrete, and subjective—centered on the experiences of individuals rather than abstract calculations.

Social Systems, Institutions, and Space

• A social system is a regularized, enduring social relation with economic, political, and cultural dimensions.

• Institutions (e.g., parliament, legal system, markets, education, healthcare) are large-scale social systems central to society.

• Social space is a bounded combination of social relations, structures, practices, systems, and institutions, produced and reproduced by human practice.

• Structures can outlast individuals (e.g., job roles persist even as people change).

• Communication is the process by which structures and spaces are lived and reproduced, using verbal/non-verbal codes and technologies.

Modernity and Globalisation

• Globalisation is seen as a continuation and enlargement of modernity, not a break from it.

• Lefebvre critiques modernity's privileging of time over space, and the abstraction of space in capitalist society.

• Capitalism increasingly produces space itself, mastering space globally by reducing the significance of time.

• Key question: Will the state produce its own "absolute political" space, or will the global market dissolve the nation-state?

Lefebvre's Critique of the State

• Lefebvre critiques both the Marxist project to conquer the state and the Left's reliance on state authority ("statism").

• He analyzes the state as the institution binding space into productive territories.

• The Left, he argues, has failed to offer a new concept of society or the state, focusing only on growth and redistribution.

• Autogestion (self-management): Advocates for worker control and radical democratization, beyond institutional frameworks.

• Counter-spaces: Social space contains possibilities for resistance (e.g., art, the body) that can challenge bureaucratic control.

Rescaling, Reterritorialisation, and Reorientation

• Rescaling: The scale of citizenship and policy shifts toward cities and global/regional blocs (e.g., EU, OECD).

• Reterritorialisation: Globalization leads to new territorial arrangements; states reassert themselves via regional blocs, deepening geographic inequality.

• Reorientation: National power expectations shift toward cities, neighborhoods, and global coalitions under neoliberalism.

Globalisation ('le planétaire')

• Global circuits of capital and social movements emerge, with new urban reference points.

• Traditional state politics and labor unions decline; new contradictions arise between global homogenization and local parcelization (private property).

• Counter-spaces (alternative spatial practices) emerge as sites of political struggle (e.g., the beach as both liberation and labor reproduction).

Postmodernism as Respatialisation

• Postmodernism disrupts traditional "cognitive mapping" of space (Jameson).

• New spatial logic is organized around near–far, presence/absence, rather than inside/outside.

• Cultural oppositions (proximate/remote, known/unknown, material/abstract) erode modernist categories like the individual, city, and nation-state.

Summary and Applications

• Three ways to define space:

  1. As a natural container (Kitchin, 2009).

  2. As mentally constructed (e.g., mental maps; Gould & White, 1974).

  3. As socially produced (Lefebvre, 1991)—space has meaning because it is social.

• Example: The kitchen as a gendered space ("women belong in the kitchen") illustrates how social norms attach meaning to space.

• Space is historically situated (e.g., colonialism, apartheid) and changes over time through power relations.

• Parallel to world-systems theory (Wallerstein): The global economy is divided into core, semi-periphery, and periphery, with distinct economic roles and obscured worker connections.

Key Terms and Concepts

• Social space: The product of social relations, structures, and practices, continually produced and reproduced by society.

• Abstract space: Space organized by capitalist logic, emphasizing calculation, commodification, and quantification.

• Counter-space: Spaces of resistance and alternative practices that challenge dominant spatial orders.

• Rescaling: Shifting the scale of social, political, or economic organization (e.g., from nation-state to city or global region).

• Reterritorialisation: The reconfiguration of territorial boundaries and meanings in response to globalization.

• Autogestion: Self-management or worker control, emphasizing grassroots democracy.

Further Study

• Explore the relationship between space and society in tutorials and practical sessions.

• Next lecture: Nationalism and the exclusion of "the other."