POSITIONALITY the production of space
The French sociologist Henri Lefèbvre distinguishes between political, economic, and cultural functions and uses of space in relation to society. For Lefèbvre, space is a means of production, a supplier of raw materials, and a product of everyday social practice. Its structures and functions are in a permanent process of reciprocal exchange. The city creates urban situations “where different things occur one after another and do not exist separately.” Social realities take place in predetermined spaces, while, in turn, bodily practices constitute new spaces. Lefèbvre understands the creation of space as a process, a `production de l`espace`. Action conditions the emergence of space and transforms static spaces into dynamic points of materialisation. Everyday actions produce space, which is determined by the structures that direct those actions. Urban space “is grasped in terms of its fixed structures, staged, hierarchised, from the apartment building to the urban in its entirety, defined by visible limits or the invisible limits of administrative decrees and orders. The construction of space is thus dependent on actions carried out with the body. Public space consists of superimposed spatial and temporal partial spaces with different functions and meanings, which are conditioned by their social historicity. Societies appoint particular spaces for particular contexts, which, however, are also used in a way that lifts them out of the everyday and requires a specific kind of behavior and perception.
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