Abstract
Despite an oeuvre of work spanning some 60 books and 300 articles (Kingma et al., 2018: 1), it is perhaps Henri Lefebvre’s contributions to the study of space (Lefebvre, 1991), the critique of everyday life (Lefebvre, 2014) and the analysis of rhythm (Lefebvre, 2016) that are most familiar to English-speaking readers. Dealing with the production of space, its rhythms and elevating the everyday to the level of critical thinking (Kingma et al., 2018: 35), Lefebvre’s work has already given rise to a prominent body of Organisation Studies (OS) literature. This ‘spatial turn’ in OS was pioneered on the pages of Organization with Yeung’s (1998) social-spatial analysis of business organisations, and has since offered researchers the opportunity to apply Lefebvre’s triadic, conceived-perceived-lived (Lefebvre, 1991: 40) framework to the study of resistance, control, symbolic meaning creation, identity and so on. However, this application is often performed reductively and without, perhaps, due cognizance of the lived, embodied, experiential and everyday dimension of space in general, and organisational space in particular (Kingma et al., 2018: 9). In this way, Lefebvre’s triad runs the risk of being misunderstood as a fixed representation of the antagonism between capital and labour, rather than an open and discursive framing allowing for multiple orderings across time and space (Law, 1993). Such an apparent lapse is not necessarily caused by a lack of researcher diligence or a superficial application of theory. Rather, the reason is likely to be found in the sprawling and byzantine nature of Lefebvre’s formidable work, which poses an equal challenge to those familiar with it, and those exploring it for the first time.
Considerations of this nature make this edited volume a needful offering for OS scholars interested in Lefebvrian conceptualisations of space. Kingma et al. (2018) do not provide an entry-level reader, nor a simplified overview of Lefebvre’s collected works. Instead, the authors aim to show the complexity of space in its totality, demonstrating the variety of applications for Lefebvre’s triad, bringing to light key moments, offering updated interpretations and sharing methodological insights without being formulaic or dogmatic. The volume also puts forward a ‘range of Lefebvrian inspired discussions and spatial analysis of organizational processes’ (Kingma et al., 2018: 14). In a nod to Lefebvre’s triadic framing of space, Organizational Space and Beyond is also split into three distinct but overlapping sections, which offer ‘theoretical considerations’ (Part 1), and illustrate their application across planned ‘spaces of organisations’ (Part 2) and the practised ‘organisation of spaces’ (Part 3) (Kingma et al., 2018: 8–9). This gives contributing authors an opportunity to explore variations across, and within space-production processes and methodologies, and the editors purposefully let this diversity of opinions and conceptualisations thrive without enforcing a standardised formulation. The research topics are varied and often able to uncover exciting and unusual aspects of the everyday by exploring self-organisation (Timon Beyes, Chapter 2), dynamic movements between presence–absence (Fabio Petani and Jeanne Mengis, Chapter 3; Perttu Salovaara and Arja Ropo, Chapter 4), urban rhythmanalysis (Louise Nash, Chapter 7; Zhongyuan Zhang, Chapter 10), lunchtime disco-dancing practices and food consumption routines (Tuomo Peltonen and Perttu Salovaara, Chapter 8; Harriet Shortt, Chapter 9).
Some conceptual tensions are played out in the text and, for instance, while Salovaara and Ropo (Chapter 4) discuss the possibility of synthesis between the three components of Lefebvre’s framework, Beyes (Chapter 1) emphatically disagrees. Nevertheless, the overall impression of the volume’s theoretical contribution is one of successfully codifying and cementing a consistent application of Lefebvre’s spatial model, rather than disrupting and transforming existing understandings of space. This is very much aligned with the editors’ intentions to showcase Lefebvre’s wider contribution to OS, including his triadic framework (Kingma et al., 2018: 15). This is a move beyond the binaries of ‘dialectic materialism’ (Kingma et al., 2018: 31) in order to study the ongoing production of space in its uneven, triadic totality. It is also a detailed critique of everyday life, not as an abstract construct but as a paradox (Lefebvre, 2016): mundane yet rich, alienating and yet meaningful, always experienced in the body. Particularly interesting examples of these themes are found in Chapter 7, in which Nash rhythmanalyses London City, appreciating its nuanced polyrhythmia and picking out tensions produced by the linear rhythms of human activity and the cyclical rhythms of nature. This is an intimately familiar account of everyday life, yet one transformed by subtle twists and turns, creating the need to listen, analyse and feel more closely. The centrality of the human body is recognised not only as a metronome-like tool of rhythmanalysis but as a metaphor for space, where the body’s arteries, sinews and veins are comparable to the walkways of the City. Peltonen and Salovaara (Chapter 8) also apply rhythmanalysis in their discussion of the Scandinavian lunchtime disco-dancing fad, Lunch Beat and its failed effort to challenge conceived working spaces through the production of more natural rhythms. Lunch Beat is a movement drawing inspiration from silver screen critiques of capitalism, such as Fight Club yet, ultimately, fails to liberate its practitioners’ everyday lives as it is unable to provide them with a sense of escape either in terms of context (venue, equipment), or practices (alcohol consumption).
The volume also offers invaluable methodological insights, particularly for practitioners of Lefebvre’s rhythmanalysis, while demonstrating how the potential of his spatial triad as a dynamic and ‘non-teleological’ model can be unlocked. This is particularly useful since, in his posthumously published volume on rhythms, Lefebvre introduces but is unable to fully develop his vision for a ‘new field of knowledge’ (Lefebvre, 2016: 13). Thus, in Chapter 9 Shortt offers an intriguing, unusual and engaging discussion on eating at the workplace in a foodscape study of work and eating, weaving images and narrative to show that an everyday practice need not be shackled in ordinary everydayness. Her chapter also offers methodological insight into the use of participant-led photography to discuss the meaning-making and significance of rituals, patterns, practices and smells. Zhang (Chapter 10) discusses the city in terms of exchange value (the city as a product), use-value (the city as an oeuvre), and embodying the spatial tension of simultaneously being a work of art, and a commodity. His chapter also demonstrates the utility of autoethnography as a method performed by a cyclist-walker and thus, a non-consumer in the context of a case study of Hangzhou. Zhang considers the subversive role of lived space as an arena of struggle for multiple marginalised and alienated voices, and convincingly extols the need to study the totality of the everyday, and the range of experiences of those inhabiting it. Through this, space appears as originally intended – extending from the body, tangled in rhythm, produced in tripartite totality and unapologetically quotidian. It also means that the space is produced also by those researching it, so Lefebvre’s dialectic, processual and materialistic conceptualisation makes the study of our own humanity a worthy pursuit.
In their conclusion, Kingma et al. (2018) express the significance of Henri Lefebvre for OS in no uncertain terms. Lefebvre’s triad may not envisage full emancipation of our alienated under capitalism bodies, yet it enables the study of their rhythms, movement, commodification and appropriation over time. This renders it equally useful as a framework, allowing researchers to chart ‘spaces of organisations’, a heuristic, through which processes producing the ‘organisation of spaces’ may be grasped and, finally, an overarching ontology of space. Indeed, its utility lies in the triad’s flexibility to be all three, which is not always recognised in the volume and consequently, authors at times get locked in applying the selfsame reductive interpretations they critique. While postgraduate students and researchers are likely to find the perspectives and methodologies in this volume invaluable, assessing whether the edition can ‘contribute to a liberation of the spirit of organisational studies’ (Kingma et al., 2018: 316) is a tall order. Lefebvre’s work has earned its rightful place in OS, yet his triad is built on the ongoing interplay between tensions and antagonisms entrenched so deeply that OS are unlikely to be liberated from them in the foreseeable future.
