Henri Lefebvre and the Spanish Urban Experience

Henri Lefebvre and the Spanish Urban Experience
Author: Benjamin Fraser
Publisher: Bucknell University Press
Total Pages: 252
Release: 2011-09-19
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1611483697

Henri Lefebvre and the Spanish Urban Experience is the first book to thoroughly apply the French urban philosopher's thought on cities to the culture and literature of Spain. Fraser shows how Lefebvre's complex view of city as a mobile phenomenon is relevant to understanding a variety of Spanish cultural products—from urban plans and short writing on the urban expereince during the nineteenth century to urban theories, cultural practices and literary fiction of the twentieth century, pushing on to interrogate even te apperance of Mediterranean space and Barcelona in recent videogames.

Toward an Architecture of Enjoyment

Toward an Architecture of Enjoyment
Author: Henri Lefebvre
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
Total Pages: 301
Release: 2014-05-01
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 145294198X

Toward an Architecture of Enjoyment is the first publication in any language of the only book devoted to architecture by Henri Lefebvre. Written in 1973 but only recently discovered in a private archive, this work extends Lefebvre’s influential theory of urban space to the question of architecture. Taking the practices and perspective of habitation as his starting place, Lefebvre redefines architecture as a mode of imagination rather than a specialized process or a collection of monuments. He calls for an architecture of jouissance—of pleasure or enjoyment—centered on the body and its rhythms and based on the possibilities of the senses. Examining architectural examples from the Renaissance to the postwar period, Lefebvre investigates the bodily pleasures of moving in and around buildings and monuments, urban spaces, and gardens and landscapes. He argues that areas dedicated to enjoyment, sensuality, and desire are important sites for a society passing beyond industrial modernization. Lefebvre’s theories on space and urbanization fundamentally reshaped the way we understand cities. Toward an Architecture of Enjoyment promises a similar impact on how we think about, and live within, architecture.

Understanding the City

Understanding the City
Author: Gülçin Erdi-Lelandais
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages: 260
Release: 2014-06-30
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1443863203

Henri Lefebvre is undoubtedly one of the most influential thinkers in the field of urban space and its organization; his theories offer reflections still valid for analyzing social relations in urban areas affected by the crisis of the neoliberal economic system. Lefebvre’s ideal of the “right to the city” is now more widely accepted given today’s current cultural and social situation. Most current research on Henri Lefebvre refers solely to his ideas and their theoretical discussion, without focusing on the empirical transcription of the philosopher. This book fills this gap, and proposes examples about the empirical use of Henri Lefebvre’s sociology from the perspective of different cities and researchers in order to understand the city and its evolutions in the context of neoliberal globalization. The book’s main purpose is to revisit Lefebvre’s still-relevant key concepts to propose new comprehensions of the contemporary city. Case studies in this book will show also that the reception of Lefebvrian concepts differs across different contexts, depending on the social and political circumstances of each country. The debates in this book both expand the scope of urban imagination, and help to reinvigorate, unify, and empower shared desires for just urban outcomes. The contributions to this book also illuminate the everyday choices concerning the form and social processes of the city, and the inspiration that they draw from Lefebvre’s theoretical legacy in the realm of urban sociology.

Gender in Spanish Urban Spaces

Gender in Spanish Urban Spaces
Author: Maria C. DiFrancesco
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 408
Release: 2018-01-03
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 3319473255

This edited collection examines the synergistic relationship between gender and urban space in post-millennium Spain. Despite the social progress Spain has made extending equal rights to all citizens, particularly in the wake of the Franco regime and radically liberating Transición, the fact remains that not all subjects—particularly, women, immigrants, and queers—possess equal autonomy. The book exposes visible shifts in power dynamics within the nation’s largest urban capitals—Madrid and Barcelona—and takes a hard look at more peripheral bedroom communities as all of these spaces reflect the discontent of a post-nationalistic, economically unstable Spain. As the contributors problematize notions of public and private space and disrupt gender binaries related with these, they aspire to engender discussion around civic status, the administration of space and the place of all citizens in a global world.

Toward an Urban Cultural Studies

Toward an Urban Cultural Studies
Author: Benjamin Fraser
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 280
Release: 2015-04-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1137498560

Toward an Urban Cultural Studies is a call for a new interdisciplinary area of research and teaching. Blending Urban Studies and Cultural Studies, this book grounds readers in the extensive theory of the prolific French philosopher Henri Lefebvre.

The Urban Revolution

The Urban Revolution
Author: Henri Lefebvre
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
Total Pages: 230
Release: 2003
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9780816641604

Originally published in 1970, The Urban Revolution marked Henri Lefebvre’s first sustained critique of urban society, a work in which he pioneered the use of semiotic, structuralist, and poststructuralist methodologies in analyzing the development of the urban environment. Although it is widely considered a foundational book in contemporary thinking about the city, The Urban Revolution has never been translated into English—until now. This first English edition, deftly translated by Robert Bononno, makes available to a broad audience Lefebvre’s sophisticated insights into the urban dimensions of modern life.Lefebvre begins with the premise that the total urbanization of society is an inevitable process that demands of its critics new interpretive and perceptual approaches that recognize the urban as a complex field of inquiry. Dismissive of cold, modernist visions of the city, particularly those embodied by rationalist architects and urban planners like Le Corbusier, Lefebvre instead articulates the lived experiences of individual inhabitants of the city. In contrast to the ideology of urbanism and its reliance on commodification and bureaucratization—the capitalist logic of market and state—Lefebvre conceives of an urban utopia characterized by self-determination, individual creativity, and authentic social relationships.A brilliantly conceived and theoretically rigorous investigation into the realities and possibilities of urban space, The Urban Revolution remains an essential analysis of and guide to the nature of the city.Henri Lefebvre (d. 1991) was one of the most significant European thinkers of the twentieth century. His many books include The Production of Space (1991), Everyday Life in the Modern World (1994), Introduction to Modernity (1995), and Writings on Cities (1995).Robert Bononno is a full-time translator who lives in New York. His recent translations include The Singular Objects of Architecture by Jean Baudrillard and Jean Nouvel (Minnesota, 2002) and Cyberculture by Pierre Lévy (Minnesota, 2001).

Marxism and Urban Culture

Marxism and Urban Culture
Author: Benjamin Fraser
Publisher: Lexington Books
Total Pages: 283
Release: 2014-04-24
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0739191586

Marxism and Urban Culture is the first volume to reconcile social science and humanities perspectives on culture. Covering a range of global cities—Bologna, Buenos Aires, Guatemala City, Liverpool, London, Los Angeles, Madrid, Mahalla al-Kubra, Mexico City, Montreal, Osaka, Strasbourg, Vienna—the contributions fuse political and theoretical concerns with analyses of urban cultural practices and historical movements, as well as urban-themed literary and filmic art. Conceived as a response to the persistent rift between disciplinary Marxist approaches to culture, this book prioritizes the urban problematic and builds implicitly and explicitly on work by numerous thinkers: not only Karl Marx but also David Harvey, Henri Lefebvre, Friedrich Engels and Antonio Gramsci, among others. Rather than reanimate reductive views either of Marx or of urban theory, the chapters in Marxism and Urban Culture speak broadly to the interdisciplinary connections that are increasingly the concern of cultural scholars working across and beyond the boundaries of geography, sociology, history, political science, language and literature fields, film studies, and more. A foreword written by Andy Merrifield (the author of Metromarxism) and an introduction by Benjamin Fraser (the author of Henri Lefebvre and the Spanish Urban Experience) situate the book’s chapters firmly in interdisciplinary terrain.

Digital Cities: The Interdisciplinary Future of the Urban Geo-Humanities

Digital Cities: The Interdisciplinary Future of the Urban Geo-Humanities
Author: Benjamin Fraser
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 156
Release: 2015-07-30
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1137524553

This book highlights an interdisciplinary terrain where the humanities and social sciences combine with digital methods. It argues that while disciplinary frictions still condition the potential of digital projects, the nature of the urban phenomenon pushes us toward an interdisciplinary and digital future where the primacy of cities is assured.

Laying the Foundation

Laying the Foundation
Author: John W. White
Publisher: Purdue University Press
Total Pages: 246
Release: 2016-03-15
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1612494498

Laying the Foundation: Digital Humanities in Academic Libraries examines the library's role in the development, implementation, and instruction of successful digital humanities projects. It pays special attention to the critical role of librarians in building sustainable programs. It also examines how libraries can support the use of digital scholarship tools and techniques in undergraduate education. Academic libraries are nexuses of research and technology; as such, they provide fertile ground for cultivating and curating digital scholarship. However, adding digital humanities to library service models requires a clear understanding of the resources and skills required. Integrating digital scholarship into existing models calls for a reimagining of the roles of libraries and librarians. In many cases, these reimagined roles call for expanded responsibilities, often in the areas of collaborative instruction and digital asset management, and in turn these expanded responsibilities can strain already stretched resources.Laying the Foundation provides practical solutions to the challenges of successfully incorporating digital humanities programs into existing library services. Collectively, its authors argue that librarians are critical resources for teaching digital humanities to undergraduate students and that libraries are essential for publishing, preserving, and making accessible digital scholarship.

Routledge Handbook of Critical International Relations

Routledge Handbook of Critical International Relations
Author: Jenny Edkins
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 462
Release: 2019-03-11
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1317433130

Critical international relations is both firmly established and rapidly expanding, and this Handbook offers a wide-ranging survey of contemporary research. It affords insights into exciting developments, more challenging issues and less prominent topics, examining debates around questions of imperialism, race, gender, ethics and aesthetics, and offering both an overview of the existing state of critical international politics and an agenda-setting collection that highlights emerging areas and fosters future research. Sections cover: critique and the discipline; relations beyond humanity; art and narrative; war, religion and security; otherness and diplomacy; spaces and times; resistance; and embodiment and intimacy. An international group of expert scholars, whose contributions are commissioned for the volume, provide chapters that facilitate teaching at advanced undergraduate and postgraduate level, inspire new generations of researchers in the field and promote collaboration, cross-fertilisation and inspiration across sub-fields often treated separately, such as feminism, postcolonialism and poststructuralism. The volume sees these strands as complementary not contradictory, and emphasises their shared political goals, shared theoretical resources and complementary empirical practices. Each chapter offers specific, focused, in-depth analysis that complements and exemplifies the broader coverage, making this Routledge Handbook of Critical International Relations essential reading for all students and scholars of international relations.