Organisational Space and Beyond

1 Introduction

Henri Lefebvre and Organization Studies

Sytze F. Kingma, Karen Dale, and Varda Wasserman

Introducing Lefebvre

One of the most important points to make right at the start of this book is the need to not stereotype Henri Lefebvre solely as a theorist of space, as Shields (2001) puts it. Thus we begin with a very brief overview of Lefebvre’s life and work, in an attempt to avoid the “mis-recognition” that has tended to characterize Lefebvre’s categorization by Anglo-American readers, as Aronowitz (2015: 73) argues, where he is ‘placed’ only in relation to a very partial view of his work and life.

Henri Lefebvre was born in 1901 and died in 1991, his life thus covering most of the twentieth century with its profound changes and disruptions. ...