The Dictionary of Human Geography

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to supplement Marx – notably G.W.F. Hegel,

Friedrich Nietzsche and, more critically,

Martin Heidegger. Each of these thinkers was

useful, Lefebvre contended, in adding things

that Marx’s analyses alone could not provide.

Marx was the indispensable starting point for

Lefebvre at each stage of his career, but

Heidegger was particularly useful in thinking

about the question of space. Heidegger’s

analysis of how modern thought’s mathemat-

ical, geometrical sense of space is reductive

and we need to recall how to dwell or live is

crucial to Lefebvre’s thinking through of the

alienating properties of capitalist space, par-

ticularly in the city (cf.alienation).

Lefebvre’s work has come under sustained

criticism from more orthodox Marxists, for

whom his emphasis on space trembles on the

edges of or, more directly, simplyisa form of

spatial fetishism. In fact, these criticisms,

and other engagements with his writings, by

scholars such as Manuel Castells, David

Harvey and Neil Smith, were available in

English before Lefebvre’s work was translated,

and it was left to later commentators to explore

quite other dimensions of his work. The util-

ization of thinkers such as Heidegger and

Nietzsche brought Lefebvre into a tense prox-

imity with thepost-structuralismof thinkers

such as Michel Foucault, but Lefebvre was

strongly critical of theiranti-humanismand

their use of spatialmetaphorsin the absence

of more concrete analyses (cf. Gregory, 1997b).

It has largely been left to Anglophone geog-

raphers such as Soja (1989, 1996), Gregory

(1994) and Dear (1997) to develop the com-

monalities and complementarities of their

approaches (see also Gunewardena, Kipfer,

Milgrom and Schmid, 2008).

AlthoughThe production of spaceremains his

most influential work in human geography,

Lefebvre’s writings on cities (e.g. 1996),

everyday life and Marxist theory are also avail-

able in English translation and provide much

useful material. Lefebvre is commonly looked

at as a theorist of space, yet he would have

equally stressed his work ontimeand tempor-

ality (Lefebvre, 2004 [1992]: seerhythmana-

lysis), suggesting that space and time need to

be rethought, and thought together, in any

genuinely radical political action. se

Suggested reading

Elden (2004, ch. 5); Gregory (1994, ch. 6);

Lefebvre (1991a [1974]); Merrifield (2006);

Soja (1996b, ch. 1).

productivity A measure of output relative to

input, usually expressed as the ratio of the

returns from sales to the costs of production.

The term was developed in analyses of the

efficiencyof manufacturing industry, where

it is equivalent to the rate of surplus value or

rate of exploitation in marxist economics.

production of space2:The colonization of concrete space(Gregory, 1993)

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PRODUCTIVITY