Sue Middleton - Henri Lefebvre and Education: Space, history, theory

During his lifetime Henri Lefebvre (19011991) was renowned in France as a philosopher, sociologist and activist. Although he published more than 70 books, few were available in English until The Production of Space was translated in 1991. While this work often associated with geography has influenced educational theory's spatial turn, educationalists have yet to consider Lefebvre's work more broadly.

This book engages in an educational reading of the selection of Lefebvre's work that is available in English translation. After introducing Lefebvre's life and works, the book experiments with his concepts and methods in a series of five spatial histories of educational theories. In addition to The Production of Space, these studies develop themes from Lefebvre's other translated works: Rhythmanalysis, The Explosion, the three volumes of Critique of Everyday Life and a range of his writings on cities, Marxism, technology and the bureaucratic state. In the course of these inquiries, Lefebvre's own passionate interest in education is uncovered: his critiques of bureaucratised schooling and universities, the analytic concepts he devised to study educational phenomena, and his educational methods.

Throughout the book Middleton demonstrates how Lefebvre's conceptual and methodological tools can enhance the understanding of the spatiotemporal location of educational philosophy and theory. Bridging disciplinary divides, it will be key reading for researchers and academics studying the philosophy, sociology and history of education, as well as those working in fields beyond education including geography, history, cultural studies and sociology.

Sue Middleton is Emeritus Professor of Education in the Faculty of Education at the University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand.

Series editors Michael A. Peters
University of Waikato, New Zealand; University of Illinois, USA
Gert Biesta
University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg

This book series is devoted to the exploration of new directions in the philosophy of education. After the linguistic turn, the cultural turn, and the historical turn, where might we go? Does the future promise a digital turn with a greater return to connectionism, biology, and biopolitics based on new understandings of system theory and knowledge ecologies? Does it foreshadow a genuinely alternative radical global turn based on a new openness and interconnectedness? Does it leave humanism behind or will it reengage with the question of the human in new and unprecedented ways? How should philosophy of education reflect new forces of globalization? How can it become less Anglo-centric and develop a greater sensitivity to other traditions, languages, and forms of thinking and writing, including those that are not rooted in the canon of Western philosophy but in other traditions that share the love of wisdom that characterizes the wide diversity within Western philosophy itself. Can this be done through a turn to intercultural philosophy? To indigenous forms of philosophy and philosophizing? Does it need a post-Wittgensteinian philosophy of education? A postpostmodern philosophy? Or should it perhaps leave the whole construction of post-positions behind?

In addition to the question of the intellectual resources for the future of philosophy of education, what are the issues and concerns that philosophers of education should engage with? How should they position themselves? What is their specific contribution? What kind of intellectual and strategic alliances should they pursue? Should philosophy of education become more global, and if so, what would the shape of that be? Should it become more cosmopolitan or perhaps more decentred? Perhaps most importantly in the digital age, the time of the global knowledge economy that reprofiles education as privatized human capital and simultaneously in terms of an historic openness, is there a philosophy of education that grows out of education itself, out of the concerns for new forms of teaching, studying, learning and speaking that can provide comment on ethical and epistemological configurations of economics and politics of knowledge? Can and should this imply a reconnection with questions of democracy and justice?

This series comprises texts that explore, identify and articulate new directions in the philosophy of education. It aims to build bridges, both geographically and temporally: bridges across different traditions and practices and bridges towards a different future for philosophy of education.

In this series

On Study
Giorgio Agamben and Educational Potentiality
Tyson E. Lewis

Education, Experience and Existence
Engaging Dewey, Peirce and Heidegger
John Quay

African Philosophy of Education Reconsidered
On being human
Yusef Waghid

Buber and Education
Dialogue as conflict resolution
W. John Morgan and Alexandre Guilherme

Henri Lefebvre and Education
Space, history, theory
Sue Middleton

Space, history, theory

Sue Middleton

First published 2014
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2014 S. Middleton

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ISBN: 978-0-415-81080-7 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-203-07066-6 (ebk)

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Sue Middleton, Emeritus professor at the University ofWaikato and previously a professor in the department of Policy, Cultural and Social Studies in Education at Waikato for many years, is a social theorist with an interest in many fields, including: New Zealand's involvement in the global 1920s1950s Progressive Education movement, the neo-progressive educational ideas of the late 1960s1970s, and connections between these two historical movements; the lives and works of New Zealand educational theorists, particularly Sylvia Ashton-Warner; doctoral education; the impact of the New Zealand research assessment (PBRF) on educational knowledge in higher education; and the letters and other narratives of emigrants of the working class to Wellington in the early 1840s. There is a clear historical bias in her work and she also draws heavily on the new geography, especially that which theorises the production of space. While her work is not traditionally regarded as philosophical, Gert and I decided to commission a work from her that investigates the significance and relevance of Henri Lefebvre, the Marxist philosopher and sociologist, for a number of reasons. First, philosophers must reach out to the best scholars working in social science and historical studies; second, questions of space have become critically important in studies of educational globalization; and third, at the level of theory, it could be argued, disciplinary perspectives become less important and many of the studies necessary for understanding education and its new policy formations have to employ a multidisciplinary approach.