Space, Crime, and the City: Henri Lefebvre and Criminological Research

Henri Lefebvre’s work has been central to the development of urban and spatial theories, to our understanding of everyday life under late capitalism, and for deciphering the role of the state in the reproduction of capitalist development. Less has been said, however, about how Lefebvre’s oeuvre can be used for empirical sociological and criminological research. In this seminar, I draw on my recent book Space, Urban Politics and Everyday Life. Henri Lefebvre and the U.S. City (2023, Palgrave) to foreground how his writings on space, the urban, everyday life, the state, and other key concepts, have informed my ethnographic research on everyday life and the production of space on Chicago’s South Side. Focusing on territorial stigmatisation and the criminalisation of space, public housing transformation, and urban redevelopment, I will foreground the relevance and applicability of Henri Lefebvre’s work for empirical criminological and sociological research. I will conclude with an outline of how Criminology can more extensively engage with and draw on Lefebvre’s work in the future.

Tilman Schwarze is Lecturer in the School of Social & Political Sciences at the University of Glasgow and member of the Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research (SCCJR). He has published on urban redevelopment in the American Rust Belt, territorial stigmatisation, and urban growth discourses.

His most recent work has been published in Critical Criminology, Urban Geography, Dialogues in Urban Research, and Popular Music. His book Space, Urban Politics, and Everyday Life. Henri Lefebvre and the U.S. City (2023, Palgrave MacMillan) presents a sociological and geographical analysis of the production of space on Chicago’s South Side through Lefebvrean empirical research.