This dissertation examines how boredom can be understood in the context of Henri Lefebvre’s (1901-1991) critique of everyday life. Through an integration of the boredom literature, both the fully developed studies as well as fragmentary passages, I argue that Lefebvre’s critique of everyday life adds an important dimension to understanding boredom in modernity. One of the leading strands in boredom studies today argues that boredom is an historically specific experience unique to the rhythms of life imparted with the onset of modernity. Viewed in this light, boredom is a relatively recent phenomenon that can be linked to what Lefebvre calls the ‘double process’ of industrialization and urbanization. Although the mass profusion of boredom has left a seemingly indelible mark on society, it has received relatively little attention in both everyday life and academia. First coined in the middle of the 19th century, boredom is a relatively new word for what today is an all too pervasive experience. Writing throughout most of the 20th century, Lefebvre makes numerous references to boredom, yet, despite claiming that a study of boredom would be a significant contribution to his critique of everyday life, he never developed an in-depth and sustained analysis of this experience. Lefebvre did, however, identify an internal dialectic of mass culture as being an integral component for understanding boredom. It is argued that Lefebvre’s theory of a dialectical process inherent to mass culture is a key for understanding boredom as an historically specific phenomenon. In organizing this dissertation, a constellation of themes are presented in order to articulate this dialectic. After exploring boredom’s relationship to modernity, I then discuss what Lefebvre considers as the verso of modernity, everyday life. Following this, I consider the contradictions of space that give rise to boredom in urban centres and suburban peripheries by critically analyzing both the production of those spaces as well as how they are consumed in everyday life. Finally, I consider the escape from boredom offered in select sounds and images of the culture industry and its opposite, the embrace of boredom in certain 20th century avant-garde art movements. Through a reading of Lefebvre’s critique of everyday life and complementary texts, this interdisciplinary dissertation is a contribution to understanding the mass phenomenon of boredom in modernity.

Berlin, Techn. Univ., Diss., 2010.

Anthropological research discusses the potential of light to act as a social agent, influence culture and substantially effect the ways that people interact. To enrich this scholarship with ethnographic engagement the following analysis applies and expands upon these concepts while discussing a database documentary about the moonlight towers of Austin, Texas. Moonlight towers are historic street lights dating from the late 19th century that are no longer necessary to light the city and yet they remain as fine engineered sentinels, shedding mercury vapor luminance over the city. This is a meditative inquiry into the types of agency light has in particular spaces referred to in this work as the ruminating concept of lightspace. As a concept, lightspace refers to the experience of light in space and is concerned with how light illuminates and shapes the everyday, tracing fissures between inclusion and exclusion. This work acknowledges the existence of lightspace in order to show there are ways that light shapes our experiences of which we are only partially aware. In the midst of this attunement to the experience of light are valid ideas about how people in Austin, Texas relate to space and to each other. The work of Henri Lefebvre is used as a point of departure to develop the concept of lightspace. In The Production of Space, Lefebvre arrives at the conclusion that the experience of geographical space is fundamentally social by making connections between perceived space and conceived space to create lived space of the imagination (1978: 70). In this philosophy, perceived space as constitutes our lived, everyday experience of space, while conceived space is a translation of perceived space using knowledge, signs, and codes, such as a map. Lived space then is our own unique, individual negotiation of perceived space using conceived space. This introduction to lightspace shows how connecting perceived and conceived lightspace in Austin reveals a lived experience of light in the imagination. / text

Orientador: Ernesto Jacob Keim. / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Regional de Blumenau, Centro de Ciências da Educação, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Educação.

This dissertation, Visualizing Virtual Space in Modern and Postmodern Literature, explores the nature of the virtual as it relates to Henri Lefebvre’s conception of spatial practice in literature and culture. The goal of this analysis is to locate a site within theories of space for the inclusion of the postmodern object narratives that have emerged in contemporary culture. In order to accomplish this goal, I have created a semantic square that configures Lefebvre's three conceptions of space with a new fourth term, integral space. The emergence of integral space is developed through the analysis of fiction by four major authors: William Gibson, Marcel Proust, James Joyce and David Foster Wallace. Each of these authors engages the virtual through a different narrative approach. Gibson uses the virtual to create the spatial practice of his characters. Proust uses the virtual to undermine the representations of space inherent in the autobiography. Joyce virtualizes his main character, through the narration, in order to build representational spaces. Finally, Wallace uses the virtual to create integral spaces of cultural critique for the subject of his text. By situating these four authors at vertices of the semantic square, the inherent dialectical conflicts among their positions are revealed. The exploration of these conflicts reveals the cultural power of integral space within contemporary practice. Integral spaces emerge through the postmodern process of cultural accumulation. The power of these spaces is their ability to reveal to their subjects the nature of the spatial practice that directs their everyday lives. The aesthetics of integral practice are firmly rooted in the later theories of Theodor Adorno. Adorno's aesthetics operate by negating the negation of identity in the subject. The synthesis of Adornian aesthetics with integral space allows the subject to create object narratives from the fractured materials of postmodern culture. This analysis uses the space created by this synthesis to explore the agency of the subject in contemporary spatial practice. Ultimately, integral spaces will be developed as the primary arena of spatial understanding in both contemporary literature and spatial practice. / acase@tulane.edu

Zugl.: Berlin, Techn. Univ., Diss., 2008 u.d.T.: Bertuzzo, Elisa Tullia: Fragmented perspectives, transiting signs of urbanity

Zugl.: Köln, Univ., Diss., 2007

Är lek roligare på en nybyggd skolgård? Vi har valt att undersöka hur skolgården som rum påverkar leken. Vi har intervjuat åtta informanter på en skola i Skåne vars skolgård genomgått en totalrenovering. Med en kvalitativ metod har vi synliggjort deras uppfattning och upplevelser. Fyra elever och lika många pedagoger intervjuades med en intervjuguide som underlag. Frågorna berörde lek, material, normer, regler och känslor på skolgården. Intervjuguiden var tematiserad så att svaren skulle kunna tolkas via vår valda teori, Henri Lefebvres enhetsteori om rum. Informanterna beskriver hur skolgården uppfattas materiellt, vilka föreställningar som finns och hur den nyttjas för lek. Lagar, regler och normer styr en skolgård, elever kan inte springa hur som helst heller inte säga och göra precis som de vill, de förväntas bete sig på ett visst vis. Oavsett lekredskap, underlag och ålder så är pjätt en favoritlek vilket beskrivs av samtliga informanter. Pjätt kan lekas oavsett skolgårdens utformning, det enda som krävs är gemenskap.

Chan, Chun Hay. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 195-232). / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / Abstract --- p.i / Acknowledgement --- p.iii / Chapter 1 --- Introduction --- p.1 / Chapter 2 --- The Intellectual Trajectory of Sociology of Everyday Life --- p.26 / Chapter 3 --- The New (French) Context --- p.50 / Chapter 4 --- Henri Lefebvre --- p.70 / Chapter 5 --- Michel de Certeau --- p.120 / Chapter 6 --- Conclusion --- p.162 / Bibliography --- p.195

Zugl.: Heidelberg, Univ., Magisterarbeit, 2006