Lefebvre and Law: social justice, new technologies and the spatial imaginary

Abstract

As the fluidity of contemporary social life has accelerated due to an ongoing process of social and technological transformation, there has been increasing interest in the work of Henri Lefebvre on the production of space and how different types of space impact on each other. His work amalgamates perception, symbolism and the social imaginary by addressing the ways in which their contradictory relations can be fashioned into new codes in a constantly-evolving process of producing space. The interaction between Lefebvre’s articulation of the spatial imaginary and law is an emerging area of importance which has, until recently, been neglected. This chapter addresses the implications for law as spatial justice, in a world of algorithms, web maps, hyperlinked spaces and teched-out cyber-communities. The technological revolution has necessitated a metaphoric shift in how we understand the production of space and social relations; particularly in the shadow of new technologies of access and exclusion which raise concerns over freedom of expression, privacy, mass surveillance and monitoring. As technological and media innovations transform who and what we are, and how we live, the question becomes, in the words of the late David Bowie (and paraphrasing Lefebvre) ‘where are we now’ (2013)?