Geographies of Rhythm: Nature, Place, Mobilities and Bodies

Translated into English in 2004, Rhythmanalysis puts forward Henri Lefebvre's theories on the relationship between time and space, particularly how rhythms characterise space. This book brings together leading geographers to expand and advance these theories and relationships. Although few scholars have explored the wealth of the critical, conceptual possibilities generated by rhythmanalysis, many of the issues raised by Lefebvre intersect with current theoretical and political concerns within the social sciences, and this book explores several of these themes. In terms of geography, rhythmanalysis emphasizes the dynamic and processual nature of space. Moreover, in thinking about the relationship of time to space, a focus on rhythm can highlight the tensions between repetition and innovation, and between the need for consistency and habit, but also the importance of breaks in routine, of disruption and unpredictability. These tensions reveal the ways in which social time is managed by power to ensure a measure of stability through the instantiation of temporal norms, but also illuminate how this is always contingent and often challenged. A rhythmic conformity concerning when particular practices should take place persists but superimposed upon and intersecting with these rhythms are the diverse habits of individuals, corporeal rhythms, seasonal and 'natural' rhythms and the rhythms of mobility which course through places, in addition to consciously mobilized alternative rhythms. In looking at the rhythms of geographies, and drawing upon a wide range of geographical contexts, this book explores the ordering of different rhythms according to four main themes: rhythms of nature, rhythms of everyday life, rhythms of mobility, and the official and routine rhythms which superimpose themselves on the multiple rhythms of the body.