Underground electronic dance music venues as instances of Lefebvrean differential space? Phenomenological and psychogeographic investigations in Salford, Barcelona and Wuppertal
Year: 2026
Type: dissertation
Abstract: This thesis documents research undertaken into the status of autonomous cultural space in the contemporary city, with the goal of understanding whether it is still possible to produce noncapitalist spaces in aggressively gentrified or gentrifying urban environments. A case study methodology is employed in order to generate broader knowledge from a limited number of instances by means of within-case, cross-case and overarching ‘meta’ modes of analysis. Phenomenological investigations of the case study spaces and psychogeographic logging of the urban contexts in which they are situated are the main fieldwork methods used.The case study examples that form the subject matter of this research are bounded at several scales: they are autonomous cultural spaces, distinct from the commercial mainstream; they are part of the cultural field of electronic dance music; and, within that, representative of its ‘underground’ variant. As a result, the spaces selected for study are read as emblematic of a broadly autonomous cultural strand with the potential to act metonymically, illuminating a wider landscape of contemporary urban culture and its potential to produce new forms of agonistic politics.In the process, this study also seeks to update spatial theory for the present conjuncture, moving it out of and beyond a period in which it has abandoned critical considerations of class, capital and political economy. In order to pursue this aim, it revisits the spatial theories of Henri Lefebvre – particularly his distinction between abstract and differential space –linking them dynamically to the current contestation of urban space. It updates, hybridises with new data, and redescribes Lefebvre’s principles for a new era of spatial theory.
Author: Steven Taylor
Subfield: Urban Studies
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7203451983
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