ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we discuss possible connections between Lefebvre and current leadership research. Although Lefebvre’s writings on space have had a particularly significant impact on organizational thinking on spatiality, we do not go as far as to suggest that Lefebvre be forced into a category of leadership thinkers. However, borrowing Lefebvre’s wording in his comment that ‘Marx is not a sociologist … there is sociology in Marx’ (in Elden, 2004: 129), we would like to say that Lefebvre is not a leadership researcher, but there is leadership in Lefebvre. His dissertation on rural peasant life in the Valley of Campan in the Pyrenees (2000, originally 1954), another more general book on the Pyrenees (1963) and his work on space (1991) 1 indicate a delicate understanding of how collectives become organized and of the relationship between humans and the natural and built environment, that is, between humans and materiality. This chapter introduces the concept of ‘spacing leadership’ that combines Lefebvre’s writings on spatiality and rural culture to suggest that his work offers ways to conceptualize relationships between humans and spatial materiality in a way that informs and connects to leadership studies (cf. Ropo and Salovaara, 2018).
