Lebensraum
From Geography
The concept of ‘lebensraum’ literally translates as ‘living space’. The concept was famously used by the 19th/ early 20th century geographer Friedrich Ratzel (who adopted the term from Ernst Haekel (Werlen, 2009)) “in his representation of the state as an organism to identify a ‘geographical area within which living organisms develop’. The term was developed by the Geopolitik school and partially adopted by the Nazis to justify the extension of the borders of the German state eastwards for the benefit of Germans and at the expense of the Slavs, who were represented as inferior and ‘unworthy’ of the territory” (Gregory, Johnston, Pratt, Watts & Whatmore 2009, p. 416). Lebensraum is a concept that originates from the discipline of biology (the notion of a state as a growing/shrinking organism), and it is from the Darwinist school of thought that the notion refers to the idea of “territorial expansion as a ‘natural’ consequence of the survival of the fittest” (Gregory, Johnston, Pratt, Watts & Whatmore 2009, p. 416).
The idea that there is a constant struggle going on between states which results in a ‘natural selection’ of stronger states is based on a specific way of conceiving the world, which Benno Werlen (2009, p. 7) calls a ‘space-centered perspective’, a view that “takes spatial categories as primary categories for academic analysis”. In line with this, Werlen (2009) sees the concept of lebensraum as “the best illustration of this highly problematic ordering of categories – space as primary category and subjects and actions as secondary categories” (p.7). This perspective is based on the idea of space as a pre-given container, within which all life forms have their own demarcated space. Those life forms that will adjust best to the natural circumstances will persist and grow, while others will disappear. This kind of geo-deterministic thinking leaves no room for meaningful (individual) spatial action, but, instead, claims there is something as a fully objective, pre-given container-space, consisting out of different, clearly defined spatial territories (Werlen, personal communication, 28 september 2010).
References:
Gregory, D., Johnston, R., Pratt, G., Watts, M. & Whatmore, S. (2009). The Dictionary of Human Geography, 5th edition. London: Wiley-Blackwell Publishing.
Werlen, B. (2009) Everyday Regionalizations. In: International Encyclopedia for Human Geography. Elsevier.
Contributors
- Links added by --SusanVerbeij 13:51, 28 September 2011 (UTC)
