Urban Space and everyday life: A Personal Theoretical Trajectory Within Nordic Social and Cultural Geography

As an example of socio-spatial theorization within the Nordic context, this chapter is written as an autobiographic narrative of my intellectual development from the 1970s to 2021. It is a story involving a steady positioning in the ‘Nordic’ context, but within that a range of shifts in affiliations, as well as a participation in different intellectual networks – both Danish, Nordic and ‘International’ – all of which have influenced my thinking. The chapter is arranged in four parts: First, a presentation of some Nordic predecessors. This is followed by an intellectual history of what I call theoretical approximations to (a) a non-deterministic social ecology, (b) towards a theory of practice, and (c) an engagement with the formulation of a critical phenomenology – all involving issues of the urban question, of everyday life and of modalities of social space.