Social & Cultural Geography

ISSN: 1464-9365 (Print) 1470-1197 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rscg20

What is Rhythmanalysis?
by Dawn Lyon, London, Bloomsbury Press, 2018, 144 pp., £45 (hardcover),
ISBN: 9781350018280, £16.99 (paperback), ISBN: 9781350018273, £18.34 (e-
book), ISBN: 9781350018297

Emily Reid-Musson

To cite this article: Emily Reid-Musson (2020) What is Rhythmanalysis?, Social & Cultural
Geography, 21:1, 137-138, DOI: 10.1080/14649365.2019.1632059

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/14649365.2019.1632059

Published online: 15 Jun 2019.

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 SOCIAL & CULTURAL GEOGRAPHY 137

Zimman, L. (2017). Transgender language reform: Some challenges and strategies for promoting trans-affirming,
gender inclusive language. Journal of Language and Discrimination, 1(1), 84–105.

James D. Todd
Department of Geography, Durham University
j.d.todd@durham.ac.uk Durham United Kingdom
© 2019 James D. Todd
https://doi.org/10.1080/14649365.2019.1632058

What is Rhythmanalysis? by Dawn Lyon, London, Bloomsbury Press, 2018, 144 pp.,
£45 (hardcover), ISBN: 9781350018280, £16.99 (paperback), ISBN: 9781350018273,
£18.34 (e-book), ISBN: 9781350018297

Rhythmanalysis is an oftentimes-puzzling methodological orientation widely attributed to Henri

Lefebvre, an approach that has had academic interest from geography, anthropology, sociology
and the humanities. Cultural geographers, in particular, have contributed to geographical perspec-
tives on rhythmanalysis. It is therefore timely that the Bloomsbury Research Methods Series has
published a new volume on rhythmanalysis by a British sociologist, Dawn Lyon. A concise scan of
approaches to rhythmanalysis across a variety of social science and humanities perspectives, Lyon’s
book runs at about 100 pages in length and is an excellent resource for advanced researchers
(graduate and faculty level) from a variety of disciplines who wish to know more about rhythma-
nalysis as a strategy of inquiry.
Lyon defines rhythmanalysis as a broad tool of research focused on the temporal patterning of
social activity that is not apparent at first glance or easily captured, but is nonetheless significant for
understanding ways that urban life, place, mobility and human experience (among other social and
spatial phenomena) are organized. Rhythmanalysis has no standard application – it is not
a ‘method’ in any sense – and is therefore open to (and necessitates) the researcher’s creativity.
The approach is consequently challenging for researchers and the volume offers an essential aid in
this regard. Lyon draws extensively throughout from her own studies – in particular, her rhythma-
nalysis of a London fish market using a photo-montage technique – to explain how to design and
conduct rhythmanalysis research. She also provides a compelling overview of Henri Lefebvre’s
personal and intellectual life while tracing the broader intellectual history of rhythmanalysis.
Questions of how to capture, understand and regulate rhythms are certainly not new. Virginia
Woolf’s writing, Frederick Taylor’s scientific management, or Frank Gilbreth’s attempt to more
efficiently organize domestic labour tasks all reflect an interest in transformations in the social
pacing and tempo of modern industrial life.
One of the most essential aspects of the volume is Lyon’s ability to succinctly explain the key
elements of rhythmanalysis. She explores the relationship between linear and cyclical time (and its
relationship in turn to the question of rhythm and repetition), different forms of rhythms identified
by Lefebvre (e.g. polyrhythmia, arrhythmia, etc.), and the role of the body in rhythmanalysis. For
anyone new to this approach, this clarity will certainly be appreciated. Lyon also re-classifies
rhythmanalysis research from existing literature across several distinct themes: cultural histories,
mobilities, place, work/labour and nature. Because these reviews cover various disciplines, Lyon
identifies literature that geographers may not be aware of; again, the trans-disciplinary perspective
is a valuable resource.
138 BOOK REVIEWS

One of the most central foci of the volume across each of the chapters is the focus on the body,
an element that is central to Lefebvre’s approach. Yet, as Lyon rightly states, Lefebvre was ‘firm in his
refusal to deepen his understanding of his own body through rhythmanalysis’ (p. 35). This tension is
noted throughout the volume; in the current rhythmanalysis research, Lyon points out, researchers’
own bodies are keenly absent from the analysis. Lyon devotes a chapter to operationalizing
rhythmanalysis, framed around the body as a sensory, phenomenological tool of research. Lyon
identifies three distinct ways of conducting rhythmanalysis through the body: instances where the
body is a >central tool of study, where the body is displaced (where the body ‘cannot directly
register rhythms’), and lastly, where the body is insufficient to record rhythms (that is, where other
methodological tools are required to capture and explain the pattern under investigation). Again,
Lyon draws from existing research to explore each of these approaches, while gleaning methodo-
logical insights for the reader and highlighting the limitations and gaps of the various approaches.
While Lyon recognizes the limitations of Lefebvre’s politics and approach in relation to post-
colonial and feminist perspectives, the volume does not explore the literature on the production of
gender, race, and class inequalities in relation to rhythmanalysis – perhaps because there is very
little research in this area. These lacunae are especially salient given the heavy focus on the body in
rhythmanalysis. Greater emphasis in this area would have been worthwhile. Lyon does argue,
however, that there are multiple possibilities for conducting rhythmanalysis research that bridges
these gaps, and believes such lines of investigation are possible and worthy. Moreover, the literature
on rhythmanalysis, especially the literature the Lyon draws upon, focuses primarily on the UK and,
to a lesser extent, western European context. Acknowledgement of and perhaps a commentary on
the UK- and Eurocentric nature of the literature (on what such a pattern reveals and excludes) would
have been valuable for readers as well.
Overall, What is Rhythmanalysis? will be a welcome resource for social and cultural geographers
as well as qualitative and mixed methods geography researchers, in a context where there are so
few methodology-focused rhythmanalysis resources available.

Emily Reid-Musson
Department of Geography and SafetyNet, Memorial University of Newfoundland,
St. John’s, Canada
ereidmusson@mun.ca
© 2019 Emily Reid-Musson
https://doi.org/10.1080/14649365.2019.1632059

Bad environmentalism: irony and irreverence in the ecological age, by

Nicole Seymour, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 2018, 306 pp., US$26.95
(paperback), ISBN 978-1-5179-0389-3, US$108.00 (hardcover), ISBN 978-1-5179-0388-6

Environmentalism as a political movement has long been characterized by its seriousness. In the
contemporary moment, we are told that impending apocalypse demands action from institutions
and individuals. The foreboding images of disappearing ice caps or flooded cities mandate affective
response. We are supposed to develop a love and reverence for capital-n Nature and
a mournfulness for its disappearance. Yet this purity politics also results in a sanctimonious petty
moralism, demanding that we change lightbulbs and use reusable bags. And these feel-good
actions can entail a self-righteous smugness and judgment of supposedly failed others (especially