LAUSR

This article methodologically develops one theoretical issue regarding the sociological debate on relational space: How do past, present and future times interfere in the relations between human bodies and in their interconnectedness with material and/or symbolic goods in places, by considering that space is generated through these relations? After demonstrating the absence of this issue in the debate, the article presents a methodology for analytically identifying and conceptually interpreting the relational space produced through historically relational time in relational bodies in places, with the aid of Henri Lefebvre’s dialectical concerns with everyday life and the production of space. In order to show the approach ‘in action’, the study focuses on the rules of pedestrians’ body conduct in the cathedral square of the Brazilian city of São Paulo in 2013–2014. Hence the approach is analytically complemented by Erving Goffman’s phenomenological approach to the bodily dimension of social interaction. In conclusion, three contributions of this methodology for relational-spatial sociology are summarized.