Social Geography

Abstract

The past fifty years have seen the proliferation of adjectival geographies. During this time human geography became detached from the physical side of the subject, at least to many of its practitioners. Regional geography and settlement geography came to represent markedly different approaches to subject matter as well as distinct spatial scales of study, while historical geography developed as the examination of past geographies. Gradually, various subdividions of human geography also emerged: economic geography (and within it agricultural geography, industrial geography, transportation geography, and so on), political geography, cultural geography, population geography, and social geography. Each is concerned with particular classes of phenomena, seeking to elucidate the spatial aspects overlooked by the disciplines of economics, politics, anthropology, demography, and sociology. The content of the adjectival subfields of human geography is, for the most part, fairly obvious. For example, economic geography deals with economic phenomena such as factories, farms, and transport systems, political geography with political jurisdiction and affiliation, and social geography with social phenomena in space.But what are &dquo;social&dquo; phenomena? What objects does the social geographer investigate-analogous to the factories, farms, and railroads of the economic geographer, for example? Even the national boundaries, capitals, and internal administrative units of the political geographer, and the voting patterns of electoral geography, appear to have the firm if not physical identity denied to &dquo;social&dquo; phenomena. It is this uncertainty and intangibility of subject matter that distinguishes the development of social geography from that of other subfields. Developments elsewhere have been more methodological than substantive, more concerned with adopting numerical techniques and sophisticated theoretical frameworks than a search for solid subject matter.As seen conventionally today, social geography is a product of the post-1945 era, indeed largely of the past fifteen or so years. This is not to say that the notion of a &dquo;social&dquo; geography had not appeared in the literature at earlier dates. It is simply that there are important changes in emphasis as between the immediate postwar social geography and that of the 1960s and 1970s. We contend that

Accounts from behind the Curtain: History and Geography in the Critical Analysis of Urban Theory

“…Since the 1950s, West‐based scholars commented on the lack of knowledge on Eastern European cities and socialist cities (see also Ferenčuhová, : 236, referring to the same quotations): Gideon Sjoberg (: 336) considered the scope of research on European cities satisfying, but noted: ‘Less research has been done on present‐day urban centres in eastern and southern Europe'. And in 1978, Eyles and Smith stated:

It is a strange commentary on the spatial selectivity of social geographers in the Anglo‐American tradition that more is known of Chicago than of all state socialist cities put together, or so the literature would suggest (Eyles and Smith, : 54).

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“…It is a strange commentary on the spatial selectivity of social geographers in the Anglo‐American tradition that more is known of Chicago than of all state socialist cities put together, or so the literature would suggest (Eyles and Smith, : 54).…”

The examination of social relationships in space: Its territorial, empirical and practical parameters

“…Indeed, in a recent historical view of the sub-discipline, the author suggested that such movement might possibly result in the demise of social geography (Eyles and Smith 1978). Indeed, in a recent historical view of the sub-discipline, the author suggested that such movement might possibly result in the demise of social geography (Eyles and Smith 1978).…”