Space and Social Theory in Geography

Abstract

Social theory and the analysis of spatiality have a long and rich history. Building on earlier traditions such as Marxism, feminism, and humanistic geography, this article addresses the major lines of conceptual thought in human geography in the early twenty-first century. It encompasses the discipline's major theoretical constructs under the broad umbrella of social constructivism and political economy, largely based on the work of Foucault. These precepts serve as a guide to the role and impacts of various forms of social theory in the analysis of multiple topics, including cultural geography, critical political geography, economic geography, the geographies of cyberspace, critical cartography, and GIS, and the social construction of nature.

Place in legal geography: Agency and application in agriculture research

“…Researchers, too, must ensure that their approaches are sensitive and responsive to these developments (Klenk, 2008;Williams, 2014). Scholarship in applied environmental policy and natural resource management demonstrates that there is a critical need to foreground place and non-human agency following various ontological "turns," including the "cultural," the "spatial," the "material," and the "relational" (Ash, 2020;Bakker & Bridge, 2006;Bartel, 2017Bartel, , 2018Bennett, 2016;Boulot & Sterlin, 2022;Brierley et al, 2006Brierley et al, , 2018Dowling et al, 2017;Warf & Santa Arias, 2008;Whatmore, 2006;Wilcock et al, 2013;Williams, 2014). Environmental historians have long accepted place as influential in human history (Morgan, 2015;Steinberg, 2002;Worster, 1979), as have scholars in geography and the environmental humanities more broadly (O'Gorman, 2014).…”