Social geography — Welfare state ideology or critical social science?

Abstract

The theme of the paper is the question of whether social geography has an ideological or a critical function in society. This question is approached from four different perspectives: (i) the history of ideas, (ii) the philosophy of science, (iii) the development of theory, and (iv) the view of practice. Having identified the two main directions of social geography as being a liberal (positivist) and a radical (marxist) approach, they are subjected to a brief epistemological examination. The development of theory of the liberal and marxist directions differ in three ways. These are the positioning of production vis-à-vis distribution, the conception of the relationship between the individual and society, and the understanding of space. The concept of relative space, making geography the science of space (chorology), is criticized. An alternative conceptualization of space, where space is not separated from and understood independent of the object under study, is formulated. Space is here considered as a property of the object (society), which totally integrates space and object. In the last section of the paper it is pointed out that the liberal approach represents either ‘counter-revolutionary’ or ‘status-quo’ theories, while the radical approach is ‘revolutionary’. The concept of space as the property of the object makes social geography more politically relevant, in that the actors in the political struggle became more precisely identified as groups in regional social structures.