Social Space in Interdisciplinary Perspective

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DRAMATIC and exciting challenges confront geographers today. Revolutionary changes in empirical social patterns have spelled obsolescence for many traditional analytical procedures; radical transformations in the scholastic world have raised questions concerning the philosophical basis of social-science procedures. Behaviorists and existentialists pose the fundamental question: can science continue to serve a useful function by measuring and explaining the objective face and underlying mechanics of social reality, or must it also penetrate and incorporate its subjective dimensions?' As Edward T. Hall2 so convincingly poses it: does time talk, does space speak? How does the silent language of time and space influence mankind's cultural variations? Geographers ask themselves: should we be satisfied with drafting an opaque, objective map of social patterns in space, or must we supplement this with the subjective or inside view?3 This problem is certainly not new. Jules Sion's 1908 study of Normandy showed how differences in the mentality of Norman and Picard peasants reflected and reinforced the contrasts between two physically similar regions.4 Pierre Gourou's cleverly applied notion of civilisation proved how attitudes and skills influenced the evolution of landscape in the Far East.5 Walter Firey's well-known Boston study6 demonstrated how cultural variations and traditions have influenced land values in an urban area, and Renee Rochefort's Sicilian study7 left little doubt concerning the predominant influence in social life on that island: the Mafia! In principle and in practice, then, substantive work demonstrates the need for a penetrating analysis of this subjective component in geographical study. A recent article by Paul Claval8 even suggests that the geographer's unique contribution might well be in comparative crosscultural studies of group mentality. Few scholars, however, have given concrete and appli-