THE FUTURE OF GEOGRAPHICAL SPACE IN SOCIAL SCIENCES

Abstract

Space is one of the key concepts of geography, but it is almost not investigated by Russian geographers in ontological and epistemological terms. Over the last century in the foreign geography the idea of space was varied from purely Newtonian (as a passive receptacle, by E. Tobler) through the humanitarian perception (Yi-Fu Tuan) to “production of space” by society (as a “second reality”, by H. Lefebvre). In the second half of the 21th century M. Foucault declared the need to put the Space at the front end of modern science and to abandon the primacy of gnoseological historicism. In the second half of the 21th century M. Foucault declared the need to put the Space at the central place of modern science and to abandon the primacy of gnoseological historicism. After that, social sciences allied with geography began to actively explore the concept of space, but more often as a metaphor, ignoring the real role of geographical space in social processes. The reaction of professional geographers on this metaphor forces itself to wait. In the geography, the epistemology of space becomes more complicated. The division of space through traditional zoning is complemented (or disputed) by two other approaches – the geostructural approach and the concept of places. Calls appear to liberate geography from too tight binding to the view on the space as the central idea of geography (Barnes). The fruitfulness of these calls has to reflect on from the point of view of prospects of development of theoretical geography.