On the difference between the social and the cultural: Reconstructing historical-geographical materialism1

Abstract

At the background of this article lies the question of how social sciences can internalize spatial and cultural phenomena and, in the most general sense, the ‘principle of difference’. Therefore, it has more than one problem and tries to see many seemingly contradictory phenomena as parts of a whole by employing a complex dialectical method. It looks at the relationships between the following phenomena: social and cultural; natural and cultural; universal and particular; similar and different. The article proceeds according to this method: it relates the opposites to each other through space and thus tries to show the following dialectical transitions: the social is produced as culture through the social space and the production of the social space itself. The article suggests that the transition between universal and particular constitutes the problematic of space, that space realizes the social as culture, and that this is the only realization of the social. The articles argues that the social is universalizing, and the cultural is particularizing, and that the social/universal can fulfill itself as necessarily cultural/particular. It also defends the principle of universality by stating that differences occur in relation to a whole. The article critically exploits classical social theory, specifically Marxist social theory and spatial Marxists such as Henri Lefebvre and David Harvey, some recent historical sociology, some postcolonial ideas, planetary urbanization theory, and tries to support the development of the theory of historical-geographical materialism.