Social geography and the taken-for-granted world.

Abstract

The lack of firm direction in contemporary social geography is based on a fundamental distinction between spatial form and social process. The preoccupation of social geography with material phenomena and economic forces has diverted the school of Vidal de la Blache, the Chicago school or urban sociology, and behavioural geographers, into disregarding the subjective or forcing it into an inappropriate mould. The cure lies firstly in recognising the subjective as well as the objective in all areas of behaviour; secondly in adopting a phenomenological attitude; thirdly in recognising that the 'life-worlds' of individuals and groups are intersubjective; and fourthly in regarding place as an amalgam of fact and value. -J.Welford