The Dictionary of Human Geography

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that it is occupied through social activity, it

becomes relativized and historicized space.

Inferring that every society – and everymode

of production – creates its own space,

Lefebvre further distinguished between the

abstract spaces of capitalism, the sacred

spacesof the religious societies that preceded

it and the contradictory and differential spaces

yet to come. In outlining this history of the

production of space, Lefebvre implied that

the division of the world into a mosaic of social

spaces is in no sense natural, but is a process

that needs to be understood critically (and

dialectically): in his words, ‘social space is a

social product’ (Lefebvre, 1991b, p. 32: see

dialectic).

The idea that space is not passive in the

constitution ofsocietyis now dominant in

human geography, manifest in numerous

studies of the conflicts inherent in both the

production andconsumptionof social space.

Key here is the notion that these conflicts are

not necessarily between different groups, but

are between different forms or conceptions of

space (Shields, 1991). Adapting Lefebvre’s

terminology, it is suggested that spontaneous

and fully lived ‘spaces of representation’ may

often clash with official ‘representations of

space’, with the former occasionally breaking

through abstract capitalist logics to produce

differential spaces. Studies of spatialprac-

tices as diverse as skateboarding, tagging,

driving and free-running may thus point to

the possibilities of producing new social spaces

where human sociality is given full reign and

where play is privileged over work (Thrift,

2003; Latham and McCormack, 2005). In

this regard, the rise ofnon-representational

theoriescan be interpreted as an important

part of geographers’ ongoing attempts to elu-

cidate the materialities rather than just the

meanings of social space. ph

Suggested reading

Holloway and Hubbard (2001).

social theory This term refers to a constel-

lation of theories about what Giddens (1984)

terms ‘the constitution ofsociety’, specifying

the mechanisms or the forms of social power

that lend society some overall shape and cohe-

rence, however precarious, within given terri-

torial limits (extending in some theories to the

whole globe). Callinicos (1999, p. 1) states:

Social theory. .. has concerned itself. ..

with the three main dimensions of ‘social

power’ – economic relations, which have

reached their furthest development in the

market system known as capitalism; the

ideologies through which forms of special

power are justified and the place in the

world of those subject to them defined;

and the various patterns of political

domination.

Social theory can be distinguished from

philosophy, which addresses epistemo-

logicalandontologicalissues pertaining

to the nature of knowledge that we acquire,

develop and relate about the world, its social

contents included. In practice, however,

social-theoretic and philosophical questions

run closely together, and in many reviews of

human-geographical theorizing the two are

presented in an entangled (and perhaps on

occasion confused) manner. Different social

theories embrace a raft of varying assump-

tions, arguments and models about howecon-

omy, politics andcultureplay out in social

power, and perhaps too bringing in claims

about psychology, mythology and many other

domains of human being and endeavour. All

manner of economic, political, cultural and

other theories abound, deriving from diverse

disciplinary fields, alongside theories about

how these different domains interrelate, influ-

ence or even determine one another in the

social. All of this complicated material com-

prises the ‘house’ of social theory that has been

repeatedly visited, borrowed from, critiqued

and reworked by geographers down the years.

The ‘predisciplinary history’ of social theory

can be traced toeuropein the period 1750–

1850 (Heilbron, 1995), anchored in how the

enlightenmentencouraged abstracted reflec-

tions upon the social character of the times,

but its origins are usually identified with sev-

eral major thinkers who continue to cast a long

shadow over the contemporary academy. The

pantheon here includes the ‘big three’ of Karl

Marx, Emile Durkheim and Max Weber, the

key figures of so-called ‘classical social theory’,

as well as various others – Herbert Spencer,

Georg Simmel, G.H. Mead, Talcott Parsons,

the Frankfurt School theorists – bridging for-

ward into ‘modern social theory’, and then

another cast-list – Anthony Giddens, Richard

Rorty, Ulrich Beck and various French

intellectuals – deemed, if a touch misleadingly,

exponents of ‘postmodern social theory’ (see

postmodernism: for equivalent periodiza-

tions, see Lemert, 1993; Callinicos, 1999).

The term ‘social theory’ was clearly in use by

the early twentieth century, and it appeared

in modern-sounding guise when Merton

Gregory / The Dictionary of Human Geography 9781405132879_4_S Final Proof page 698 1.4.2009 3:23pm

SOCIAL THEORY