Space and Social Theory: Interpreting Modernity and Postmodernity (Paperback)

by Georges Benko (Editor), Ulf Strohmayer (Editor)
Key Phrases: imperfect panopticism, nomad metaphor, social spatialization, New York, Third World, Jacques Lacan (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
This book draws together new contributions by geographers from all over the world with a view to reasserting and redefining space in social theory and to understanding spatial practices within the contexts of culture and time. The volume is divided into four parts. Part I, Reason, Texts and Debates around Postmodernism, revisits questions of the continuity between modernity and postmodernity and considers the effectiveness of new and conventional modes of writing and interpretation. Part II, Writing Space, Forming Identities, explores the discourses and political practices through which identities are constructed and analyzes the meaning of such constructions within the context of the culture, class and national status of their creators. Part III, Planning and the Postmodern, examines the crisis of confidence in planning and seeks the means by which a humanly transformed and equitable environment may be conceived and realized. Part IV, The Politics of Difference, considers the problems of marginality associated with construction of identity in relation to gender, class and culture. Uninhibited in concept and reference, skeptical and adventurous in its argument, this collection of new work by leading theorists from all over the world is at once accessible and stimulating. It engages directly with key current intellectual, political and social issues, and will interest all students of social change and theory in geography and related social science disciplines.

From the Back Cover
The last decade has been a decade of tremendous change across the broad of the human and social sciences. Ancient certainties, trusted ideologies and tested methods all came under immense pressure once so-called ‘postmodern’ ideas and concepts gained wider currency particularly among those with an interest in social theory. No longer content with framing social reality according to the logic of one core metaphor, the human and social sciences both rediscovered the local particularity of truth where hitherto a general explanation was deemed sufficient. In short: the revitalizing and formative power of ‘space’ was acknowledged once again.

More than ten years into the debate, the present collection of original essays seeks to assess both the impact and current state of the debate around postmodernism and the spatial social sciences. It aims not at solving contradictions and differences within the debate since such a claim would be both fruitless and immature; rather, it seeks to demonstrate the diversity of interpretations that has come about by the mutual discovery of postmodern discourses and human geography since the mid 1980s. Celebrations of postmodernity, the insistence of a continuation of modernity, interpretations of globally-emerging postmodern spaces, even the call for an analysis of hypermodernity thus coexist in the collection at hand. In-between the essays, a new discursive agenda for the spatial human sciences emerges: not to pave the way for a new orthodoxy but simply to allow for the recognition of new ideas taking root in today’s academic environment.

This book is at once critical, provocative and accessible. It will be widely welcomed by advanced students of spatial and social theory in geography and related disciplines.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 416 pages
• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell (July 14, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0631194673
• ISBN-13: 978-0631194675
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 8 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
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• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,636,981 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)