This introduction to the development of new theoretical approaches to human geography sets out to explain the key features of these new approaches, and to trace their antecedents and implications. The authors also highlight points of comparison and contrast, inter-connection and dissimilarity. An introductory chapter describes and accounts for the theoretical diversity present within twentieth-century human geography, and particular attention is paid to the transition from environmental and regional approaches to the “spatial science” of the 1960s. This chapter then sets (...) the stage for the later chapters, which deal systematically with different post-1960s approaches: Marxism, humanism, realism, structuration and postmodernism. Each of these chapters deals with the chronological development of the appropriate literature, describes the key claims and arguments, and then presents a worked example to illustrate the benefits and pitfalls of an approach in practice. A concluding chapter re-integrates the diverse themes and reflects briefly on possible future theoretical developments in human geography in the 1990s. The principal chapters of the book are framed by both a preface and an epilogue, which address questions about ‘relativism’ in approaching human geography, while also stressing the need for continued commitment and critical sensitivity in geographical enquiry. The book is written in an easily accessible style with generous expositions of key claims and arguments, and thorough cross-referencing between chapters. (shrink)

Margaret Archer develops here her morphogenetic approach, heralded in Culture and Agency (CUP, 1988), and applies it to the problem of structure and agency, that is, how we both shape society and are shaped by it. Her aim is to capture the interplay between these two processes rather than collapse them into one, as has been the case with the traditional competing individualist and collectivist methodologies. The morphogenetic approach offers a new understanding of social change and poses a direct challenge (...) to Giddens' structuration theory. (shrink)

Latour is a world famous and widely published French sociologist who has written with great eloquence and perception about the relationship between people, science, and technology. He is also closely associated with the school of thought known as Actor Network Theory. In this book he sets out for the first time in one place his own ideas about Actor Network Theory and its relevance to management and organization theory.

This book expounds the transcendental realist theory of science and critical naturalist social philosophy that have been developed by Bhaskar and are used by many contemporary social scientists. It defends Bhaskar's view that the possibility and necessity of experiment show that reality is structured and stratified, his use of this idea to develop a non-reductive explanatory account of human sciences, and his notion that to explain social structures can sometimes be to criticize them. After a discussion of the uses of (...) critical realism in controversial areas of social science, Bhaskar's optimism about the prospects of human sciences is criticized. (shrink)

Beginning with a Cuban Catholic ritual in Miami, this book takes readers on a momentous theoretical journey toward a new understanding of religion.