Space and Social Theory : Interpreting Modernity and Postmodernity

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 nIt 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.