Spatial Thinking in Social Sciences

Joost Jongerden (Wageningen University) and Bahar Şimşek (Ankara University) 

Today, the concept of socially produced or constructed space appears in publications with little apparent need for justification or explanation. Yet it was not so long ago that "space" was generally ignored in social theory. During most of the 19th and 20th centuries, sociology was concerned with explaining (and forecasting) the making of the world, applying a preconceived picture of what modernity was supposed to be. Conceptualizations like "stages of development", "phases", and "backwardness" were expressions of the social as intervals on a time‐scale. Difference was explained from a perspective of stage or phase difference, thus time. Eventually, the obsession with time and linear history in modern political thought came together with an ignorance/subordination of a "spatial consciousness." In this course, we critically engage with the spatial turn in social sciences developing since the 1970s. Building upon a brief introduction into the return of spatial thinking in the social sciences, we will discuss three themes in relation to the visual culture: the construction of the rural (in relation to the urban), our understanding of the local (in relation to the global), and re‐invention of the nature (in relation to culture, or society).

Students following this course will be provided with the theoretical skills necessary to critically analyse important issues in development studies and to understand how theory resonates in research set‐up and reporting. By the end of this course, having read the literature and participated in the educational activities, students should be able to:

  1. Understand and appraise dilemma's and controversies related to spatial thinking in social sciences;
  2. Explain and evaluate how research is informed by spatial imaginaries;
  3. Assess differences and similarities between main contemporary development theories;
  4. Evaluate the consequences of theoretical choices for development practices;
  5. Apply a relational approach to one's own research