Jacques
Lévy: Eine geographische Wende
The relevance of space in human life
is increasing. The point of equilibrium between constraint and freedom has
moved. Individuals have become actors of their own spatiality as well as of the
spatiality of others. Social actors must develop an explicit competence in and
accountability for spatial issues. At the same time, geography and the social
sciences of space have also changed. They have become more interactive and more
intricate. A renewed resource has been discovered in philosophy. Political and
economic stakeholders’ knowledge, as well as urban and territorial
planners’ expertise have been mobilised.
These two components are converging
towards a third one, the growing pressure on scientists to produce analyses of
and insight into the spatial dimension of society. The conjunction of those
three elements can be referred to as the “geographical turn”.
Where does French geography stand in this context? In the 1960s it suffered from severe underdevelopment in comparison with other disciplines due to its ruralism, its addiction to state rationales, and its reluctance to adopt theoretical approaches. Today, French geography is still to an extent isolated from English-speaking research. However, it does have some assets, namely its capacity to address the major issues of social theory without abandoning the ideal of a unified social science devoted to space. It has moved away from the odd epistemological mixture that Paul Vidal de la Blache and his epigones once imposed on it, and has put forward a culture of research that includes epistemology and ambitious theoretical goals.
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