ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that geography as spatial science, emerging in the 1950s and 1960s, replicated the obsession with the material world, albeit translating the configurations of material phenomena into more abstract geometric representations supposedly disclosing the deeper truths of humanity's spatial organization. It suggests that there are surprisingly few works which explicitly set out to explore the possible overlaps between human geography and sociology. The chapter also suggests that the success of the cultural turn is actually posing a few problems for the study of social geography, the subdisciplinary realm which, in Britain at least, initially spawned the present cultural turn. It is concerned with the researcher's focus all too quickly becomes one hung up on identity politics and cultural representations, rather than patiently excavating the grain of component social lives, social worlds and social spaces.
