Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book focuses on highly urbanized and highly industrialized societies, what are sometimes called the more developed countries (MDCs) with particular focus on Britain and western Europe, but also drawing on case studies from North America, Australia, New Zealand and Japan. Social geography focuses on the relationships between societies and the spaces they occupy and use. Space has an important role in actively constituting society. Radical approaches emphasize power relations and social and political structures in explaining the social geographical world. Radical social geographers have an explicit political and moral commitment to the issues they study. The political, philosophical and social positioning affect the geographies we research, write, and read, and those people construct in the world. It is important to be explicit about positioning as it underpins different interpretations of the social world.