Social Geography

Questions Guiding Social Geography

Social geographers have analyzed people's uneven knowledge of places, often asking them to draw maps of the world, their countries, and the cities and neighborhoods where they live. In addition to examining people's awareness of individual locations and their positions relative to each other, geographers also explore how people evaluate places, asking why one neighborhood is considered attractive while others repel or evoke indifference. Increasingly, social geographers examine the meanings that people attach to different locations by asking them where they feel at home and where they feel out of place. Investigating the social and built characteristics of public spaces where women feel unsafe at night, geographers have recommended design changes that will ensure that women as well as men are at ease in public spaces.

Different questions have motivated social geographers’ studies of diverse social groups. Some geographers have studied people who live in specific neighborhoods, municipalities, and regions, while others have analyzed particular segments of society, such as the elderly, children, racial minorities, income groups, hate groups, and various occupational groups. In both cases, geographers seek to understand how space and place shape the behaviors and beliefs of and the links between people in particular groups. Attention is paid to the social ties through which information and influence are transmitted among members of a social group and their spatial patterns. At the core of many studies are questions about the ways in which space and place shape power relations among social groups.

Institutions such as government, nongovernmental organizations, ethnic and religious groups, and for-profit institutions are a third topic of interest to social geographers, who want to understand how place shapes institutions and their social impacts and how social institutions shape space and place. For example, looking at the provision of services for psychiatric survivors, social geographers have highlighted the processes that lead to concentrations of such services in poor neighborhoods, where the housing stock is often in poor condition and residents are kept isolated, far from commercial establishments and recreational facilities. Other geographers have examined how concentrating services for marginalized groups in poor urban neighborhoods stigmatizes them.

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