Theory

Theory is a set of assumptions and propositions that offer explanation. There is no one unified theory that is applied by all social and physical scientists to explain the world. Instead, there are myriad explanatory frameworks that invoke different theoretical paradigms and approaches, some of which are more dominant at different points in time and space. In human geography in particular, there are four major metatheoretical paradigms that have developed over the late 20th and early 21st centuries and that inform the majority of geographic inquiry: spatial science, humanism, critical realism, and poststructuralism. Metatheories are constituted by epistemological assumptions (how we know the world) and ontological[Page 485] assumptions (how the world is structured to produce knowledge). These epistemological and ontological assumptions vary depending on one's paradigmatic perspective. Moreover, these broad paradigms have multiple theoretical modifications that privilege key objects of analysis. It is possible to argue that feminism, which focuses its attention on the power dynamics that are part and parcel of gender, cuts across all four paradigms, although many feminists today favor rethinking the epistemological assumptions of critical realism and poststructuralism in defining a feminist theoretical approach more so than those of spatial science and humanism. Needless to say, it is possible to argue for a distinct theoretical approach called feminist poststructuralism.

As John Paul Jones explained, epistemology and ontology in Western thought historically are organized around key sets of binaries. In geography, some of the most common epistemological binaries include objectivity and subjectivity, nomothetic and ideographic, general and particular, and explanation and interpretation. Ontologically speaking, geographers are concerned with the relationships between order and chaos, nature and culture, materiality and discourse, and society and space. These are but a few examples. Ontology and epistemology, taken in conjunction, frame our theories about how the world might work and how best to study that world. A spatial scientist understands the world as ontologically ordered and rational. Within that context of order, the spatial scientist would view the world as objectively quantifiable. From a different epistemological framework, a poststructuralist geographer may view the world as chaotic. Ontologically, the poststructuralist might privilege discourse over the material in studies of the webs of chaotic social relations that are part of the relationships between, for example, space and social identity.

Spatial science historically is based in the philosophical tradition of logical positivism. Epistemologically, positivism favors objectivity; ontologically, it favors order. Positivism operates within the assumption that through the generation of hypotheses and the empirically testing of those hypotheses, it is possible to generate laws about how the world works. Also underpinning positivism's assumptions about the objective world is that once laws are proven, they may be generalizable for universal application. The overarching goal of positivism is not to overturn the epistemological and ontological assumptions of this paradigm but rather to refine, through empirical investigation and methodological nuance, the theories that emerge about the objective and orderly world. Thus, human geographers seek to advance spatial laws about how the world operates, working across an ontologically flat and absolute space in their study of what John Nystuen called geography's primitives, for example, distance and location. The spatial scientist, operating from the position of objectivity, treats the field of study as something “out there”; the subject position of the researcher is distinct and separate from the people the researcher claims to study. Despite the fact that spatial scientists operate within a framework of objectivity, they use both deductive (top-down) and inductive (bottom-up) analyses. Inductively, it is possible to generate new theories of the world beginning with empirical investigation, although the presumption is that those theories still operate within a world that is based in order and rationality.

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