Geography, History and Social Sciences: 27 (GeoJournal Library) - Tapa dura

Georges Benko «Societies are much messier than our theories of them» Michael Mann The Sources of Social Power 1 Towards a unified social theory Why are there communication problems between the different disciplines of the social sciences? And why should there be so much misunderstanding? Most probably because the encounter of several disciplines is in fact the encounter of several different histories, and therefore of several different cultures, each interpreting the other according to the code dictated by its own culture. Inevitably geographers view other disciplines through their own cultural filter, and even a benevolent view remains 'ethnocentric'. It was in order to avoid such ethnocentricity that Femand Braudel called for more unity among the social sciences in 1958 : «l wish the social sciences . . . would stop discussing their respective differences so much . . . and instead look for common ground . . . on which to reach their first agreement. Personally I would call these ways : quantification, spatial awareness and 'longue duree'». In its place at the center of the social sciences, geography reduces all social reality to its spatial dimensions. Unfortunately, as a discipline, it considers itself all too often to be in a world of its own. There is a need in France for a figure like Vidal de la Blanche who could refocus attention away from issues of time and space, towards space and social reality. Geographic research will only take a step forward once it learns to address the problems facing all the sciences.

The complex relations between territory and the social sciences are explained by investigators from different disciplines: geography, economy, sociology and history among them. The current ferment in the social sciences has assigned an increasingly important role to the concept of space. In Geography, History and Social Sciences, established, internationally respected authors demonstrate the renewed vigour of the concept of space within the social sciences in general, and within the historical social sciences in particular.
Consciously situating human geography among these latter, the contributions advocate an integrated vision of societies, taken through the lenses of an interdisciplinary human science. Geography and history, originally united in the pursuit of understanding the concrete forms and developments of societies, are once again brought under the unifying umbrella of a truly spatialised human science. Human geography in particular, which has been asserting itself as a social science over the last 20 years, must be rejuvenated, not only by listening to all the messages that can stimulate its theoretical construction, but also by establishing close relations with all discourses which speak of a society as a whole, made up of differently conditioned historical parts.