Scientific event

Social Geography in Question
Abstract

In France, until the early 1980s, social geography was carried forward by relatively isolated voices, such as Élisée Reclus at the end of the 19th century, Jean Brunhes during the following decades, then Pierre George after the Second World War, and Renée Rochefort beginning with her thesis on labor in Sicily published in 1961.
Twenty years later, social geography became a collective project; it inspired a geographical movement that gave rise to research teams mainly in the universities of Western France, as well as in Toulouse, Pau, Lyon, Grenoble, and elsewhere.
Published in 1984, the book Social Geography is now considered, in retrospect, by new generations of geographers engaged in social geography, as the founding work of this new orientation in French geography.
This geography, social and critical by nature, has been built over the years through continuous interaction between observations and field research experiences, as geographers say, and the gradual — yet never completed — construction of interpretative frameworks for societies through their spatial projections.
It has attracted new generations of teachers and researchers who contribute to strengthening its foundations and enriching its methods and themes. The multiplication of research fields and the convergence of perspectives on the relationships societies weave with their living spaces have broadened the scope of social geography and the scientific paths it inspires.
This presentation aims to introduce and discuss the foundations of social geography, the themes it prioritizes, the questions it raises in relation to other branches of geography and social sciences, as well as its objectives of intervention in social debates and societal issues.


About Territory(ies)
Abstract

The term territory, rarely used 30 or 40 years ago, has today become a polysemic and widely used concept, not only among disciplines that traditionally employed it — geographers, biologists, political scientists, and planners — but also across most humanities and social sciences, as well as among politicians, journalists, and others.
Consequently, reflection on the different definitions of territory becomes necessary. To guide this reflection, four overlapping definitions are proposed:
territory as a political-administrative division;
territory as a space of resources and development potential;
territory as a lived space;
territory as a space of planning and development actions.
Based on these definitions (and possibly others proposed by geographers, jurists, sociologists, or anthropologists), discussion is proposed around the following themes:
territory and individual and collective identity;
from territory as a shared and delimited space to networks of relations and mobility;
territory and social category (or social group, or social class)