This accessible textbook is a stimulating introduction to contemporary social geography. It provides students with the tools to understand the various frameworks that geographers use to conceptualize, document, and attempt to overcome social differences.

"With clarity and confidence, this vibrant volume summons up 'the social' in geography in ways that will excite students and scholars alike. Here the social is populated not only by society, but by culture, nature, economy and politics." - Kay Anderson, University of Western Sydney "This is a remarkable collection, full of intellectual gems. It not only summarises the field of social geography, and restates its importance, but also produces a manifesto for how the field should look in the future." - Nigel Thrift, Vice-Chancellor, University of Warwick "The book aims to be accessible to students and specialists alike. Its success lies in emphasizing the crossovers between geography and social studies. The good editorial work is evident and the participating contributors are well-established scholars in their respective fields." - Miron M. Denan, Geography Research Forum "An excellent handbook that will attract a diversity of readers. It will inspire undergraduate/postgraduate students and stimulate lecturers/researchers interested in the complexity and diversity of the social realm.... As the first of its kind in the sub-discipline, it is a book that is enjoyable to read and will definitely add value to a personal or library collection." - Michele Lobo, New Zealand Geographer The social relations of difference - from race and class to gender and inequality - are at the heart of the concept of social geography. This handbook reconsiders and redirects research in the discipline while examining the changing ideas of individuals and their relationship with structures of power. Organised into five sections, the SAGE Handbook of Social Geographies maps out the 'connections' anchored in social geography. Difference and Diversity builds on enduring ideas of the structuring of social relations and examines the ruptures and rifts, and continuities and connections around social divisions. Geographies and Social Economies rethinks the sociality, subjectivity and placement of money, markets, price and value. Geographies of Wellbeing builds from a foundation of work on the spaces of fear, anxiety and disease towards newer concerns with geographies of health, resilience and contentment. Geographies of Social Justice connects ideas through an examination of the possibilities and practicalities of normative theory and frames the central notion of Social geography, that things always could and should be different. Doing Social Geography is not exploring the 'how to' of research, but rather the entanglement of it with practicalities, moralities, and politics. This will be an essential resource for academics, researchers, practitioners and postgraduates across human geography.

This book provides a round-up of the state of the sub-discipline of social geography, capture recent themes and directions, and chart new questions and challenges for theory, politics and practice.

`Introducing Social Geographies' is a major new text offering a comprehensive and up-to-date introduction to this important area of human geography. It presents a broad overview of social geography, clearly outlining the key theoretical and political positions, and making extensive use of examples to show how these frameworks can be used to analyse real social issues. The book is ideal for undergraduates first encountering social geography and includes topic overviews, summaries of key points, critiques, boxed case studies and suggestions for further reading.

Written by one of America's foremost geographers, Postmodern Geographies contests the tendency, still dominant in most social science, to reduce human geography to a reflective mirror, or, as Marx called it, an "unnecessary complication." Beginning with a powerful critique of historicism and its constraining effects on the geographical imagination, Edward Soja builds on the work of Foucault, Berger, Giddens, Berman, Jameson and, above all, Henri Lefebvre, to argue for a historical and geographical materialism, a radical rethinking of the dialectics of space, time and social being. Soja charts the respatialization of social theory from the still unfolding encounter between Western Marxism and modern geography, through the current debates on the emergence of a postfordist regime of "flexible accumulation." The postmodern geography of Los Angeles, exposed in a provocative pair of essays, serves as a model in his account of the contemporary struggle for control over the social production of space.

Most social geography undergraduate textbooks are structured around different social categories, splintering the discussion of gender, class, race and increasingly now sexuality and disability, into separate chapters. This has the effect, firstly, of making social relations rather than space (the raison d'etre of human geography) the focus of undergraduate books; secondly of ignoring the way that social relations are negotiated and contested in different space. Rather than reproducing this conventional social geography format the aim of this proposed text is to make space the focus of analysis. In doing so the intention is to make complex theoretical debates about space more accessible to students and encourage them to look at their own environments in new ways.

How do we describe ourselves? Where have we, do we, will we, live our lives? Why are the differences between people a source of tension? How can social change occur? Social geography can assist in addressing these questions. It provides ways of understanding and living in our contemporary world. Providing students with the resources to understand both the theoretical and empirical approaches social geographers take when investigating social difference, this text outlines key theoretical approaches and traces the core geographies of difference: class, gender, race/ethnicity, and sexuality. It concludes by showing how geographers work across these ideas of difference to understand questions of identity, power and action. Using illustrative examples from around the world, Social Geographies includes: - Individual chapters on the main theoretical approaches to difference - Individual chapters on the key concepts of identity, power and action - Reviews of the core literature, with suggestions for further reading - Biographies of key contemporary social geographers - Glossary of key terms For students beginning human geography courses, or in social geography modules, this book is the essential primer.