Thinking of Space Relationally : Critical Realism Beyond Relativism - A Manifold Study of the Artworld in Beijing /

Gao, Xiaoxue,

Thinking of Space Relationally : Critical Realism Beyond Relativism - A Manifold Study of the Artworld in Beijing / Xiaoxue Gao. - 1 online resource (282 pages) - Urban Studies .

Frontmatter -- Contents -- List of Figures and Tables -- Acknowledgment -- 1 Introduction -- Section One: Thinking of space relationally: traveling epistemic frames and local context of knowing and doing -- 2 Conceptual elucidations -- 3 Accounts of social space in traditional Chinese thought -- 4 Recontextualizing theoretical knowledge of space and the local context of knowing -- Section Two: The retroductive empirical research on the spatial constitution of Beijing's artworld -- 5 Critical realism methodology and the study of an artworld -- 6 Conclusion -- References -- Appendix: anonymized interview list

Open Access

Since the spatial and relational turns in the social sciences, it has become self-evident that one needs to combat methodological universalism and nationalism and explain the constitution of space relationally. Following the sociology of knowledge approach, Xiaoxue Gao takes relational spatial theories as `travelling conceptual knowledge', distinguishes them, and reflects on the `epistemic fallacy' which arises from re-contextualising them uncritically in studying contemporary urban space in China. Taking Critical Realism as a meta-theory, this book offers a methodology which leaps productively from causal hypotheses in plural travelling theories to explanations of locally observable events. It is exemplified in interrogating the poly-contextual formation of the artworld in Beijing as a conjunctive multiplicity.


In English.

3839455871 9783839455876

10.14361/9783839455876 doi


Social sciences.
SOCIAL SCIENCE--Sociology--General.
Social sciences.

Art. Artworld. China. Critical Realism. Science. Sociology of Art. Sociology of Knowledge. Sociology. Space.


Electronic books.

N6498.R43

709.51/15