Society, Space and Practice
The Society, Space and Practice (SSP) research cluster focuses on conceptual and practical themes in social geography. Members of this research cluster view social inequalities as the complex configuration of social processes and how they are experienced at different spatial scales.
Key to the critical engagement with the social realm is concern with space-time co-ordination, gender relations, identity formations, social divisions and urban segregation. Particular emphasis is on the failings of ‘advanced’ capitalism and the experiences of those who are disadvantaged by a market-led system.
Research on infrastructures of daily life-span debates around social exclusion, urban environmental crisis and the future of the welfare state. Topical issues of daily life are explored through different social transitions: the household, community, labour market, civil society and trans-national movements.
Specific research foci include:
- Local labour market analysis
- Household resource inequalities and segregation
- The future of work and caring roles
- Geographies of health and well-being
- Social exclusion and spatial injustice
- Class, race and gender identities
- Social transformations and transitions
- Theorising space-time co-ordination
- Analysis of inequalities through application of GIS, biographic and ethnographic interpretation
The cluster embraces a loose affiliation of some 40 researchers across the University including New Economic Geographies and the Contemporary Social Change cluster in Sociology. It engages in a reciprocal exchange of information on outside seminars with:
- Transport Operations Research Group
- Institute of Health and Society
- Human Nutrition Research Network
- Architecture, Planning and Landscape
whereby attendance at SSP events is dynamic and truly cross-disciplinary. Members of this cluster currently hold an ESRC funded seminar series: Time-Space and Life-Course (2007 – 2009).
