SPECIAL ISSUE – Spatial Analysis in the Social Sciences and Humanities

Cornelia Thierbach, Anna Laura Raschke, Linda Hering and Nina Baur (Eds.): Spatial Analysis in the Social Sciences and Humanities. Towards Integrating Qualitative, Quantitative and Cartographic Approaches

Due to the Spatial Turn, research on space and spatiality has increased in all humanities and social sciences. Although there have been many theoretical debates and empirical studies within the above fields of research about the meaning and relevance of space, the debate is to this day surprisingly unintegrated as debates remain fixed within their respective fields. Interdisciplinary discussion is still the exception and so far has not resulted in a common cohesive analytical framework. Even more startling is that despite the long history and large quantity of empirical studies using space and spatial concepts as an analytical category, there is no systematic debate on methodology and methods of spatial analysis. This is even more surprising as there is a broad and thorough knowledge on many methodological problems concerning spatial analysis in various disciplines and subfields of these disciplines.

This HSR Special Issue thus aims at starting a debate on integrating the methodological debate on spatial analysis in various humanities and social sciences, bridging the gaps between different research fields like geography, cartography and geo-information sciences, cross-cultural survey research, sociology, architecture and urban planning, literature and philosophy. The contributions in this issue address questions such as: Which qualitative and/or quantitative methods are best suited for which kind of theoretical problems? Which sampling strategies are appropriate for spatial problems? What are the specific data requirements for spatial analysis, and how can these data be collected? Which strategies of data analysis are appropriate for spatial analysis?

Abstracts of all contributions are available on our website <http://www.gesis.org/hsr/>.

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