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Since the relational turn, scholars have combated methodological universalism, nationalism, and individualism in researching social-spatial transformations. Yet, when leaving the gaps between the traveling and local epistemic assumptions unattended, engaging relational spatial theories in empirical research may still reproduce established theoretical claims.
Following the sociology of knowledge tradition and taking Critical Realism as a meta-theoretical framework, Xiaoxue Gao takes relational spatial theories as traveling conceptual knowledge and develops meaningful and context-sensitive ways of engaging them in studying the complex urban phenomenon in China. She offers conceptual elucidations and methodological roadmaps, which leap productively from employing plural causal hypotheses to generating effect-based explanations for locally observable events. They are exemplified by manifold interrogations of Beijing's Artworld as a conjuncture of particular events.
Xiaoxue Gao (Dr. phil.), born in 1987, works as a project
manager and post-doctoral researcher at the Institute of Architecture at Technical University of Berlin. Prior to that, she researched and studied in urban planning, human geography and sociology of space. She is interested in researching spatial transformation with a focus on counterculture space in China, and in exploring the cross-cultural social-spatial research methodologies.
Frontmatter 1
Contents 5
List of Figures and Tables 7
Acknowledgment 9
1 Introduction 13
2 Conceptual elucidations 47
3 Accounts of social space in traditional Chinese thought 83
4 Recontextualizing theoretical knowledge of space and the local context of knowing 125
5 Critical realism methodology and the study of an artworld 155
6 Conclusion 251
References 259
Appendix: anonymized interview list 278