La dimensione spaziale del sociale: nuove prospettive.The spacial dimension of social issues: new perspectives

Sociology is a discipline that is not necessarily concerned with space. In fact, in many cases it avoids the introduction of the spatial dimension of the phenomena in its interpretations, for theoretical reasons or for an implicit underestimation of it. While taking into account this situation, the article argues that there are several reasons why the marginalization of space in sociology has now lost plausible justifications and a new need of “spatializing” social processes is emerging. To demonstrate this, the article mentions some fundamental theoretical contributions of the last 15 years who intend to focus on the role of space and territory in sociological analysis. These reflections are of great interest; however, they must not give rise to a further theoretical sub-discipline, to be labelled as “sociology of space”, but should serve to renew the approach of the whole sociology, making it more suitable to interact with architecture and urban design.