Practices, power, space

This paper is an analysis of the different definitions of the space that have caused the revitalization of interest for this issue in the social sciences. Our assumption is that in the social sciences of the second half of the twentieth century, space lost the status of privileged epistemology of 'old' geography, architecture and urbanism. As one important reason for the theoretical and epistemological regionalization of space in the social sciences, we emphasize the existence of different sources for these investigations: from the 'discovery' of space in Vico, Montaigne and Montesquieu, to neo-Marxism of Henri Lefebvre, critical geography of David Harvey and poststructuralist discourses on space. Although the work of the authors (Lefebvre, Foucault, Harvey) that we present in this paper belong to different traditions of research, their analyzes of space are connected with one key, multivalent term - human, social practices. Hence we emphasize the Foucault's geo-epistemology and his turn toward space which was, despite the various influences that have shaped it, authentical, different and previously unknown synthesis of historicity/ genealogy, practices, power and space. In conclusion, we point out that theoretical turn towards space of mentioned researchers and especially Foucault's, contributed to the fact that in social sciences space is no longer a comprehensive, stable, clearly parceled entity with solid boundaries, independent of human practices and power. We conclude that the spatial turn in the social sciences should be understood as related to the turn to social practices. The space today is not the background scenery for anthropological dramaturgy of universality and ahistorical social phenomena or the permanently set stage for dynamic that European temporal narrative will fulfill to 'colonize' the geography with history.