Spatial Analysis of Social Facts
By Claude Grasland
“A tentative theoretical framework derived from Tobler’s first law of geography and Blau’s multilevel structural theory of society.
“This document presents an attempt to build a theoretical framework for the spatial analysis of social facts, derived from Tobler’s first law of geography (‘Everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related than distant things’) and Blau’s theory of macro sociology and multilevel structural analysis. At individual level four basic times of position and interaction are defined (geographical/sociological and discrete/continuous). It is then necessary to discuss the effects of scale aggregation and time dynamics on the elementary levels of position and interaction. This part is illustrated by examples about airflows between world cities in 2000 and euro coins diffusion across borders between 2002 and 2007.”
