2001. vol. 1. No. 2

Arnold Gehlen is considered to be one of the original sociologists. Thus, he was an editor of the first German postwar textbook on sociology. Gehlen shared scientific worldview and thought that the human being is a result of the evolution of the living world. He often referred to the searching of “missing link” of Louis Leakey and the works of other paleontologists. However, the interconnection between human and animal, according to his position, is considered wrongly by the followers of idealism and religion and by the majority of evolutionists. In this article we will speak about Gehlen’s social theory, which is trying to overcome drawbacks of evolutionists’ and idealists’ theories by showing the role of action in human’s development as a biological kind and describing the main schemes of social action and its regulation. 

The fragment of the Russian version  of the “Society, Action and Space” by well-known  Swiss social geographer  Benno Verlaine includes a preface to the English edition by the author, Anthony Giddens’ foreword to the publication of this edition, and the first chapter of the book. The author states, first of all,  the differences and features of the new edition (in comparison with the German one) --  the aim was to revive the cultural debate among social scientists and geographers of the German and the Anglo-Saxon tradition. A.Giddens sees this work as having great value especially for social scientists because Verlaine’s arguments sound a death sentence for the idea of the geography as a “science of space”, but at the same time opening up new and vast field of study. In the first chapter the author deals with the problem of causality in correlation with the space and action.

In the talk given in 1929 in Barcelona, Carl Schmitt developed on the ideas which were previously presented in the article “The Concept of the Political” (1927). In 1932, when the extended version of the article was published as a single book, the talk has become an appendix to the book. Schmitt sketched out the history of “the last 4 centuries of the European history” as a history of shifts of central domains: from theology (16 century) towards metaphysics (17 century), then – towards the Enlightenment and doctrines of moral virtues (18 century), and finally – towards economism (19 century). At any of these shifts it was assumed that order should have been established in the relevant central domain while the rest would follow. At any moment the concept of the state reflected the relevant central domain. At the same time, European humankind always looked for a neutral space where a common understanding could be achieved if it was not possible in a given central domain. The domain which used to be central at a certain point is neutralized and stops being central. On the grounds of the new central domain there is hope to establish minimum level of consensus and common assumptions and to make possible security, evidence, mutual understanding and peace.

This article has introduced the notion ‘distinction’, embedded into social order, being more wide and saturated than social differentiation and social stratification. The notion of ‘distinction’ has become necessary for urban analyses due to increasing sophistication and confusion of the systems of recognition and co-matching. Semantics of urban signs and semiology of urban territories are considered as obligatory elements of modern urban order. These ideas are discussed and redefined in multiple urban contexts.  Human territorial behavior is a particular case of the general ethology of animals, yet not oriented towards physical and olfactory designations, but towards urban space semantics, which is a complex product of a distinction process.