2002. vol. 2. No. 4

This is the  Russian version of the third chapter from the book "Society action and space." by famous Swiss social geographer and theorist Benno Verlaine. In this chapter, the author examines the grounds and the reverberation of objectivism in the social sciences and starts with Popper's critical rationalism. First of all, the author refers to the criticism of inductive interpretation of everyday actions in Popper theory and then takes up the main principles of the research from the critical realism point of view. Next he examines Popper theory of "three worlds" and correlates it with a critical analysis of rational action. Author completes the analysis of Popper's concept and its methodological consequences with a statement of the paradox - the structural functionalists, sociologists and geographers-positivists and neo-determinists stating that the study of the social sciences should be based on "the Popper’s epistemology” 'turn to non-existent Popper - striking an unintended consequence of the intentions of Popper.

“Orientalism” is the most popular work of Edward Said. This book was published in the USA in 1978 and it was translated into thirty languages. Moreover, despite of the fact that before “Orientalism” Edward Said published around two dozen of book and a lot of articles, he has been primarily perceived as the author of “Orientalism”. However, sometimes people remember the work “Culture and imperialism”, which was published by Said much later. In this article we will try to analyze works and ideas, which were formulated by Edward Said in his other works. Despite of their unpopularity and obscurity, they have no less originality than his work “Orientalism”.

The book “Orientalism” was finished in the end of 1977 and was published one year after. “Orientalism” got a lot of comments, which were partly hostile and partly irrelevant, however, the majority of them were positive and even delighted. “Orientalism” was written in the Borhes’s spirit and due to this it transformed from one book to many. I wanted to discuss here this strange and disturbing diversity of followed versions of “Orientalism”. Certainly, I will try to correct wrong readings of this book and its false interpretations.