On the relationship between definitions of sociology of rural areas, social space, and social geography: similarities and differences. Part 1

The first part of the article reveals the theoretical relations of the concepts of social space, social geography, and rural sociology in the context of the multi-paradigm approach developed by the authors. The paper analyses the issue in terms of integrating the key ideas of critical realism, social constructivism and institutionalism, and puts forward strong arguments about the advantages of the adopted approach in explaining the development vector of modern humanitarian knowledge. In particular, critical realism attracts the attention of many scientists from a wide range of social disciplines due to the commitment to realistic ontology, the vision of the actual complexity of social processes, the recognition of the significance of the activities of actors and their real results. The constructivist structure helps to understand the social world and the actors’ actions identifying narratives based on observations and reflections. Institutionalism includes institution - norms, customs of behavior, and institutions - the consolidation of norms and customs in the form of laws, organizations, and institutions. It allows evaluating formal and informal economic actions, and including such categories as price, demand, revenue, costs, profit taking into account the most complete range of interests and relations of actors which is important for empirical conclusions. If the multi-paradigm approach illustrates the possibilities of compatibility of a wide variety of methodologies, which is important for the synthesis of fundamentally contradictory concepts of social space, social (human) geography and rural sociology, then the search for meaningful pointsof their possible contact leads to the need to identify constructive narratives in qualitative research, looking for cause-and-effect relationships associated with these narratives.