Edward Sawyer's Critical Theory Of Modernity Space

Since the 1960s and 1970s,"space" has changed the oppressive situation under the "historical determinism" and gained more and more attention in the marxist theory.This "space transfer" in the western social science circle is a new era context with the emergence of the capitalist mode of production in the context of the capitalist globalization space system,the creation of innovative spatial knowledge and new forms of capital,and the transformation of the spatial consumption society.This shift is not only to regard space as a popular subject of research,but also to change the theoretical limitations of the traditional Marxist theory,that means change the preferential habit of time to space in the narrative of social history and the reflection on contemporary modernity.Based on the prominence of spatial factors in the development of capitalist globalization and the stagnation of traditional social critical theory,under the context of this era,Soja insisted on the basic position of Marxism,absorbed and borrowed others' spatial thoughts,and formed his own unique modern spatial critical theory.From the perspective of modernization critique,this paper starts from the dialectical relations among time,society and space,and makes a comprehensive reflective criticism of the capitalist society.From the perspective of space dimension,through a critical analysis of modernity issues such as the social life,urban space and so on,his put forward its space ontological thought of "ternary dialectic",and then constructed the new "third space" epistemology,and finally used in metropolitan modernity criticism and seek justice practice.Through the critical interpretation of Soja's critical theory of space,this paper explains the critical characteristics of modernity of his critical theory of space,reveals the limitation of value of his theory to the development of contemporary Marxism,and the practical significance of spatializing social reality.