Place in social process : an exploratory data analysis of outcomes from localised labour exchange

The principle tenet of this Study is that place and its role in social process is poorly understood. This is a serious problem in human geography where one of the major tasks is to elucidate the spatial elements in social process. The resulting difficulties are compounded in empirical analysis where the spatial and social are highly disaggregated. Any response must, therefore, address these features of the problem if the situation is to be redressed. A twofold response was formulated. The first, concentrates attention on labour exchange as a key element of social process and investigates spatial differences from the highly disaggregated local perspective. The second involves transferring Tukey's philosophy of EXPLORATORY DATA ANALYSIS to geographical research. This has been done to overcome analytical rigidities which impede progress where theory concept or dat a are sufficiently suspect as to cause uncertainty. Implementation of this strategy progresses from comparatively simple and conventional treatments of place in labour exchange to more sophisticated examinations which explore spatial aspects of differentiation in controlled analytical environments. Substantive investigation of labour exchange, from an exploratory point of view, provides powerful insights into the role of place in labour exchange because it is less constrained than conventional treatments. These insights are manifest through analyses of extent and nature in differentiation between places. Results are of three types: structure in place and social process which establish a prima facie case for more general analysis; structure of place in a widely defined social environment; structure in social process which is sufficiently general as to sustain hypotheses of ubiquitous spatial structure. These interim findings, of merit in their own right, combine to provide a sound foundation for proposition of a model relating place to social process. This model is significant because it reverses the principal tenet of traditional empirical models, which reduce place to the status of an analytical convenience, and argues that it is inherent in considerations of social process