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The paper opens with a review of recent developments in the sociology of spatial organization and after an examination of the ontological and epistemological assumptions which are embedded within current theorizations of space a number of arguments are advanced concerning the inter-relationships which hold between forms of knowledge, social practice and physical design. Using architectural plans, these arguments are then developed with reference to the study of the spatial organization of hospital wards in three contexts; the care and treatment of children, the containment of madness in the pre-1845 period and the management of psychiatric patients 1973-1982. The paper concludes that schemes of spatial organization are best understood in relation to the discursive practices of which they form a part rather than as decontextualised and reified social facts which exhibit their own 'logic'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the application of Foucauldian perspectives within sociology. While Foucault's epistemology has generated novel historical and philosophical interpretations, when transposed to sociology, problems arise. The first of these concerns the association of knowledge and power, and the concept of 'discourse'. Foucault suggested that there are 'rules' of discursive formation which are extraneous to the 'non-discursive' realm of 'reality'. This formulation is consequently both deterministic and incapable of supplying explanations of why some practices become discursive which others do not. This determinism is reflected in some sociological analyses of embodiment, offering a model of the 'body' which is passive, and incapable of resisting power/knowledge. Secondly, Foucault's notion of the 'self' moves to the other extreme, inadequately addressing the constraints which affect the fabrication of subjectivity. Sociological accounts do not always recognize the ambiguities which consequently result from efforts to use Foucauldian positions. It is argued that post-structuralists other than Foucault may offer more to sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most accounts of sociology's origins ignore the role of Schopenhauer's philosophy and fin de siècle German philosophy in general in favor of a Kantian, positivistic scenario. Thus contemporary sociological theory remains trapped in Kant's dismissal of the noumenon, or the thing-in-itself, as unknowable. Evidence is presented to suggest that Schopenhauer's philosophy in particular influenced many of sociology's precursors, among them Durkheim, Simmel, Freud, Weber and Tönnies. Schopenhauer attempted to recover Kant's noumenon by renaming it the will, thereby informing a vocabulary that included 'the other side' of the phenomenon, including the unconscious, habit, perception, intuition, and judgment. The implications of recovering Schopenhauer's achievement for contemporary sociological theory as well as understanding its origins are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]