Duality and Paradigm of Regional Science – in the Hungarian Mirror

Abstract

The paper – based on a general deductive model and the evaluation of the recent Hungarian mainstreams in the regional research – investigates the theoretical structure and contexts of the regional scíence. The regíonal science as a social science integrates the basic concepts, theories and methods of different regional studies concerned with spatial processes. The basic theoretical framework of the regional science is the duality of the general social theories and the social space theory. The processes investigated in the regional studies have two main characteristic directions: the analysis of the real social processes or the research of the systems of the public administration. These processes closely connected with the aims and methods of the regional analysis and planning. The author points out four paradígm of the regional science: the elements of the social space and the spatial structures as two general paradigm of the discipline, and the paradigm of the settlements and regions, as a special paradigm of the "outer" (geographic) space.