Reflections on Gunnar Olsson's Contribution to the Discourse of Contemporary Human Geography

During the 1970s, the emphasis in Gunnar Olsson's work entailed a shift from linguistic investigations with a philosophical flavour to linguistic experiments seen as the core of a new social science. Both of these phases in Olsson's thinking have been received, however, with scepticism by human geographers. An attempt is made here to allay some of this scepticism by demonstrating the relevance of Olsson's concerns, first to the critique of a positivist and functionalist human geography, and second to the emergent ‘agency-structure’ debate as this touches upon the concerns of human geographers. In the latter respect it is suggested that Olsson's focus on the internal dimensions of the meshing of individual and society can perhaps complement the structurationist focus on the more external dimensions of the meshing of agency and structure.