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What Are The Concepts Of Marxism And Feminism

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In order to describe Marxist and feminist approaches to geography, the definition of a paradigm has to be fully understood. Therefore this essay will describe the term paradigm and discuss what they consist of. Following this, the essay will look at key underlying concepts of Marxism and feminism as individual paradigms and how they are applied to geography. After, some of the similar principles between the two paradigms will be explored, before they are compared against each other in regards to crime. Kuhn (1962) was the first to coin the term paradigm. He defined it as a body of accepted theory which can illustrate successful applications that can be compared to observations and experiments. In his work ‘The structure of scientific revolutions’, he defines a paradigm as the entire constellation of beliefs, values and techniques shared by the members of a given community. It is the universally recognized scientific achievements that for a time provide model problems and solutions to a community of practitioners (Kuhn, 1962). Paradigms inform researchers what the object of their science should be, to which questions they should try to find ‘acceptable’ answers and which methods can be considered as ‘geographical’ (Holt-Jensen, 1995). There are three elements of a paradigm; ontology, epistemology and methodology. Ontology is the set of specific assumptions about the nature of existence underlying a theory or system of ideas; beliefs about what exists and can be observed, and

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