| Summary: | This article describes attempts that cross-fertilize spatial science and critical geographies and challenge the analytical/quantitative versus critical/qualitative distinction existing across human geography. The article is organized on the basis of criticisms of positivist quantitative geography; it discusses both (early) attempts to articulate the visions and interests of marginalized groups drawing on conventional methodological understandings and (more recent) attempts to integrate enumeration, statistical and mathematical analysis, and geographic information system (GIS) with realist, feminist, and post-structuralist perspectives on science. It is shown that critical spatial analysis is a vibrant but variegated body of work that tends to recognize the limitations of quantitative methods; is committed to issues of difference, contextuality, and contingency; frequently adopts a progress orientation to methodology; and often transcends the qualitative/quantitative binary. Despite challenges yet to be overcome, critical spatial analysis occupies an important niche within the discipline, because it enables numbers to be mobilized in favor of empowerment and progressive social change and helps connecting the analytical and critical lineages of human geography.
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