Originally this was defined as the study of the spatial patterns of social, as distinct from political and economic, factors; see, for example, Meijering et al. (2007) Tijdschrift 98, 1. Social geography may now be subdivided into three categories. The first is the spatial expression of capitalism: ‘private property…is a spatial expression of power and surveillance that we have obediently internalized to make the actual exercise of power unnecessary’ (Gruenewald (2003) Am. Educ. Res. J. 40, 3). The second stresses the ‘alternative’ view of human geography; for example, studying the economically disadvantaged rather than the successful: D. Darton et al. (2003) point out that the distribution of disadvantage in the UK has a strongly geographical dimension. A third category emphasizes welfare geography. See Pain (2003) PHG 27, 5, 649.