Area (1998) 30.1, 8-1 8
Ethics in geography: giving moral form to the
geographical imagination
JamesD Proctor
Department of Geography, 3611 Ellison Hall, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106-4060,
USA. Email: jproctor@geog.ucsb.edu
Revised manuscript received 27 October 1997.
Summary Geographershavebecome increasinglyinterestedin questions of ethics. In this
paper, I introduce the scope and major concerns of ethics, briefly reviewing recent
literature as a means of situatinggeography's potentialcontribution. I then link ethics to the
geographical imagination by developing a twofold schema representing geography's
ontological project and epistemological process, an approach that unites existing
professionaland substantive ethical concerns among geographers. Examplesof recent work
by geographers in these areas are noted. I close with a set of broad questions at the
interface of ethics and geography worthy of further reflection.
Introduction
Philosophical introspection is a hallmark of much
contemporary geography. Perhaps it is the discipline's
sheer diversity (Buttimer 1993), or the
fundamental questions that geographers pose
(Unwin 1992), that leads to this reflective attitude.
Clearly, some geographers are more enamoured
with philosophical discussionsthan others; yet, taken
as a whole, the discipline largely belies its common
interpretation by non-geographers as more a
repository of descriptive facts about the world
than some deeper intellectual perspective on their
meaning.
This paper is built upon recent forays by
geographers into one particularly fascinating and
eminently important area of philosophy: the realm
of ethics, or moral philosophy. Recent reviews of
subdisciplinary efforts suggest that there has been a
marked increasein geographical publications attending
to normative issues in general, and ethics in
particular, in the last half-decade (eg Matless 1995,
396-7; Driver 1996, 101). This emphasis is not
entirely new: it builds in many ways upon a broader
interest in values, dating from the 1970s among
geographers (Buttimer 1974), involving both the
professional issue of values inherent in the practice
of geography, and the substantive issue of values
inherent in the subject-matter of geography. The
interest was engendered principally in response to
the professed value-neutrality of the burgeoning
quantitative approach in geography, with its emphasis
on objectivist spatial analysis (Billinge et a1 1984;
Cosgrove 1989). Values, then, have been noted for
some time to be as much a part of geography as
facts; as a rigorous analysis of values, ethics can
enrich this discussion.
Like geography to non-geographers, however,
ethics to non-ethicists is often misunderstood,
though the caricature painted of ethics is opposite to
that of geography in many ways. Ethics is often held
to be a hopelessly abstract and speculativefield, one
as impractical as it is incomprehensible, of interest
only to scholars paid to think thoughts bearing little
connection to reality outside the ivory tower. This
charge is in large part false, though its status is well
known among moral philosophers, who work hard
to paint a different picture of ethics. Thus, Peter
Singer argues in his preface to a recent multiauthored
overview of the subject:
It is vital that ethics not be treated as something remote,
to be studied only by scholars locked away in universities.
Ethics deals with values, with good and bad, with
right and wrong. We cannot avoid involvement in
ethics, for what we d e a n d what we don't d e i s
always a possible subject of ethical evaluation. Anyone
Ethics in geography 9
omic, political and cultural development of western
societies (Horkheimer and Adorno 1972; Sorell
1991; Latour 1993). These are disturbing moral
questions, for they shake the very normative foundations
of science; thus, it is politically understandable
that they have not attracted the concerted
attention paid by scientists to the lesser-though
in themselves important-questions of professional
practice.
Philosophical usage of the term ethics is thus
broader than this prevailing scientific interpretation.
Ethics, also known as moral philosophy, involves
systematic intellectual reflection on morality in
general-morality being, as commonly understood,
the realm of significant normative concerns, often
described by notions such as good or bad, right or
wrong, justified or unjustified, and so forth-or
specific moral concerns in particular. The former can
be called theoretical ethics, and the latter applied
ethics, though the two are closely related. One realm
of applied ethics that has garnered considerable
attention outside philosophyfocuses on professional
conduct; thus, the moral questions asked by
scientists, as well as those in, for instance, the fields
of law, medicine and business, are legitimate
components of ethical enquiry.
In addition to ethics involvingboth theoreticaland
applied concerns, another useful distinction can be
drawn between descriptive ethics, normative ethics
and meta-ethics (though only the latter two are
represented in philosophical literature). The aim of
descriptive ethics is to characterize existing moral
schemes; this has been an important feature of, for
instance, cultural anthropology, which in so doing
has raised the problem of relativism (Benedict 1934;
Geertz 1989). Normative ethics are devoted to
constructing a suitable moral basis for informing
human conduct: contemporary examples include
Rawls’ theory of justice (1971) and Carol Gilligan‘s
contrasting, feminist-inspired ethics of care (1982).
Meta-ethics, in distinction, is more an examination
of the characteristics of ethical reasoning, or systems
of ethics. A classic meta-ethical problem, as
exemplified in David Hume’s is-ought dichotomy
(19781, concerns the relationship between facts
(descriptive statements) and values (normative
statements); this problem has been a major concern
of, for instance, twentieth-century social theory
(O’Neill 1993).
Much work in Western ethics is derived from the
way in which moral philosophy has developed.
For instance, one major theme to which many
who thinks about what he or she ought to do is,
consciously or unconsciously,involved in ethics (Singer
1993, v).
Singer’s argument is directed at people in general,
and, as such, we geographers ought to listen. But
what of our disciplinary concepts and practices?To
what extent does ethics occupy a critical, even
unavoidable place throughout geography? To what
extent can geographers, in particular the diverse
threads of their geographical imaginations (Gregory
1994b), contribute fruitfully to moral discourse?
I will begin with a clarificationof what is meant by
ethics, as considerable confusion results from the
different ways in which the term has been employed,
especially in the sciences. After briefly surveying
Contemporary work in ethics, I propose the moral
form of geographical imaginations expressed in
the discipline by developing a twofold schema
representing geography’s ontological project and
epistemological process, closing with some broad
questions worthy of further attention.
Background: ethics
Ethics defined
What is ethics? In science, ethics typically involves
reflection upon moral questions that arise in
research, publication and other professional activities.
Is it wrong to bend data to support one‘s
conclusions?To publish data gathered under some
assumption of confidentiality on the part of the
research subject?To publish a work based substantially
on the research of one’s graduate student(s)as
one’s own?To enter the policy arena as a scientist,
where objectivity and partiality could well clash?The
sheer number and complexity of these kinds of
ethical issues in the conduct of science is amply
evidenced in recent literature (eg Erwin et al 1994;
Shrader-Frechette 1994; Weeks and Kinser 1994).
But this prevailingsense of ethics among scientists
is quite narrowly circumscribed, avoiding at least as
many difficult moral questions as it asks. Indeed, the
kinds of moral issues entertained in much current
work on ethics in science dodge the much larger
moral question of the ethics of science-whether,
for instance, its current research priorities and the
amount of scarce resources currently allocated to
scientific research are justifiable, or whether the
typically elevated status of scientific pronouncements
on reality is justified, in the light of the many
cogent critiques of the role of science in the econ-
10 Proctor
theoretical discussions-primarily normative, but
also meta-ethical-have returned involves the
relationship between the right and the good. The
right corresponds to a particular act or intent;
the good implies rather the end or justification for a
particular act or intent. These terms are of primary
significance in Western ethics, in that they correspond
to the two major classes of moral theories:
teleological theories such as utilitarianism, where
the good is the primary concern, and deontological
theories, where the right becomes a more
paramountconcern (for introductory discussion, see
Davis 1993, 206% Goodin 1993, 241).
Contemporary work in ethics
Intellectualreflection on ethics in Western societies
has existed since at least the time of Socrates, to
whom Plato attributed the famous quote ‘The
unexamined life is not worth living’ (Apology,
38A). Though space precludes treatment of this
rich history of ethical enquiry, a brief review of
the contemporary literature may suggest how
geographers could participate.
Contemporary work in ethics is marked by its
sheer magnitude and diversity. This review offers a
snapshot, being restricted to journal articles and
books published during the first half of 1 9 9 6 a
period of time in which over 300 English-language
titles appeared. During this period, a fair amount of
literature emerged in the disciplines classically concerned
with ethics, namely philosophy and theology.
Though some of this work examined traditional
figures, running from Plato (Burke 1996) through to
Hobbes (Deigh 1996), the bulk focused on contemporary
theoretical and applied ethics (Fryer 1996;
Parsons 1996).
One of the primary lessons revealed by an examination
of publications in ethics during this period is
that scholars from virtually all disciplines are contributing
to the field, primarily in the context of
contemporary applied concerns (though theoretical
ethics still flourishes: see Gatens 1996; Hoffmann
and Hornung 1996). Examples include international
migration (Abernethy 1996; Aldeeb Abu-Sahlieh
1996), suicide (Beauchamp 1996; Lester and
Leenaars 1996), nature (Fox 1996; Herzog 1996),
the US Congress (Frederick 1996; Gabaldon 1996),
gay rights (Clark 1996; Thurston 1996), multiculturalism
(Ibrahim 1996; Michel 1996) and war
and peace (Nardin 1996; Wells 1996).
The other major area in which publications are
emerging is professional ethics. Major fields of
interest include medicine (Benn and Boyd 1996;
Koch 1996), law (Alfieri 1996; Hazard 1996), business
(Becker 1996; Newton and Schmidt 1996) and
science (Vinogradov 1996; Zahorik 1996), as well as
other professions rangingfrom engineering (Bowyer
and Donner 1996) to journalism (Cunningham
1996).
Contemporary work in ethics is thus overridingly
ecumenical, involving significant contributions from
many scholars outside philosophy and theology;
there is certainly room for geographersto participate.
In addition, though much of this work involves
specific applied and professional concerns, these
concerns span a broad range of issues and contexts;
geographers should thus expect to find significant
ethical questions arising throughout the domain of
their discipline. Indeed, there are many common
questions being asked in contemporary work in
ethics and geography, in areas such as gender
(Young 1990; Benhabib 1992; Rose 19931, development
theory (Friedmann 1992; Corbridge 1993),
community identity and exclusion (Walzer 1983;
Sibley 1988; 1995), postmodernism (Dear 1988;
Harvey 1989; Bauman 1994) and justice, universalism
and difference (Tronto 1993; Smith 1994;
Harvey 1996; O’Neill 1996).
A framework for ethical enquiry in
Geographers have published few books offering
sustained attention to ethics; those in existence have
been rather specifically delimited to topics such as
the ethics of geographical research (Mitchell and
Draper 1982), the struggle between imaginationand
morality in the worlds people create (Tuan 1989)
and geographical dimensions of social justice (Smith
1994). Indeed, most reviews suggest that current
work is not spread throughout the discipline, nor
throughout the spectrum of moral philosophy, being
largely confined to specific topical and theoretical
clusters within human geography (Ley 1994), and
focusing much more on descriptive than normative
ethics, and much more on both than meta-ethics.
In an upcoming review, David Smith discusses a
number of geographically relevant questions related
to meta-ethics, but finds few geographers to cite in
this area to date; by contrast, work by geographers
on ’moral geographies’, what could loosely be called
a form of thick descriptive ethics, is profuse (Smith,
forthcoming b). There are other clusters of interest
by geographers as well, including, for example, the
geography
Ethics in geography 11
ethics of geographical research, the ethics of CIS,
and social justice (for recent citations, see below).
Within each cluster of current interest, work is
proceeding fruitfully; yet there is little conversation
between these existing clusters, and emerging
clusters of interest are far more difficult to identify.
In short, the current literature suggests both the
potentially fruitful relationship between geography
and ethics, and the need to build a more concerted
and systematic effort in this area, in order to touch
the themes basic to the geographical imagination
that can help join these rather disparate interests.
Indeed, for this area to develop along more intellectually
robust lines, geographers working on ethics
must address the questions: how does it all hang
together?what is the appropriate scope and focus of
ethics in geography?what pivotal problems should
geographers be posing?what are some priority areas
for further work?
Ethical dimensions
There have been few theoretical frameworks
proposed to date to help answer these questions.
Such a framework would optimally be sensitive to
both ethics and geography: that is, it should embrace
the range of current work in moral philosophy and
link it to ethically relevant aspects of geographical
theory and practice. One framework that accomplishes
the former objective is the threefold taxonomy
of descriptive ethics, normative ethics and
meta-ethics presented above, and it has been fruitfully
employed in one upcoming review of work by
geographers on ethics (Smith, forthcoming b). A
particular strength of this approach is that it parses
out the different objectives and levels of abstraction
of ethical analysis. It is important to be clear, for
instance, whether one is proposing a solution to a
moral problem encountered in geographical enquiry
(normative ethics), or rather, looking into the rules
by which one would propose such a solution
(meta-ethics); likewise, it is important to know
whether one is primarily interested in providing a
rich account of the ways morality interweaves
with the geographies of everyday life (descriptive
ethics), or whether one is rather seeking to
evaluate these moral geographies as better or worse,
good or bad, justified or unjustified (normative
ethics).
There are problems with this rubric, however. For
instance, the growing literature among geographers
on moral geographies (see below) is somewhat
trivialized when classified under the category of
descriptive ethics-a category generally dismissed
by philosophers as unphilosophical! Additionally,
work by geographers on themes of normative ethics,
such as social justice, or meta-ethics, such as the
possibility of universals, often approaches these
questions from a grounded, contextualized and
often concrete perspective, which is quite unlike the
style of much philosophical literature in these two
categories of ethics.
A final limitation in relying solely on this threefold
rubric is that some of the areas of geographical
interest noted above are related more to professional
than substantive ethics, and thus do not fit
well into this rubric, as they are primarily devoted to
a gaze inward at the practice of the discipline versus
outward at the world. The relationship between
professional and substantive ethics has been less
worked out for geographers; indeed, Smith’s review
noted above does not engage with professional
ethics in geography.
One way to weave together professional and
substantive ethical enquiry in geography is to recall
its heritage in the recent history of interest in values
by geographers, as mentioned at the outset. The
rejection, in the 1970s and 198Os, of certain tenets
inherent in the positivist, so-called ‘value-free’
approach, led to two broad coalitions of geography:
those arguing for greater relevance in geographic
research (Mitchell and Draper 1982), and those
arguing for the use of more explicitly critical
theoretical approaches (eg Peet and Thrift 1989), of
which William Bunge and David Harvey, respectively,
stand as early exemplars (Unwin 1992, 162-4).
The net result of these movements could be a
greater affinity between professionaland substantive
concerns among geographers. Derek Gregory, for
example, argues in defence of a morally reflective
geographical practice, which is sensitive to the
morally differentiated character of geographical
reality (Gregory 1994b, 10-1 4). I will expand upon
the scope of ‘professional’ ethics below, arguing that
it entails much more than proper research and
publication. What will be important in joining these
two areas of ethics, I believe, is that professional
ethics represents the context-the process-out
of which the content-the result-of substantive
ethics emerges. joining these two areas will allow
geographers to be properly reflexive in the moral
statements they make about the world, without
getting lost in this reflexivity to the point that
they cannot speak about the moral nature of this
world.
12 Proctor
Geographicaldimensions
There is thus a need to retain the important
distinctions of the threefold rubric of descriptive,
normativeand meta-ethics,yet also to be sensitiveto
the links between professional and substantive concerns,
and situate this ethical framework within the
practice and substance of the geographical imagination,
as expressed by academic geographers. It is
this latter task to which I now turn.
I assume that academic geography exists primarily
as a knowledge-buildingenterprise, with two major
components: its ontologicalproject and its epistemological
process. Geography’s ontological project is,
simply, to make sense of those aspects of reality
(thus ‘ontology‘, a term referringto being or reality)
historically engaged in geographical analysis. Much
of geography’s ontological project is bound up in
specific metaphors used to organize reality; for convenience,
I will adopt the common threesome of
space, place and nature as the overriding metaphors
informing the ontological gaze of the geographical
imagination (Gregory 1994a, 217). Space is the
metaphor underlying a good deal of geography’s
ontologicalproject, including emphases as disparate
as spatial science and Marxistcritique.The metaphor
of place underlies more humanistic and interpretative
work in geography; it speaks of a realityas lived
and understoodby active human subjects. The metaphor
of nature underlies physical geography and
geography of the society-nature tradition. Though
these three metaphors are by no means comprehensive
in geography, they do suggest the differentways
in which geography proceedsin its project of making
sense of reality.
Geography, of course, accomplishes this ontological
project via an epistemological process: knowledge
of space, place and nature do not arise from
thin air. This is the manner in which professionaland
substantive ethics in geography are connected, since
without process and product, context and content
are not comprehensible without the other. Yet the
epistemological process of geography is far broader
than what is typically subsumed under the category
of ’professional ethics’. Minimally, this process
involves a set of guiding concepts, implemented
via research and analytical techniques to generate
knowledge, which has a certain form of representation
and leads to specific social (and other) implications.
Guiding concepts include the metaphors of
reality discussed above, which play an important
general role in the constitution and reconstitution of
geography’s identity and thus provide a delimited
range of appropriate enquiry in geographical
research. Guiding concepts also include philosophical
commitments as to how knowledge is to be
produced and what kind of knowledge is worth
producing-other important components of the
constitution of geography. Research and analytical
techniques are more specific, and include methods
of data collection and analysis, such as qualitative
interviews, field reconnaissance, CIS-based spatial
modelling and so forth. Representation of research
results by geographers commonly include mapping
and writing, though other forms of representation
are possible as well. Implications, whether intentional
or unintentional, follow from the production of
geographical knowledge; these may touch upon
social, environmental, political, intellectual and/or
other worlds.
Ethics and geography‘s ontological project: space,
place, nature
The metaphor of space provides perhaps the
most familiar entry of geographers into substantive
questions of ethics. Indeed, one of the strongest
areas of attention among geographers has concerned
spatial dimensions of social justice (Harvey
1973; 1993; Smith 1994; Gleeson 1996).This work
builds on geographical analyses of spatial exclusion
and control (Ogborn and Philo 1994; Sibley 1995),
and considers questions such as: geographical
perspectives on some of its major philosophical
figures (Clark 1986); professional and personal
responsibilitiesto distant others spatially (Corbridge
1993); immigration and social justice (Black 1996);
and territorial justice (Boyne and Powell 1991).
Work by geographers on social justice is not,
however, limited to its spatial dimensions. Geographers
are, for instance, devoting increasing attention
to environmental racism and justice, bridging the
social justice paradigm to the metaphor of nature.
Though contributions by geographers are barely
evident in recent anthologies (eg Bryant 1995;
Westra and Wenz 1995), an upswingof book-length
publications (Pulido 1996), articles in mainstream
journals (Bowen et a/ 1995) and, indeed, whole
issues of geographical journals (see, for instance,
Antipode 28(2) and Urban Geography 17(5)),attest
to its burgeoningsignificance.
As another example, David Smith has recently
posed the question, ‘How far should we care?‘
(forthcoming a), in an effort to work through the
dual perspectives of ethics as spatial justice (where
principles of indifference and universality are
Ethics in geography 13
prioritized), and ethics as care, a relationally based
ethics (where one’s families, communities and other
social groups of relational significance are the
primary emphasis, where ethics and partiality,
morality and passion are not polar opposites).
Smith’s question clearly considers on the plane of
ethics what many others have considered on the
plane of epistemology: the tension between the
objectivist, rationalistic metaphor of space, and
the explicitly perspectival, embodied metaphor of
place (Tuan 1977; Buttimer and Seamon 1980;
Entrikin 1991; Sack 1992).
Place is, of course, already a significant category in
the works of Sibley and others noted above. It is
perhaps best exemplified, however, in work on
’moral geographies,’ which could loosely be translated
as thick descriptions of the moral features of
place. To call this work ‘descriptive ethics’ is missing
something, however, since place-based ethical
enquiry may be closer to the mark of understanding
human morality than its placeless equivalents, which
are common in more abstract normative and
meta-ethical enquiry (Walzer 1994; O’Neill 1996,
68). Indeed, though geographical work in moral
geographies and other questions of ethics has shied
away from an explicitly normative and/or metaethical
focus, the fact that there has been some
attention given by geographers to questions such as
universalist versus particularist ethics suggests the
relative ease with which place-based geographical
analysis lends itself to addressingthese more abstract
issues (Corbridge 1993; see also 1997 special issue
of Society and Space 15).
The concept of place itself has been invoked
by geographers in order to reflect critically on the
problematic objectification of subjective community
or regional values (Entrikin 1991, 6&83), as well as
to ground the moral context of production and
consumption in advanced industrial societies (Sack
1992, 177-205). Indeed, the moral realm is deeply
implicated in the work of many humanist geographers
on p1ac-f which the example of Yi-Fu Tuan
is perhaps most prominent (Tuan 1974; 1993). But
the sheer range of recent work on moral geographies
makes the important collective point that the diverse
places geographersstudy are inescapably normative,
that normativity is not so much something to be
added onto place as to be teased out of it. Recent
instances of this work include the explorations of
Jackson and others on moral order in the city
(Jackson 1984; Driver 1988), ’moral locations‘ of
nineteenth-century Portsmouth (Ogborn and Philo
1994), the moral geography of reformatories
(Ploszajska 1994), the moral geography of the
Norfolk Broadlands (Matless 1994) and the moral
discourse of climate (Livingstone 1991). Though the
term has had some use outside of geography (eg
Shapiro 1994; Slater 1997), it would be a gross
overstatement to suggest that, by means of moral
geographies, geographers have made their indelible
mark on how ethics ought to be encountered.
The metaphor of nature is evident in much of what
was presented above, but as a primary focus of
ethical interest among geographers, it has not
enjoyed such diffuse attention as social justice and
moral geographies. One important reason is that the
vast majority of work by geographers under this
metaphorical trajectory is largely physical and life
science-based, and, as such, rarely if ever entertains
questions of human ethics. Is this lack of attention by
physical geographers to ethics justified? At the level
of their immediate topics of interest, perhaps: fluvial
geomorphology and microclimatology involve processes
that have important human impacts and arise
in part from human drivers, but in and of themselves,
there is arguably little ground for ethical reflection.
Yet, the historical process by which science is decoupled
from explicit attention to morality is well
rehearsed elsewhere, and as such suggests that this
immediate detachment of physical geography from
ethics is as much a particular historical result as some
inevitable corollary of its subject matter.
Nonetheless, there has been a rising interest
among geographers in environmental ethics. In
addition to the entire issues of geographicaljournals
(cited above) that were devoted to environmental
racism and justice, there is ample supplementary
evidence of this interest. The inaugural issue of
Philosophy and Geography, for instance, was
devoted to environmental ethics (Light and Smith
1997). Whole books are now arising that engage
with questions of nature and morality in significant
ways (Simmons 1993; Harvey 1996).
Work in this area is predictably diffuse, though not
at all limited to the recent past, as suggested, for
instance, in the writings of Reclus (Clark 1997). Some
geographers have situated questions of environmental
ethics in the context of culturally based ideas
of nature (Simmons 1993), while others have discussed
the spatial scale dependency of optimal
formulations of environmental ethics (Reed and
Slaymaker 1993), and still others have critically
reviewed the values underlying environmental
movements (O’Riordan 1981; Lewis 1992), at times
14 Proctor
rejecting them in favour of less socio-politically
naive alternatives (Pepper 1993). Some have
looked at environmental ethics from a cross-cultural
perspective (Wescoat 1997), while others have
engaged with the modernist and anti-modernist
underpinnings of Western environmental thought
(Gandy 1997). Indeed, the diverse linkages that
geographers have drawn between social theory
and environmental ideology and ethics (Proctor
1995; Gandy 1996) are broadly suggestive of the
important contributions geographers can make.
As suggested above, perhaps the most interesting
substantive work by geographers on ethics transcends
the boundaries between the metaphors of
space, place and nature. Indeed, the key contribution
geographers have to make arises from the
diverse metaphors of reality they entertain; hence, as
mentioned earlier, the tension between universals
and difference, justice and care, can be entertained
thoughtfully by geographers, given the solid establishment
of the discipline upon the metaphors of
space and place. This strength in metaphorical
diversity is also evident in the contribution that
geographerscan make to environmental ethics: here,
for instance, the problem of how to resolve conflicts
between social and natural goods can be entertained
meaningfully, as geographers have a solid foot
planted in both nature and culture. The diversity of
geographical imaginations cast upon this world
thus offers a strong beginning point from which
geographers may make a real contribution to moral
discourse
Ethics and geography’s epistemological process
Geographicalknowledge does not arise in a vacuum.
The statements that geographers make about space,
place and nature come out of a particular process, of
which four sequential steps were noted above. The
first stepguiding concepts- draws upon the metaphors
that inform geography’s ontological project, as
well as intrinsic or extrinsic epistemological rules (eg
universalizability, or the lack thereof), which govern
the application of these metaphors to knowledgebuilding.
This discussion is well rehearsed in the
literature: the critique of positivism over the last
several decades, for instance, is in large a part a
critique of how particular ontological and epistemological
assumptions associated with positivism have
constrained the kinds and implications of knowledge
arising from geographical research (Gregory 1979;
Billinge et a/ 1984). Though this critical literature
does not go by the self-ascription of ‘ethics’, nonetheless
its reasoned normative pronouncements are
of similar intent. Further enquiry is needed into the
ways in which basic ontological and epistemological
assumptions shape geographical research in ethically
significant ways.
One of the most familiar areas of ethical enquiry
in geography involves research and analytical techniques,
ranging from cartography (Harley 1991;
Monmonier 1991; Rundstrom 1993) to remote sensing
and geographic information systems (Wasowski
1991; Lake 1993; Curry 1994; Crampton 1995). The
act of research itself, and the consideration of the
role of the researcher vis-i-vis the research subject(s),
has also been a popular subject of enquiry (eg
Eyles and Smith 1988; England 1994). Another area
where a fair amount of work has been done concerns
how geographical knowledge is represented,
in realms ranging from cartography (see above) to
academic publication (Brunn 1989; Curry 1991) to
education (Havelberg 1990; Kirby 1991; Smith
1995). Less work focuses on implications of geographical
research, though explicit attention has
been paid to areas with direct social significance,
such as planning (Entrikin 1994), and some of the
most provocative publications by geographers have
taken the implications of geographical research as a
starting point for reconfiguring geography (Kropotkin
1885; Harvey 1974). Indeed, ethical issues become
more focused as one moves from a particular geographical
concept to its technical implementation,
and finally to its application. For instance, conceiving
space as an isotropic surface appears innocent
enough, until one builds a GIS upon this naive
assumption for the purpose of, say, specifying socialservice
facility location. This example also suggests
the interrelation of ethical issues across the continuum
of geography’s epistemological process, and
points out the severe limitations in a ’professional
ethics’ circumscribed solely to questions of research
data and publication.
Conclusion: ethics in geography,
geography in ethics
Geographers have employed normative concepts,
whether wittingly or not, in many ways (Hay 1995).
Yet, contemporary geography is a vital intellectual
and practical force, due precisely to the willingness
of geographers to engage with issues raised outside
the discipline, and their ability to offer a distinct
perspective on these issues. There is arguably no
more important set of issues for geographers to
Ethics in geography 15
address today than that dealing with complex and
contested matters of ethics. The contribution of the
geographical imagination has been significant to
date, but much more work remains to be done. In so
doing, geographers will have the opportunity to ask
once again some of the many moral questions that
have circulated through the discipline for at least the
last few decades. Ultimately, a more systematic
exploration of the overlapping terrain of geography
and ethics will yield valuable benefits to the discipline,
and to those outside the discipline for whom
questions of ethics matter deeply.
I wish to end this paper with questions, not
answers, as there are so many to which geographers
could apply their intellectual efforts. These can be
organized under two main themes: the place of
ethical reflection in geographical theory and practice,
and the potential role geography could play in the
arena of ethics.
What is the place of ethics in geography?
What kinds of values have implicitly or explicitly
accompanied the practice of geography in its
recent history?In which areas of geography has
explicit moral or normative enquiry been
embraced or shunned, and why? Is it appropriate
for only a subgroup of geographers to be intellectually
concernedwith ethics, or does ethics pertain
to all geographers?
What kinds of values and moral issues loom large
in the major fields of contemporary geographical
research? How might geographers go about
addressing ethical problems in their substantive
work?
What role should moral theory (eg concepts of
social justice) play in geographical research?What
areas of moral theory are most appropriate for
inclusion in the agenda of geographical enquiry?
Should geography be conceived as (at least in
part) a normative practice? What implications
would exist for concepts central to geographical
analysis? How might this reconception help or
hinder research in geography?
To what extent is ethical conduct desirable, definable
and/or enforceable in the practice of
geography?
What is the place of geography in ethics?
How might geography help explain the historical
development of political, social, environmental
and other forms of ethics?
In what ways do the dimensions of reality elucidated
by physical and human geographers (eg
space, place, biophysicalnature)matter in the case
of ethics?How might moraltheory be reconceived
in light of these elements?
To what extent are substantive questions of ethics
beyond geography’s intellectualgrasp and/or topical
or methodologicalbounds-that is, beyond the
geographical imagination? Should geographical
education be reconceived, so that geographers
are better equipped to make contributionstoward
these questions?
What are the major descriptive, normative and
meta-ethical areas in which geographers can
make the greatest contribution in ethics?How, for
instance, might geographers’ inclination toward
place-based description and theory be channelled
toward resolution of larger normative and metaethical
questions, such as the tension between
ethical universalismand particularismor relativism?
is uuestions such as these that await further
extension of the geographical imagination. Understandingethics
as an inextricablepart of geography‘s
ontological project and epistemological process is
the first step in this direction.
Acknowledgements
This work has been supported in part by National Science
Foundation Grant No SBR-9600985. The author would like
to extend appreciation to David M Smith for his generous
assistance during the preparation of this paper, and to
anonymous reviewers for comments on an earlier version
of the manuscript.
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