ABSTRACT

Amid the diversity of interpretations of both geography and ethics, we concern ourselves in this chapter with the ethics of our professional practices of research and writing. Following Jane Flax (1993) and Iris Marion Young (1990), we view ethics as procedural, composed of sets of interrelated social practices. We evaluate “what is ethical” not in terms of absolute standards, but rather in terms of processes that bring about more just social relations (for similar theoretical perspectives, see chapters by Nick Low and Brendan Gleeson, Ron Johnston, Jeremy Tasch and Caroline Nagel in this volume). Accordingly, we evaluate the ethics of our own behavior in terms of our common sense responsibility for the influences of our actions on larger social processes. From this theoretical perspective ethics ceases to be something that can be objectively researched and becomes something that must be activated in social practices, including the practices of academic work. Thus, for us, ethics and research are both intensely personal and necessarily public. They are themselves composed of, and have an effect on, social relations.