Ethics in geography: giving moral form to the geographical imagination

Abstract

Summary Geographers have become increasingly interested in questions of ethics. In this paper, I introduce the scope and major concerns of ethics, briefly reviewing recent literature as a means of situating geography's potential contribution. 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 professional and substantive ethical concerns among geographers. Examples of 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.