The first of my three ‘progress reports’ on Geography and Ethics is now published in Progress in Human Geography. This first one is dubbed ‘justice unbound‘, and discusses recent literature on justice and injustice in and around geography and related fields – including Sen’s recent book, G.A. Cohen’s leftist riposte to Rawls, Nancy Fraser, and Iris Marion Young . It was written before recent books by Danny Dorling, Ed Soja, Susan Fainstein were published, but these otherwise different works sort of confirm the point I am trying to make in this piece – that it might be worthwhile to think through the idea that injustice is the medium of justice (the line is J.M. Berstein’s), without thinking that this absolves us completely from engaging with normative reflection on what these terms mean. It’s not meant as a warrant for assuming that we all just naturally know injustice when we see it.
Anyway, as I say, this is the first of three of these reports; the second is already done, the final one I’ll do later this year. I have ended up not quite writing about ‘geography and ethics’, not least cos most of what I know about ethics is part of that poststructuralist strain of thought that Jeff Popke had already reviewed rather thoroughly as the previous ‘incumbent’ of this role; partly because it might be more interesting to think about how normative practices are an ordinary aspect of how life hangs together, rather than thinking of ethics as an extra special ‘responsibility’ that requires a special effort to pull off; and partly because I said ‘yes’ when invited because I wanted to write about some overlaps between social theory, political theory, and moral philosophy that I find intriguing for no other reason that they don’t quite show up in geography-land despite being on the edges of conversations which take place there. I think their not showing up has something to do with the degree to which Theory in geography has drifted into such a resolutely ‘metaphysical’ register, in the sense of this term that someone reminded me this week Ian Hunter uses to describe the genealogy of contemporary Theory-land. But that’s another story.
Pop Theory 