Geographies and Moralities E-Book

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
• Serie: RGS-IBG Book Series
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 646

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

This topical book addresses contemporary concern with the interconnections between geography and morality. * * Covers both the geographical context of morality, and moralities in geographical methods and practices. * Contains up-to-date case studies based on original research. * Deals with controversial issues, such as problems of globalization, European integration, human rights in Nigeria, territorial conflict in Israel, and land reform in post-apartheid South Africa. * The editors are well-published leading international authorities. * The contributors are drawn from Australia, Eastern Europe, Israel, South Africa, the UK and the US.

Leseprobe

Contents

Series Editors’ Preface

Notes on Contributors

Foreword

Preface

Acknowledgements

to the memory of

1 Introduction: Geographies of Morality and Moralities of Geography

The Social Construction of Morality in and between Places

Reasserting the Normative

Geography’s Moralities

Geographies and Moralities

Structure of the Text

REFERENCES

Part I Moral Geographies of Uneven Development

REFERENCES

2 Globalization, Production and the (Im)morality of Uneven Development

Introduction

Changing Geographies of Production

‘Goods’ and ‘Bads’, ‘Winners’ and ‘Losers’ in the Global Economy

The contours of world poverty

Developed countries in the global economy: increasing affluence – but not everybody is a winner

Developing countries in the global economy: some winners – but mostly losers

The ‘double exposure’ problem

To be ‘Globalized’ or Not to be ‘Globalized’

NOTES

REFERENCES

3 Regional Inequality, Convergence and Enlargement in the European Union

Introduction

Regional Development Disparities and Convergence in Europe

Policy Initiatives Designed to Combat Unequal Worlds

Enlargement: Economic Reality, Policy and Justice

REFERENCES

4 Moral Problems of Eastern Wilderness: European Core and Periphery

Introduction

Core and Periphery

Land of Hope or Despair? Remarks on the Responsibility of Our Research

The Moral Dimension of the Social Transformation of Post-socialist Europe

Conclusion

NOTES

REFERENCES

5 Where the Grass is Greener in Poland: Regional and Intra-urban Inequalities

Introduction

The Hierarchy of Explanation and the Level of Analysis

Transformation in the Social Structure of Poland

The Scale of Poverty

Regional Differentiation of Poverty lindicators

Increase of Intra-urban Disparities

Conclusions

REFERENCES

Part II Moral Geographies of Distribution: Justice, Welfare and Rights

REFERENCES

6 Social Exclusion, Health and Health Care: The Case of the National Health Service in England

Introduction

The Nature of Social Exclusion

A Universal Concept of a Socially Just and Inclusive Health Care System?

The NHS in England: Health Care Based on Universal Concepts of Social Justice

Challenges to Equity in the NHS: Geographies of Inequality of Health Care

Challenges to Ensuring Equity of Access to Services of Good Quality

Challenges in Ensuring Territorial Justice in Resource Allocation

Health Care Facilities: Therapeutic Healing Spaces or Spaces of Exclusion?

Conclusion: The Challenge of Social Justice in Practice

REFERENCES

7 The Problem with Welfare

Introduction

Global Matters

Principles and Practicalities

Welfare in principle

Welfare practicalities

Welfare markets?

From Welfare States to Caring, Creative Societies!

NOTE

REFERENCES

8 Struggles over Human Rights in Nigeria: Questions of Scale in Moral Geography

Introduction

Cultural struggles over human rights

Scales of cultural struggles

Nigerian Human Rights Struggles

Human rights struggles within Nigerian cultures

Human rights struggles between Nigerian cultures

Nigeria and the global human rights community

Nigerian struggles against external violations of human rights

Conclusions

REFERENCES

9 Valuing Land and Distributing Territory

Introduction

From Traditional to Cosmopolitan Statism

Anglo-American Ethnogeography

Toward Territorial Justice

Conclusion

NOTES

REFERENCES

10 When Two Rights Collide: Some Lessons from Jerusalem

Introduction

Ethno-national Conflict: Israelis and Palestinians

The context

Contested moral claims

Might decides: features of exclusion

Palestinians’ counter-response

Cultural Conflict: The Haredi and the Secular Jewish Population

The context

Contested claims

Force decides: features of intolerance

Territorial Struggles

Moral Debates

Territorial Implications

Conclusions

REFERENCES

11 Land Reform Policy in Post-Apartheid South Africa: The Elusive Quest for Social Justice?

Introduction

Land Dispossession in South Africa

Debates About Socially Just Land Redistribution and Restitution

Capitulation to Markets

Land Reform and Restitution

Critical Reflections

Conclusion

REFERENCES

Part III: Moral Geographies in Place

REFERENCES

12 Waiting in Line, or the Moral and Material Geographies of Queue-Jumping

Introduction

Moral Geographies and Queue-Jumping

Scarcity and Queueing Behaviour

The Responsibilities of Critique

NOTES

REFERENCES

13 Moral Geographies of Sexual Citizenship

Introduction

Public Morality: The Space of the School as a Site of Moral Engineering

Contested Terrain: Nationhood and Citizenship

Conclusion

NOTES

REFERENCES

14 ‘But Tight Jeans Are Better!’: Moral Improvisation and Ethical Judgement in Local Planning Decision-Making

Introduction

Ethical Planning in Theory

Planning in Practice: Elected Representatives and Decision-Making

Rulebooks or Moral improvisation!

Conclusions: Are Tight Jeans Really Better!

NOTES

REFERENCES

Part IV Geography and Ethics: Method and Practice

REFERENCES

15 The Quality of Ethics: Moral Causation, Method and Metatheory in the Interdisciplinary Science of Geography

Introduction

Making Space for Ethics

Moral Causation: Science, Ethics and Qualitative Inquiry

Qualities, Primary and Secondary

Tertiary Qualities and the Sources of Moral Causation

Conclusion

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

REFERENCES

16 On the Pavement: Reflections on Fieldwork with Urban Poor Black Women Street Traders in Durban, South Africa

Introduction

Pilot Fieldwork

Quantitative Data Collection

Qualitative Data Collection

Negotiating Access and the Influence of My Positionality

Problems in the Field

Reflections on Personal Interaction in the Research Process

Conclusion

NOTES

REFERENCES

Part V Moral Context and Professional Practice in Geography

REFERENCES

17 Disciplinary Change and Career Paths

Geographers and Kuhn: Revolutions No but Paradigms Yes?

Networks of Geographers

Career Paths and Disciplinary Change

Paradigm Shifts and a Career Path: David M. Smith

The career

Conclusions

NOTES

REFERENCES

18 From Location Theory to Moral Philosophy: Views from the Fringe

David M. Smith

Discoveries of Location Theory

Excursions in Industrial Archaeology

Towards a Welfare Approach

Inequality and Social Justice

Engagement with Ethics: Moral Geographies

On Performing Geography: Personal and Professional Ethics

Epilogue: On Limits of Knowledge

REFERENCES

Index

RGS-IBG Book Series

The Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers) Book Series provides a forum for scholarly monographs and edited collections of academic papers at the leading edge of research in human and physical geography. The volumes are intended to make significant contributions to the field in which they lie, and to be written in a manner accessible to the wider community of academic geographers. Some volumes will disseminate current geographical research reported at conferences or sessions convened by Research Groups of the Society. Some will be edited or authored by scholars from beyond the UK. All are designed to have an international readership and to both reflect and stimulate the best current research within geography.

The books will stand out in terms of:

the quality of researchtheir contribution to their research fieldtheir likelihood to stimulate other researchbeing scholarly but accessible.

For series guides go to www.blackwellpublishing.com/pdf/rgsibg.pdf

Published

Geographies and Moralities

Edited by Roger Lee and David M. Smith

Military Geographies

Rachel Woodward

A New Deal for Transport?

Edited by Iain Docherty and Jon Shaw

Geographies of British Modernity

Edited by David Gilbert, David Matless and Brian Short

Lost Geographies of Power

John Allen

Globalizing South China

Carolyn L. Cartier

Geomorphological Processes and Landscape Change: Britain in the Last 1000 Years

Edited by David L. Higgitt and E. Mark Lee

Forthcoming

Domicile and Diaspora

Alison Blunt

The Geomorphology of Upland Peat

Martin Evans and Jeff Warburton

Fieldwork

Simon Naylor

Putting Workfare in Place

Peter Sunley, Ron Martin and Corinne Nativel

Natural Resources in Eastern Europe

Chad Staddon

Living Through Decline: Surviving in the Places of the Post-Industrial Economy

Huw Beynon and Ray Hudson

After the Three Italies: Wealth, Inequality and Industrial Change

Mick Dunford and Lidia Greco

Publics and the City

Kurt Iveson

Geochemical Sediments and Landscapes

David Nash and Susan McLaren

Driving Spaces

Peter Merriman

© 2004 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd

BLACICWELL PUBLISHING

350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148-5020, USA

108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK

550 Swanston Street, Carlton, Victoria 3053, Australia

The right of Roger Lee and David M. Smith to be identified as the Authors of the Editorial Material in this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except as permitted by the UK Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988, without the prior permission of the publisher.

First published 2004 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Lee, Roger, 1945-

Geographies and moralities: international perspectives on development, justice, and place/Roger Lee and David M. Smith.

p. cm. — (RGS-IBG book series)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 1-4051-1636-6 (hardcover: alk. paper) — ISBN 1-4051-1637-4 (alk. paper)

1. Regional disparities. 2. Distributive justice. 3. Geography—Moral and ethical aspects. I. Smith, David Marshall, 1936—II. Title. III. Series.

HT388.L44 2004

305.5—dc22

2004006261

Series Editors’ Preface

The RGS/IBG Book series publishes the highest quality of research and scholarship across the broad disciplinary spectrum of geography. Addressing the vibrant agenda of theoretical debates and issues that characterize the contemporary discipline, contributions will provide a synthesis of research, teaching, theory and practice that both reflects and stimulates cutting edge research. The Series seeks to engage an international readership through the provision of scholarly, vivid and accessible texts.

Nick Henry and Jon Sadler

RGS-IBG Book Series Editors

Notes on Contributors

Stuart Corbridge teaches at the University of Miami and the London School of Economics. He works in rural eastern India, on questions of government, empowerment and environmental politics. He is the author, with John Harriss, of Reinventing India: Liberalization, Hindu Nationalism and Popular Democracy (Polity Press, 2000); with Sarah Jewitt and Sanjay Kumar, of Jharkhand: Environment, Development, Ethnicity (Oxford University Press, 2003); and, with Glyn Williams, Manoj Srivastava and Rene Veron, of Seeing the State: Governance and Governmentality in Rural India (Cambridge University Press, 2004). He is interested in ‘geographies and moralities’ in the context of the needs and rights of distant strangers, the policing of the debt crisis, and poorer people’s encounters with the state.

Priscilla Cunnan received a working-class school education under the apartheid system in South Africa. She holds three degrees from the University of Durban-Westville, where she was also employed as a researcher and teaching assistant. She completed a PhD in the geography of health at Queen Mary, University of London, focused on the health of poor women street traders in Durban. Her research interests include working with marginalized and deprived communities in South Africa and more recently in London. She is currently Assistant Director of the Science and Engineering Foundation Programme at Queen Mary, University of London.

Sarah E. Curtis is Professor of Geography at Queen Mary, University of London. She has extensive international research experience in the geography of health and health services, especially on inequalities of health and access to health care, and on the assessment of health needs and impacts. She is currently conducting research funded by Research Councils and NHS agencies on health impact assessment of urban regeneration schemes, the relationship of social and physical environments to variations in health and well-being of adolescents, variation in use of mental health services, and therapeutic aspects of design of mental health facilities. Her latest book is Health and Inequality: Geographical Perspectives (Sage, 2004).

Peter Dicken is Professor of Geography at the University of Manchester. He has held visiting appointments at universities and research institutes in Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, Mexico, Singapore, Sweden and the United States. He is an Academician of the Social Sciences, a recipient of the Victoria Medal of the Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers) and of an Honorary Doctorate of the University of Uppsala, Sweden. His major research interests are in global economic change, as reflected in his book Global Shift: Reshaping the Global Economic Map in the 21st Century (Guildford Press, fourth edition, 2003).

Boleslaw Domański is Professor of Geography and head of the Department for Regional Development at the Jagiellonian University in Cracow, Poland. He has recently been working on social dimensions of local and regional development, effects of foreign direct investment and activity of transnational corporations, restructuring of old industrial regions, and urban and regional inequalities. He is the author of Industrial Control over the Socialist Town: Benevolence or Exploitation? (Praeger, 1997), as well as of numerous publications on post-socialist economic and social transformation in various European journals and books.

Donna Easterlow is Honorary Research Fellow, Department of Geography, University of Durham. Her research interests centre on the relationships between geography, inequality and public policy in contemporary Britain. Her work explores the impact of welfare restructuring on the ‘health divide’, or the increasing importance of health status as an axis of social and geographical inequality. This includes studies of access to public and private housing, employment and life insurance for people experiencing long-term ill-health. The results have been published in a range of academic journals, including Policy & Politics, Housing Studies, Health & Place and Public Health.

Shlomo Hasson is a professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he teaches in the Geography Department and the Institute of Urban and Regional Studies. His fields of interest are cultural and political geography and urban planning. He is the author of Urban Social Movements in Jerusalem (State University of New York Press in cooperation with The Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies, 1993), Neighbourhood Organizations and the Welfare State (with David Ley; University of Toronto Press, 1994), Divided Regions: A Comparative Perspective (with Moshe Hirsh and Alexander Weingrrod; The Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies, 2000), The Struggle for Hegemony in Jerusalem: Secular and Ultra-Orthodox Jews in Urban Politics (The Floersheimer Institute for Policy Studies, 2001) and State, Religion and Society in Israel: Possible Futures (The Floersheimer Institute for Policy Studies, 2002).

Jean Hillier is Professor of Town and Country Planning at the University of Newcastle. Her main research interests lie in praxis-based planning theories and in discursive and relational analyses of participatory planning strategies. Underlying most of her research is a deep concern with issues of social exclusion, and the impact of planning decisions on women and marginalized groups and on nature. Publications include Shadows of Power: An Allegory of Prudence in Land Use Planning (Routledge, 2002), Habitus: A Sense of Place (edited with Emma Rooksby; Ashgate, and Consensus and Consent (edited with Denis Cryle; University of Queensland Press, 2004).

Rex Honey is Professor of Geography and Associate Director of the Center for Human Rights at the University of Iowa. He is former chair of the Ethics, Justice and Human Rights Speciality Group of the Association of American Geographers, and is Secretary of the International Geographical Union’s Commission on Geography and Public Policy. His research interests focus on public policy and human rights. He has ongoing research programmes in West Africa, the Middle East, the South Pacific, Western Europe and the United States.

Ron Johnston is a professor in the School of Geographical Sciences at the University of Bristol, having worked previously at Monash University (Australia), the University of Canterbury (New Zealand) and the Universities of Sheffield and Essex. He has written widely on aspects of the recent history of human geography, including Geography and Geographers (Edward Arnold), first published in 1979 (sixth edition co-authored with James Sidaway; 2004), and two major co-edited books – The Dictionary of Human Geography (with Derek Gregory, Geraldine Pratt and Michael Watts; fourth edition, Blackwell, 2000) and A Century of British Geography (with Michael Williams; Oxford University Press, 2003).

Avery Kolers is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Louisville, Kentucky. He earned his PhD at the University of Arizona. His primary research interests are political philosophy and ethics. He is currently writing a book on the justification of territorial claims and the role of territorial rights in the theory of global justice, and intends to apply the theory not only to international territorial disputes, but also to problems associated with globalization and indigenous land rights.

Roger Lee is Professor of Geography and immediate past head of the Department of Geography at Queen Mary, University of London. An Academician of the Social Sciences, he is an editor of Progress in Human Geography, a former editor of the Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers and founder of electronic Transactions. His interests lie in the connections between economic life and its social understanding. His latest book, Alternative Economic Spaces (Sage, 2003), is a volume of research essays co-edited with Andrew Leyshon and Colin Williams, and he is currently working as a co-editor (with A. Leyshon, L. McDowell and P. Sunley) on a compendium of economic geography to be published by Sage in 2006.

William S. Lynn is Research Scholar and Executive Director at the Centre for Humans and Nature in New York. He received his doctorate from the University of Minnesota, where he studied the philosophy of geography, critical landscape geography, practical ethics, interpretive social science and qualitative methods. With research foci in animal ethics and global ethics, he is the principal investigator for the People, Animals and Nature Initiative, a founding editor of the journal Ethics, Place and Environment and Research Associate at Vasser College. He is currently finishing a book, Practical Ethics: Moral Understanding in a More Than Human World.

Brij Maharaj is Professor and head of Geography (Pietermaritzburg) and Research Director at the Centre for Civil Society (Durban), University of Natal. He serves on the International Geography Union Commission on Geography and Public Policy, was Faculty Fellow at the University of Illinois, and is a life member of the National Association of Geographers of India. In 1998 he was awarded Fellowship of the Society of South African Geographers. He has published extensively on issues relating to segregation, land dispossession and restitution, and urban processes in South Africa.

David M. Smith is Emeritus Professor of Geography at Queen Mary, University of London, where he has worked since 1973. He held earlier appointments at the Universities of Manchester, Southern Illinois, Florida, Natal, the Witwatersrand and New England (Australia), and has made numerous research visits to Israel, Poland, South Africa, the former Soviet Union and the United States. His books include Human Geography: A Welfare Approach (Edward Arnold, 1977), Geography and Social Justice (Blackwell, 1994) and Moral Geographies: Ethics in a World of Difference (Edinburgh University Press, 2000).

Susan J. Smith is Professor of Geography at the University of Durham. Her work concerns the role of housing and the organization, institutionalization and meaning of space in structuring social inequality. She has published on the indignity of victimization and fear of crime, the affront of racism and gender inequality, and the challenge to housing, employment and financial services for people experiencing ill-health. This work has an interdisciplinary focus (engaging with debates in social policy, social medicine and housing studies) and a practical edge (with links to central and local government, financial service providers, interest groups and communities).

Nigel Spence is Professor of Geography at Queen Mary, University of London. Previously he was Casel Reader in Economic Geography at the London School of Economics. His interests are in urban and regional economic planning and he has published widely in journals of this field. His books are British Cities: An Analysis of Urban Change (Pergamon, 1982) and Regional Policy Evaluation (Gower, 1983). He has three monographs in Progress in Planning and has authored an HMSO report on Infrastructure and Industrial Costs. He has undertaken research for UK Government Departments and European agencies such as the Commission and the Court of Auditors.

Gill Valentine is Professor of Geography at the University of Sheffield, where she teaches social and cultural geography and research methods. She has published widely on a range of topics including geographies of sexuality, consumption and children, youth and parenting. Gill is a (co)author/editor of ten books, most recently Cyberkids: Children in the Information Age (FalmerRoutledge, 2003) and Key Concepts in Geography (Sage, 2003). She is also a co-editor of two journals: Gender, Place and Culture and Social and Cultural Geography.

Grzegorz Węcławowicz is Professor and head of the Department of Urban and Population Studies in the Institute of Geography and Spatial Organization of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw. His current research is on urban issues, particularly during the post-socialist transformation, involving social exclusion and segregation at the regional and intraurban levels in Poland and Central Europe. He has written one book in English: Contemporary Poland: Space and Society (UCL Press, 1996). His most recent book, Urban Social Geography: The Socio-spatial Differentiation (PWN, 2002), was published in Polish.

Foreword

Revaz Gachechiladze

Professor of Human Geography, Tbilisi State University Georgian Ambassador to the State of Israel

From the authors of antiquity we learned that morality and ethics might have a spatial dimension. They sometimes compared their own countries with those of barbarians. And these comparisons always led to the conclusion that the other countries and peoples were without ethics and immoral while the polis of the author was a model of ethics and morality!

Leaving aside these not quite fair comparisons of ancient authors, really scientific geographical research on social behaviour, which actually distinguishes societies from each other, began in the last three to four decades of the previous century. And within the constellation of the researchers of such issues the name of David M. Smith is one of the brightest.

I remember well the 1970s, when Western approaches to social geography reached the Soviet Union, where there was a taboo on geographical research on ‘non-standard problems’. Soviet people were to be equally happy everywhere, no spatial differences in welfare could exist. Together with some sociologists, we had to overcome a host of obstacles to prove that social problems ought to be studied geographically and to publish the first book in the USSR on the geography of crime. For the young (in those days) geographers the inspiration was provided by the works of Western European and North American authors, David Smith’s books not least among them.

Later I met personally with David and understood almost instantly that he is a person who has the right to speak about morality in a way that would not be considered hypocrisy. I knew that David studied certain countries, for instance South Africa under apartheid. My desire was to persuade him to turn my Georgia into a subject of his scientific research. I must confess that efforts in this direction appeared to be futile. But I succeeded in making David Smith a true friend of my country. And we are not alone: David hosted a lot of young scholars from different countries, and helped them to acquire knowledge. Many people are grateful to him.

David first arrived in Georgia together with his unforgettable wife, Margaret, in June 1991. The country had already declared formal independence, but was not yet recognized as such by any state. David and Margaret fearlessly travelled in the Caucasus mountains, steadily becoming rather dangerous in those days. We visited places where one could already feel the heavy breath of forthcoming civil wars. He came to Georgia again, together with a group of British scholars, in 1993 when a civil war was raging in the country. Despite this we managed to start the British–Georgian Geographical Seminars, which actually substituted for the British–Soviet Seminars, continuing in London in 1995. He again visited my country in 1997 to co-organize with me the third such seminar.

The Georgian Geographical Society, which claims its origins from the Caucasian Branch of the Imperial Russian Geographical Society established in 1850 in Tbilisi, Georgia, has bestowed its Honorary Membership upon David Smith, a great scholar, a great friend, a great man.

The fact that this collection, which gathers together articles by the best British and international authors, originated as a tribute to David Smith is no surprise. It would only be surprising if we did not appreciate his most valuable contribution to geography, to which he has added a moral dimension.

Preface

Geographies and Moralities is a set of research essays reflecting on the links between geography, ethics and morality. Although such links are inherent and ever-present, their explicit investigation and reflexive incorporation has, until recently, been surprisingly rare in geographical scholarship. The purpose of this book is, then, to demonstrate this inherency in a wide variety of contexts and so to advance and encourage further critical reflections on its implications for geography.

In this, the book marks and celebrates the achievements and widespread contributions and influence of David M. Smith, who, after four decades of research leadership in human geography, continues to demonstrate and proselytize issues of morality and ethics and so to disrupt certain tacitly accepted norms and to open up a range of research questions and the politics associated with them. This work goes on – arguably with ever more urgency under contemporary global and local geo-economic and geo-political circumstances – and so the book is not a backward-looking assessment but a contribution to an agenda for a more explicitly morally and ethically informed geography in the future.

And in that, the book also points up the centrality of geographical scholarship itself for a credible understanding of the contemporary world. This is a world riven with the consequences of a widespread, even wilful, lack and neglect of geographical understanding of the continuous construction, and subsequent consequence, of difference along a range of interlocking dimensions – both social and environmental.

Thus Geographies and Moralities contributes to a range of fundamental questions vital to the sustainability of the contemporary world. It does so in a special way through the contributions of leading scholars who have come together in a collaborative endeavour. This, as much as the substantive individual contributions to the volume, demonstrates the way in which it is not merely academic work that may be sustained through critically empathetic collaboration, but the very making of the geographies and histories through which human life itself is, and may continue to be, developed.

Roger Lee

Acknowledgements

Geographies and Moralities begins and ends with David Smith. He is, quite simply, a wonderful colleague, constantly disrupting the intellectual status quo – and hence thoughts about the political status quo – and engaging others with his thought and argument. This, I take it, is the point of academic work. Typically, this book reflects David's great influence not only in its contribution to the emergence of a field of study but very much in the nitty-gritty of its production.

The countless colleagues, some of whom are contributors to this book, who are, quite remarkably, prepared to persuade – if not to convince – me that whatever contribution I may make to such academic work is worth doing, remain a delightful and selfless source of support. Peter Dicken (and here the book comes doubly full circle) remains a personal and intellectual inspiration.

All the contributors to this book have been more formative than they know. Their constant belief in the project and their will to see it through was both extraordinarily heartening and so effective. Nick Henry was as generous, direct and modest as ever in encouraging a submission to this series of books and then to take the project on. All the anonymous reviewers made very full and highly perceptive comments on the proposal, and I can only apologize for my failing to respond to them in a way fitting of their insight. However, the generous comments made by the anonymous reader of the completed manuscript reflected their earlier sympathetic critiques. The further critically perceptive points made by the reader on individual chapters and on the organization of the book as a whole have enhanced the finished product even further. The shape of the book owes more to reviewers and readers than to anyone. In this creative – but demanding – process, Angela Cohen and her team at Blackwell have combined sympathy and pressure in superbly judged measure. Both editors would like to thank Justin Dyer for his superb work as copy editor.

Finally, the book reflects not only David Smith's wide and ongoing influence in critical human geography but also the unique academic environment created by my colleagues in the Department of Geography at Queen Mary, University of London. It is they, and all their co-workers elsewhere, who will make something of whatever this book has to offer.

Roger Lee

London

June 2004

This volume provides the opportunity to thank some of those who gave me various kinds of assistance over my half-century's involvement with geography. At Solihull School, thanks to Guy King-Reynolds for starting me off; at the University of Nottingham, to Eric Rawstron for showing me the way; at the University of Manchester, to Peter Dicken and Peter Lloyd for helping to shape new directions; at Southern Illinois University, to Don Eggert for my first radical encounters, and to Denis Fair for arousing my interest in development; at the University of Florida, to ‘Dick’ Dickinson for sharing his ecological and social concerns; and to Bruce Young, Keith Beavon and Ian Douglas, for invitations to join their departments at the Universities of Natal, the Witwatersrand and New England.

Returning to Britain, at Queen Mary, University of London, thanks to Eric Rawstron (again) for supporting my appointment, to subsequent heads of the Department of Geography (Bruce Atkinson, Murray Gray, Philip Ogden, Nigel Spence and Roger Lee), and to other colleagues past and present, for sustaining an academic environment conducive to my independent creative spirit while not neglecting the performance indicators. And I also thank those of my former post-graduate students who fulfilled expectation (including contributors to this volume: Peter Dicken, Jean Hillier and Priscilla Cunnan), along with generations of undergraduates on whom I tested the contents of successive books.

While based at Queen Mary I have been able to take up short-term posts facilitating research in countries that have provided material for case studies. The following are a selection of those to whom I am grateful for providing academic support, research material, friendship and hospitality. In the United States: Sandy Bederman (Georgia State University), for assistance with research in Atlanta; Tom Boswell and Peter Muller (University of Miami), for making me welcome in their department; Jim Proctor (University of California at Santa Barbara), for a fruitful collaboration on geography and ethics. In the former Soviet Union: Mark Bandman and Alexander Novoselov (Economics Institute, Siberian Branch Academy of Sciences), for arranging visits to Akademgorodok; Natasha Barbash, Veniamin Gokhman and Yuri Medvedkov (formerly Geography Institute, Academy of Sciences), for revealing different facets of Moscow; Revaz Gachechiladze, Alex Rondeli (Tbilisi State University) and their colleagues, for making links with Georgia so exciting; Oksana Dmitrieva (St Petersburg University of Economics and Finance), for invitations to what became a favourite city. In Poland: Piotr Korcelli, Grzegorz Węcła-wowicz, Marek Jerczińsky and their colleagues (Institute of Geography and Spatial Organization, Polish Academy of Sciences), for congenial visits to Warsaw; Sylwia Kaczmarek (University of Łódź), for helping me to see her city; Bolek Domański (Jagiellonian University), for introducing me to Cracow; Iwona Sagan (University of Gdansk), for enabling me to return to Poland. In South Africa: Ron Davies (University of Cape Town), colleagues in various departments at the University of Natal, and Keith Beavon again (Wits), for time in the field and home as well as the office; Brij Maharaj (University of Natal), Dhiru Soni, Vadi Moodley and their colleagues (University of Durban-Westville), for their company and support on repeated visits; Denis Fair again, for many years of regularly renewed friendship; Marie Huchzermeyer and colleagues (School of Architecture and Planning, University of the Witwatersrand) and Gustav Visser (Free State University), for invitations to return after what I thought was my last visit. In Israel: Shlomo Hasson and Arie Shachar (Hebrew University of Jerusalem) and Amiram Gonen (Floersheimer Institute for Policy Studies), Yehuda Gradus, Avinoam Meir, David Newman and Oren Yifta-chel (Ben Gurion University of the Negev), and Yoram Bar-Gal and Stanley Waterman (University of Haifa); these and others were generous with their time and hospitality.

My travels have been funded in part by opportunities to teach in host departments. I have also been assisted by grants from the Academic Study Group on Israel and the Middle East, the British Academy, the British Council, the Economic and Social Research Council, the Leverhulme Trust, the Central Research Fund and Hayter Fund of the University of London, and sources within the countries concerned. Thanks to them all.

I am enormously grateful to those who have contributed to this book. They have all enriched my professional life, and I am privileged to consider many of them as friends. I am touched by their generous references to my work, and especially to its influence on theirs. I am particularly grateful that almost all our original selection of authors were able to hang on in there until we found a publisher as distinguished as Blackwell, and that they went on to meet demanding deadlines. As initiator and original sole editor of this book, Roger Lee generously allowed me to share the work, as a finale to thirty years of scholarly association which has been one of the highlights of my time at Queen Mary.

Finally, to members of my family, who often accompanied me on my travels and into the field. Margaret shared so much that our roles were at times inseparable; no conventional form of acknowledgement can convey what she gave me, how she made my life – she was just there, part of us. Margaret met most of the contributors to this volume, at home or abroad, and I am grateful to them all for agreeing the dedication to her memory. My deepest thanks go to Michael (with Paula) and Tracey, for their loving care and support, and for being who they are.

David M. Smith

Loughton, Essex

June 2004

to the memory of

Margaret Smith1937–2002

I miss her now. Properly. Not with anger, or because I want to avenge or undo the past, but just because I’d like to see her again. I know she’s out there somewhere, or perhaps inside, in a place where the air is verdigris. I guess time doesn’t mean much where she is, and she’ll come back when she’s good and ready. Sometimes I think I can feel her, staying playfully out of reach. Getting closer by the minute, building up speed to pull me free.

Tomorrow I’m going to pack a bag and get in the car and drive down the Baja. I’m going to check into Quintas Papagayo, and collect enough driftwood for a fire, then take a shower and walk into Ensenada. If I start early enough I’ll get there while the streets still teem with tourists buying rugs and bangles and pottery animals, and the sky over the harbour is still thick with birds squabbling for scraps of fish: early enough to wander for an hour in a bright afternoon sun which hazes land and sea into one.

Maybe later, as the light begins to change and the crowds thin out, I’ll start to feel something, to believe again in nights of shadows and distant shouting. And perhaps as I walk the streets towards Housson’s, past the dark storefronts, I’ll find the corner I’ve always looked for, and turn it, and she’ll be there.

Michael Marshall Smith, One of Us(HarperCollins and Bantam Books, 1998, reprinted by permission)

1

Introduction: Geographies of Morality and Moralities of Geography

Roger Lee and David M. Smith

That geography and morality are strongly interconnected may not be immediately apparent. Human geographers have become familiar, over the years, with the subject matter of such disciplines as economics, politics and sociology, with culture also looming large. On the physical side, geology was once an essential foundation for the field, now linked to a range of other environmental sciences. But morality has not attracted anything like the same attention. Indeed, there have been periods in the history of geography when a yearning for scientific status has generated reverence for supposedly value-free objectivity, with any normative inclinations yielding to positivism. Such was the case during the ‘quantitative revolution’ and the era of human geography as ‘spatial science’, which preoccupied much of the 1960s and 1970s. And when, some years ago, the then Secretary of State for Education in a British Conservative government (Kenneth Clark) pronounced that geography should be about facts and not opinions, he was reflecting a common understanding of the field as essentially descriptive, as well as perhaps suspicion of the subversive nature of some of the opinions that geographers might hold.