Disability, Geography and Ethics

In recent years geographers have started to re-engage with issues of exclusion, social justice and moral philosophy, first explored by radical geographers in the 1970s. This re-engagement parallels the rapid growth in the 1990s of feminist and critical geographies. Geographers within these traditions have focused their attention on the intersection of issues such as identity, difference and space, and the ways in which socio-spatial processes reproduce material and non-material inequalities. Empirical and theoretical work has focused on a range of specific issues such as gender (patriarchy), race (racism), sexuality (homophobia) and class. To this list has recently been added disability (ableism). However, most critical geography research has concentrated on examining the production and maintenance of geographies of social exclusion. Only a small number of studies have engaged directly with these issues in the context of specific theories of social justice and moral philosophy, which are seemingly taken for granted (see Smith, 1994, 1997). One area where these ideas have been applied is in relation to data generation, where there has been a concern for research ethics and the power relationship between researcher and researched. For example, a number of articles have been published exploring issues such as production and situatedness of knowledge, representativeness, reflexivity, empowerment, emancipation, critical praxis and positionality, and how these might be best addressed (e.g. Katz, 1992; Robinson, 1994; Rose, 1997). In the collection of short position papers gathered here, the theme of ethics and moral philosophy is explicitly examined in relation to geography (as a research practice and institutional endeavour) and the lives of disabled people.