urban fiat (Shiva, 1994). In contrast ecological
thinking, coupled to sensitivities for justice and
the importance of connection and context, offer
some useful intellectual tools for engagement
with the more innovative of current social
movements. Shifting the focus from develop-
ment to sustainability might also shake loose
some of the remaining vestiges of the categori-
cal structures derived from the colonial dis-
courses of the past, although the political
questions of who and what are to be sustained
remain paramount.
An ontologically self-aware geography has the
advantage of the influence of recent critical
theory and postmodernism and their sensitivity
to how such discourses play in particular
contexts. Global dangers there may undoubtedly
be, but the impacts of specific dangers vary
widely. Ontological critique of the sort that this
chapter offers might usefully link up with the
innovative thinking of ecological and develop-
ment activists to make geographical inquiry more
sensitive to the cultural premises of a living bios-
phere. But it is unquestionably clear that
neither urban architectonic conceit, nor the
celebration of modern urban and virtual identities
while obscuring the ecological consequences
of their production, are appropriate modes for a
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