been a boon to forms of social constructionist
and relational theorizing in the discipline.
The strong political impulse behind anti-
essentialism has factored in issues of gender,
race, culture and the like alongside the predom-
inant focus on economic processes and class
(Gibson-Graham, 2006b [1996]). However,
there has not been much explicit geographical
conceptualization from this anti-essentialist
perspective, despite the fact that Althusser’s
original critique of essentialism in Marxism
was oriented by an innovative attempt to think
through the non-coincident temporalities of
different processes (Althusser and Balibar,
1970, pp. 94–118). The potential herein for
theorizing spatiality in a fully conjunctural and
relational fashion has, however, been pursued
by Massey (2005).
Discussions of essentialism in geography
have become stuck in easy juxtapositions of
‘bad’ essentialism and ‘good’social construc-
tionism. There is a tendency to conflate
cultural essentialism with biological reduc-
tionism, causal explanation with epistemo-
logical foundationalism; and to affirm
simplistic notions of constructed realities and
contingent knowledge-claims (Sedgwick,
2003). Anti-essentialism presents a false
choice between knowledge with certain guar-
antees and knowledge with nothing to back it
up other than arbitrary persuasive force. In
contrast, recent treatments of theories of prac-
tice suggest a reorientation of theoretical
energy away from essentialist definitions of
fundamental, ontological qualities, towards a
greater appreciation of the ways in which con-
cepts accrete overlapping degrees offamily
resemblancewithout ever converging around a
finite number of criteria. cb
Suggested reading
Hacking (1999); Sayer (1997).
ethics That part ofphilosophyconcerned
with the worthiness of human actions and of
systems of belief regarding what people ought
or ought not to do. Questions regarding our
duties, obligations and responsibilities fall
within the purview of ethics. While there is
no universal agreement regarding which of
our acts are subject to moral evaluation and
argument, the actions that affect the well-being
of other human beings, ourselves and/or non-
human beings, within our midst or distant
from us, are most pertinent. Ethics concerns
not only the actions of individual people but
social, economic and political structures and
arrangements that also affect human and non-
human beings. In this sense, ethics andsocial
justiceare intrinsically related to each other, if
they are separable at all.
The study of ethics may be descriptive or
normative, or may fall into the category of
meta-ethics (see Smith, D.M., 1994a). The
purpose ofdescriptive ethicsis to understand
what people actually do, and what they actu-
ally believe, with regard torights, wrongs,
duties and so on; it is not necessarily con-
cerned with evaluating those actions and
beliefs. Withinnormative ethics, the goal is to
develop arguments or justifications for acting
in particular ways and not others; normative
ethics wishes to settle moral dilemmas by
applying some theoretical argument to a par-
ticular case; for example, whether the US war
in Iraq meets the criteria for a ‘just war’ (cf.
normative theory).Meta-ethicshas a broader
provenance than either of these; it is the field
that takes on questions pertaining to the eth-
ical as such; that is, it takes up the issue of
what sort of territory ethics should cover.
Examples of meta-ethical questions include
the following: What actions call for ethical
judgement? (I should exercise more fre-
quently, but it is probably not an ethical mat-
ter if I do not.) What entities should be given
moral consideration at all? (It would not be
ethical to kick a dog for the fun of it, but I need
not worry about kicking a soccer ball.) Can
there be any moral universals? (Some people
would argue that every society gives special
consideration to the needy, but what counts
specifically as a need may differ from one soci-
ety to another.) Can moral views be objective
or only subjective? (There are some philo-
sophers who have argued there are verifiable
moral facts in more or less the same way there
are objective, scientific facts.)
Moral philosophers, in asking why a
particular act, decision or belief is ethical, typ-
ically distinguish between consequentialist
and deontological notions of ethics (Smith,
D.M., 1994a). Consequentialismargues that
an act (or decision or belief) must be judged
against its consequences. The process is one of
weighing the probable effects of one course of
action as opposed to others. One makes the
choice on the basis of the morally best effects.
A best effect, for example, might be that
the greatest good is brought to the greatest
number of people:utilitarianism, in other
words, is a consequentialist theory of ethics.
Deontologicaltheories of ethics evaluate actions
on their own merits, independent of their con-
sequences. They see duties and obligations as
inherently good; even if a different course ofGregory / The Dictionary of Human Geography 9781405132879_4_E Final Proof page 211 1.4.2009 3:17pmETHICS