Caring about research ethics and integrity in human geography

In general, human geography has taken the rationale for its concern about research ethics from these other fields and paid less attention to the discipline's own foundations of interest. In this chapter, we want to look at just one part of this agenda and explore some of the motivations for human geographers to engage with ethics. Though drawn from fields other than human geography, these examples do point to social and personal matters that encourage, allow or condone ethically questionable work. The universalising tendency of principlism and those policy communities that support its extension across disciplines and countries ought to be countered by disciplines like human geography that are sensitive to the spatial specificity of cultural and bureaucratic practices. Take a moment to imagine a world of human geographic inquiry in which researchers care little for ethics and integrity in their work.