Geoethics: hammering out an interdisciplinary conversation

Abstract

Geoethics is not just a matter of geoscience, but involves complex transdisciplinary concerns with social, economic and cultural implications. Because of this, both geoethicists within geosciences and those working in social sciences and humanities are increasingly calling for dialogue across disciplinary silos. Drawing from our work on the British Academy funded interdisciplinary project, ‘Mining for Meaning: the Geoethics of Extractive Industries,’ we trace out what an interdisciplinary engagement with Geoethics might look like. As an earthly ethics that necessarily stretches beyond geological considerations to consider the socio-natural, cultural-spiritual and political-economic, any engagement with Geoethics demands conversations that bring geoscientific understandings into more explicit dialogue with ideas from the social sciences and the geohumanities (though not exclusively). Acknowledging the very real challenges of doing interdisciplinary work - from distinct understandings about research, knowledge and results, to disciplinary-specific technical terminology - we set out the core ideas underpinning Geoethical approaches in these domains. This lays important groundwork for crafting meaningful and indeed ethical conversations that stretch across these disciplines, but crucially, avoids the mining of other disciplines for useful concepts and metaphors, without due regard for their context, history and technical meaning – a form of disciplinary extractivism in itself. Animated by this anti-extractivism, the paper presents a reading of how the earth, ethics, knowledge and practices are understood from within the geosciences, social sciences and geohumanities respectively, charting out what we hope to be a useful frame of reference for working across these disciplines. We then use this analysis as the bedrock for discussing the potential of cross-disciplinary conversation. By critically responding to the relative strengths, limitations and offerings of each discipline’s conceptualisation of geoethics, we bring to the fore important interdisciplinary frictions, overlaps and potential collaborative directions. Taken together, we suggest that this two-part analysis offers scope for crafting meaningful conversations necessary for an interdisciplinary Geoethics.