Geography of Justice

Abstract

The term “geography of justice” can be interpreted in a number of ways. One reading of the term relates to the spatial aspects of claims to justice. This interpretation is often related to questions of social justice, work that examines fundamental questions of inequality and the uneven distribution of resources or harm. The roots of this scholarship are diverse, inspired by anticapitalist, anticolonial, and feminist movements of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Despite the diversity of these approaches, they all express an interest in addressing questions of spatial justice, where the organization of space is understood as a crucial aspect of the entrenchment of injustice within society. At the heart of much of this work is a philosophical question of how justice is interpreted, most crucially whether justice is a universal human condition (perhaps structured around certain human rights) or should be understood as a more localized set of solidarities. These concerns become particularly apparent when questions of spatial justice are considered within structures of power relations. A second interpretation of “geography of justice” relates to the mechanisms used to address injustice and resolve conflict. Alongside reflections of the spatial qualities of injustice, legal geographers have examined the relationship between law and space. On the one hand, this work has encouraged scholarly reflection on the spatial nature of legal concepts, such as jurisdiction and sovereignty. On the other, it has explored the spatial aspects of trial processes, from the architecture of courtrooms to the spatiality of prisons and internment. A third interpretation of “geography of justice” turns critical attention to the nature of scholarly inquiry, posing the question, what is a just form of geographical discipline? Much of the work examining forms of spatial justice and legal geographies has reflected on the nature of knowledge production within geography, and the subsequent ways in which certain viewpoints, topics, or voices have been marginalized. Emerging in particular from the fields of feminist, postcolonial, and antiracist scholarship, these reflections have sought to challenge injustices within the discipline of geography. These perspectives have advanced forms of qualitative methodology that focus on positionality: the implications of the researcher’s identity, geography, and history for the nature of knowledge production. Reflecting these three aspects of the “geography of justice,” the review below does not chart the emergence of a single, coherent body of scholarship. Instead, it seeks to sketch the implications of this fragmentation and diversification, as geographers and others have explored the complex intersection between geography and justice.