Beyond Judgment and Approval: Establishing Process‐Oriented Ethics in Geography

What the paper says

In recent decades, geography has increasingly engaged with questions of positionality, power relations, and the situatedness of knowledge production. Feminist, postcolonial, and transdisciplinary approaches, in particular, have therefore emphasised the need for continuous reflection throughout the research process. However, there is currently no established ethical procedure and infrastructure in geography that systematically supports this insight. In this conceptual paper, we argue for establishing an ethics committee in geography that moves beyond a singular, formal judgment, and approval at the outset of a research project. Instead, we propose a process‐oriented ethics approach that engages with ethical questions continuously throughout the research process. Such ethical practice would provide ongoing support and empowerment for researchers, addressing ethical challenges at different stages of the research process. This includes issues of participation, the handling of sensitive data, the representation of marginalised groups, power asymmetries between researchers and research participants, and the publication process. We claim that process‐oriented ethics approaches both enhance the quality of geographical research and strengthen the discipline's responsibility. In this paper, we present an ethics framework to inspire and stimulate a debate about process‐oriented ethics in geography (POEG).