Moral, Ethics and Geography: An Empirical Perspective on Political, Economical and Sociability Behaviors

Ethics and morality as objects of research remain important blind spots of geography. Despite their recent attempts to reconcile the discipline’s take on ethics, geographers hardly ever investigate the individual and social production of moral and ethical systems and practices. Instead, they engage in research work in which they use shared ethical beliefs to frame spaces of injustice, practices of care, and environmental hazards. Following Durkheim’s normative stance on the social sciences, Western human geographers have reduced their research scope to comply with the moral and ethical beliefs of their scientific community. Morality is however not only limited to questions of justice/injustice and care/harm. Recent research developments in psychology and anthropology shows human morality as set of adaptive mechanisms to be much broader than the academic “Rawls vs Gilligan”—justice vs care—and to span across other normative categories. In this paper, I expose recent developments on the study of morality and ethics in psychology and anthropology, following primarily two evolutionary research strands: Moral Foundation Theory and Evolutionary Values Theory. I then describe three studies in which I begin to question both social and individual production of normative and moral systems, and their spatial correlates, using methods from political, cultural and urban geography. I finish on a theoretical opening linking contemporary French geography to John Silk’ original preoccupation on “caring at a distance,” and describe how care, but also justice, authority, in-group and purity can be part on a novel geographical inquiry on ethics.

Globalizing the digital: A cross-cultural framework for the ethics of operationalizing Big Data

Shin Alexandre Koseki

Concerns over the ever-increasing production, availability and use of multilayered individual data in social research, business and the everyday life calls for the development of ethical and legal guidelines. In parallel to civic and governmental initiatives, Critical Data Studies offers a transdisciplinary academic platform to define a common ethical framework for computational research. Essays recently published under this label argue for lines of conduct guided by principles such as fairness and justice. Cultural and evolutionary anthropology, as well as political psychology show, however, those principles are mostly common to Northern liberal cultures. For example, Moral Foundation Theory identifies five cross-cultural grounds to ethical reasoning—Fairness, Care, Authority, In-group and Purity—the first two being associated with progressive views, and the three others with traditionalist views. In the current development of Critical Data Studies, the framing of research ethics by fairness and justice therefore risks to maintain, if not increase, the hegemony of Northern researchers on scientific productivity in Big Data research. In this poster, I present a novel framing of Big Data ethics, one that considers the cross-cultural diversity of human morality. My objective is to lay out a shared ground to an urging global approach to knowledge production. First, I review existing ethical framework of Big Data research and classify each proposal according to the Moral Foundation Theory. Second, I identify commonalities and gaps of proposed framework and articulate possible extension of each framework using the missing moral foundations as guiding principles. Finally, I propose a synthetic framework of Big Data ethics. The poster highlights the unbalance of ethical considerations in Big Data research, and in scientific production in general. The proposed framework points at ethical stances that could become major concerns in future research using Big Data for social research: Political or economic definition of scientific objectives, applications and limitations (authority); Exclusion of individuals, groups and communities in the production, publication and application of research findings (in-group); Constrains on inter- and transdisciplinary collaborations, research topics, methods of analysis, epistemic positioning and ontological grounds (purity).

2018

The Influence of Urban Spatial Practices on Moral Schemes: Analyzing the Cognitive Construction of Spatial Globalization Through Experimental Moral Philosophy

Shin Alexandre Koseki

In French analytical geography, globalization is the emergence of the World as a spatial entity by which the planetary extension become one space. Taking a cognitive perspective, I suggest that globalization is by extension the process by which the individuals construct and tighten inter-spatial relations, from the spaces in which they live to other spaces, either physically or socially distant. In other words, globalization is the process by which otherness is neither ignored nor dissolved, but acknowledged and taken in account in the daily life; affecting spatial practices and spatial actions. Based on this premise, I pose that the analysis of moral schemes of daily organizational processes can inform us on the cognitive construction of the globalization of space. To do so, I engage in an ethnographic fieldwork on affectively constituted social networks. The fieldwork comprises observations of micro-political relations using “friendship as a method”; interviews on spatial practices, political behaviors and moral tendencies; and experimental moral questionnaires. I then look at possible relationships between the spatial practices of the interviewed individuals and their cognitive construction of inter-spatial relations and spatial otherness, in order to observe if these can relate to their moral schemes regarding social otherness. I hypothesize that the city, as a social condenser, promotes—through divergent spatial practices—different relationships to the social and spatial otherness in comparison to the suburban, rural or alpine lifestyles, and that these relations can be indicators of a given level of urbanity.

2013

En quête d'habitat

Marie-Paule Thomas

This doctoral thesis is based on the observation that the individualization of society that is taking place today has led to new differentiations within the domains of lifestyle and residential choice. Our main hypothesis was that lifestyle influences residential choice. What kinds of differentiation with regard to lifestyles are we seeing currently? What connections are there between lifestyles, residential preferences and localization? Theoretically, the typical methods for describing residential choice and environment rely on epistemological, methodological and empirical corpuses that are quite varied and, at times, contradictory. On one hand do we find economic and demographical approaches based on the theory of the "rational" actor who attempts to optimize his localization according to "functional and economic" parameters (i.e. proximity to the workplace, the price and size of the residence depending on income and background); on the other we find sociological and anthropological approaches based on theories of social action where choice as a general rule is "socially" determined based on the individual's family ties, tradition, culture, way of living or even social position (Authier & al., 2010). Above and beyond such rational or social perspectives, other factors also influence the choices we make, including the sensitive dimension related to an individual's physical and emotional experience of space. In order to grasp all three logics of action in a single analytical frame we based our analysis on the postulate that residential choice is "plural." Thus do multiple criteria – accessibility, social rooting of families, social status of the residential residence, appreciation of the morphological qualities of the environment, etc. – figure into the decision. We assumed that based on their lifestyles that households blended one or the other of these logics of action, thus resulting in their ranking their criteria for choice in different ways. We proposed a conceptualization of lifestyle that offers a compromise between classical structuralist perspectives (Bourdieu, 1979) and individualist perspectives (Beck, 1983). In our opinion residential choices are influenced by a three-fold dimension of lifestyle: urban practices and daily life (stylization), values and urban representations (evaluation) and resources/constraints (stratification variables). Thus did we couple classic vertical forms (training, income, gender, etc.) with new horizontal forms (attitudes, opinions, values, practices, etc.) that engender social inequalities. Residential choice therefore results in a compromise (resulting from lifestyle) between the different functional, social and sensitive criteria that are or are not present in the structural, socio-historical, environmental context (potential receptiveness). Methodology The cities of Bern and Lausanne in Switzerland – two cities of comparable size but whose socio-historical backgrounds and urban structures vary significantly, particularly with regard to the quality of public transportation service – served as the field for our study. As families often use long-term residential choices to realize plans for the future, we chose to look at them. We used a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods for our empirical work. At the macro level we describe the territory using a series of functional, social and sensitive indicators that allowed us to characterize "potential receptiveness" at different levels, from citywide to neighborhood. At the micro-sociological level we conducted: a quantitative telephone survey of 500 households in each agglomeration, a qualitative survey comprised of 40 semi-directive interviews in eight neighborhoods that distinguished themselves by their geographical location (central, suburban, peri-urban) and architectural diversity. Principal findings In general our findings show that income inequalities have a discriminatory effect on the size and price of the residence as well as on the probability of finding a living space that is entirely adapted. These inequalities however only play a secondary role when it comes to explaining differences in terms of residential preferences. Whether or not the households had a weak or strong income, certain areas of the city were never considered if they did not correspond to the individual's lifestyle. To begin we showed that the immediate environment plays an important role in quality of life for families, especially with regard to the presence or absence of elements favoring children's autonomy. Access to public transportation for instance is a decisive factor in terms of localization for most families. Above and beyond these commonalities we highlighted six axes of differentiation for residential preference that indicate the qualities most sought after by families: do they want to live in an environment that first and foremost is safe, densely-populated, convivial, traditional, calm or elite? To identify how families classify choice criteria and in so doing position themselves on the different axes we did a typological analysis, thus allowing us to categorize households into seven major "residential lifestyles," each of which valued the environment's social, sensitive and functional qualities in varying degrees. Thus we found there was not a quality of life that held true for all groups but rather qualities of life. Two main groups stood out, highlighting as such the contrast between ways of living typical of (modern) industrial society, based on classic models of upward social mobility, work and material success, and those originating from (post-modern) post-industrial society, based on self-enrichment, post-materialism and criticism of so-called "bourgeois" values. The groups identified are products of the historical sedimentation of the different ways of relating to the environment that have appeared over time. By comparing our analysis of residential lifestyles and the structural/cultural differences between the cities of Lausanne and Bern we were able to highlight the impact of context on the spatial distribution of lifestyles at different scales (from nationwide to the neighborhood level). We were also able to prove that geographical distinctions such as center, suburban and peri-urban become less important; each area has its own individual functional (accessibility, services), sensitive (urban morphology, architecture) and social (social-spatial diversity, segregation) qualities. Based on these characteristics, an environment is more or less receptive to different types of residential lifestyles (can I do everything on foot in this neighborhood? Can my children go to by themselves? Is there a strong social/community dynamic?). With such a detailed qualitative and quantitative description of areas it becomes easier to determine who would like to live in a given neighborhood and who, on the contrary, would not ("describe where you live and I'll tell you who you are?"). To guarantee the success of urban development or regional policies, those responsible for planning and development need to consider urban planning not only in terms of "social mixing" but in terms of the "mixing of lifestyles" as well. Through this notion of potential receptiveness, the urbanism of lifestyles is one of the main functional conclusions of this study, for which we propose avenues of change and recommendations (how to plan and think about urban development based on use?).

EPFL2011

En quête d'habitat

Marie-Paule Thomas

EPFL2011

Globalizing the digital: A cross-cultural framework for the ethics of operationalizing Big Data

Shin Alexandre Koseki

2018