This book explores the interface between geography, ethics, and morality. It considers questions that have haunted the past, are subjects of controversy in the present, and affect the future. Does distance diminish responsibility? Should we interfere with the lives of those we do not know? Is there a distinction between private and public space? Which values and morals, if any, are absolute, and which cultural, communal, or personal? And are universal rights consistent with respect for difference?

David Smith shows how these questions play themselves out in politics, planning, development, social and personal relations, the exploitation of resources, and competition for territory. After introducing the essential elements of moral philosophy from Plato to postmodernism, he examines the moral significance of concepts of landscape, location and place, proximity, distance and community, space and territory, justice, and nature. He is concerned above all with the morality people practice, to see how this varies according to geographical context, and to assess the inevitability of its outcomes. His argument is seamlessly interwoven with everyday observation and vividly described case studies: the latter include genocide and rescue during the Holocaust, the conflicts over space between Israel and Palestine and within Israel itself, and the social tensions and aspirations in post-apartheid South Africa. The meaning, possibility, and limits of social justice lie at the heart of the book. That geographical context is vital to the understanding of moral practice and ethical theory is its central proposition.

Preface
1) Introduction: Geography, Morality and Ethics
Moral values in geography
Ethics, morality and moral philosophy
The significance of difference
The approach
2) The Historical Geography of Morality and Ethics
The significance of context
An outline historical geography
Moral differences and similarities
3) Landscape, Location and Place: Moral Order
Moral readings of landscape, location and place
The moral geography of the industrial city
A moral geography of absence: the Lodz ghetto
4) Proximity: Locality and Community
Locality and partiality
Community and morality
An ethic of care
Limitations of locality, community and partiality
A premodern community: the shtetl
5) Distance: The Scope of Beneficence
Reconstituting community
Extending the scope of care
Combining the ethics of care and justice
The contextual experience of moral learning
A moral geography of genocide and rescue: the Holocaust
6) Space and Territory: Who Should be Where
Inclusion and exclusion
Claims to territory: promised land?
Multiculturalism and minority rights
Contesting local space: whose Jerusalem?
7) Distribution: Territorial Social Justice
Distribution and difference
The place of good fortune
Human sameness, needs and rights
Social justice
Universality and particularity
8) Development: Ethical Perspectives
Introducing development ethics
Development after apartheid
Alternative development ethics: a new South Africa?
9) Nature: Environmental Ethics
Introducing environmental ethics
Environmental equity and justice
Sustainable development
Community, care and the future
10) Conclusion: Towards Geographically Sensitive Ethics
A world of difference
Context-sensitive moral knowledge
Towards a better world
On moral motivation
Bibliography
Index