Is there an ethics of place

Although place is an increasingly important notion in much of contemporary theorizing across humanities, social sciences, and the arts, there is also a persistent tendency to think place in ways that see it as inevitably given over to a problematic ethics and regressive politics. Such a way of thinking place nevertheless misconstrues the nature and the necessity of place, as well as the nature of the ethical and the political. This essay suggests some reasons why this may be so, and briefly sketches the direction in which a genuine ethics of place may be found.