Political ecology as ethical practice

Pedagogy is not an issue generally addressed in discussions of ethics in political ecology. These discussions commonly focus upon research agendas and methodology and do not consider teaching and learning political ecology as ethical and political practice. This paper argues that public scholarship can make political ecology's approach more concrete for students, because it focuses upon problems of inequality and resource access in their own communities and can foster ethically informed research projects useful to state and nongovernmental organizations while opening new research venues for students, teachers and community members. The paper's argument consists of three parts. In the first, I provide an overview of ethics in geography. Next I discuss the relevance of radical pedagogy to critical human geography and to political ecology and rework radical pedagogy's definition to include a consideration of public scholarship. Finally, I demonstrate how political ecology as an approach to public scholarship may spark and sustain student activism and value-driven forms of learning and teaching in an undergraduate classroom. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.