Dear All,

As some of you may have seen from the back of the British THES this week, I
am resigning from the RGS after the decision to keep Shell as one of the
sponsors of the organization.   Anyone who was at the 'Geography and Ethics'
session at the Exeter IBG will have heard me rattle on about this a greater
length, but my reasons are basically these:

I think (for me at least) it's the right thing to do. I understand arguments
about staying in the organization and attempting to change it - before the
events of 1995/6 I was a strong supporter of this line, and I continue to
hope that the RGS will be contested terrain.  However I took what became a
very public stand on the relationship between the RGS and Shell before the
Strathclyde, and I now feel that, having exhausted the normal procedures of
the society, it is untenable for me to stay in the RGS. I am no longer
willing to give positive support to an organization which gives positive
support to a company like Shell.

I don't accept the rather glib assurances that Shell's record is improving
which were made at Kensington Gore in the December debate by officers of the
Society.  Talking to Ogoni activists in London, I'm convinced that whatever
superficial changes have been made Shell remains embroiled in a complicated
political and environmental dispute in the delta.  As I stressed in an
earlier discussion, I accept that here are complicated questions involved in
the Ogoni/Nigeria issue, yet the sponsorship arrangement places the Society
unambiguously on the side of the powerful against the poor, the marginal and
the dispossessed in what remains an ongoing (if now less publicised) dispute.
And, as Steve Hinchliffe's recent forwarding on Shell in Peru serves to
remind us, the contradictions inherent in a linkage between a major oil
company and a society of geographers are broader than this single issue.  

I found one of the interesting features of the 'Geography and Ethics' session
at the IBG was the way in which an attempt to think about 'professional codes
of ethics', rapidly extended into a discussion as to whether we need to think
about a wider sense of 'geographical ethics'.  One of the things that I felt
about 'the Strathclyde moment' was that for all the currency of relativism,
and for all the contestations which take place within the disciplinary
community, that there was a remarkable sense of convergence around certain
key moral/ethical/political standpoints.  Perhaps we were just 'lucky' in
that the Shell/Nigeria/Ogoni issue brought so many potentially diverse (even
conflicting) strands together - environmental stewardship, voicing of the
marginal, international justice, opposition to corporate capitalism,
opposition to political repression, defence of the autonomy of the academic
sphere. 

Sitting at the December debate at the RGS I was struck by how different the
sense of the nature of the discipline and of any broader sense of
'geographical ethics' was in that forum.  For many, I think the RGS itself
was the 'good' that was being defended - a conservative sense of the
protection of tradition and institutions (in this case from the
'politicising' academic left).  It was only at the RGS that I heard a
positivistic case for maintaining links with Shell - that scientific method
is objective and pure and untainted by its sources of funding. Others argued
that judgements could only be made by those who had _experienced_ the
situation -- meaning having spent time in 'Africa' (often described
generically), rather than through buying petrol from a Shell garage in West
London.  In a couple of places this latent rascism broke the surface in
comments about civilization and the African mentality.  There was also a
stifling sense of deference in the hall (I'm not a great fan of ermine).  One
of the key moments came when 'Sir' Crispin Tickell spoke of his role in many
ethical and environmental audits and of how Shell more than passed the test
(which I presume will be interesting news to anyone with investments in
ethical trusts with CT as adviser).  There was an audible murmour of approval
- the expert had spoken.

I am sceptical about any kind of dialogue (ethical or political) with this
view of geography, which remains the dominant voice in the RGS (by a margin
of 71% to 29%??). Far from the 'healthy debate' which seems to be the RGS PR
line on the post-merger disputes, I see not so much competing postions, as
irreconcilable and almost untouching understandings of the nature of
geography.  In a funny way it's not in research, or in discussion with other
academics or postgrads, that I feel the contradictions of continued RGS
membership most strongly, but in teaching first years.  I hope what I'm doing
is not indocrination or prescription, but equally I'm aware that I do want my
students to learn certain kinds of sensitivities - in the broadest sense to
have a moral education.  It's in first year teaching (which I'm about to get
even more involved in) that I have to think about and talk about and discuss
what geography means to me, and I don't want to do it as a card-carrying
member of an organization which has made a very public and direct commitment
to a very different vision.

I hope I'm not now cast into the wilderness, and I certainly intend to remain
on the committee of the HGRG and in the SCGRG (please send details of the
practicalities on this one - I'm happy to pay extra subs to cover the lost
subvention). I respect the decision of others to stay in the Society, and I
certainly am not now 'disinterested' in the future of the RGS.  I have yet to
write a formal letter of resignation, and if there are other recent or
prospective resigners out there in CGFland or beyond, I'd be happy to go
collectively. 

Thanks for getting this far!

 


%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%