Research, action and ‘critical’ geographies

In the 199Os, the notion of ‘doing’ critical geographies become one of the central themes infusing geographic study. Eschewing the strictures radical Marxist approaches (which principally on the forms of oppression and inequality by capitalist process), critical geography consequently sought to examine the diverse processes that regulate and reproduce exclusion. The lens of critical geographers has widened from a narrow focus on capital-labour to encompass broader processes of social and marginalization as they affect , ethnic minorities, sexual dissidents, disabled and so on. Simultaneously, this ’critical ’ has been accompanied by a heightened that the geographer’s research on social and exclusion should be sensitive to the experiences of marginalized groups. For example, recent years there have been several papers (eg 7992; Robinson 1994; Rose 1997) and collections (Canadian Geographer 1993; Professional 1994; Antipode 1995) that have examined such as reflexivity, empowerment, emancipation, praxis, positionality and power . Such writing has generally concentrated on complex social relations the exist between and researched, with ideas from feminist (in particular) invoked to dismiss assumptions research is an objective and ‘value-free’ .