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'nominalist' to acknowledge this fact, let alone a 'relativist'. One can happily insist
that there is a 'real world' out there, while still conceding that it is suffi ciently
complex and differentiated such that no one mode of knowing it will suffi ce for all
our wishes and purposes. (Even traditions of environmental modelling can approach
the same question using very different assumptions about human behaviour and
societal dynamics, and refl ect different approaches to explaining atmospheric or
ecosystem dynamics.) In short, environmental geography's diversity should not be
sacrifi ced on the altar of 'unity' - or least not the sort of 'strong' unity that presumes
epistemic variety to be symptomatic of intellectual confusion about the 'true' nature
of human-environment relations.
This said, our reluctance to defi ne environmental geography in terms of the
narrow and highly normative standard of symmetry does not mean that we are
agnostic about its current condition. On the contrary, we believe some positive
change is required. There is one obvious problem with a 'let many fl owers bloom'
stance towards the fi eld. It is not so much a problem of epistemic relativism - as we
have explained, there is no consensus about whether we can know reality indepen-
dently of our various mental and physical engagements with it as researchers.
Instead, it is more a problem of mutual ignorance and indifference. This risk was
identifi ed many years ago for geography as a whole by John Pickles and Michael
Watts. As they put it, the '. . . unwillingness to debate the merits of competing frame-
works encourages reliance on values: assertion, training and faith become suffi cient
conditions for selection. A new [plural] dogmatism is asserted...' (Pickles and
Watts, 1992, p. 303). What they were calling for was the development of a critical
culture within the discipline. Nominally at least, environmental geographers share a
common object of analysis and concern: 'the environment'. While there will always
be real limits to communication to do with the sheer inability of one group of
environmental geographers to understand what other equally specialised groups are
'up to', there is nonetheless room for greater cross-group dialogue and critique.
What would be the virtues of this and how might it be engendered? We can
answer the fi rst part of this question by analogising environmental geography to a
nation state composed of highly diverse populations - think the USA, Britain or
Australia, for example. A monocultural polity environmental geography is not. So
is it, in analogical terms, a multicultural or a republican one? In our view, it is
currently multicultural when it ought to be far more republican. What does this
mean? We are using the term multicultural here (contentiously, we admit) to denote
different ways of life that are spatially juxtaposed but which ignore or talk past
one another. Some might call this 'communitarianism'. 'True' republicanism, by
contrast, corresponds to what philosopher of science Karl Popper (1945) famously
called 'the open society'. In Popper's view, all knowledge claims - along with their
practical consequences - are only robust once they have withstood, been modifi ed
by, or enriched through an encounter with criticisms issuing from various quarters.
Republicanism in knowledge (as in politics) ought to involve a genuine engagement
between rival perspectives on the basis of common sensibilities - not so much to
reduce epistemic differences in the name of 'one truth' but, instead, to ensure the
socio-practical robustness of otherwise divergent knowledge claims.
The sort of open, critical culture being described here is diffi cult to engineer. It
is underpinned by an ethic of responsibility rather than (
pace
Fuller, Pickles and
Watts) an ethic of conviction, one that many or most members of any given aca-
demic discipline would need to share. It entails both mutual recognition and respect
