RESHAPING BOUNDARIES - INTERNATIONAL ETHICS AND ENVIRONMENTAL CONSCIOUSNESS IN THE EARLY 20TH-CENTURY

As questions of global ethics, struggles over space, place, time and n ature occupy much late twentieth-century intellectual debate, this pap er analyses some comparable currents of thought at the previous fin de siecle. Particular interpretations of nature-society relations emerge d within a political and social context marked by widespread concern o ver the need to rehabilitate British society, in order to confront ade quately the challenges of the new century. In transcending the narrow confines of national and imperial citizenship, these visions of nature and the international offered a different model of cultural regenerat ion and transformation. The work of a group of scientists and public f igures associated with the Scottish polymath and prominent anti-imperi alist, Patrick Geddes, notably Andrew John Herbertson and Marion Isabe l Newbigin, reveals that their support for values of harmony and coope ration central to civic responsibility found common ground across geog raphical and cultural boundaries and were important components of an i nternational imagination. In promoting these values, their advocacy of both a critical and a practical geography is demonstrated.