Drawing on contemporary geographical examples, critically analyze the extent to which people should care for distant others.

David Smith asks the question in his article written in the progress of human geography 'How far should we care?' When this question is first put to anyone they are immediately taken aback. They begin to think who they care for, and how much; where does the caring stop. The first question to ask is what is the meaning of care? '…caring for others as well as caring about them: the focus here is on beneficence as doing good or showing active kindness, rather than on benevolence as merely the desire to do good or charitable feeling'


The meaning of 'caring' is defined differently by each individual; it is how we as a person look at things. It is quite clear to me that we would care for our close and loved ones first over others, Marilyn Friedman supports this in her article 'The Practice of partiality' by saying 'Hardly any moral philosopher these days would deny that we are each entitled to favour our loved ones.' This can be down to instinct, whereby like animals we will always look after members of our pack or group above others. Historically caring for others outside your particular gang or tribe would be extremely negative, 'those posing a threat were repulsed.' This action took place very early on in the development of the planet whereby tribes would be competing over land and there was a distinctive lack of communication existing. Communities would work together with everyone helping each other and everyone knowing what the other was doing. This is an excellent example of the early signs of the communitarians, where the focus of the community was not on the individual but as a unit, 'personal identity reinforced...