Moral landscapes and manipulated spaces: gender, class and space in Victorian reformatory schools

This paper provides a comparative study of two Victorian reformatory schools; the Philanthropic Society farm school for boys at Redhill, Surrey, and Red Lodge girls' reformatory in Bristol. Situating the study within the context of broader Victorian assumptions about forms of human settlement and association most likely to foster "morally acceptable" behaviour, it explores contemporary ideas about the location and design of these environments of moral reform. It suggests that dominant ideologies of class and gender were central considerations in determining the location and design appropriate to each institution.     

Narrating intersections of gender and dwarfism in everyday spaces

Dwarfs, midgets, even freaks, are among the terms that have been used to label little people. Feminist theorists have argued that discursive identities of women prevent any meaningful essentialised analysis of their experiences. Similarly, disability researchers have argued against generalising the experiences of disabled individuals. This paper explores the intersection of gender and dwarfism through the narratives of four women who are little people. Findings suggest that the ways women, who are little people, negotiate public spaces are affected by discourses of gender, disability and common conceptions of what is physically normal. Furthermore, these discourses have material implications in the everyday lives of these women. A brief historical overview of dwarfism is followed by narratives that describe experiences in public spaces, perceptions of height related to age and capability, gendered spaces and sexual stereotypes, uncomfortable spaces, violations of personal space and transportation. This paper provides a partial perspective on how discourses of dwarfism are manifest in social spaces and the built environment. Despite these significant commonalities that little people shared with other disabled people, there are socio‐spatial experiences that appear to be unique to people with dwarfism .     

Negotiating gender,power, and spaces in masquerade performances in Nigeria

Egungun is a Yoruba ancestral masquerade ritual that has been practiced for centuries. Shifting coalitions of individuals and factions have vied for social and political influence through this practice. In the nineteenth century, when western missionaries, explorers, and colonial officials first documented this phenomenon, any individual who could sponsor an Egungun performance was a force to be reckoned with in Yoruba society. To this day, Egungun masquerades are understood as vehicles through which individuals and groups can assert influence in their communities. Western scholars have portrayed Egungun as a hegemonic masculine performance space through which men assert their dominance over women. In privileging the writings of English missionaries, explorers, and colonial officials, we have tended to neglect the oral traditions and histories of specific Egungun masquerades in which women feature prominently. I argue that scholars have oversimplified and misrepresented the complex ways in which these performances are gendered as well as the ways in which they offer women opportunities to shape the identities of the places they inhabit.     

Gender mainstreaming and rural development policy; the trivialisation of rural gender issues

This paper considers gender mainstreaming of the EU Rural Development Programme. The EU promotes the gender mainstreaming of rural development policies because retaining women in rural areas is seen as crucial to the long-term viability of rural areas. A review of literature and scan of policy documents demonstrates that few rural development plans address gender issues, and generally only by including some separate projects for women. Little is done to address the systemic features of gender inequality and to realise inclusive developments that address the needs of all social groups. The de-politicisation of rural gender issues results in policy makers ticking the obligatory gender box without envisioning any real change in the agenda or process of rural development policy making. I argue that a more fruitful way to go forward is to re-politicise gender in rural development and to tease out at the local level how changing gender relations and rural development coincide.     

Fluid lives: subjectivities,gender and water in rural Bangladesh

This article seeks to contribute to the emerging debates in gender–water and gender–nature literatures by looking at the ways that gendered subjectivities are simultaneously (re)produced by societal, spatial and natural/ecological factors, as well as materialities of the body and of heterogeneous waterscapes. Drawing from fieldwork conducted in Bangladesh on arsenic contamination of drinking water, the article looks at the ways that gender relations are influenced by not just direct resource use/control/access and the implications of different types of waters, but also by the ideological constructs of masculinity/femininity, which can work in iterative ways to influence how people relate to different kinds of water. Conflicts and struggles over water inflect gendered identities and sense of self, where both men and women participate in reproducing and challenging prevailing norms and practices. As a result, multiple social and ecological factors interact in complex and interlinked ways to complicate gender–water relations, whereby socio-spatial subjectivities are re/produced in water management and end up reinforcing existing inequities. The article demonstrates that gender–water relations are not just intersected by social axes, as generally argued by feminist scholars, but also by ecological change and spatial relations vis-à-vis water, where simultaneously socialized, ecologized, spatialized and embodied subjectivities are produced and negotiated in everyday practices.     

The historical roots of differing rural gender orders in Norway and Sweden

Offering a systematic comparison of the history of the differing rural gender orders that have developed in Norway and Sweden since 1750, this article considers the complex interconnections between gender and capitalist relations. It begins by highlighting the contrasts between these two Scandinavian countries’ settlement patterns, agricultural structures and rural gender orders, in spite of the similarities in their environments, social-democratic policies and commitments to gender equality. Within a theoretical framework focused on the persistence of simple commodity production by farming families within capitalist economies, it considers the gender division of labour, commodity systems, and laws of succession and inheritance as they bear upon the positions of farm women in Norway and Sweden. Tracing the development of stratification in the countryside and the history of farmers’ political activism at the national level illuminates the salient differences between these two countries’ histories from the early 19th through the late 20th centuries. This comparison demonstrates that gender as well as the mobilization of rural citizens shaped the transition to capitalism and that, in turn, agricultural and settlement policies reshaped rural gender relations.     

Risky Geographies: Teens,gender, and rural landscape in North America

Young Vermonters living along the Canadian border experience cultural, spatial and material marginalisation, as well as historically high rates of death due to alcohol‐related motor vehicle accidents. This research examines the relationship between teens' place in society, their material geographies in a rural setting, and the strategies they employ to create social opportunities and produce ‘cultural gateways’. As active cultural producers, young people, especially older boys, are successful in building socio‐spatial networks that extend beyond their local area, across the US–Canada border, and into Quebec bars. The research reveals that teens live in a highly gendered social environment, one that encourages risk‐taking for boys and closes down social opportunities for girls. This study opens up new directions for further research into the social and environmental conditions under which North American teens craft their lives in rural places.     

Generative spaces of gender and feminist geography in Singapore: entanglements of the personal and political

Abstract

While geographers’ work in Southeast Asia has yet to engage substantively with theoretical developments in gender/feminist studies generated by Anglo-American academic centers, we argue that Singapore has proven to be somewhat of an exception. Focusing on the National University of Singapore, this article discusses how the development of gender and feminist geography in Singapore has benefitted from being able to engage with international debates in feminism through the country’s and NUS’ internationalization efforts, and working in the English language. Using the notion of generative spaces, we highlight first, the importance of using our teaching to engage in feminist activism to encourage feminist change in the classroom, as well as within our immediate communities and further afield; and second, the nascent yet significant contributions of feminist geographers based in Singapore to feminist theorization from and about the Global South.     

Tomboy Tales: The rural,nature and the gender of childhood

By following and connecting certain well-trodden routes through constructions of childhood, it is possible to arrive at a point at which the 'natural' gender of childhood is apparently male. This is indicated by the fact that girls are often termed 'tomboys' in both popular and lay discourses, even when they are partaking in what are seen to be the purest, most ideal childhoods which are present in notions of country childhood idylls. Children, nature, and the countryside as surrogate nature, are all seen as innocent, and thus notions of idyllic 'natural' country childhoods become a powerful force. Heavily influenced by romantic constructions of, and connections between, childhood, nature and the countryside, such views, it will be shown, leave little space for girl children to adopt female identities. The author suggests that this ideal association of male children and nature, and the accompanying notion that it is the development of female sexuality which in particular marks a departure from the natural state of childhood, and thus ends childhood, merits consideration. This is particularly so in the contexts of various discourses, such as romanticism, feminism and ecofeminism, which have explored links between the female and the natural. The aim is not to challenge these constructions and theorisations of gender and nature directly, but rather to show how the introduction of the notion of childhood might cross-cut, problematise and even illuminate them to some degree.     

The cultural politics of shit: class,gender and public space in India

In this article we seek to interrogate the cultural, political and economic conditions that generate the crisis of sanitation in India, with its severe implications for the poor and the marginalized. The key question we ask is how to interpret and explain the spectre of ‘open defecation’ in India's countryside and its booming urban centres. The discussion is divided into three parts. Part one examines the cultural interpretation of ‘shitting’ as symbolic action underpinned by ideas of purity, pollution and ‘the body politic’. Part two takes the political economic approach to gain further insights into contemporary discourse, performance and cultural politics surrounding toilets and open defecation in India. Part three examines civil society activities, state campaigns and media accounts of open defecation to explore the disruptive potency of everyday toilet activities, and how these interplay with issues of class, caste, and gender. Drawing on interviews and a review of ethnographic work, we seek to interrogate the idiom of modern sanitation, with its emphasis on cleanliness, progress and dreams of technology, as a constitutive idea and an explanatory force in Indian modernity.     

Between affiliation and autonomy: navigating pathways of women's empowerment and gender justice in rural Bangladesh

Inasmuch as women's subordinate status is a product of the patriarchal structures of constraint that prevail in specific contexts, pathways of women's empowerment are likely to be "path dependent." They will be shaped by women's struggles to act on the constraints that prevail in their societies, as much by what they seek to defend as by what they seek to change. The universal value that many feminists claim for individual autonomy may not therefore have the same purchase in all contexts. This article examines processes of empowerment as they play out in the lives of women associated with social mobilization organizations in the specific context of rural Bangladesh. It draws on their narratives to explore the collective strategies through which these organizations sought to empower the women and how they in turn drew on their newly established "communities of practice" to navigate their own pathways to wider social change. It concludes that while the value attached to social affiliations by the women in the study is clearly a product of the societies in which they have grown up, it may be no more context-specific than the apparently universal value attached to individual autonomy by many feminists.     

Father and Ford revisited: gender, class and employment change in the new millennium

In the last decade in Britain the combination of women's continued entry into the labour market and the restructuring of welfare provision has exacerbated the growing demands on individuals and households in their allocation of time between productive and reproductive labour and the contradictions between the two spheres, as well as time and income inequalities between the rich and the poor. Since the election of the new Labour government in 1997, the concept of work/life balance, as well as a range of other policies to address these divisions have been introduced. This paper addresses the nature of the changes in the last decade, through the perspective of gender and class divisions and critically assesses key debates about the changing nature of working life as well as current policy provisions to support the increasing individualization of employment.     

The space between: globalization,liminal spaces and personal relations in rural Costa Rica

Globalization facilitates the movement of people, goods, ideologies and even diseases across borders and into local communities. This article explores the liminal space created by tourism in the rural Costa Rican community of Monteverde as a site where the movement of people, especially Western women (women from the global North), intersects, contests and even reinforces existing heteropatriarchal ideologies. Theories from feminist geography and anthropology provide a lens for understanding and interpreting how Western women and local residents (both male and female) perceive, construct and interact with each other. We argue that ‘liminality’ or the sense of being ‘betwixt and between’ – physically, socially and ideologically – allows Western women a space to both challenge the hegemony of heteropatriarchal ideology and reconstitute it in their sexual relationships with local men. We also explore the implications that sexual relationships between Western women and local men have for local women. We stress the urgency to understand and articulate the nature of these sexual relationships in light of the growing HIV/AIDS epidemic.     

A gender analysis of everyday mobility in urban and rural territories: from challenges to sustainability

Gender differences in mobility patterns between women and men have long been acknowledged. This study analyses how these differences are reproduced in different urban and rural contexts. Using mobility data from a large travel survey taken in 2006 in Spain, we examine the differences between gender mobility through age, modal split and trip purposes. Special attention is paid to how territory shapes mobility and how these territorial settings differently affect gendered mobilities. The use of this data source allows the comparison of all trips made by the total population, including all means of transport. By taking a global view on mobility, the uneven relationships that men and women have with different means of transport become more visible. After disaggregating data by age and territorial settings, results show that women are using sustainable transport modes more often than men, and travelling for more diverse reasons. Gender is thus a fundamental variable in understanding modal split and, by extension, transport sustainability, in terms of energy consumption and the emission of greenhouse gases. From this point of view, we consider women's mobility knowledge and practices – typically related to the most sustainable means of transport – as factors with rising value that could effectively guide public policy in its way to promote more sustainable mobility patterns.     

Women and microcredit: alternative readings of subjectivity,agency, and gender change in rural Mexico

Within the last two decades, the growth of microcredit, or the provision of small loans to poor borrowers, has become a key development initiative in the Global South. This is particularly important for questions of gender relationships, as the majority of microcredit recipients worldwide are low-income women. However, most assessments of microcredit and gender emphasize issues of individual empowerment rather than the large-scale political implications of credit provision. In this article, I critique the use of mainstream empowerment models employed in the assessment of microcredit's ability to provoke changes in gender relationships. I argue that these models often fail to describe microcredit's effects on women's lives due to their epistemological framework, which pushes aside questions of geographical and historical specificity in pursuit of a universally empowered microcredit subject. Examining a mainstream empowerment model I used to conduct research in rural Mexico, I highlight these problems and present an alternative analysis of subjectivity, agency, and gender change as a result of microcredit provision.     

Producing liminal space: gender,age and class in northern Ontario's tree planting industry

Drawing upon qualitative data, this article examines how tree planters in northern Ontario, Canada engage with liminality in terms of gender, class, age and space. In doing so, it provides insight into concepts of gender liminality and the variegated experiences of males and females in liminal space. The article focuses on four aspects of the liminal engagement. First, the spaces of tree planting are liminal as they are marked by homelife and worklife, but dominated by neither. Second, gender performances are liminal, as males perform masculinities seldom necessary or appropriate – yet often valorized – in their permanent communities, while females (who make up nearly half of the workforce) are offered opportunities to work and succeed in a traditionally male industry. However, success often requires that they adopt certain masculine traits. Third, most tree planters are in the interstitial age of ‘youth’, somewhere between adolescence and adulthood. Finally, tree planters are generally members of affluent urban middle-classes, yet the work they perform is more readily associated with rural or peripheral working-classes.     

Queering the pitch: race,class, gender and nation in the Indo-Australian encounter

Recent cricket contests between Australia and India offer a fascinating theatre to examine issues of race, class, nation, and gender. I chart their protean character as they are performed and deployed in these encounters. Instead of exploring relations between already extant and singular entities called “India” or “Australia,” it might be more useful to see the performative practices of those situated at different loci of enunciation by which those categories are momentarily congealed and given meaning or content. While there is a surfeit of charged cricketing encounters between the two nations, I focus on two in this essay: (a) Rahul Dravid's speech at the annual Bradman Oration in 20111, and (b) what has come to be called ‘Monkeygate’ – a bitter and acrimonious cricket test match between India and Australia in 2007 played in Sydney.