Structural boundaries that effect the representation of gender and disability in works of fiction from the United States and United Kingdom

Abstract

Discussions of intellectual disability are found in medical journals, published biographies, and disability research. However, outside the realm of medicine or personal reminiscence intellectual disability struggles for spaces of social, historical, cultural and imaginative representation. This article addresses these struggles for space and specifically focuses on the imagined space of narrative fiction. Being imagined spaces they should easily be able to accommodate people with disability, and yet, very few characters with intellectual disability are represented or more importantly have agency in narrative fiction. Drawing on work from feminist geographies and literary geographies this article addresses the limiting narrative structures that have been used against fictional characters who have a disability and ways authors may move beyond these limitations. Reconciling feminist geographies and literary geographies allows new critical spatial knowledge around disability to emerge. It is not enough to write characters with disabilities into narrative fiction if the structures surrounding them remain limiting and prejudiced. This article discusses the three main limiting structures in narrative fiction: character representation, narrative voice and genre. Looking at narrative fiction through feminist and literary geographies reveals how these limiting structures function as power hierarchies, and importantly, shows how these imposed structures can be subverted and changed.     

Mothering,digital media and emotional geographies in Hamilton,Aotearoa New Zealand

This article traces a line between two literatures that can usefully be drawn into deeper conversation: geographies of digital media, and geographies of emotion. Its broad theoretical aim is to ascertain what insights might be gleaned by increasingly bringing together these two literatures. The more specific and primary aim, however, is an empirical one and that is to offer a materially grounded example of 35 mothers who live in Hamilton, Aotearoa New Zealand who use digital media to communicate with their children. Particular attention is paid to the capacities of different digital media, both individually and combined, to help facilitate, but certainly not guarantee, different emotions. The research is informed by a feminist geographical reading of theories of digital media and emotion. Findings illustrate that increasingly mothers are making use of digital media, both singularly and collectively, to increase the chances of a particular desired emotional outcome with their child or children. This article concludes that bodies, devices, screens, sounds and images comingle to mediate emotions over time and space.     

Engendering Gramsci: Gender,the Philosophy of Praxis,and Spaces of Encounter in the Climate Caravan,Bangladesh

This paper examines the gendered politics of national and international networking amongst peasant farmers' movements in South Asia. In particular the paper provides an ethnographic account, based upon the author's critical engagement with the Bangladesh Krishok (farmer) Federation and the Bangladesh Kishani Sabha (Women Farmers' Association), of the Climate Change, Gender and Food Sovereignty Caravan that was organised in Bangladesh in 2011. The paper draws upon Antonio Gramsci's theory of the philosophy of praxis and feminist research on social reproduction, dispossession and materiality to interrogate the spaces of encounter and solidarity‐building practices of the Caravan between different communities in the country and between different social movement actors. The paper examines how processes of political organisation and consciousness‐raising within and between social movements are problematised by gendered power relations. The paper concludes with suggestions concerning how the philosophy of praxis in Bangladesh might be “engendered” to incorporate a politics of social reproduction.     

Geographies of gender and sexuality in Australia,from 1994 to 2018

Abstract

Corresponding with Gender, Place and Culture’s twenty-fifth anniversary, this country report surveys geographies of gender and sexuality in Australia over the last twenty-five years, from 1994 to 2018. It is a necessarily selective, rather than comprehensive, review. We map out some broad areas tackled by geographers of gender and sexuality in Australia, and accordingly scaffold our survey through themes that include the geographies of women, feminist approaches across the discipline, geographies of masculinities and geographies of sexualities. We highlight research that has investigated gender and sexuality in relation to private and public spaces, workplaces and leisure spaces, urban and rural spaces, digital spaces, and disasters, inter alia.     

Interventions on military mobilities

Mobility and movement are central to military actions and military life, and yet despite an increasing concern with military geographies and the geographies of mobility, little consideration has been given by scholars to the political geographies of military mobilities and movements, past or present. In these interventions, we examine how these different bodies of work might intersect, focusing on social media, methods for tracing military mobilities, the role of military technologies in facilitating everyday mobilities, and the more-than-human dimensions of military mobilities.     

Gendered geographies of genetic variation: sex,power and mobility in human population genetics

This article explores the ways in which geographies of human genetic variation are increasingly differentiated in terms of gender, and the ideas of reproduction, sex, power and mobility that underpin their interpretation. It thus seeks to extend recent work on the ways in which the ideas of race and relatedness are being shaped by recent accounts of human genetic variation and evolutionary history within human population genetics by exploring the gendered and sexual imaginaries of this field. At the same time, it seeks to extend feminist geographical work on social reproduction by attending to the figuring of reproduction itself. The article focuses on accounts of the geographies of Y-chromosome variation and the differences between the geographies of Y-chromosome variation and mitochondrial variation, and explores the degree to which this work is underpinned by, and potentially reinforces, particular accounts of gender, sex and the reproductive strategies of women and men. More specifically, I argue that despite some differences between the perspectives of those involved, much of this work deploys a model of male sexual competition that is at the heart of claims about the universal and determined fundamentals of reproduction, and indeed all social life, within evolutionary psychology. Gendered geographies of human genetic variation are being used as evidence for hitherto asserted but unproven claims about human nature. This article is a critical feminist engagement with the renaturalisations of culture within this strand of human population genetics.     

Feminist geographies in Norway from the turn of the millennium

Abstract

Based on an overview of feminist and gender research over two decades, this article reflects on feminist geographies in Norway within a wider political and social context. We identify eight broad, partly overlapping themes of feminist geography: rurality; development policies and practices; entrepreneurship and economic change; migration and mobility; children and youth; sexuality and health; landscape and place; and emotions and autobiography. We find that much of the research has been collaborative, interdisciplinary, multicultural, and transnational. Feminist geographies in Norway are characterized by increasing emphasis on multiple realities and situatedness, and focus on rights and power relations among men and women in all spheres of society, including academia. Yet the gender dimension has tended to focus on geographies of women, with few studies of masculinity. Inspired in part through feminist critiques of research practices in social sciences, a recent development has been autobiographical approaches examining the significance of personal lives and emotions for the research process. We conclude that feminist geographies in Norway are diverse, empirically and contextually informed, and have become embedded within several fields of human geography.     

Intersectional feminist and queer geographies: a view from ‘down-under’

Despite rapid growth of geographies of genders and sexualities over the past decade, there is still a great deal of homophobia, transphobia, and heterosexism within academic knowledges. A queer and feminist intersectional approach is one way to highlight gendered absences, institutionalized homophobia and transphobia. To understand the diversity of genders and sexualities, feminist and queer geographers must continue to talk about, for example, genders (beyond binaries), sex, sexualities, bodies, ethnicities, indigeneity, race, power, spaces and places. It is vitally important to understand the way that genders and sexualities intermingle in community group spaces, rural spaces, and within indigenous spaces in order to push the boundaries of what feminist and queer geographers understand to be relevant sites of queer intersectionality. Reflecting on the production of queer and feminist geographical knowledges ‘down-under’ may prompt others to consider the way place matters to intersectional feminist and queer geographies.     

Celebrating 30 years of feminist geographies in the German-speaking countries Germany,Switzerland* and Austria

Abstract

In this paper, we present the development of feminist geographies in the three German-speaking countries Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Since the emergence of feminist approaches in German-speaking geography in the 1980s, feminist geographers situated in these countries have worked closely together within the context of the Working Group “Geography and Gender”. The overview highlights cornerstones of the development of feminist geographies in Germany, Austria and Switzerland such as the Feminist Geography Newsletter (Feministisches GeoRundMail), the Doreen Massey Reading Weekends, the feminist geography student meetings (Feministisches Geograph_innentreffen) and the current DFG-research network “Feminist Geographies of the New Materialism”. By doing so, we try to appreciate both the historical development of feminist geographies and the current situation in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Highlighting both informal and institutionalized pillars of feminist geographies in these countries, we show how feminist geographies have moved from a marginalized position towards a vibrant field that gains more and more attention within the German-speaking geography community as a whole.     

Rethinking the place of emotions in the field through social laboratories

The insights of feminist science and technology studies (STS) into the constructed and situated nature of knowledge have proved crucial to informing feminist geography. Since the rise of emotional geographies, feminist methodologies no longer simply reflect on questions of positionality, partiality, and power relations, but also on the role of emotions in the field. In this article, we argue that a feminist STS perspective has much to offer when thinking about the way emotions are engineered, controlled, and negotiated in research processes. Our engagement with what we call ‘social laboratories’ – i.e., spaces in everyday life where (experimental) research is conducted with human beings – advances debates in feminist geography, as these laboratories crystallize the emotional entanglements feminists encounter in the field. Looking at economic experiments in Ghana and fertility clinics in Mexico, we discuss the difficulties of doing feminist fieldwork in these experimental research spaces. We argue that the constant negotiation of emotions and ethics is crucial to access, assess, and do fieldwork in research settings that do not adhere to feminist ideals, but nevertheless have gendered effects on women's and men's lives. Rethinking ‘the place of emotions in research’ (Bondi 2005, in Emotional Geographies, edited by Joyce Davidson, Liz Bondi, and Mick Smith, 231–246, Aldershot: Ashgate) through social laboratories forges instructive links across feminist/emotional geographies and social studies of science.     

Recognizing and undisciplining feminist geography in the Caribbean

Abstract

The aim of this piece is to provide an overview of the state of feminist geography in the Anglo-Caribbean. In doing so via the metaphor of a gayap, we provide a précis of work that has been completed by feminist geographers across the region; offer an analysis of the historical, structural, and institutional obstacles of why it is not more robust; and propose that it can be seen across the region via an undisciplined and anti-orthodox standpoint. In addition, we review how Caribbean feminist scholarship and praxis contributes to feminist geographies through analyses of how people in the region, particularly women, are contesting, negotiating, disrupting, and responding to prevailing heteropatriarchal ideologies across differing social contexts and political arrangements within the Caribbean.     

Violence on bodies: Space,social reproduction and intersectionality

Abstract

Social categories such as gender, race, ethnicity, caste, and class have been analyzed by feminist geographers, who collectively argue that as individuals we experience and live the effects of these social categories simultaneously. Violence as a result of living these categories is not specific to certain spaces or contexts. Nor can violence be imagined as only social – it is also political, economic and institutional. Silvia Federici’s work can assist feminist geographers in understanding how this violence plays out in various contexts. Federici's detailed archival searches and empirical analyses of bodies and reproduction show parallels with contemporary forms of direct and structural violence of the state, patriarchy, and capitalism through unequal power relations and unequal life chances. Refining the scarce scholarly acknowledgement of women (and men) who are exploitable or labeled as irrational and vulnerable, and of human and non-human populations that have been relegated to the realm of surplus and expendable bodies – explain how the organization of capital facilitates and, indeed, relies on violence. In support of this argument, the authors in this collection seek pathways within Federici’s ground-breaking works Caliban and the Witch and Revolution at Point Zero, which could enrich existing works in the discipline. The contributors reflect on how these particular books have been pivotal to feminist thought generally and their own research, analysis, and pedagogical practice specifically. Through their disparate studies the contributors have intertwined the geographies of structural, institutional, and/or state-sponsored violence with themes arising in Federici’s work.     

Emplacing Current Trends in Feminist Historical Geography

In this article, the authors assess some of the major trends within anglophonic feminist historical geography appearing in the decade since Rose & Ogborn called for the development of an explicitly feminist approach to the subfield. In examining the 'geography' of feminist historical geographies, three main categories of scholarship are evident: a 'new' historical geography of North America, portions of which are informed by feminist theories and methods; a British school of feminist historical geography with a focus on the discipline of geography, geographical knowledges and colonialism/imperialism; and feminist historical geography interventions in cultural politics of space and place. A diversity of feminist methods and epistemologies appears across the literature. In an attempt to avoid a reading of these trends as better or worse approximations of historical 'progress', the authors conceptualize them as emplaced within a number of specific social and spatial contexts. Most recent work is concerned with the production of gender differences as they are worked through economic, political, cultural and sexual differences in the creation of past geographies. The continued need simply to write women into historical narratives and geographies, however, is also evident. The work of feminist historical geography questions and challenges geography's masculinist historical record.     

Feminist historical geographies: doing and being

Abstract

As part of GPC’s 25-year anniversary celebrations, this article explores possibilities and prospects for feminist historical geographies and geographers. Here I define feminist historical geography as scholarship which asks geographical questions of historical material and is informed by feminist theories, approaches and methodologies. Its empirical subject matter is necessarily expansive and diverse, but often has a particular focus on the lives of women and other marginalized groups, and on the ways gender and space were co-constituted. This essay interrogates recent developments within this broad terrain, specifically articles and books published in the period from around 2000 onwards and either appearing in geography journals or written by those self-identifying as geographers. The main exception is work by historians and archaeologists interested in gender, space and place, which is cited here in an attempt to open up new research directions for feminist historical geographers. In what follows, we shuttle across spaces and between scales, roaming from the sites of empire to the intimate geographies of the home, from landscapes and buildings to personal possessions like clothes and letters. Doing so is a deliberate act intended both to demonstrate the liveliness of feminist historical geographies broadly conceived and to counter hierarchical readings of space, society and history with their inherent danger of privileging the public over the private, and the exceptional over the everyday and mundane.     

Introduction: young people,gender and intersectionality

There are close connections between feminist geographies and young people's geographies with their shared interests in challenging inequality, questioning power relations and in conducting ethically sensitive and nuanced research. The introduction to this themed section synthesises some of the key developments in youth geographies and the contributions that feminist geographers have made to this field. Following this, we explore how the articles in this themed section are valuable additions to the evolving body of work on youth, gender and intersectionality.     

Living with patriarchy and poverty: women's agency and the spatialities of gender relations in Afghanistan

This article examines the spatialities of gender relations and women's oppression in urban Afghanistan under conditions of poverty and strict patriarchy. Using empirical data from biographical interviews with Afghan women from urban households in Kabul, Herat, and Jalalabad, the article questions how gender as social relation and gender as difference is lived and experienced among the urban poor in Afghanistan. Looking at urban livelihoods through the lens of feminist geography helps to better understand the gendered spaces of home and the outside world, of households as sites of security and violence, and of urban contexts and ethnic affiliations. The approach allows for reflection on women's subjectivities and their own understandings of gender inequality and injustice. Examining the gendered geographies in urban Afghanistan shows how social difference is lived under conditions of patriarchy and poverty and how women's agency contributes to the livelihoods of their households.     

Women's,gender and feminist studies in Portugal: researchers’ resilience vs institutional resistance

Abstract

This paper presents an overview of Women's, Gender and Feminist Studies in Portugal, focusing on gender and feminist geographies. Although there is a solid, diversified and mature corpus of feminist reflection in the Portuguese academia, there is a lack of institutional recognition with very few Women's, Gender and Feminist Studies formally organized in curricula or academic degrees. There have been, and still are, many resistances to a formal recognition of Women's, Gender and Feminist Studies as a scientific domain and Portugal is lagging behind in this area. The first and only scientific research centre entirely dedicated to Gender Studies was only created in 2012. The long period of dictatorship that Portugal endured for over 40?years in the past century, has had a major influence in the Portuguese society, preventing social movements, as the second wave feminism, to foster social change in the academia. The current debates at the present time in Portugal concern the widespread use of the concept of gender without an effective epistemological and methodological paradigm shift, and some researchers question the erasure of the word ‘women’ that is being almost always replaced by the word ‘gender’. In this area of study, the intersections of activism and academia in Portugal are noteworthy, and there is a positive contamination that comes through the contact with the feminist empowering movements. The Portuguese researchers’ resilience has proven to overcome the lack of support, both institutional and financial, making it possible to advance Women's, Gender and Feminist Studies.     

Student geographies and homemaking: personal belonging(s) and identities

Studies of the ‘geographies of students’ have become increasingly prevalent across the social sciences and are particularly concerned with the predilection for young UK University undergraduates to be mobile in their institutional choice. A more recent focus within this work has been upon student identities, with attention given to how the spaces to which students move and in which they settle can have both positive and negative consequences for the evolution of the student identity, and how such identities are often framed within the context of social activities; learning environments; friendship networks; or other sociocultural factors. This paper contributes to these discussions by considering the role of student accommodation – a site which often remains on the periphery of discussions of student identities – in offering students opportunities to construct, adapt and manage their student identities. This adds to the important contemporary geographies of student accommodation, which are currently debating, among others, purpose-built student accommodation and the broad housing ‘careers’ and strategies of students. In contrast, this paper explores the micro-geographies of student accommodation (and more specifically, the bedroom) to highlight its value in providing young, mobile students with an anchor within which they can draw together their learner, social and domestic dispositions into one geographical location.     

Getting comfortable to feel at home: clothing practices of black muslim women in Britain

This article explores the role of comfort as an affective encounter across bodies, objects (namely clothing) and spaces. I focus on how bodies that are marked as strange and a source of society’s discomfort negotiate this positioning through the presentation of one’s body. What does it mean for these bodies to be comfortable or uncomfortable? This question is answered through work done with Black Muslim women in Britain. By exploring how comfort is felt in relation to racially marked bodies, this article develops work on emotional geographies. Comfort is understood as both an emotional product and process that changes as bodies move across different spaces. In noting this movement, I also explore how boundaries around the body (enacted through e.g. the multi-dimensional hijab) presents a particular form of territorialisation that facilitates comfort as we present our bodies across different spaces. These boundaries can be both a source of comfort and discomfort through their positioning as deviant from social norms. In understanding the different roles of boundaries, I explore the social processes that construct comfort (or discomfort) as we move through different spaces. This is intertwined with furthering work on Muslim geographies by challenging the overwhelming focus placed on ‘public’ facing garments like the headscarf and abaya. Such a focus limits an understanding of the fluidity of Black Muslim women’s identities, and how these changes in our clothing practices affect and are affected by the relationships built across spaces.     

Songs of Sisterhood: Feminist Political Practice between Empire and Internationalism 1910–20

This article seeks to understand how feminist thought and practice in the early twentieth century intersected with emergent movements against British imperialism. By tracing relations between Indian, Irish and British feminists, it delineates the diverse ways in which women, across imperial spaces, adopted emergent languages of internationalism and female fraternity to further their political ambitions. This article moves beyond the geographical boundaries of colony and metropole to uncover a much wider circulation of ideas, practices and solidarities amongst feminist networks in the early twentieth century. Collectively, the stories presented in this article convey multiple feminist political imaginaries in an era defined at once by imperial crisis and the rise of internationalism. They show that women's choices of political association in the autumn of empire were determined by their ideological affinity, political practice and social class rather than their country of origin or ethnic identity alone.