Doing Archaeology as a Feminist: Introduction

Gender research archaeology has made significant contributions, but its dissociation from the resources of feminist scholarship and feminist activism is a significantly limiting factor in its development. The essays that make up this special issue illustrate what is to be gained by making systematic use of these resources. Their distinctively feminist contributions are characterized in terms of the recommendations for “doing science as a feminist” that have taken shape in the context of the long running “feminist method debate” in the social sciences.     

Feminist geography in Ecuador

Abstract

Latin American feminist geography exists in historically strong academic centers in the region, such as Brazil, Mexico and Argentina with an incipient tradition in Colombia, Chile and now Ecuador. In countries like Ecuador, where institutionalized human geography perspectives are lacking, the rise of feminist geography provides the field with important reflections regarding the flow of knowledge and practice. This paper addresses two ways in which feminist geography has entered Ecuadorian academia and activist-research circles. The first is through the work of the Critical Geography Collective of Ecuador and the second, through an incipient interest in feminist geography from different universities.     

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.     

Informal sovereignties and multiple Muslim feminisms: Feminist geo-legality in Sri Lanka

This paper argues that Muslim feminisms emerge as spatially differentiated strategies and tactics to accommodate local varieties of Muslim “informal sovereignties”. These informal sovereignties are exercised by Muslim judges, scholars and lawyers regulating Muslim marriages and divorces, based on diverse readings of the Muslim Personal Law and situated in the context of different forms of violence, such as Islamophobia and ethno-religious communalism. Comparing two districts in Sri Lanka - Puttalam and Batticaloa - the paper shows how Muslim feminist activists navigate spatially diverse forms of informal sovereignties exercised by Muslim movements and institutions, in response to locally specific political, social and economic challenges that Muslims face in the aftermath of Sri Lanka's decades-long civil war. The struggles over implementing and reforming the Muslim Marriage and Divorce Act (MMDA), the Muslim Personal Law in Sri Lanka, focus on Muslim women's bodies and spaces as main sites of politics. The paper thereby contributes to debates in feminist geo-legality and Muslim femininity by pointing to the need to understand the contextuality of Muslim Personal Law within Sri Lanka's varieties of lived Islam.     

Feminist Perspectives on the Internationalization of The State

Abstract: The state is often described in transition: public spaces are rearranged by private companies, national social welfare is being privatized to some extent, and supranational institutions have more influence on national policies. “A view from the kitchen” (Diane Elson) is helpful for understanding the changing dynamics of states and societies because different women are affected by these policies in different and often ambiguous ways: women of the globalized South migrate to the North, creating global care chains, while women in Western industrialized countries are confronted with changing welfare regimes, leaving mainly highly educated women to profit from this situation. This article contributes to feminist debates on economic globalization and state internationalization. Our feminist materialist perspective allows a critical view on dominance and power in “governance”. Thus, the article adds to feminist debates on globalization from the perspective of state transformation and to debates on governance from the perspective of state transformation grounded in gendered social relations.     

Adventures in happy land

Abstract

Interpretation proved to be a key to the successful outcome of three overseas aid projects in Asia and the Pacific. In Vanuatu, interpretation games were used to interest and involve local villagers in writing a management plan to protected a recently protected Pacific Kauri (Agathis macrophylla.) forest. The rapid establishment of national parks in Indonesia required staff to be trained in a variety of disciplines including interpretation. Park interpretation manuals were also written. Small scale tourism ventures in Fiji, where locals are the interpreters, are part of a management plan to protect a private forest park forest from logging.     

Intersectionality in feminist geographies

This paper introduces a special themed section that arose from an International Conference on Feminist Geographies and Intersectionality: Places, Identities and Knowledges, held in 2016 at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Six scholars of Canada, France, Greece, New Zealand, United Kingdom and United States seek to deal in five short papers with the intersectional dynamics of power structures and the central role of place within them. Here we situate the developments of intersectionality in feminist geographies in relation to the role of place and space in constituting intersectional relations, the relevance of context for the development of intersectionality and the use of different methodologies for research on it.     

Reframing autonomy in political geography: A feminist geopolitics of autonomous resistance

Autonomy is often universally defined and undertheorized, making invisible ways of knowing and understanding autonomy that are embodied and practiced. Alternate theorizations have drawn on anti-capitalist and alter-globalization movements and discourses to provide accounts of struggles for autonomy as they relate to self-determination, identity politics, and oppositional action, however, in many cases these accounts are still grounded in universal understandings. In this paper I use a feminist geopolitical perspective to re-read autonomy for difference within, alongside and outside of contemporary political geographies of autonomy. Empirical work in self-declared autonomous communities in Chiapas, Mexico, demonstrates that current political geographies of autonomy do not sufficiently explain the ongoing struggle for indigenous farmers in the highlands. In the article, I examine how autonomy is understood and practiced by subsistence corn and coffee farmers who have declared themselves autonomous and in resistance. I argue that in the case of farmers in resistance, autonomy is not just a political act, but also an embodied practice deployed through agricultural production and consumption. A feminist geopolitics assists with reframing autonomy and identifying different ways that it is understood and practiced. In examining the practices that farmers view as contributing to autonomy, different understandings and ways of knowing autonomy emerge.     

Feminist research in online spaces

The Internet is growing in popularity as a research site and is often framed as the next frontier in human subjects research. The opportunities the Internet provides for political organizing, making personal experiences more public, and creating spaces for a variety of voices makes it particularly relevant to feminist geographers and researchers such as ourselves. However, many qualitative researchers approach online research as though the Internet simply archives an abundance of data that is ‘there for the taking.’ Being trained in feminist research methods, we took issue with this approach, yet also encountered challenges when trying to apply feminist practices and ethical perspectives to online research environments. We explore these challenges through a collaborative reflection on our own independent online research experiences. Three themes emerge: (1) interpreting politics and visibility in online spaces, (2) researcher positionality across virtual and material study sites, and (3) subjectivity and power in online research ethics. Reflecting on these themes, we argue that the insights of feminist ethics and a feminist geographical lens are crucial for bringing much-needed reflexivity and reciprocity into online research. Simultaneously, online research opens up exciting new ways of conceptualizing central ideas within feminist research ethics, including politicization, positionality, and power.     

Gender and Feminist Geography in Colombia

Abstract

The article explains how gender and feminist geography as a transversal analytical category to geography have been introduced recently in Colombia. At the beginning of the XXI century, in the geography department of Universidad Nacional de Colombia, the first undergraduate thesis to focus on the relationship between gender and processes of social construction of space was presented. Since then, the contributions of geographers and researchers from a feminist geographic perspective have contributed to the feminist geographical debates from their own trajectories. The contemporary geographical landscape in Colombia is linked with the transversal debates on feminisms and gender in social sciences, social movements and Latin-American feminisms. This networks and connections allows today a diversity of themes from the deconstruction of hegemonic spatial representations in different contexts, gender and conflicts related to territory and body, to some new approaches to technologies and virtual social interactions and their connotation in the construction of non-normative spatialities.     

Feminist and gender geographies in Ireland

Abstract

This report discusses feminist and gender geographies in Ireland. We first focus on the ways in which gender constructs Irish geographies, updating numbers of women in academic positions across Ireland. This shows that women are increasingly in secure positions, but remain under-represented in more senior positions. We then turn to research. We discuss how femininities and women, and masculinities and men, have been addressed in Irish geographies. The focus on femininities and women is crucial given recent strides towards gender and reproductive justice. We then briefly summarise sexualities work. The report concludes by arguing that Ireland not only has vibrant gender/feminist geographical scholarship, it also has significant potential for emerging research and developing new theorisations and research agendas.     

Female Representation in the Discipline of Geography

This report updates earlier findings of women's progress in the discipline of geography from a feminist perspective. A variety of data sources are used in the analysis, including survey data from doctorate-granting US geography departments. Results reveal that there has been progress; however, significant inequity remains in student and faculty representation, particularly in the upper levels of the discipline.     

Animal Bodies and Ontological Discourse in the Greek Neolithic

The present article tries to assess the ways that animal bodies were represented in the Neolithic of Northern Greece. Contending that representations always have a material presence (be they spoken, depicted or anything else), an attempt is made to sort out how the specificity of this presence constitutes a frame of reference for the deployment of social action. Animal representations seem to be particularly related with certain materials, especially clay, and certain objects, mostly clay vessels. It is suggested that these objects allow animals to be incorporated in social action in a very specific manner, one that is further defined by the contexts of their use.     

Still a long way to go: gender and feminist geographies in France

Abstract

After recalling some specific elements of the French gender debate, such as French feminism, which threatens the war of the sexes and the fear of indifference, this article distinguishes three moments in the geography of gender in France. The first moment forgotten is the emergence of research on women’s work and urban mobility from a Marxist and feminist materialist perspective. The second, at odds with the first, is distinguished by an approach that is more cultural than social, an inspiration that borrows from the linguistic shift and postmodernism, and that may have its references among the English-speaking authors of radical geography and feminist geography. The last is a moment of consolidation and diversification of themes (masculinities, sexualities, the body) and approaches (queer geography, black feminism, intersectionality). The article then highlights two challenges. The first is to sustain gender by consolidating achievements, developing gender education and promoting gender mainstreaming in all aspects of research. The second is to create common ground and develop solidarity in a context of profound transformations in higher education and research.     

The state comes home: Radiation and in-situ dispossession in Canada

In 1975 it was discovered that the small Ontario community of Port Hope was widely contaminated with radioactive waste from the local uranium refinery, including hundreds of homes. Through close analysis of state archives, regulatory documents, media, and key informant interviews, I analyze how the radioactive contamination of the home constitutes an in-situ dispossession, a material, corporeal and psychosocial dislocation in everyday life. In so doing, I reveal discrepancies between internal state positions and those publically conveyed, while showing how the categories of normal and abnormal are malleable social constructs and geopolitical tools of state power. By investigating the contamination of Port Hope through the lens of everyday life, I aim to add to critical geographies of home while contributing to scholarship demonstrating the multi-scalar interconnectedness of body, home, and nation-state.     

Avoiding the “F” word: feminist geography in Iran

Abstract

Little attention has been given to how feminist geography is defined, applied, and taught in non-Anglophone countries, especially in Muslim majority societies where Women’s Rights are quite different from the western world. The case of Iran among other Middle Eastern countries becomes even more isolated due to the several political, linguistic, and cultural limitations opposed on Iranian academics and international collaborations after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Women make half of Iran’s 80 million population, 63% of university graduates, almost half of informal workers, 30% of Iranian professors, 13% of high level management position holders, and under 5% of the Islamic Majlis (Iran’s Parliament). However, feminist geography, the sub-discipline that has been traditionally dedicated to the inclusion of gender as an analytical lens within Geography, is not a recognized field at any departments in Iran. This essay aims to present the current status of feminist geographic research and teaching at selected Iranian Universities. My goal is to offer a better understanding of how the local social and political context affect what constitute feminist geographic work and how geographers navigate the political and hierarchal university systems to engage in gender studies. Through informal interviews via emails and Skype with several Iranian geographers, I illustrate why Iranian geographers often avoid using “feminist” terminology in recognizing their work, even though their work is feminist.     

Announcing: The Janice Monk Lecture in Feminist Geography

In this brief announcement we have the pleasure of introducing the inaugural Janice Monk Lecture in Feminist Geography. The lecture will appear annually in the pages of Gender, Place and Culture. The first lecture, printed here, is by Ruth Fincher of the University of Melbourne. Her article is preceded by four papers that pay tribute to Jan Monk's academic achievements and her dedication to encouraging and guiding the careers of emerging scholars around the world.     

Marxist/Feminist Models in the New Guinea Highlands

ABSTRACT The widespread existence of men's houses in Highland New Guinea raises the question as to the existence of the nuclear family in this area. We know that in some cases (e.g. the ‘Sambiah’) a married couple co‐reside, despite the fear of the woman's alleged pollution. In others there may be symbolic isolation of the nuclear family, e.g. by subclassification in kin terminology. The matter is especially important in current kinship studies, wherein Marxist and ‘radical’ feminist models of sociality, which tend to see the nuclear family as a sort of Western aberration, abound.     

Gender geography in Japan: the trajectory,fruits of research and future challenges

Abstract

The indication by female geographers outside of Japan that, due to the original dearth of female geographers, a gender perspective had been missing from geography held true for Japan as well. In 1993, Yoshida was the first person to discuss the importance of a gender perspective in a Japanese journal of geography. Nearly 25 years have passed since its publication, and the aim of this paper is to investigate what developments have taken place in Japanese geography on gender research. As the accomplishments of feminist geography in English-speaking countries was merely ‘imported’ to Japan around 1990, there is no firm starting point of ‘feminist’ geography, which originated in women’s liberation movement of the 1970s, in the country. Rather, it can be said that Japanese geographers, regardless of sex, undertake gender geography, which does not limit a particular sex as the sole subject and/or object of research. The results of research on gender geography by men geographers began to appear from the year 2000. The use of life history method emerged as a trend in research since 2000. While there has been gradual progress in research on gender geography in Japan, the number of researchers are still by no means large. While Japanese geography has hitherto involved a one-way absorption of the fruits of overseas research on gender/feminist geographies, at least based on studies that have already accumulated in Japan, it is now necessary that Japanese study results also be communicated to overseas.