Developing geographies of intersectionality with Relief Maps: reflections from youth research in Manresa,Catalonia

The conceptualisation of intersectionality has been one of the most important contributions to feminism, as it allows for theorisation about multiple and intersecting oppressions. This contributes to a more complex and dynamic understanding of social relations and power structures, and it acknowledges the differences between categories, but it has no methodological direction. I try to take this debate a step forward, by developing what I have called Relief Maps: a new way of collecting, analysing and displaying intersectional data. I consider Relief Maps to be a sound tool for studying the Geographies of Intersectionality, as they show the relationship between three dimensions: power structures (the social), lived experience (the psychological) and places (the geographical). By showing some examples of them, I demonstrate how Relief Maps make empirical work on intersectionality possible and how they are able to take into account both privilege and oppression without using categories in a fixed and rigid way. Taking the spatial dimension as a central part of the analysis, they show how the relationship between power structures varies depending on places and also illustrate how subject formations are done and undone through everyday spaces. Relief Maps aim to take the potentialities of intersectionality and minimise its limitations: they intend to disrupt homogeneous categories while pointing towards the material consequences of oppression. Finally, Relief Maps also provide some insights on intersectionality itself, as they help to think about how power structures relate to each other and the role that experience and place play in these processes.     

Desocializing space: the decline of the public realm in Western Sydney1

This paper addresses the public realm and considers its contemporary context in an important Australian region, Western Sydney. Although problematized by social theory in recent years, my base position is the Habermasian premise that a public realm is critical to the healthy functioning of liberal democracies, such as Australia. This paper has three specific aims. First, I note the erosion of the public realm in an important Australian region, Western Sydney, and the obfuscation of its presence and role by new institutional arrangements emerging principally but not exclusively from federal policy settings. I then consider the consequences of this ‘desocialization of space’ for democracy and equity in a socially and culturally diverse urban region such as Western Sydney.

Désocialiser l'espace: le déclin de la sphère publique dans le Western Sydney

espace public, Western Sydney, néolibéralisme

Le présent article s'intéresse à la question de la sphère publique et examine sa condition actuelle à Western Sydney, une région australienne d'une importance capitale. Bien que la théorie sociale l'a récemment remise en cause, je m'appuie sur la prémisse d'Habermas selon laquelle la sphère publique est essentielle pour le bon fonctionnement des démocraties libérales comme celle qui prévaut en Australie. Les trois principaux buts de cet article sont de faire état de l'érosion de la sphère publique dans une des plus importantes régions australiennes qu'est Western Sydney. Je souligne à quel point sa présence et son rôle sont embrouillés par de nouveaux arrangements institutionnels qui naissent surtout mais pas uniquement grâce aux instances politiques fédérales. J'aborde ensuite les conséquences qu'entraînent la «désocialisation de l'espace» pour la démocratie et l'équité dans la vaste mosaïque socioculturelle urbaine de Western Sydney.

La desocialización del espacio: la disminución del terreno público en el oeste de Sydney

espacio público, el oeste de Sydney, el neo-liberalismo

Este papel trata el terreno público y considera su contexto contemporáneo en una región importante de Australia, el oeste de Sydney. Aunque la teoría social lo ha problematizado en recientes años, yo me baso en la premisa de Habermas de que un terreno público es esencial al buen funcionamiento de las democracias liberales, como la de Australia. Este papel tiene tres objetivos específicos. Primero, hablo de la erosión del terreno público en una región importante de Australia, el oeste de Sydney, y de la ofuscación de su presencia y de su papel, causada por nuevos arreglos institucionales que han surgido principalmente, pero no exclusivamente, de la política federal. Luego, considero las consecuencias para la democracia y la igualdad de esta ‘desocialización de espacio’ en una región urbana donde hay gran diversidad cultural y social, como el oeste de Sydney.     

Art as a diagnostic: assessing social and political transformation through public art in Cairo,Egypt

Since January 2011, Egypt has undergone several waves of political upheaval in order to craft a new form of governance. Central to this process has been the role of art. This article argues that artistic interventions that engage with the idea of public space and that take place in the public space of the city engender interactions that illuminate the complexities and difficulties currently facing Egyptian society. More so than serving as documentation of what has taken place or as acts of protest, public art can serve as a diagnostic of issues that simmer underneath the surface of national politics. Based on interviews, focus groups, and observations conducted between 2011 and 2013 with Cairo-based artists and arts advocates, the paper explores the way in which public art has signaled tensions regarding class, gender and increasing political polarization. By exploring the relationship between art, artists and urban space, this paper extends analyses on political transitions to take account of the effects produced by forms of artistic expression within the public sphere.     

Sharing public space across difference: attunement and the contested burdens of choreographing encounter

This paper concerns how claims to public space are negotiated between differently embodied subjects, and how forms of bodily articulation shape capacities for sharing space. Drawing on a study of outdoor access practices, entailing mobile video ethnographies with walkers and cyclists, it explores the corporeal mechanisms through which the entitlements of differently mobile subjects are asserted, resisted, circumscribed or accepted in the time-spaces of bodily encounter. How the signalling of ‘responsible’ and ‘irresponsible’ conduct influences how bodies are allowed to move in relation to other bodies is the focus. Mobilisations of speed, affective and sensory attunement, and techniques of bodily articulation, were found to be a key in the disciplining of cycling and walking bodies. This paper highlights the central role of attunement to, and concession of, hybrid subjectivity in the choreography of encounters, and, moreover, how related burdens of orchestrating coexistence are shared and struggled over amongst different publics. It demonstrates that whilst greater attunement can enable differently mobile subjects to develop a reciprocal choreography, expectations of such attunement can also undermine the ability to share space if not met. This paper thus raises the dilemma of when to accept or extend the limits of attunement in facilitating coexistence in public space.     

Young women and public leisure spaces in contemporary Beijing: recreating (with) gender,tradition, and place

Feminist geographers and leisure scholars have long argued that one critical way to understand gendered norms and expectations is through examining women's access to and experiences of leisure activities. Set in the context of the rapid economic, political, and social changes that have taken place in Beijing over the past half century, this article draws on in-depth interviews and extensive participant observation to explore the role of newly available public leisure spaces in the lives and leisure of young women in Beijing, in particular by examining the way that these spaces provide an opportunity for the negotiation of new gender norms and identities. Through an analysis of the interaction of gender norms and practices with women's use of and behavior in public leisure spaces, we argue that women's behavior in public leisure spaces in contemporary Beijing remains strongly circumscribed by gendered norms. Rather than their presence itself constituting a challenge to gender expectations, in many cases their leisure behavior and experiences serve to reinforce the social norms that masculinize public leisure spaces. In spite of this, however, the findings of this research suggest that public leisure spaces may, in some cases, provide women with a place from which to challenge gender norms.     

Central Park against the streets: the enclosure of public space cultures in mid-nineteenth century New York

The industrialization of New York and its rise to economic dominance brought about a major restructuring of street life and unleashed an array of contradictory everyday urban cultures. In a still under-regulated environment, the commoning of public space became a key sociospatial capital that helped the working classes resolve their reproduction in a way the elite found disturbing and far removed from the civic order they were trying to instil. This article draws on recent theorizations of the commons/enclosure dialectic to develop a comparative analysis of the cultures of public space use vis-à-vis the practices prescribed by Central Park in its attempt to reform everyday spatialities. The park is understood here as an early episode in the project of imposing new social relations through the enclosure of public conduct—a first effort to tame the urban commons and prevent the subaltern appropriation of public space. Following a preliminary discussion of the economic and social determinants and configuration of the material cultures of public space use in Manhattan, the article studies the park's strategies as a special type of enclosure, consisting not of the usurping of common land for private profit but of the mobilization of public space to shift behaviors from one regime of publicity to another.     

‘Time-twisted space’: an exploration of the synaesthetic continuum through the work of Vladimir Nabokov

ABSTRACT

The synaesthetic author Vladimir Nabokov undertakes extensive consideration of the relationship between time and space, and its manifestation in human perception, throughout his fictional and autobiographical writing. The following dissertation considers this in the light time–space synaesthesia, a neurological phenomenon where time is visualized in a spatial form often external to the subject’s body. Using the idea that synaesthesia exists on a continuum alongside common constructs integral to cognitive perception such as cross-modality and metaphor, these three will be explored in detail in Nabokov’s work through a multidisciplinary lens incorporating literature, cognitive science, philosophy and anthropology.     

Girls on film: Affective politics and the creation of an intimate anti-trafficking public in Singapore through film screenings

The interstices between film and politics occupy a prominent place in recent scholarship in political geography and cognate disciplines, focusing on the ways film establishes relations between viewers and characters. Such processes often utilise affective referents to create ‘intimate publics’. This paper focuses on the relations human trafficking films establish between ‘victims’, viewers and anti-trafficking stakeholders in creating an intimate anti-trafficking public in Singapore. I argue that the third world girl is rendered a moral object of sympathy both through trafficking film and performances by anti-trafficking stakeholders in the cinema. However, in comparison to both film viewers and anti-trafficking stakeholders she is cast as muted and lacking agency. Intimate anti-trafficking publics can emerge through the harnessing of negative emotions that, in this case, privilege the plight- but not the agency – of the female child trafficking victim and are inculcated through film storylines and cinematic performances.