‘It shocks me,the place of women’: intersectionality and mining companies’ retrogradation of indigenous women in New Caledonia

Indigenous women’s social positionings are complex and dynamic, informed by culture and post-colonial politics; gender and ethnicity intersect with age, socio-economic status, and social hierarchies. This article uses an ethnographic study of Kanak women’s engagements with mining in New Caledonia, to examine three questions. First, how do indigenous women’s dynamic social positionings shape their possibilities for negotiation with and resistance to industry? Secondly, how do women’s possibilities for engagement in turn shape the wider community’s possibilities for negotiation with or resistance to industry? Finally, what is the companies’ role in shaping women’s possibilities for such engagement? I draw on the critical feminist concept of intersectionality, bringing this into conversation with concepts of symbolic and cultural violence and hegemony. Over time, women began to actively negotiate with and resist industrial projects, in line with growing gender equity in New Caledonia, but the mining companies referenced – and thus reinforced – women’s dominated social position as an excuse to sideline their concerns, a type of cultural violence I term ‘retrogradation.’ Thus, this article recognizes indigenous women’s increasing agency in engaging with external actors, such as industrial projects, yet also shows how outsiders can commit retrogradation to further marginalize young, rural, poor community women. I discuss how such marginalization limits options for the larger group. Finally, I point to a way out of oppression, through transformation of hegemonic ideologies.     

‘It’s a different time. It’s a different era. It’s a different place’: the Legacy of Vietnam and Contemporary Memoirs of the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan

Abstract

This article examines censorship of US journalists in World Wars I and II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and Persian Gulf War, and from war to war, trends in types of censored information. This article also answers whether any censorship has avoided bloodshed or been legitimate, and concludes by examining how, in any future US wars, the government or military could most legitimately ensure safe reporting.     

The ‘return to Europe’: intellectual debates on the global place of Czechoslovakia in the interwar period

In the East Central European context, the phrase ‘return to Europe’ has been used mainly in the period after 1989, referring to political, economic and social changes as well as mental relocations towards a ‘Western’ system. However, debates about the national whereabouts on a mental map – whether one was part of Eastern, Central or Western Europe – also abounded in the years following the founding of the nation-states after the First World War. Concentrating on Czech discourses on the national whereabouts both in a European and a global perspective in the years preceding and following the great upheaval of 1918, this article traces the changing Czech national identity, ranging from a self-perception as a ‘small nation’ in the Habsburg Empire to a European power with colonial ambitions after the foundation of the Czechoslovak republic, and finally to the acknowledgement in the 1930s that these ambitions could not be met. The study is based on sources ranging from Czech travelogues mainly to Africa and Asia, but also South America, to economic writings and colonial brochures, which offer a broad range of debates on the role and location of both the Czech nation and the Czechoslovak state both in Europe and the world.     

Stuck between ‘the rock’ and a hard place: rural crisis and re-imagining rural Newfoundland feminine subjectivities

There has been a growing body of research exploring the mobility experiences of rural youth as they migrate in search of work, education and leisure. In this article we contribute to this body of knowledge by examining the mobility experiences of young women (16–24 years) living on the southwest coast of Newfoundland, Canada. In contrast to dominant constructions of rural crisis that position out-of-the-way places as in decline, dying or dead, we argue that the young women in our study articulated complex, affective relations to place. In so doing, they negotiated localized histories, prevailing social relations, broader discursive constructions and embodied affective connections in forging their emplaced feminine subjectivities. We argue that foregrounding the complex and at times contradictory relationships that the young women articulated with their rural homes is an important step in prying open dominant albeit constraining constructions of the rural, thereby allowing for alternative and more inhabitable imaginings of out-of-the-way places.     

‘Hidden from view’?: an analysis of the integration of women’s history and women’s voices into Australia’s social history exhibitions

ABSTRACT

‘Women have mostly been left out of history’, boldly asserted Elizabeth Willis in her exhibition text for The Story of Victoria in 1985. Taking Willis’ statement as a starting point, this article aims to trace firstly how women have been rewritten into Australia’s social history exhibitions focusing on the use of voice as a strategy to do so, and secondly how these voices have changed historical master narratives – by allowing a shift from a big picture history to intimate and deeply personal stories that recast our understanding of the past in ways that are inclusive of gendered experiences. We investigate the use of the curatorial voice as reflected in Willis’ work, aligning it with the notion of curatorial activism, before exploring the changing curatorial practices that expanded the potential for an interpretive approach that incorporated the voice of the subjects themselves as a central component in the telling of history. We then analyse the impact of these strategies on traditional understandings of the past through three exhibitions developed by Melbourne Museum over 30 years: The Story of Victoria, a successor exhibition The Melbourne Story, and their Great War centenary exhibition, WWI: Love & Sorrow.     

Between historical myth and ‘Inythohistory’: the limits of Ottoman history

Abstract

‘“Myth and reality“’ as Professor Gombrich has reminded us in an historical context apparently far removed from that of Ottoman studies, are, as he has defined the phrase, perhaps only ‘a more genteel formulation for the blunter title of “lies and truth”’.     

Ambiguous heritage and the place of tourism: Bangkok’s Rattanakosin

ABSTRACT

Bangkok’s ancient city, Rattanakosin, is a major tourism focus displaying palaces, temples, exotic street life and frenetic waterfront. However, this ‘first-level’ heritage landscape makes little sense dissociated from that of an underlying ‘second level,’ comprising surviving remnants and lost memories of a vast array of other palaces whose occupants sustained the ancient Siamese state and accounted for a present culture of royal-elite-military hegemony. The first five Chakri kings had an immense multiplicity of sons who could serve as defenders of both realm and dynasty, later as royal ministers and administrators and as commercial collaborators. Multiple daughters were useful in buying loyalty of an often restive nobility. Royal fecundity, however, posed a real-estate challenge as sons had to be housed appropriately, calling for an extraordinary profusion of both large and small palaces. While most have now been swept away for other development, the remnants constitute a suppressed and uninterpreted cultural landscape that also intersects with multiple sites of both dark and hedonistic tourism. These intersections of first and second levels of heritage, then with both dark and hedonistic levels of heritage-identity, yield ambiguity, demanding interpretation.     

Risk and security on the Mexico-to-US migrant journey: women’s testimonios of violence

In this article, I argue that immigrants’ meanings, perceptions, and feelings of risk and (in)security are relational, multi-scalar, and contextual to lived experiences before, during, and after the migration journey. Paying attention to and analyzing Mexican women’s testimonios of intimate experiences uncovers why they migrate, how migration is experienced, and how migrant women frame their lives in the US. In this article, I compare how national and transnational policies of the War on Drugs in Mexico, which increased militarization of the US-Mexico border and created tougher immigration policies in the US (all in the name of US national security), form and transform intimate experiences of risk and (in)security across the migration journey for the same population. This comparative approach challenges and expands US-Mexico literature that does not read across experiences in the three sites of the migration journey.     

‘This is the place:’ putting the past on the map

All events noticed in the historical record necessarily occurred—if they occurred at all—in a specific time and place. Although perhaps more interested in the first of these, historians and others have also attempted to localize these events as far as possible. Using evidence from the written and oral sources, archaeology, aerial photography, and the like, they attempt to match present-day locales with this testimony. Inevitably problems arise. Sometimes these are due to the exiguity of the evidence, sometimes to the desire to match the past and the present in specific ways regardless of the evidence, and sometimes to a failure to appreciate that both historiography and topography are dynamic entities. In this paper I look at a few examples of the phenomenon that can serve as a microcosm of the issues that arise and suggest that they serve as a cautionary tale.     

On the edge: ‘Community’ and ‘sustainability’ on the Isle of Harris,Outer Hebrides

Although scholars have recently begun to question the manner in which nationalist temporal narratives are constructed, a similar analysis of nationalist spatial narratives has yet to occur. Instead, scholarship often remains trapped within the territorial boundaries of the nation‐state; the only ontologically given container of nationalism. In order to advance theoretical understanding of nationalism, however, it is imperative that geographers break this sedentary spell, by beginning to map the interstitial historical‐geographies of nation‐building in the context of globalisation. Through an analysis of the transnational development of Irish nationalism in the second half of the 19th century in particular, this paper will illuminate the important role played by the diaspora and other transnational actors in the development of Irish nationalism in Ireland.     

Exploring gender and fear retrospectively: stories of women’s fear during the ‘Yorkshire Ripper’ murders

The murder of 13 women in the North of England between 1975 and 1979 by Peter Sutcliffe who became known as the Yorkshire Ripper can be viewed as a significant criminal event due to the level of fear generated and the impact on local communities more generally. Drawing upon oral history interviews carried out with individuals living in Leeds at the time of the murders, this article explores women’s accounts of their fears from the time. This offers the opportunity to explore the gender/fear nexus from the unique perspective of a clearly defined object of fear situated within a specific spatial and historical setting. Findings revealed a range of anticipated fear-related emotions and practices which confirm popular ‘high-fear’ motifs; however, narrative analysis of interviews also highlighted more nuanced articulations of resistance and fearlessness based upon class, place and biographies of violence, as well as the way in which women drew upon fear/fearlessness in their overall construction of self. It is argued that using narrative approaches is a valuable means of uncovering the complexity of fear of crime and more specifically provides renewed insight onto women’s fear.     

‘Save our NHS’: activism,information-based expertise and the ‘new times’ of the 1980s

This article examines activism in defence of the National Health Service (NHS), which emerges in the 1960s to defend local hospitals from closure. From the mid-1980s, a new form of campaigning developed, which sought to protect the Service nationally. Tracing this campaigning illuminates, first, that small groups played a significant role in negotiating political change, and in contributing to cultural change which, in turn, has become politically powerful. Second, this demonstrates that the 1980s were ‘new times’ in welfare politics, as Thatcher’s changes fostered voluntary interest in information-led expertise, and a new vision of the NHS as a significant, much valued, national institution.     

‘It’s good but it’s not enough’: the relational geographies of social policy and youth mentoring interventions

Developing a critical analysis of the relational and situated practices of social policy, this paper draws on an evaluation of an early intervention project in Scotland (UK) where volunteer adult mentors supported young people ‘at risk’ of offending or antisocial behaviour. Contributing to ‘enlivened’ accounts of social practice, we explore how practices of mentoring developed through the co-presence of mentor and young person in the often transitory spaces of care which characterized the ‘diversionary activities’ approach in the project. We expand the notion of the relational in social practice beyond the care-recipient dyad to include wider networks of care (families, programme workers, social institutions). The paper explores how such social interventions might both be ‘good’ for the young people involved, and yet recognize critiques that more individualized models of intervention inevitably have limitations which make them ‘not enough’ to deal with structural inequalities and disadvantages. Acknowledging the impacts of neoliberalism, we argue critical attention to diverse situated relational practices points to the excessive nature of engagement in social policy and provides scope for transformative practice where young people’s geographies can be ‘upscaled’ to connect to the realms of social policy and practice.     

Tehran’s subway: gender,mobility, and the adaptation of the ‘proper’ Muslim woman

Tehran’s subway, the most affordable means of public transportation in the city, offers a useful context to study the relationship between women’s spatial mobility, the construction of self, and social production of space. This study focuses on Line 1 of Tehran’s subway that connects Tehran’s Bala Shahr (Northern Tehran) and Paeen Shahr (Southern Tehran) neighborhoods. This study draws upon 46 semi-structured interviews with women who were using subway Line 1 in the fall and winter of 2012. The average hour-long interviews examine how women’s emotional states as well as their perceptions of self and space vary as they traverse the city on Line 1. Representing a cultural as well as a spatial transect through the city, the perceptions of women on subway’s Line 1 convey the repudiation of the state’s attempt to promote a singular Muslim female identity. The findings suggest that similar to women’s perception of space, their gendered identities are constantly changing through the enhanced mobility that is facilitated by Tehran’s subway system. In contrast to what is presumed in the West, with a simple change in their hijab style or make-up, Iranian women innovatively negotiate contrasting spaces.     

‘Whore-friendly people’: heritage tourism,the media and the place of sex work in Butte,Montana

In 1997, the International Sex Workers Foundation for Arts, Culture and Education (ISWFACE) began the process of purchasing a historic parlor house brothel (the Dumas) in Butte, Montana to create a cultural center and museum. This business transaction drew national and international attention while Butte citizens questioned the presence of ISWFACE in their community. Using media accounts of the Dumas, I examine the framing of sex work and its place in the heritage tourism landscape of the American West. The case of the Dumas captures the complicated relationship between history, a community, tourism and the media on local as well as national/international levels. Sex work is part of the historical landscape of the American West, but is fading from view as communities actively shape their public image, erasing this element from their landscapes.     

‘The women's lobby’: Networks,coalition building and the women of middle Australia

The ‘women's lobby’ or the ‘powerful feminist lobby’ has been held responsible for a range of evils including the undermining of the traditional family, public expenditure on community services, social engineering and the imposition of ‘political correctness’. To what extent is there a ‘women's lobby’ working from inside or outside government to influence public decision‐mating? In this paper we explore this question, using data from a social network analysis of the Australian women's movement conducted in 1992–3.

Our findings are that there is a large, very loosely connected network of organisations engaging in advocacy on behalf of women. Density of ties is less than is found in a comparable study of the Canadian women's movement but there are more ties between non‐government groups and government agencies. Issues of organisational philosophy have inhibited the development of a ‘peak body’ for the non‐government women's movement and led to reliance on issue‐specific coalitions. Latterly, awareness of increasing fragmentation has led to a series of attempts to create more effective national networking.     

At the Intersection of Invisibilities: Canadian women,homelessness and health outside the ‘big city’

This article explores the concept of ‘invisibility’ in relation to women, homelessness and health in Ontario, Canada. While popular images of homelessness continue to focus on older men with mental illness and/or addictions issues, the proportion of women without secure, affordable shelter continues to rise. The stereotypes of homelessness also have a spatial component, with the incorrect assumption that housing affordability crises are concentrated in the centres of large cities. There is a third aspect to ‘invisibility’: the tendency of the traditional medical model of health care to ignore the interrelated physical and emotional impacts of stress among women who make up the majority of the ‘hidden homeless’. While an increasing number of women are facing loss of their accommodation in suburban, small city and rural settings, this social policy issue remains largely invisible outside the realm of local services struggling to meet women's needs. Interviews with women facing homelessness in Haliburton, Kingston and Oshawa, a rural area, small town and outer suburb, illustrate both experiences of invisibility and possibilities of integrated health services combating this personal and societal invisibility.

En la intersección de invisibilidades: mujeres canadienses, la falta de vivienda, y salud afuera de la «ciudad grande»

Éste artículo explora el concepto de «invisibilidad» en relación a mujeres, la falta de vivienda y salud en Ontario, Canadá. Mientras que representaciones común de la falta de vivienda continúan enfocar a hombres con enfermos mentales y/o problemas de adicción, las cifras de mujeres sin viviendas seguras y asequibles se acentúan. Los estereotipos de gente sin hogares también tienen un componente espacial, con la suposición equivocado que la crisis de la falta de viviendas asequibles es concentrado en los centros de ciudades grandes. Hay un tercer aspecto de la «invisibilidad»: la tendencia del modelo medico tradicional de la asistencia sanitaria a no tomar en cuenta los entrelazados impactos físicos y emocionales de estrés entre mujeres que constituyen la mayoría de «la gente escondida sin vivienda». Mientras que mujeres, en cifras cada vez mayor, se enfrentan a la perdida de vivienda en los suburbios, ciudades pequeñas, y áreas rurales, la cuestión política social queda principalmente invisible afuera del terreno de servicios locales que luchan para cumplir las necesidades de mujeres. Las entrevistas con mujeres que faltan viviendas en Haliburton (un área rural), Kingston (un pueblito), y Oshawa (un suburbio), demuestran no solo las experiencias de invisibilidad sino las posibilidades de integrar la asistencia de salud para combatir ésta invisibilidad personal y social.     

‘It’s a horrible,horrible feeling’: ghosting and the layered geographies of absent–presence in the prison visiting room

This paper advances geographies of absence by considering the multiscalar, overlapping, ambiguous and reciprocal absences inherent in incarceration, and the compound nature of the experiential and embodied absences characteristic of prison visiting. It progresses extant literatures by considering as absent a group which differs from those previously thus conceptualised, and by postulating absence even when whereabouts are known and co-presence is possible. Drawing on a major RCUK-funded study of the socio-spatial context of prison visitation in the U.K., it brings carceral geographies and geographies of absence into productive dialogue, demonstrating that attention to the felt presence of absence in the context of prison visiting is highly revealing of the poignant and bittersweet nature of family contact during incarceration.     

‘It’s fun in the legs’: children’s dwelling in garden trampolines

ABSTRACT

Physical activity is critical for children’s current and future health status. Understanding how children’s everyday outdoor environments encourage movement could help progress the health-environment debate. In response to this, and adopting a theoretical focus upon dwelling, skills and the haptic engagement, this qualitative case study explores 25 Danish 10–11-year-old children’s everyday use of garden trampolines. Three principal methods of data generation were employed in the fieldwork: photo-elicited interviews, group interviews and participant observation at children’s important outdoor places. Findings suggest that garden trampolines are important everyday outdoor places for children that – among other things – can spark a vigorous physical movement in abundantly meaningful and joyful ways. Further, findings indicate that trampolines are places of inexhaustible movement opportunities, which operate through haptic sensations, feelings of skilfulness and attunement, expansions of the range of motions available to the body, and interactions between children. Implications for future research and design are highlighted.