A feminist geographer in a strange land: building bridges through informal mentoring in Switzerland

Abstract

This article is a narrative representation of a personal experience as an early career feminist woman in the French-speaking Swiss context. After highlighting the androcentric tradition in Swiss academia, and the still-prevalent glass ceiling for young female scholars, this article aims to explore the survival mechanisms women use among themselves when up against a pervasive old boys’ club. Using a reflexive approach, this article illustrates how informal mechanisms can support early career women academics. Despite the lack of either feminist or gender geography programs and departments in Western Switzerland, this article highlights the presence of feminist practices in the everyday life of academia. Numerous collaborative practices are encountered at different career levels, and in different sites. While the bias of such practice is acknowledged, relying on individuals more than on institutionalised practices, the article aims to understand the workings of female solidarity networks better. It calls for a recognition of their role in women’s career progression and for the implementation of a culture of informal mentoring within academia. Finally, by more fully recognising such practices, it calls for the use of mentoring as a feminist tool to create a more inclusive academia, promoting an ethic of care that aims to challenge the masculinism and elitism of the neoliberal university.     

Facilitating the transition from being a geography student to becoming a geographer in Spain: the role of professional identity

ABSTRACT

The transition between university studies and workplace is often described as a difficult and challenging process. In this paper, we propose a series of modifications to the curriculum of geography studies based on an exploration of both student and professional perceptions on the image of the geography profession and how they identify with it. Based on several interviews, we suggest a series of recommendations for curriculum design to reconcile the disagreement found between student and professional perceptions and to foster students’ identification with professional images.     

Custody and custodianship: A reflection on collection terminology through the lens of human remains

The vast number of human remains in scientific research, museum and teaching collections bring the multifaceted terms ‘custody’ and ‘custodianship’ into view. The question of ‘custodianship’ and ‘curation’ is part and parcel of the language of collection, yet human remains push the question of ownership to a more elementary level. The authors look at the meanings of custodianship as used (and not yet used) within the framework of an interdisciplinary project on academic collections of human remains. They suggest that expanding from custodial protection, representation and expertise to custodial responsibility and care may offer a lens for framing the past and for ‘letting go’ in the future.     

Peace through the lens of human rights: Mapping spaces of peace in the advocacy of Colombian human rights defenders

What kinds of peace do human rights defenders advocate? This question has become controversial in light of heavy criticisms raised against the scholarly paradigm that peace and human rights are co-constitutive universals. In this article, I explore how Colombian human rights defenders navigate potential tensions, erasures, and vested politics in their peace advocacy during the current peace process with the FARC-EP. I follow the trend in the geographies of peace literature to study the articulation of peace with human rights as situated and constitutive practices. My analysis of published activist statements maps out the discursivity of peace advocacy, that is, how human rights defenders articulate different political demands as interconnected conditions for peace and maintain a common activist space that cuts across the uneven geographies of violence in Colombia. The visualization of my results as discursive networks shows how activist practices open social and discursive spaces that integrate multiple understandings of peace, instead of obliterating differences in a single and homogenized, ‘local’ representation of peace. I further submit that elucidating how human rights defenders address peace beyond the end of guerrilla insurgency, the ambiguous role of the state, societal discrimination, and structural transformations helps us nuancing conceptual debates. We can learn from Colombian activists to move beyond rigid conceptual juxtapositions of human rights as either panacea or liberal fuel for conflict and to pay attention to how concepts are animated in political struggles to end violence.     

Some rhizomatic recollections of a feminist geographer: working toward an affirmative politics

In celebration of the 21st anniversary of Gender, Place and Culture, I have taken the opportunity to argue for an affirmative politics for feminist geography. I offer a set of rhizomatic recollections of individualized moments of limit experiences that I have encountered in my own academic practice as a feminist geographer. Although perhaps not as transformative as one might expect, the limit experiences I write about are at the very least an attempt to garner attention to those experiences that transform us into academic subjects. As reflections, these recollections are an experiment in the practice of writing as part of an affirmative politics – a collective project valuing potential and possibilities. Through the writing, I assist this collective effort by many colleagues in orienting the wider projects of reflexivity, autoethnography, and autobiographical writing away from the undermining charge of being narcissistic habits borne out of the harsh criticism of not engaging the power that swirls around us toward the affirming claim of being part of a sustainable ethics whereby researchers and scholars can write from an embodied, embedded self through recounting their own intellectual and social practices.     

Tourism in a nature-based destination: the human versus the ecological perspectives

In the tourism studies literature, wilderness has been addressed from two perspectives. From the first, human, perspective wilderness is a social, subjective construction that exists only in the mind of its users. From the second, ecological, perspective it is a material, objective reality. Here, we compare these two perspectives based on data collected in one of Poland's most popular nature-based destinations, The Great Masurian Lakes region, and develop a methodological framework which would operationalise this comparison and make it measurable. The research approach combined a survey of tourists and mapping of natural features. The data was analysed, first, to verify whether stated preferences regarding nature and the natural features surrounding tourist accommodation were coherent; this resulted in the construction of a Coherence Index (CI). Second, we analysed how stated preferences with respect to nature were linked to outdoor recreational activities; this was measured by a Nature Cruciality Index (NCI). Finally, both indexes were mapped and their spatial distributions were analysed. The findings showed that the subjective, social construction of wilderness does not always correspond to objective reality. Although tourists declared natural environment to be very important to them, in some cases the analysis found a lack of consistency between expressed preferences and the natural features found around accommodation. The phenomenon was mainly found in towns, where tourists were most nature-indifferent. Moreover, they were not interested in activities with high NCI. In some cases, however, the two perspectives were coherent, especially among nature-oriented tourists who stayed near lakes and those who stayed in villages (who were most conscious of their choices). Tourists who stayed near lakes undertook the most nature-crucial activities. These findings can be used to enhance local planning, management and marketing strategies for nature tourism.     

Approaching the archaeology of value: a view from the modern world

SUMMARY: The abundance of goods in the modern world has a tendency to prejudice interpretation of their value, but the way people value their goods is complex, relative and changeable — scarcity is just one factor. There is a long history of value theorization across the social sciences, but archaeological considerations of value remain uncommon and focused on prestige goods. In this paper, I review alternative conceptions of value through the lens of the modern world, with an example of Spode creamware used by a governor in the early decades of colonial Sydney. I argue that the process of devaluation, through discard and waste, offers a unique archaeological understanding of the shifting values people of the modern world placed on commodities.     

A lone ranger: My journey towards becoming a feminist geographer in Nairobi,Kenya

Abstract

Very few Kenyan universities offer modules on Gender or Feminism in their courses. Women are largely under-represented and very few hold senior positions. Due to the few numbers of female faculty, mentorship for young female scholars is lacking. Feminist writing by Female Kenyan geographers in professional geography journals is limited. Collective action among female geography faculty is also largely absent. This is largely due to the lack of feminist advocacy and policies in the universities. My journey to becoming a feminist geographer has received little or no support from the university. I have taken personal initiatives to link up with local and transnational gender associations in order to get insights on current feminist scholarship issues. My lived feminist experience and observations of the struggles of ordinary women in everyday livelihood negotiation have been my main motivation for continuing to do feminist work. Thus, my feminist work has concentrated on women in marginal economic informality. This paper presents my journey as a feminist geographer. It begins with a discussion on the state of feminist geography in three universities in Kenya namely, University of Nairobi, Kenyatta University and Egerton University. This is followed by a presentation of my journey toward becoming a feminist geographer in the absence of a supportive infrastructure. My journey has been inspired by my lived experience. The paper concludes with a call for a concerted effort for feminist advocacy in Kenyan Geography departments.     

From scholar to bureaucrat: the political choice of the historical geographer Zhang Qiyun

In the mid-1920s, under the guidance of his teacher, Zhu Kezhen, Zhang Qiyun established himself as a scholar by compiling middle school geography textbooks. He reached the peak of his early academic career when he joined the National Defense Planning Commission (Guofang sheji weiyuanhui) in 1932. His subsequent setbacks offered him a different kind of experience. During his tenure at Zhejiang University (1936–1949), he strived to combine research and administrative work. His friendship with Chen Bulei, Chen Xunci, and others, provided him with the connections to move from academia into politics. More important, beginning in the 1940s, Zhang contributed his scholarship in historical geography and geopolitics to the ruling regime and attracted Chiang Kai-shek’s attention. In 1948, some of the students at Zhejiang University started a movement to oust Zhang, which truly alienated him. During the power transition in 1949, Zhang made a political choice entirely different from the one made by his longtime mentor Zhu Kezhen, epitomizing the political divergence among scholars in the last years of the 1940s.     

Stratified familialism: the care regime in India through the lens of childcare

This article explores the political and social economy of care in India through a focus on childcare practices, from the viewpoint of the care giver — a perspective frequently ignored or touched on only generally in earlier discussions on development or social policy. It is argued that the care regime is an ad hoc summation of informal, stratified practices. It is shaped by the institutional context, in particular the economic and social inequalities of work and livelihoods, as well as trends and absences in state economic and social policy. Central to the dynamics of care practices in India is the ideology of gendered familialism in public discourse and policy, which reiterates care as a familial and female responsibility and works to devalue and diminish the dimensions of care. By delineating the range of institutions through which everyday childcare practices are organized, this contribution draws out the differentiations and actualities of stratified familialism and care. At one end of the spectrum are those who have the possibility to retain familial carers at home and supplement them with paid and other institutional carers; at the other are those who are neither able to retain family members at home nor fill the care gap through formal institutions.     

旅游形象感知模型及其应用研究——以长三角居民对韩国旅游形象感知为例

本项研究调查了近千名长三角地区潜在游客对韩国旅游形象的感知,运用多元统计技术手段分析探讨了刺激因素、个体因素和形象感知三者之间的关系,研究表明,刺激因素(一手信源和二手信源)与个体因素(旅游动机和社会人口统计特征)差异会影响旅游形象的感知,是旅游形象的前因变量.     

Farmwomen's emotional geographies of care: a view from rural Ontario

This article contributes to geographies of rural women's health by investigating farmwomen's perceptions of their caring roles and responsibilities, which are crucial to the wellbeing and sustainability of rural people and their communities. Featuring a thematic analysis of interviews and a focus group with farmwomen from Ontario, Canada, the research examines farms and farming as unique places and spaces of care. Informed by the literature on emotional geographies, the article examines how care is situated and performed through farmwomen's negotiation of multiple, overlapping identities and how these are embodied and affective in emotional work. The findings not only confirm the paramount role of women in rural care, they demonstrate the interdependence of family, community and work as central to the challenges of rural women's health. The article argues that the link between health and productivity on the farm is crucial to understanding farmwomen's caring, and highlights the paradox that their emotional work is as much about opportunities for power and resistance as it is about obligation and subordination.     

Resource intensification in the Late Upper Paleolithic: a view from southern China

Resource intensification is often viewed as a precursor to sedentism and thereby to agriculture. Late Upper Paleolithic sites in China are also seen as important precursors to the beginnings of sedentism and agriculture, but few faunal assemblages have been studied in detail and therefore little is known of pre-Neolithic economies in the region. A large faunal sample from a key site for early pottery and possible rice collection sheds light on subsistence strategies at the end of the Paleolithic. We apply an array of taphonomic analyses to the mammal remains to investigate the extent to which carcasses were processed for within-bone nutrients, which we see as a possible indicator of resource intensification. Determining if this is a regional trend, and/or represents diachronic change in subsistence strategies, will depend on the availability of comparative data in the future.     

Looking through the learning disability lens: inclusive education and the learning disability embodiment

Inclusion as an educational approach for students with disabilities is a widely debated topic. The concept of inclusion is often referred to as a philosophy that all pupils – regardless of ability and other differences – should be included within age-appropriate community schools [Stainback, S.B. and Stainback, W. eds., 1996. Inclusion: a guide for educators. Baltimore, MD: Paul H. Brookes Publishing, Artiles, A.J. and Kozleski, E.B., 2007. Beyond convictions: interrogating culture, history, and power in inclusive education. Language Arts, 84 (4), 357–365]. This educational approach has been scrutinized for its capacity to meet the needs of students with and without disabilities Lindsay, G., 2003. Inclusive education: a critical perspective. British journal of special education, 30 (1), 3–12; Kauffman, J.M. and Hallahan, D.P., 2005 Kauffman, J. M. and Hallahan, D. P. 2005. Special education: what it is and why we need it, Toronto, , Canada: Pearson.  [Google Scholar]. Special education: what it is and why we need it. Toronto, Canada: Pearson; McPhail, J.C. and Freeman, J.C., 2005. Beyond prejudice: thinking towards genuine inclusion. Learning disability research and practice, 20 (4), 254–267]. However, as Bodgan and Taylor [1990. Looking at the bright side: a positive approach to qualitative policy and evaluation research. Qualitative sociology, 13 (2), 183–192.] point out, the ‘does it work’ framework for analyzing inclusion programs for persons with disabilities is not beneficial to practitioners and researchers who believe that ‘integration into society is a moral question rather than an empirical one’ (p. 187). Instead of questioning whether inclusion ‘works’ or is ‘effective’ for students with learning disabilities (SLD), this study uses a critical geography perspective to examine from the SLDs' perspective how educational spaces are as socially and discursively constructed as places of inclusion and exclusion. This paper also examines interest in how these constructions of places are situated in relation to provincial and regional inclusive education policies.     

The population of the Amazon basin in 1492: a view from the Ecuadorian headwaters

"Recent archaeological, ethnohistorical and ecological evidence has begun to challenge the view that 'civilizations' failed to develop in the Amazon basin due to limitations of the tropical forest environment. As a result, estimates of the native population in 1492 have become an issue of debate. These estimates are evaluated in the light of the ethnohistorical research on the Ecuadorian headwaters. Estimates are considered by examining estimated habitat densities, the impact of Old World diseases and contemporary evidence for native cultures. The study is based on documents found in archives in Quito, Seville, Madrid and Rome. It is suggested that the population of the Amazon basin in 1492 probably exceeded 5 million but that expectations of substantially higher populations appear unfounded."