Masculinities and geography,moving forward: men’s bodies,emotions and spiritualities

Geographical work on men and masculinities has expanded and diversified since the 1990s. Gender, Place and Culture has been, and continues to be, a significant outlet for this research. Geographies of masculinities now range across diverse sub-fields – social, cultural, economic, health, post-colonial, urban and rural geographies. We provide a brief overview of this scope, including the expansion of geographies of masculinities beyond the Anglo-American sphere. We then focus on two vibrant fields of research on geographies of men and masculinities, which cut across the various sub-fields of the discipline: men’s embodied and emotional geographies, and their experiences in relation to religion, faith and spirituality. We discuss these fields, suggesting further productive developments for geographies of masculinities, which include work on the body and wellbeing, body size, male care giving, men’s experiences in diverse faith communities, and men and alternative spiritualities. Ongoing development of geographical work on men and masculinities is important for helping to contest patriarchal structures and knowledge production.     

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.     

The Janice Monk Lecture in Feminist Geography: the first 10 years

The year 2016 marked the 10th anniversary of the publication of the Janice Monk Lecture in Feminist Geography in Gender, Place and Culture. Here we celebrate that milestone by reflecting upon the 10 lectures that have been delivered in the series. Our aim is to situate these lectures within the context of the wider intellectual changes that have occurred during that period so as to appreciate the lectures, taken as a whole, as a window on contemporary feminist geography. This contextualization also allows us to recognize the continuing development as well as speculate about feminist geography and the Jan Monk Lecture’s role in contributing to and shaping them.     

GPC Ten Years On: is self-reflexivity enough?

In the 10 years since the first issue of Gender, Place and Culture was published, feminist geography has grown, matured, become part of the normal curriculum in most departments of geography. The need to consider gender as a fundamental aspect of social life has become accepted wisdom. We have much to celebrate. Over the same period, increasing attention has been paid to questions of racialisation, and to projects that set anti-racism on the academic agenda. While I would argue that, socially as well as academically, we have made more progress in overcoming gender barriers than racial barriers, a growing body of work recognises the intersection, indeed the simultaneity, of sexism and racism, as well as classism, ableism and homophobia. Such recognition has characterised the pages of Gender, Place and Culture from its very first issue. Indeed, no paper that addresses issues of social exclusion from a geographical perspective would fail nowadays to make several references to articles in this journal. Theoretically, the connection between gendered and racialised social constructions heightens social awareness of the ways in which social exclusion occurs. It is now received wisdom, well beyond the narrower confines of feminist and anti-racist scholarship, that human attributes are the result of social construction and, while many controversies rage over the findings—and the social effects—of the postmodern ‘turn’, this fundamental theoretical tenet is hardly questioned by intellectuals of the early twenty-first century. Broader attention has now been focused on issues of what kind of society—and what kind of theoretical underpinnings—will replace a world in which social constructions such as gender and ‘race’ are taken for granted. Perhaps the most significant general trend of the last decade, then, has been the fact that our journal has played such an active role in the transition from the early 1990s' struggle to overcome essential ideas to today's struggle to re-place essential ideas with a new geometry of human relations. Significant historical events on every social front emphasise the difficulties of that transition, both theoretically and empirically.     

Remembering the making of Gender,Place and Culture

Separately and together we offer our memories of how Gender, Place and Culture came into being. In so doing we seek to make available the kind of histories that often remain hidden from view. At the same time we illustrate the fallibility of memory and the conditions of possibility that frame what we can narrate.     

Re-placing gender? Reflections on 15 years of Gender,Place and Culture

This article reflects on Gender, Place and Culture (GPC) from 1994 to mid-2008, to highlight some of the key subjects and debates which have been delimited and progressed within its pages. Launched simultaneously with the cultural turn in human geography, GPC proceeded to raise important questions about identity and difference, effectively reflecting but also driving a number of transformative intellectual and political agendas. This reflection will focus on three interrelated sites of such activity: empirical, theoretical and political. Empirically, numerous articles have examined the ways gender is lived, in and across spaces and these have been enlivened by approaches highlighting masculinities, sexualities and embodiment. Theoretically these subjects have been informed by post-colonial and post-structural frameworks, directing discussion towards multiple identities, reflexivity, research practice, performativity, material cultures, positionality and the nature of academic knowledge. In addition, GPC has registered progressive political concerns for justice and equality, though the nature and extent of its political import has been legitimately questioned from without and within the pages of the journal. The resolution of the many dilemmas associated with the ways gender is lived, thought about and practiced has not always been successful in the pages of GPC, and the ongoing reality of Anglo-American dominance, the persistence of women's inequality and the tension between discursive and political activism, remains. However, in re-placing gender over the last 15 years, GPC has been a journal of serious and path-breaking scholarship which has further legitimized the value of feminist geography.     

Ways of Seeing: Sexism the Forgotten Prejudice?

Recent developments in feminism, charted in Gender, Place and Culture over the past 21 years, have stressed the relational, differentiated and contested nature of gender. This has led to the rejection of the unified category women, and with this the right for feminism to make claims on behalf of all women. This paper argues that an unintended consequence of this development in ways of thinking about gender is that patriarchy as a form of power relations has become relatively neglected. It draws on research from a European Research Council project (including biographical interviews and case studies of a gym and workplace) to demonstrate that while the development of equality legislation has contained the public expression of the most blatant forms of gender prejudice, sexism persists and is manifest in subtle ways. As a consequence, it can be difficult to name and challenge with the effect that patriarchy as a power structure which systematically (re)produces gender inequalities,is obscured by its ordinariness. Rather, sexism appears only to be ‘seen’ when it affords the instantiation of other forms of prejudice, such as Islamophobia. As such, we argue that Gender, Place and Culture has a responsibility going forward to make sexism as a particular form of prejudice more visible, while also exposing the complexity and fluidity of its intersectional relationship to other forms of oppression and social categories.     

Bodies,gender, place and culture: 21 years on

This article examines research on embodiment published in Gender, Place and Culture (GPC) over the past two decades. We searched using the keywords ‘body’, ‘bodies’, ‘embodiment’, ‘embody’, ‘flesh’, ‘fleshy’, ‘corporeality’ and ‘corporeal’, the titles and abstracts of all the articles that have appeared in GPC since it first began publication in 1994. Articles containing these keywords were listed in a searchable bibliography. What we found was a growing volume of research inspired by ‘body politics’ produced over a 21-year period that compares favourably to cognate geography journals. We also found that various themes have emerged including maternal and geopolitical bodies. In other areas, we identified gaps. Throughout the article, we engage with the question: has the upsurge of interest in embodiment, as expressed in the pages of GPC since 1994, led to an upheaval of masculinist ways of thinking in the discipline? We conclude by expressing our feelings of ambivalence.     

Guest Editorial: Does Anglophone hegemony permeate Gender,Place and Culture?

This editorial is seen as a comment on the on-going concern expressed in several Anglophone geography journals about the hegemony of Angloamerican production and its role in formulating the terms of international academic debate. We examine the extent to which Angloamerican dominance is equally true with regard to feminist geography, by looking at how/whether Gender, Place and Culture (GPC) deals with this bias. Finally we forward some suggestions for positive action towards enhancing the international character of the journal.

¿La hegemonía Anglosajona impregna Gender, Place and Culture?

Esta nota editorial trata de un tema que en la actualidad es motivo de preocupación en algunas revistas anglosajonas, la hegemonía de la producción anglosajona en geografía y su papel crucial en la formulación de los debates académicos internacionales. A través del anàlisis de la revista Gender Place and Culture, se discute cómo esta situación se da también en la geografía feminista. Finalmente, se proponen una serie de acciones positivas para potenciar el carácter internacional de la revista.     

Bodies,beaches and bars: negotiating heterosexual masculinity in southern Thailand's tourism industry

This article explores the gender politics of heterosexual masculinity by detailing the practices of masculinity and heterosexuality among a group of Thai men working in the tourism industry in Thailand's south. The research is based on ethnographic data obtained during a number of field visits between October 2000 and January 2007 to Pha-ngan Island in southern Thailand. It is positioned within the geography literature on masculinities and heterosexuality, extending the current literature on cross-cultural negotiations of masculinity by exploring negotiations of heterosexual masculinity in a context where differing cultural notions of hegemonic masculinity come into dialogue. Specifically, I detail the articulation of heterosexual masculinity by Thai bar workers through their encounters with three key ‘Others’: Thai transgendered people; tourist women; and tourist men. These encounters provide a context through which the complexity and instability of both hegemonic and subordinated masculinity can be explored. In particular, I argue that the delineation of these masculinities is both contextually and culturally specific. The encounters also provide an opportunity to investigate the importance of spatiality to the performance of heterosexual identities.     

Masculinities in Asia: A Review Essay

Abstract:

Masculinity as an analytical concept has received limited attention in historical and cultural studies of Asia, and particularly of South and Southeast Asia. Only a small number of works produced in South and Southeast Asian studies address the historical construction and evolution of masculinities in the regions and even fewer offer in-depth inquiries into the extent to which historical forms of masculinity governed social relations. The specific dynamics of the relationship between ideologies and the ways that manhood is interpreted, experienced and performed in daily life in the past and in present times remain underexplored. This essay reviews three recent publications that demonstrate that masculinity has been crucial to ideologies and techniques of rule in colonial, national and globalised contexts and, as such, needs to be placed at the centre of analyses of empire, nation and globalisation. It directs attention to promising areas for future comparative research on masculinities in Asia.     

Introduction: global perspectives on gender–water geographies

This introduction summarizes the work featured in the themed section of Gender, Place and Culture titled ‘Global geographies of gender and water’. It brings into dialogue scholars investigating a variety of gender–water relationships at different scales, including: poisoned waterscapes; fishing practices; and the implications of neoliberal water policies. The authors featured purposefully engage with the multi-faceted ways in which experiences, discourses and policies of water are gendered, and how gender is created through processes of access, use and control of water resources. In bringing these articles together, we have consciously aimed to support inclusive, feminist collaborative work and to prioritize diversity.     

Constructing gender,constructing the urban: A review of Anglo-American feminist urban geography

This essay explores the changing shape of Anglo-American feminist urban geography, through a discussion of material published in Gender, Place and Culture and elsewhere over the past decade. We contextualize this discussion in relation to the development of feminist urban studies since the 1970s, showing its enduring commitment to work across traditional analytical divides that obfuscate crucial aspects of the mutual constitution of gender and the urban. Focusing on two thematic areas--affective experiences of urban space, and the making of urban public spaces--we examine how this commitment is expressed in recent contributions to feminist urban geography. Both bodies of work successfully challenge a divide between scholarship that focuses on how cities constrain, disadvantage and oppress women, and scholarship that focuses on how cities liberate women. However, we are disturbed by a seeming bifurcation between work concerned with issues of recognition and work focusing on issues of redistribution, with the former being well represented in Gender, Place and Culture and the latter more likely to be aired in 'mainstream' journals. We conclude by reflecting on our lack of perspective on the trajectories of feminist urban geography outside of the Anglo-American context and ask whether the boundaries within which our review has been conducted are themselves gendered.     

Hungarian feminist geography in a curved space?

Abstract

The history of feminist geography in Hungary coincides with the 25?year-long history of Gender, Place and Culture. Authorities denied the existence of gender inequality in the era of state socialism, which was the primary obstacle to the spread of gender studies. The political changes that had occurred after 1989 had removed most obstacles, but feminist geography emerged with a delay relative to other disciplines. Its first two decades was characterised by struggles and compromises within and against the geographical discipline in order for it to win recognition. The 25?year-long history of feminist studies has, however, been completely broken by legislation proposed by the current government suggesting a ban on masters programs in gender studies. In this article, I trace the situation of feminist geography in Hungary by applying the concept ?curved space?. This concept adapted from modern physics claims that mass creates a gravitational field, i.e. it bends 4-dimensional ?spacetime?. My argument is that the situation of feminist geography in Hungary can be interpreted as an embodiment of ?curved space?. Using this analogy, I argue that the current Hungarian government has amassed such a huge amount of power that has enabled it to curve the space of feminist geographical knowledge production. It has established a quasi-dictatorship that resembles the one that impeded the evolution of gender/feminist geography in the state socialist era. Therefore, only broad-based solidarity can help create opposition to the current government’s attacks against gender studies.     

Doing gender and the GeoHumanities – celebrations and intoxications

Abstract

This paper celebrates Gender, Place and Culture’s 25th Anniversary by staging a dialogue of sorts between feminist, queer and trans knowledge projects and the interdisciplinary field of practice based GeoHumanities, in other words creative research practices such as film-making, theatre, creative writing or live art. In embracing the vibrancy of these fields together the paper addresses two much wider issues; firstly, the continued challenges that these knowledge projects face, especially in an era of post-truth and the undermining of expertise, which together risks a reactive retrenchment of academic practices. Secondly, within the GeoHumanities, feminist scholar-practitioners have been leading the way in evolving the critical-political dimensions of these interdisciplinary practices, but as they acknowledge, much more remains to be done to ensure that the critical potential of these doings is realised.

In short, this paper asks, what can/have GeoHumanities ‘doings’ contributed to the challenges of gender based knowledge projects, and further, how can/are the critical questions framed by these knowledge projects evolving GeoHumanities practices? Three large concerns frame discussion of possibilities for mutual learning and advancement; what forms of knowledge count; who can make and legitimate knowledge, and how we might build critical perspectives for the transformations claimed in the name of these practices? As such, the paper honours GPC’s quarter century through a forward looking celebration of exciting scholarly practices that remain committed to the foundational tenants of feminist, trans and queer knowledge projects: namely their ongoing critique and remaking of knowledge hierarchies, academic practices, and the political economies of the academy.     

Migration,marginalization and metropolitaneity: negotiation of masculinities of Nepali drug users in Hong Kong

Many studies on men and masculinity have discussed how Asian male migrants who experience a ‘masculinity crisis’ negotiate their masculinity vis-à-vis dominant black and white masculinities in Western societies. Yet, few have discussed how they negotiate their masculinity in the Asian contexts. In this study, Nepalis have a tradition of transnational migration. Their transnational networks have facilitated the development of overseas Nepali communities. This research therefore aims to study the negotiation of masculinities of Nepali male heroin users, a marginalized group in Hong Kong. By using a qualitative mixed-methods approach, it is argued that their negotiation of masculinities is nuanced and relational; intersecting with race/ethnicity, social space, and generation. In the process, discursive resources in the cultural repertoire are utilized to construct alternative forms of masculinities in school, the workplace, and rehabilitation treatment. These masculinities are pluralistic and contingent, in relation to the transnational space and post-colonial situation of Hong Kong.     

Men in upheaval: integrating Hong Kong politics and critical studies of men and masculinities

Abstract

In this short review, we explain the need for a multidimensional analytical framework for exploring how the construction of men and masculinities has shaped Hong Kong’s social and political development, and how politics both enable and constrain men in their lived experiences and practices in various life spheres at the city’s current political juncture. We observe that the majority of the extant research on men and masculinities in Hong Kong is depoliticized, whereas studies on current Hong Kong politics are largely gender-blind. However, the ever-tightening grip of the Chinese Communist Party and the instances of political resistance in response, namely, the Umbrella Movement of 2014 and Fishball Revolution of 2016, suggest that the influence of the wider political situation has penetrated every dimension of life, which has considerable implications for masculine identities and practices. Rather than continuing to conduct the depoliticized masculinity studies and genderless political studies we have seen to date, it is time for a thorough investigation of the dynamic intersection of men’s practices and the political context of Hong Kong.     

Crafting masculinities: gender,culture and emotion at work in the surfboard industry

This article examines the masculinities of male workers in the context of an emotionally rich form of labour: surfboard-making. Contributing to emerging research around the emotional and embodied dimensions of men's working lives, the article maps the cultural, emotional and embodied dimensions of work onto masculine identity construction. Combining cultural economy theory, emotional geographies and in-depth ethnographic methods, I reveal how surfboard-making has become a gendered form of work; how jobs rely on (and impact) the body and what surfboard-making means to workers outside of financial returns. Following a manual labour process, and informed by Western surfing subculture, commercial surfboard-making has layered onto male bodies. Men perform ‘blokey’ masculinities in relation with one another. However, doing manual craftwork evokes close, personal interaction; among co-workers but also through engagements with place and local customers. Felt, embodied craft skills help workers personalise boards for individual customers and local breaks. Beneath masculine work cultures and pretensions, surfboard-making is a deeply emotional and embodied work. Labour is dependent on haptic knowledge: sense of touch, bodily movement and eye for detail. Contrasting their blokey masculinity, surfboard-makers rely on intimate links between their bodies, tools, materials, customers and surfing places. These ‘strong bodied’ men articulate a ‘passion’ and ‘love’ for ‘soulful’ jobs, demonstrating how waged work comprises alternative masculinities, shaped by working culture, relations and labour processes. A cultural economy framework and emotionally engaged research approach are valuable for challenging hegemonic masculinity, important for achieving more inclusive, tolerant and equitable workplaces.     

Embodied intergenerationality: family position,place and masculinity

The aim of this article is to further understandings of performances of family position, place and masculinity in what I call ‘embodied intergenerationality'. I build on research with 38 men across three generations within 19 families of Irish descent to discuss masculinity, intergenerationality and place. These men are living, or have recently lived, in the region known as Tyneside, in the North East of England. Secondary to this contribution is an acknowledgement of the significance of changing positionalities as research insider and participant observer by addressing both intersectional and intergenerational identities involved in geographic research. The article therefore responds to recent work in the discipline which has called for more critical attention towards experiences in the field, with its central contribution – embodied intergenerationality – advancing knowledge of masculinities and place for those who analyse masculinities within the research encounter. This work explores the performances and relationalities of masculinities amongst men of Irish descent on Tyneside as well as between the participants and the researcher. In working with men of different ages both within and between families, I draw conclusions on masculinity, intergenerationality and place: the roles of researcher and participant can become embodied as ‘son' and ‘father' in the research encounter and where the research takes place matters.