Resisting mothers,making gender: teenage girls in the United States and the articulation of femininity

Much of the feminist literature on teenage girls in the west has tended to polarize around the issues of girls' gendered agency and victimization. In contrast, this article explores the ambiguous relationship between gender resistance and compliance. I argue that while girls clearly articulate their own agency, they do so through a reliance on gendered and heterosexual norms, identities, and categories. The article draws on examples from my research with girls in South Carolina, USA, in particular girls' narratives about their mothers. I suggest that girls situate their gendered practices and evaluate femininity in part via evaluations of their mothers' gender, sexual and nurturing practices. Mothers often stand in as representatives of normative and traditional femininity for the girls; yet girls do not realize that they reproduce, rather than resist, aspects of femininity, even as they criticize generational differences and their mothers' versions of feminine and gendered behaviors.     

Picturing the city: young people's representations of urban environments

Urban environments form the setting of everyday life for most Western young people. This article explores visual representations of cities made by young people in a range of environments within four countries. The findings inform a larger study on urban geographies within geography education. We analyse students' drawings of cities regarding physical characteristics, activities and issues. There are many commonalities between drawings from the four countries, the majority showing a ‘big, busy city’ representation with skylines, traffic and shopping areas. There are also distinctive characteristics for each set, for example Finnish students tended to emphasise environmental and social issues more than in the other countries. In relation to methodology, we conclude that drawings, supported by contextual information, are a useful source to understand young people's representations of cities. Further, this research supports thinking about how to merge young people's experiences and imaginaries with the teaching of urban geography.     

Dystopian space in colonial representations and interventions: Sierra Leone as 'the white man's grave'

This paper explores the power of dystopian imaginations. It does so by examining the form and function of dystopias in colonial contexts, both in general and through one particularly salient and significant colonial dystopia, which was known widely in imperial England as 'the white man's grave'. A detailed analysis of the form and function of dystopian accounts of Sierra Leone, with particular attention to Richard Burton's negative appraisal of the colony, illuminates a particular form of geographical colonial discourse, and clarifies some of the power relations more generally associated with dystopian representations and interventions.     

Dystopian space in colonial representations and interventions: Sierra Leone as 'the white man's grave'

This paper explores the power of dystopian imaginations. It does so by examining the form and function of dystopias in colonial contexts, both in general and through one particularly salient and significant colonial dystopia, which was known widely in imperial England as 'the white man's grave'. A detailed analysis of the form and function of dystopian accounts of Sierra Leone, with particular attention to Richard Burton's negative appraisal of the colony, illuminates a particular form of geographical colonial discourse, and clarifies some of the power relations more generally associated with dystopian representations and interventions.     

Queers in the American City: Transgendered perceptions of urban space

This paper explores the complex relationship between transgendered people and cities in the USA, and, in particular, their relationship with queer spaces within those cities. Some have argued that queer spaces occur at the margins of society and constitute a safe haven for LGBT oppressed by the hetero-normative nature of urban areas. Data from a survey of 149 transgendered individuals indicate that although queer spaces provide a measure of protection for gender variant people, the gendered nature of these spaces results in continued high levels of harassment and violence for this population. The author argues that the strongly gendered dimensions of these spaces suggests that a discursive re-visioning of gender is needed to create more transgender friendly urban spaces.     

Light railways and the rural–urban continuum: technology, space and society in late nineteenth-century Belgium

Combining the literature on ‘city systems’ and its intermediary spatial categories with the discourse on ‘socio-technical’ hybrids, this article examines whether the early rural–urban condition in Belgium was the planned spatial outcome of infrastructure policy. More specifically, it analyzes the dialectic between the conception of light railways and the geographies of power, tracing its impact on the spatial organization of the territory. In 1911 the British sociologist Seebohm Rowntree stated that Belgium had gone further than any country in supplying its working class with gardens. The dense Belgian railway network encouraged workers to commute between land and labour, travelling from their homes in the healthy countryside to work in urban factories and mines. Despite the agricultural crisis and accelerating industrialization in nineteenth-century Belgium, infrastructure policy had resulted in a peculiar territorial balance between city and countryside by transforming agricultural labourers and farmers into industrial workers without forcing them to leave their ancestral villages. Rather than nostalgically clinging to a disappearing countryside, the government harnessed the modern technology par excellence, combining rails, steam and state management, to safeguard the country as well as to facilitate modern dynamic. Countryside preservation and accelerating industrialization were reconciled in a reshaped configuration that rendered the countryside and its inhabitants simultaneously rural and urban, traditional and modern. As most literature situates the genesis of rural–urban landscapes after the First and Second World War, this article on late-nineteenth-century Belgium adds a further facet to the recently growing international research on hybrid territories within the fields of urbanism and geography.     

Screening the 'other' Paris: Cinematic representations of the French urban periphery in La Haine and Ma 6-T Va Crack-er

The emergence of the cinéma des banlieues in France during the mid-1990s reflected a more general socio-political identification with the run-down cités of the disadvantaged urban periphery as emblematic sites of fracture sociale. This article aims to consider the spatial representation of the Parisian banlieue found in two such films, La Haine (Kassovitz, 1995), and Ma 6-T Va Crack-er (Richet, 1997). It will question the extent to which the aesthetic and ideological differences between the two films can be explained by the relationship of the respective filmmakers to the banlieue, or whether, given the media (mis)representation of the banlieue in the 1990s, the disadvantaged urban periphery remained destined to be represented on screen as the space of the marginalised 'other'.     

Hollywood's insidious charms: the impact of American cinema and television on the Soviet Union during the Cold War

Using various archival documents, memoirs, diaries, periodicals and more than 70 personal interviews with contemporaries of the events, this essay is an attempt to show the paradoxes of the cultural Cold War in Soviet consumption of the American visual media – films and television from the United States.     

The Civic Survey of Greater London: social mapping,planners and urban space in the early twentieth century

This paper examines work conducted between 1915 and 1919 by a group of architects and planners based at the Royal Institute of British Architects. The project, called the Civic Survey of Greater London, and the substantial collection of maps and diagrams that resulted from it are currently unknown in histories of mapping and planning, thus this paper offers a preliminary account and analysis of the work. The paper begins by assessing the development of surveying and mapping techniques in the nineteenth century with the aim of situating the Survey within broader historical trajectories. The following section of the paper examines the immediate context for the Survey, in particular the place of Patrick Geddes and his ideas. The third part of the paper focuses on the work of the Survey itself. The fourth part draws out key analytical threads in dialogue with a number of the maps of the Survey. The emphasis placed here is on exploring lines of continuity between the Civic Survey of Greater London and earlier techniques of representation and governmentality. The concluding section reflects briefly on the reasons for the Survey's subsequent relative obscurity and the importance of the project for later traditions of surveying.     

Chinese factor in the space,place and agency of female head porters in urban Ghana

Migrating from northern Ghana to the coastal capital Accra in search of work, female head porters (‘kayayei’) find themselves in social structures and spatial orders that are imbued with various relations of seniority and power that constrain newcomers' entrepreneurial options. Yet, with the recent arrival of Chinese entrepreneurs in the social arena of Accra's marketplace, these power relations and gate-keeping mechanisms have begun to change. In this article, we analyse how female head porters perceive and appropriate the opportunities that arise as a result of the Chinese being seen by both they themselves and others as outsiders to Ghanaian society. By unintentionally enabling head-load carriers to extend their actual and symbolic claims to spatial realms that they were previously excluded from, the Chinese traders are facilitating head porters' expanded role within the social construction of place and space in Ghana's main urban market centre. They are therefore altering the patterns of everyday interactions between these head-load carriers and their environment.     

Intergroup Dialogue as a Just Dialogue: Challenging and Preventing Normalization in Campus Dialogues

The tensions from the Israeli occupation of Palestine reach around the globe and heated debates over the struggles of these two peoples are evident on U.S. college campuses. The power imbalance represented in the relationship between Palestinians and Israelis is replicated on college campuses. BDS (Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions) is a response to this inequality, is a movement to end the occupation, and has raised the issue of normalization. Teaching about this conflict presents particular challenges for faculty who negotiate this highly contested issue in classrooms or campus communities, and intergroup dialogue is an important pedagogy that can be used. It is critical to address normalization in intergroup dialogue. We discuss examples and themes of normalization in intergroup dialogue, and present pedagogical and other strategies to prevent and address normalization in intergroup dialogue and in other similar intergroup contact approaches with Arab or Palestinian and Jewish or Israeli participants.     

Place,teenagers and representations: Lessons from a community theatre project

Community art is one way the stories and perceptions of typically marginalized community residents can reach a large audience, as well as one means of community development and improvement. This paper draws on the author's ethnographic research and personal experience working for two years with a community theatre programme in an impoverished, multi-ethnic neighbourhood of San Diego, California. Like many community arts programmes, Around the World in a Single Day community theatre project targeted 'at risk' teenagers. The community theatre project provides a vehicle for discussing two aspects of representation: narrative authority and the symbolic economy. The paper argues that community arts programmes can empower the self-representation of marginalized teenagers, but these representations are given meaning in the context of the representation of their neighbourhood. L'art communautaire représente un moyen de faire connître au grand public les récits et perceptions des individus marginalisés, en plus d'offrir des voies d'amélioration et de développement des communautés. Cet article s'inspire des recherches ethnographiques et expériences personnelles de l'auteur au cours d'une période de deux ans àtravailler pour un programme de théâtre communautaire dans un quartier multiculturel défavoriséde San Diego, Californie. Comme plusieurs programmes artistiques communautaires, le projet de théâtre 'Autour du Monde en un Seul Jour' visait des jeunes dits 'à risque'. Le projet de théâtre communautaire sert de tremplin pour discuter deux aspects du processus de représentation: l'autorité narrative et l'économie symbolique. Cet article soutient que les programmes artistiques communautaires peuvent habiliter l'autoreprésentation de jeunes marginalisés, mais ces images acquièrent leur sens dans le contexte des représentations du quartier. El arte comunitario es una de las vías por la cual se puede transmitir las historias y opiniones de las personas típicamente marginas de una comunidad a un público muy amplio. También constituye una manera de desarollar y mejorar una comunidad. Esta papel hace uso de las investigaciones etnográficas y las experiencias personales del autor, el cual pasó dos años trabajando con un programa de teatro comunitoario en un barrio empobrecido y multiétnico de San Diego, California. Al igual que muchos programas de arte comunitario el proyecto 'Around the World in a Single Day' (Vuelta del Mundo en un Solo Día) se dirigía a los adolescentes 'en peligro'. El proyecto de teatro comunitario facilita el debate de dos aspectos de representación: autoridad narrativa y la economía simbólica. El papel sugiere que los programas de arte comunitario tienen la capacidad de autorizar la auto-representación de adolescentes marginados, y estas representaciones tienen sentido en el contexto de la representación de su vecindad.