Trans geographies,embodiment and experience

Queer geographers have long been interested in the interconnections between sexuality and space. With queer theorizing as its hallmark, queer geographical research has made substantial contributions to our understandings of genders, sexualities and embodiment and their constitution in, and production of, space and place. This article examines how trans scholarship intersects with several themes central to queer geographical research – subjectivity/performativity; experience/embodiment; and the historical, political and social constitution of what are now called ‘traditional’ LGBTQ or ‘queer’ urban spaces – and offers geographers interested in intersections between sexuality, gender and the body, alternative and challenging avenues of inquiry. This scholarship highlights, in part, the discontinuities and silences embedded in so-called LGBTQ and queer communities and spaces and points to the need to explore more particularly historical and political conceptualizations of the formations of subjectivities, identities and forms of embodiment in play in these spaces.     

Listening and learning: giving voice to trans experiences of disasters

This article gives voice to trans experiences of disasters, investigating their specific vulnerabilities and resilient capacities. We draw on findings from a project on lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans (LGBT) experiences of recent Australian and New Zealand disasters. We present and analyse trans voices from a survey conducted across multiple case study sites and insights from interview data with a trans person who experienced the 2011 Brisbane floods. Conceptually, to provide a robust understanding of trans experiences of disasters, we bring socially sensitive disaster studies into conversation with trans geographies. Disaster studies have begun to examine LGBT experiences, with some suggestion that trans people are most vulnerable. We advance this work by focusing on trans lives. Trans geographies, in turn, underline the importance of space, place and the body in understanding trans lives, and the need to examine the lived reality of trans people’s everyday geographies rather than embodiment as an abstract concept. Applying these insights to the trans voices in our project, we examine four themes that highlight impediments to and possibilities for trans-inclusive disaster planning: apprehension with emergency services and support; concerns about home and displacement; anxiety about compromising the trans body; and the potential of trans and queer interpersonal networks for capacity building. We offer suggestions for trans-inclusive disaster planning and preparedness, and indicate how the insights from trans experience can enrich disaster planning and preparedness for wider social groups.     

Le gouvernement de la loi est-il un thème républicain?

Liberty is submission only to laws. This idea, according to Turgot, is a very republican one, and it belongs indeed to the classical republican tradition. It is, nonetheless, a mostly modern idea, not necessarily a republican one. It appears in the criticism of absolute monarchy: the importance of making the law is granted, but that anybody could be above the laws is rejected. For Montesquieu, moderate monarchy is the rule of law, of standing laws which provide the individual action with the conditions its rationality requires. But Rousseau makes a republican system of the rule of law, by identifying self-government and autonomy. By linking liberty and law, he stresses the political existence of liberty: since Turgot, it has been objected, inside liberalism, that such a political device jeopardizes natural rights.     

Women and Peace Building: Local Perspectives on Opportunities and Barriers

The UN Security Council Resolution 1325 has made strong provisions to include women in peace‐building interventions and actions. This is, however, rarely observed in practice beyond local‐level activities. This article discusses new qualitative evidence on the opportunities and barriers to women's participation in peace‐building processes, based on a comparative analysis of case studies conducted in Afghanistan, Liberia, Nepal and Sierra Leone. The findings show that women's engagement in peace‐building activities, beyond their immediate social relations, is restricted by institutional, economic, cultural and social obstacles. These barriers prevent the realization of gender equality objectives in peace‐building initiatives. Moreover, local understandings of peace typically place family relations at the centre of how women engage with peace‐building processes, and how other community members perceive women's roles in peace building.     

Keeping cool: practicing domestic refrigeration and environmental responsibility

Domestic refrigerators have become symbols of climate change in energy efficiency campaigns; they are equipment that both permits and prohibits the performance of environmental citizenship. However, little is known about how subjectivities and practices interact, particularly with regard to questions about refrigeration and domestic energy. What might those of us interested in household sustainability learn from the relationships among refrigerators, energy, subjectivities, and practices, and from what these may reveal about environmental responsibility? We draw on data from mixed‐method qualitative research conducted with 28 households in Wollongong, Australia, and frame the analysis in terms of social practice theory, with additional attention to subjectivity. This framing helps us develop thinking about how refrigeration is done and consider whether and how things become waste by paying closer attention to the spatial imperatives underpinning these practices. It also assists us in considering how the ongoing relationships of social and material aspects of refrigeration co‐constitute a range of subjectivities. Further, our analysis advances discussions on how household practices and identities relate to public campaigns about environmental responsibility, particularly as the latter is constructed in terms of ‘energy efficiency’.