Green,red, yellow and purple: gendering the Kurdish Question in south-east Turkey

This article discusses the role of women in the contemporary ethno-territorial struggle of Kurdish Question in Turkey. I argue that gendered development has become the primary terrain where Turkish and pro-Kurdish political groups articulate their nationalist interests. The Kürt Sorunu (Kurdish Question) – the enduring debate over the political status and rights of Turkey's Kurdish population – is Turkey's largest geopolitical challenge to date. In the last decade, Turkish government policy towards the predominantly Kurdish south-east region has shifted from military intervention to gendered and socio-economic development. Simultaneously, the popularity and growth of a formal pro-Kurdish political movement has given the campaign for Kurdish rights an institutionalized voice and stronger role in regional affairs. The primary work of both the Turkish national government and local pro-Kurdish municipality of late has focused on women. Drawing on historical analysis and participant observation of development activities, I describe the symbolic and physical role women play in the contemporary Kurdish Question. Geographically, this pointed focus on women marks a territorialization of political power upon gendered spaces of the home and neighbourhood. I describe this process of territorialization through an examination of education curriculum, neighbourhood mapping and nationalist landscapes.     

Researching boxing bodies in Scotland: Using apprenticeship to study the embodied construction of gender in hyper masculine space

This article presents apprenticeship as an ethnographic method suitable for researching topics concerning gender and space. To use this method, the researcher takes up a practice, such as a sport. Emphasis lies in understanding one’s topic ‘by body’, and the article argues that such an embodied perspective sheds a new light on gender construction in the boxing gym. An empirical study of female amateur boxers in Scotland, conducted by the author, herself a competitive female boxer, reinforces the argument. The position of an embodied insider offers the researcher a unique vantage point with regard to various contrasting processes of gender construction on different scales, such as the body, embodied encounters and the gym. By giving attention to the transformative power of bodily practice, apprenticeship focuses on possibilities for, resistance to, and transformation of, gender norms in hyper masculine spaces. The apprenticeship method can therefore enrich geography’s understanding of the role of physical practices for gender construction in different spaces.     

The Role of Lesser Aristocratic Women in Twelfth-century Yorkshire Society — The Rumilly,Arches, and St Quentin Charters*

This article argues that lesser aristocratic women were an active part of twelfth-century society and that as landholders and alienators they were able to significantly shape and mould local monastic society, family wealth and relationships, and other secular social networks. The influence women could have on these areas was on the material and physical geography of the land as well as on the social relationships. As landholders, women could and did maintain social networks with the ecclesiastical and secular societies. This was, however, limited by the geographic location of their landholding and thus demonstrates a social world that is defined by localities and regions. The three families of Rumilly, Arches and St Quentin provide cases whereby women’s activities can be evidenced in a range of events and actions. They also demonstrate a level of independence in women’s agency that did not rely on their male kin before land alienations or grants could be made. The available charter evidence for the three families studied is also illustrative of the existing charter material that can be identified for lesser aristocratic women and allows the paper to address twelfth-century women outwith the traditionally studied groups of royal and comital women or religious women.