Researching ‘gay Cape Town’ finding value-added queerness

An initiative to market Cape Town as a premier gay and lesbian tourist destination has steadily gathered steam over the last decade. I set out to study this phenomenon thereby adding to conversations about the normalization and globalization of queerness. Rather than straightforwardly presenting my findings, however, this paper considers queer theorizing as an inductive process by detailing the answers I did not find in the field and the questions I did. Based on my close readings of queer theory, I went looking for resistance and therefore queerness in the normalized space of ‘gay Cape Town’. I was disappointed. But I did not instead find outright capitulation. Rather, in this process of queer's commodification, I found anxieties, cracks and fissures beneath a veneer of assured mainstreaming. I found an undetermined process that did not represent either ‘un-African-ness’ or ‘global queer homogeneity’ or ‘African-ness’ and ‘local queer heterogeneity’. I found not an un-queering through commodification, but a queer commodity struggling to gain a foothold in a nation in which the terrain for gay and lesbian politics has drastically changed in such a way that the market cannot be ignored. To grapple with these findings, I argue for a more ambivalent approach to queer theorizing.     

The monumental and the miniature: imagining ‘modernity’ in Astana

This article examines the elite nation-building project in post-independence Kazakhstan through an analysis of monumental architecture and miniature models in Astana. It considers the role of the country's new capital as a modernist project, in which elite geopolitical imaginaries are multiply inscribed in the cityscape. Drawing on interdisciplinary literatures on modernity and authoritarian regime legitimation, the article considers modernity as a discursive trope employed in legitimating the Nazarbayev government, and one that has various material manifestations in the urban landscape of Astana. The research is based on fieldwork in Kazakhstan in Summer 2009, and examines architecture, monuments, and the 2009 Astana Day celebrations. Through a focus on the monumental and the miniature, it highlights their similar roles in transforming symbols of Kazakhstani independence and identity into objects of reverie outside the field of political contestation.     

Trans embodiment in carceral space: hypermasculinity and the US prison industrial complex

Queer geographers have recently begun to examine the lives of transgender persons, a heretofore gap in the literature. This article examines the experiences of incarcerated trans persons in the USA, thus extending this nascent trans geography work by considering a new population in a new space. As some scholarly and activist research has shown over the last decade or so, US trans persons are incarcerated at a disproportionately high rate and face harsh conditions while imprisoned. First-hand accounts of trans prisoners' experiences are, however, limited due to the difficulty of accessing this population for research purposes. Working in cooperation with a Montreal-based organization that facilitates pen-pal communications between queer persons inside and outside penitentiaries in the USA, we conducted qualitative research with 23 trans feminine individuals confined in facilities in several states. Our findings unfortunately corroborate the findings laid out in the small existing literature on trans prisoner issues, demonstrating that they endure harsh conditions of confinement. We detail these conditions here, while also pointing to informant responses that offer insight into the ways in which trans incarcerated persons cope with the hypermasculine and heteronormative environment of the US prison. These results are offered in the spirit of advancing a queer abolitionist politics that centers the knowledge and experiences of trans incarcerated persons.     

Publications received

Publications received     

From boats to bushes: environmental elements supportive of children’s sociodramatic play outdoors

ABSTRACT

Sociodramatic play is a central activity of early childhood, one influenced by the nature of the environment where it occurs. Using the Smilansky Scale for the Evaluation of Dramatic and Socio Dramatic Play (Smilansky and Shefatya, 1990), this study compared the frequency and complexity of the sociodramatic play of two groups of fifteen 4–5 year old children in two preschool outdoor spaces differing in natural elements, resources, and spatial characteristics. Field notes and behaviour mapping were also employed to explore potential associations between the play characteristics, and specific elements and areas of the two spaces. Findings showed the following elements supported more frequent and complex sociodramatic play: a balanced conjunction of man-made resources and significant vegetation and natural loose parts; opportunities for seclusion and lack of overcrowding; linking pathways and open-ended design. The findings have implications for the design of outdoor spaces that support the frequency and complexity of children’s sociodramatic play.     

Machismo and other Intimacies in Twentieth-Century Bolivia: Reflections on Conducting Oral Histories about Sexuality and Reproduction

Through an analysis of two oral history interviews, this article examines the impact of machismo, closed-mindedness and blame on women's sexual experiences in the urban Andes between the mid-1970s and 2009. The testimonies of Marcela and her daughter, Graciela, also shed light on the processes by which gender ideologies and cultural values concerning sexuality are transmitted across generations. The article further addresses the ethical and methodological challenges of conducting interviews on sensitive themes and interpreting the resulting testimonies. It argues that interviewing individuals about their sexual and reproductive lives, while forcing oral historians to confront personal and political fears, enriches our understanding of a range of gender-related phenomena.