Feminist geographies in Norway from the turn of the millennium

Abstract

Based on an overview of feminist and gender research over two decades, this article reflects on feminist geographies in Norway within a wider political and social context. We identify eight broad, partly overlapping themes of feminist geography: rurality; development policies and practices; entrepreneurship and economic change; migration and mobility; children and youth; sexuality and health; landscape and place; and emotions and autobiography. We find that much of the research has been collaborative, interdisciplinary, multicultural, and transnational. Feminist geographies in Norway are characterized by increasing emphasis on multiple realities and situatedness, and focus on rights and power relations among men and women in all spheres of society, including academia. Yet the gender dimension has tended to focus on geographies of women, with few studies of masculinity. Inspired in part through feminist critiques of research practices in social sciences, a recent development has been autobiographical approaches examining the significance of personal lives and emotions for the research process. We conclude that feminist geographies in Norway are diverse, empirically and contextually informed, and have become embedded within several fields of human geography.     

Local Forest Protection, Gender and Caste—Dhani Hill, Orissa, India

A questionnaire survey covering 35% of all households in five villages was conducted in a local forest protection group in Orissa, India. The aim was to study dependency, involvement and attitude towards forest protection based on gender and caste. A conceptual model indicating differences between the groups was used as a base. Women experienced more problems of restrictions caused by the protection and more threats associated with the forest than did men. Voting in meetings and a wish for more plantations was of greater importance for women than for men, while men emphasised importance of co-operation with government. Direct involvement was very low among women, even though they were well informed about forest issues. Tribal groups were the main contributers of labour, while general caste had been involved for considerably longer in forest protection than other groups. The tribal groups also wanted more plantations and had a good understanding of the ecosystem. For example, they indicated the value of a growing forest. Men and general caste tended to be more outspoken in this type of questionnaire situation compared to women and scheduled castes and scheduled tribes. The general attitude towards Dhani Hill, however, was positive and could be linked to daily use and future optimism. This optimism and the involvement of all the different groups should be considered as crucial in the timing of local forest management interventions. This should be seen together with the diversified opinions and ways of expressing such opinions depending on gender and caste.     

‘Shew Yourselves as Men’: Gender,Citizenship and Political Propaganda in the 1773 and 1774 Worcester Election Contests

This case study of the 1773 and 1774 election contests in the city of Worcester investigates how members of the local oligarchy, and the political opposition to that oligarchy, drew on contemporary discourses on citizenship to convince the electorate that their candidate would become a worthy representative of their city in parliament, and to refute the claims of their opponents. Since independence was absolutely essential to the voters’ identities as male householder citizens, this became the main issue of conflict. The candidate of the opposition interest, Sir Watkin Lewes, sought to establish himself as the guardian of the independence of the citizens of Worcester against the corrupt corporation. The candidates of the corporation, Thomas Bates Rous and his successor, Colonel Nicholas Lechmere, instead claimed that Lewes was the real threat, as his anti‐corruption campaign deprived the voters of the usual fruits of the election. While such claims also entailed an appeal by the local elite to the financial interest of the voters, the need to justify this incentive ideologically, and the high portion of voters who turned their backs on their patrons, does suggest the power embedded in the concept of citizenship in the political life at the level of the localities. Gendered and classed conceptions of citizenship, furthermore, were employed as offensive weapons in the political propaganda surrounding the elections, as each faction sought to discredit the other by claiming that they were neither manly enough, nor of the proper social status, to qualify as worthy political subjects. Thus, citizenship was not only fundamentally gendered in the masculine, but also highly hierarchical and equally intertwined with contemporary notions of class.     

The interplay between school and home location and its relationship with children’s subjective well-being

ABSTRACT

The aim is to determine the extent to which children’s subjective well-being (SWB) varies according to age, gender and the fact of living in the same context as the school (urban/rural) or not, in representative samples of 8, 10 and 12-year-olds (N?=?3708) in Spain. The existence of a match between schoolchildren’s living context and that of their school was the most common situation for the participants. The results, analysed using linear regression models and analysis of variance (ANOVA) with complex samples, show that a match between home and school context is not associated with statistically different levels of SWB in the three age groups (8, 10 and 12-year-olds) or by gender. Whereas no interactions between age, gender, school context and home location contribute to explaining overall life satisfaction, some do contribute to explaining the modified version of the Student’s Life Satisfaction Scale (SLSS) used here.     

Geographies of gender and feminism in Mexico: a field in construction

Abstract

This paper sets out to present geographies of gender and feminism in Mexico in order to identify some of the conceptual contributions, thematic axes and key problems within the field’s corpus of knowledge that, while widely-recognized internationally, is only beginning to develop in Mexico. I examine the academic production of feminist geography with an emphasis on the institutional contexts that may facilitate or perhaps impede putting such studies into practice in different institutions throughout the country. Additionally, I provide an account of the main objects of study that have contributed to configuring original, committed field research under the conditions of exclusion and marginality that women face on a daily basis.     

Feminist geography in the UK: the dialectics of women-gender-feminism-intersectionality and praxis

Abstract

Feminist praxis has always been about both the individual and the collective; one of the revolutionary and utopian promises of feminism is that of being, bringing, and working together. This piece provides a brief account of some of the significant scholarship and collective activities within British feminist geography over the last twenty five years, with a particular focus on the work of the Women and Geography Study Group/Gender and Feminist Geographies Research Group. We underscore the importance of intersectional approaches to scholarship and praxis in UK feminist geographies in this period, and in going forward, as well as signalling some of the dialectical opportunities and tensions arising from this approach.     

Race to the top: using experiments to understand gender bias towards female politicians

ABSTRACT

Gender balance in political representation is an important goal of governments. In this paper, we ask: Do voters judge female politicians less favourably than male politicians, when given an otherwise identical set of information about their backgrounds? We employ an innovative online experiment (N?=?1933) to measure Australians’ attitudes towards female politicians and examine a series of hypotheses. We find voters see female candidates as more capable and are more likely to vote for them, but they are less likely to expect them to win. Female candidates are seen as more capable in their military and healthcare roles, but gender is perceived to be a major barrier to a female candidate’s success. Women and those aligning with the Labor/Green parties are more supportive of a female candidate, but we find limited evidence that those aligning with the Liberal/Nationals are openly hostile to a female candidate.     

Making the house a home in later medieval York

ABSTRACT

The loss of all original furnishings or decoration and the relentless refashioning of interiors have eroded our ability to appreciate how extant houses functioned as living spaces in the later Middle Ages. This paper uses a variety of documentary sources, notably York’s rich collection of probate inventories, to provide evidence on the division and furnishing of buildings. Depositions from cases within the ecclesiastical court of York ask questions about the way that particular artisanal and mercantile houses functioned both as residences and as places of work. Taking the author’s 2008 study in Medieval Domesticity a step further, the paper will consider in more depth the notion that a distinctive bourgeois ideology of domesticity, which was projected through material culture, grew up in the later medieval city. It will, moreover, ask how far later medieval artisanal or mercantile houses constituted homes.     

The Ulster Women's Declaration and the Passion of Women in the Campaign against Home Rule,c.1886–1912*

On Ulster Day, 28 September 1912, Unionist leaders orchestrated the mass signing of the Ulster Covenant and the Women's Declaration against Irish home rule. These were highly emotive documents and the ‘passion’ expressed by women contrasted with the men, as the Covenant implied a pact with God while the Women's Declaration promised to support their male counterparts. The Declaration, with 234,046 signatures, was one of the largest petitions ever organised by Irish (and British women) in this period and expressed the desire of many Ulsterwomen to defend their identities as Unionists and Protestants. This article breaks new ground by examining the Declaration as a form of petitioning culture. It will analyse Unionist women's petitioning through the lens of ‘passion’ and argue that petitioning offered women a way to express their feelings on this important issue. This will be done by analysing the Declaration and the Unionist women's earlier petitioning campaigns to reveal what motivated Unionist women to protest and their political practice. Another perspective is provided by the contemporary criticisms of the Declaration made by suffrage activists. This shows that while ‘passion’ could mobilise women, it could also cause friction. This article will also consider the gendered coverage of Ulsterwomen's political participation by the press. Overall, this article reappraises the political activism of Ulsterwomen from the perspective of petitioning and the power of ideological passion in politics.     

Witchcraft,Statecraft, Mancraft: On the Demonological Foundations of Sovereignty

ABSTRACT

Questions of sovereignty remain central to political theology, yet the role played by demonology in sovereignty’s construction has yet to be closely examined. This article addresses this omission by exploring the relation between the phantasmatic figures of the “sovereign” and the “witch” in the work of Jean Bodin (1530–96). Early modern concepts of “witchcraft” and its prosecution have a constitutive relation to (theo)political sovereignty, modern gender relations, and the birth of the nation-state. Reading Bodin’s work on witchcraft alongside those on sovereignty, tolerance, and the household, I argue that the demonological witch forms a self-consolidating other at the foundation of modern constructions of sovereignty, tolerance, and the (cishetero)normative family – an excess or absence that reinforces and destabilizes gendered, sexual, political, juridical, and religious hierarchies that continue to influence the present. In doing so, I demonstrate that sovereignty rests on a demonological foundation.