The challenges of feminist geography in Taiwan

Abstract

This article explores the development of feminist geography in Taiwan within the time frame of last three decades, since the first author became involved in the IGU Gender and Geography Working Group in 1988. It is found that Anglo-American influences have contributed significantly to the feminist movement in Taiwan. An important outcome over time has been the improved visibility of Women and Gender studies courses in academe. As social geographer and cultural anthropologist respectively, the authors trace important dynamics of growth in the academic fields of geography and the social sciences in post-secondary education. Owing to the history and the nature of the discipline of geography, and the structural constraints due to male-domination, there is still a high fence to cross over. Statistics show that a rising number of women in Taiwan have received PhD degrees. The authors note the mitigating development that younger women geographers have taken up administration positions as chairs of four of the five geography departments. However, up to the present time, in academic meetings and conferences, it is unlikely that any presentations on the topic of gender will be offered. The authors encourage younger generations of scholars in Taiwan to continue to look for and connect with feminist geographers abroad, to embrace diversity and inclusiveness in their research, and to help our society to grow in the level of gender equity.     

A feminist geographer in a strange land: building bridges through informal mentoring in Switzerland

Abstract

This article is a narrative representation of a personal experience as an early career feminist woman in the French-speaking Swiss context. After highlighting the androcentric tradition in Swiss academia, and the still-prevalent glass ceiling for young female scholars, this article aims to explore the survival mechanisms women use among themselves when up against a pervasive old boys’ club. Using a reflexive approach, this article illustrates how informal mechanisms can support early career women academics. Despite the lack of either feminist or gender geography programs and departments in Western Switzerland, this article highlights the presence of feminist practices in the everyday life of academia. Numerous collaborative practices are encountered at different career levels, and in different sites. While the bias of such practice is acknowledged, relying on individuals more than on institutionalised practices, the article aims to understand the workings of female solidarity networks better. It calls for a recognition of their role in women’s career progression and for the implementation of a culture of informal mentoring within academia. Finally, by more fully recognising such practices, it calls for the use of mentoring as a feminist tool to create a more inclusive academia, promoting an ethic of care that aims to challenge the masculinism and elitism of the neoliberal university.     

Feminist geographies: fight and achievement of a place in the Brazilian scientific production

Abstract

This paper examines the development of the field of feminist geographies in Brazil, proposing a reflection upon the different aspects of the policy (personal, institutional and national/international) which are intertwined with the geographical scientific production on gender and sexualities. This research is based on a data survey comprising 17,636 papers published between 1974 and 2015 in 90 scientific journals kept by Brazilian geographical entities at all levels of the ranking established by the government. The study emphasizes that there was an expansion of the gender and sexualities approach after the 2000s, characterized for its production from the peripheral universities, by young researchers and its publication in scientific journals of lower scientific impact, when the formal criteria of evaluation recently set in Brazil are taken into consideration. The gender studies field can be considered consolidated in Brazil, however, the approach of sexualities in the Brazilian geography still requires some work to be finally recognized.     

A feminist geographic analysis of perceptions of food and health in Ugandan cities

Abstract

This article contributes to a feminist geographic analysis of how urban food and health environments and non-communicable disease experience may be being constructed, and contested, by healthcare professionals (local elites) in two secondary Ugandan cities (Mbale and Mbarara). I use thematic and group interaction analysis of focus group data to explore material and discursive representations. Findings make explicit how healthcare professionals had a tendency to prescribe highly classed and gendered assumptions of bodies and behaviours in places and in daily practices. The work supports the discomfort some have felt concerning claims of an African nutrition transition, and is relevant to debates regarding double burden malnutrition. I argue that a feministic analysis, and an intersectional appreciation of people in places, is advantageous to food and health-related research and policy-making. Results uncover and deconstruct a dominant patriarchal tendency towards blaming women for obesity. Yet findings also exemplify the co-constructed and malleable nature of knowledge and understandings, and this offers encouragement.     

Israeli feminist geography: women,gender and queer geographies

Abstract

This article charts the changing knowledges within Israeli feminist geography in the last few decades. It briefly reviews some of the topics that characterize Israeli scholarship, and in particular the ways in which the academic knowledge changed from the focus on women’s geography, to feminist and gendered analysis of spaces, to a more recent focus on sexuality and gender. We argue that it is not that one knowledge replacing others, but rather all knowledges and approaches exist simultaneously within Israeli geography today.     

Anti-Prostitution Politics and Militarised Urban Prosperity in the US Military Camptown in Korea

Camptowns (kijich'on) are neighbourhoods located near US military bases in Korea that are organised around the military service economy, especially the sex industry. While most studies of Korean camptowns point to the US military's involvement with the camptown sex industry as evidence of US military imperialism, this article argues that since 2004 anti-prostitution polices have been essential to stabilising American militarisation in Korea's urban realm. Focusing on Anjeong-ri, a camptown located adjacent to Camp Humphreys, the largest overseas US military base on the planet, the article examines how Korean development actors invoke hierarchies of race, gender, sexuality, and class to distance the camptown from the sex industry and to construct the camptown as a space of militarised urban prosperity. By showing emerging ways in which US military empire works through anti-prostitution policies and through the urban system in Korea, the argument poses a challenge to anti-prostitution feminists who have long located evidence of American empire in the sex industry itself.     

DECOLONIZING THE PRODUCTION OF GEOGRAPHICAL KNOWLEDGES? REFLECTIONS ON RESEARCH WITH INDIGENOUS MUSICIANS

ABSTRACT. This paper contributes to debates on decolonizing geography, by reflecting on the ethical and political considerations involved in research on indigenous music in Australia. The research collaboration involved two non-indigenous researchers—an academic geographer and a music educator—engaging with indigenous music and musicians in a number of ways. The paper reflects on these engagements, and draws attention to a series of key binaries and boundaries that were highlighted and unsettled: 'outsider/insider'; 'traditional/contemporary'; 'authenticity/inauthenticity'. It also discusses the politics of publishing and draws attention to the ways in which the objects of our work—in this case a book—influence decisions about representation, subject matter, and interpretations of speaking positions. Rather than seeking validation for attempts to 'speak for' or 'speak to' indigenous musical perspectives, contemporary Aboriginality was understood as a field of intersubjective relations where multiple voices, representations and interventions are made. I discuss some ways in which the authors sought to situate their own musical, and geographical, knowledges in this problematic, and inherently political, research context.     

环境心理学视角下中国跨境流动人口的国家感研究

随着人文地理学的“情感转向”，地缘环境也开始指向情感研究。中国的家国情怀使“国家”不仅具有政治属性，也成为一个饱含情感与地方认同的概念。本文从地缘环境的情感要素入手，援引环境心理学理论与方法，探究跨境流动背景下的国家感影响因素。结论发现：①中国海外移民国家感受到个体与社会因素制约，包括年龄、学历、公民身份、出国时长、移居国GDP和文化认同；②国家软实力提升和包容多元的地缘政策利于提升客族文化认同进而增强海外移民的国家感；③居住、网络媒体环境变化及国家间的话语博弈会引发跨境群体重新审视流动前后所处的地缘环境，直接或间接重构国家感。本文既为促进跨境流动群体与国家之间的双向接纳提供新路径，也在情感地理学方法论层面提供新思路。