‘You aren’t from around here’: race,masculinity, and rural transgender men

Both scholarly and everyday understandings of transgender people tend to assume that they can only live well in urban places, yet there is little research on the transgender people actually living in rural communities. This article uses an intersectional analysis of 45 interviews conducted between 2010 and 2013 with transgender men living in the Southeast and Midwest United States to understand how some rural transgender people may not necessarily and automatically fare worse than those in cities. Indeed, these data demonstrate that a more productive question might be, which transgender people integrate into rural communities? The reported experiences of trans men suggest that the claims to sameness that are crucial to inclusion in rural communities are articulated centrally through whiteness and enacting appropriate rural working-class heterosexual masculinities. The claim to sameness allows for a measure of acceptance in rural communities under economic and demographic strain in the twenty-first century.     

The spatialities of intersectional thinking: fashioning feminist geographic futures

In this article, we highlight the inherent spatialities of intersectionality and its pivotal importance for feminist geographic thought. Intersectionality was, at its inception, already a deeply spatial theoretical concept, process and epistemology, particularly when read through careful and serious engagement with Black Feminist Thought and the writings of radical women of color. We do so here, revisiting Cooper, Crenshaw, Collins and other key scholars to demonstrate that the interlocking violence of racism, patriarchy, heteronormativity, and capitalism have always constituted a spatial formation. Drawing on feminist geographic thought from the 1990s onwards, we highlight the influence of intersectional thinking on our discipline particularly concerning how racial, gendered and classed power operates in place and through space. These pieces have inspired and driven our work, and we extend them here, recognizing newer scholarship that extends and enriches feminist geography through a postcolonial intersectionality. We close by arguing that intersectional thinking is indispensable to feminist geography. Working in solidarity, across and through the interrogation of difference, with agreement and discord, we encourage a deeper feminist geographic engagement with intersectional thinkers, contributing to more critical (and hopeful) futures for our scholarship.     

Not a zero-sum game: inequalities and resilience in Sumner,Missouri, the Gooseless Goose Capital of the World

Recent works on socio-ecological resilience stress the need to integrate inequalities and power into considerations of how communities are reorganized in response to socio-ecological transformations such as climate change. These works have often approached inequalities and power as zero-sum games, with scholars framing individuals and groups within communities as either empowered or marginalized. Drawing from 20 months of fieldwork in a rural community in the central United States that was being rearranged in response to shifts in trans-national goose migration patterns, the author shows inequalities and power do not work in such dichotomous manners because different dimensions of inequality intersect and transform each other in reciprocal manners. Gender, class, and sexuality intersected to inform how individuals sustained their community, and particular men and women were simultaneously (dis)advantaged because of how their relationships with each other were rearranged in response to shifting goose migration patterns. These findings suggest scholars and policy makers working on issues related to socio-ecological resilience can better account for inequalities and power by utilizing the theoretical framework of intersectionality.     

Intersectionality: old and new endeavours?

This short comment on intersectionality raises three points for further thought and discussion: The first has to do with the rich tradition of feminist interventions in academe and in political struggles which adopted intersectional approaches before a field of ‘intersectionality studies’ was developed. The second is a note about the difficult and complex passage from individual subject formation to the constitution of collective identities, following the logic of intersectional analysis and theorizing, Finally, the third point puts forward some thoughts on positionality as ‘perspective’ from which to interpret the complexities of intersectional analyses and seek to forge solidarities and alliances beyond individual identification.     

The Intersection of Gender,Caste and Class Inequalities in Child Nutrition in Rural India

While studies have investigated inequalities in child nutrition along single axes of social power such as, gender, caste and class, there has not been any study that has examined the intersection of the different axes in determining nutritional outcomes of children. This paper examines the intersection of gender, class and caste in determining children's nutritional outcomes for rural north, rural south and rural India as a whole. The paper investigates the intersectionality of the three axes in rural India and focuses on regional differences. The results show that children with particular disadvantageous group affiliations often find significant compensatory benefits from other beneficial identities. Class inequality dominates caste inequality and caste inequality dominates gender inequality in rural North India for all levels of stunting. In contrast, caste inequality dominates class inequality which in turn dominates gender inequality for severe stunting in rural South India.     

‘Samudayik Shakti’: Working-class feminism and social organisation in Subhash Camp,New Delhi

This article illustrates the intersections between architecture and agency in Subhash Camp, a squatter settlement in New Delhi, by ‘situating activism in place’. It highlights the significance of place in social action by examining the architecture of everyday places—the house, the street and the square—as the sites of both individual transformations and collective consciousness. Through observations of the activities of and interviews with members of Samudayik Shakti, a women's organisation and a men's panchayat, this article highlights a number of related processes in Subhash Camp: how different women experienced different places through everyday spatial practices; how the spatial practices in these places were shaped by different social structures at different scales, from the family to the state; how the architecture of these places was significant both as sites of control and of emancipation of women's bodies; and how this dynamic contributed to the making of social action in Subhash Camp.     

Toward a care ethical approach to access to health care in neoliberal times

In December 2017, the Republican-controlled US Congress closed its session by pushing through a comprehensive tax overhaul bill, HR 1. Additional provisions of the ‘must pass’ bill included a last-ditch effort to quash the Affordable Care Act (ACA), otherwise known as Obamacare. In this article, I unpack some of the immediate and long-term net-positive impacts that the ACA has had on access to health care for women, infants, and children in the US while also acknowledging the continued unevenness of health outcomes along race, gender, and income differences. I argue that if we take seriously the potential of a care ethical analysis to respond to neoliberal ethics, then there is a need for a more robust engagement with intersectional analysis in order to address interlocking oppressions that exacerbate ongoing inequalities. By extension, I show how HR 1 clearly highlights the racist, classist, and gendered neoliberal logics that permeate contemporary US political and legislative debates related to health care access, underscoring the uncaring nature of US democracy and making plain a need to ‘care with’ others. I end by posing a set of speculative possibilities, asking what might be possible if we take seriously care and caring relations as fundamental to imagining worlds-otherwise.     

Young lesbians negotiating public space: an intersectional approach through places

In this paper I analyze how different aspects of identity combine to shape the experiences of seven young lesbians in public space in Manresa, a non-metropolitan city in Catalonia. I argue that their experiences need to be understood intersectionally and spatially, as complex processes that involve the mutually constituted identities that shift in space. I focus on interviews and Relief Maps to show how these dynamics work and how they are related to larger social processes such as the heteronormalization and adultification of public space.     

Positive responses,uneven experiences: intersections of gender,ethnicity, and location in post-tsunami Sri Lanka

This article examines the role of women in post-tsunami livelihoods recovery in two tsunami-affected villages in the Hambantota District, South Sri Lanka. It considers four key livelihoods recovery strategies involving women, revealing their immense capacity to overcome socially constructed disaster impacts. Their ability to respond positively is grounded in specific geographic and cultural contexts, making location and ethnicity of profound consequence. Although pre-existing ethnic backgrounds, influenced by religious and patriarchal structures, are critical indicators of the uneven ways in which women engaged in livelihoods recovery, the tsunami generated new patterns of cultural practice. The article adds to research that goes beyond the simplistic representation of women as undifferentiated ‘victims’ in post-tsunami Sri Lanka. It stimulates discussion on the lived experiences of intersectionality in feminist geography, and emphasizes the broader relevance of the study for understanding multiple and transforming positionalities that constitute the post-disaster lives of women in divergent socio-political contexts.     

Prejudice: rethinking geographies of oppression

Despite equal opportunities legislation in many western societies, overt prejudice against minority groups is still evident. Yet, despite the persistence of equality issues, ‘prejudice’ is a term that is not widely employed in geography because of its association with a particular history of meaning within social psychology. In this paper I explore the concept of prejudice and its relationship to geographical research on discrimination and oppression. Then using original empirical research in three communities I examine how prejudice is justified and articulated by majority people. In doing so, I explore the complex intersectionalities of negative attitudes towards specific minority groups and the ways that specific mechanisms of sub-ordination can reinforce and support one another.