A collective biography of joy in academic practice

Changing working conditions at many universities over the past decade have meant longer hours, intensified record-keeping, and more precarious employment. Despite these changes, many academics still insist that we enjoy our jobs. Our inquiry is oriented toward spaces and practices that bring us joy in our daily work and help us withstand the negative effects of working in academia. This article reports on our exploration of some moments of joy at work as part of our own academic practice. Through a feminist methodology known and developed as collective biography, we wrote individual memories of joy in our teaching, publishing, and collaborating, together at a writing retreat. As we analyzed these recalled moments, we came to realize that joy emerges through a turbulent process fueled by a cocktail of emotions. In fact, we came to understand joy as affect, with affect seen as a certain sort of excess, generated around and through sensations that might contribute to feelings such as celebration, happiness, or surprise as well as fear, anger, or embarrassment. We conclude that joy does things, that it can be transformative, and that cultivating joy in academia is part of a radical praxis.     

In Place and At Home in the City: Connecting privilege,safety and belonging for women in Toronto

In this article I theorize the connections between privileged social identities and women's sense of safety and belonging in a diverse urban environment, Toronto. Based on qualitative research with a small group of women who grew up in the suburbs of Toronto, and later chose to live in the city, this article is a preliminary investigation into the factors that make it possible for some women to feel ‘in place’ in the city. I suggest that confidence, a sense of belonging, and the ability to distance oneself from violence are all related to privileges such as whiteness and middle-classness. In the Canadian context, these identities function as the invisible norm, allowing women to feel at home in an ethnically and economically diverse city. Moreover, the ability to move into and through urban space may function in a reciprocal manner to reinforce privileged identities. I argue that it is important to examine interlocking systems of privilege and oppression in terms of both women's affective experiences of urban space, and the gendered constitution of urban spaces. This approach serves to problematize and complicate the concept of appropriation of urban space through an examination of the salience of privilege. I conclude by suggesting that this article may serve to open dialogue about the relationship of privileged identities to marginalized identities in the city, in order to add complexity to feminist research on women's everyday lives in the city.

Women are not merely objects in space where they experience restrictions and obligations; they also actively produce, define and reclaim space. (Koskela, 1997 Koskela, Hille. 1997. ‘Bold walk and breakings’: women's spatial confidence versus fear of violence. Gender, Place & Culture, 4: 301–319. [Taylor & Francis Online] [Google Scholar], p. 305)     

Feminist research in online spaces

The Internet is growing in popularity as a research site and is often framed as the next frontier in human subjects research. The opportunities the Internet provides for political organizing, making personal experiences more public, and creating spaces for a variety of voices makes it particularly relevant to feminist geographers and researchers such as ourselves. However, many qualitative researchers approach online research as though the Internet simply archives an abundance of data that is ‘there for the taking.’ Being trained in feminist research methods, we took issue with this approach, yet also encountered challenges when trying to apply feminist practices and ethical perspectives to online research environments. We explore these challenges through a collaborative reflection on our own independent online research experiences. Three themes emerge: (1) interpreting politics and visibility in online spaces, (2) researcher positionality across virtual and material study sites, and (3) subjectivity and power in online research ethics. Reflecting on these themes, we argue that the insights of feminist ethics and a feminist geographical lens are crucial for bringing much-needed reflexivity and reciprocity into online research. Simultaneously, online research opens up exciting new ways of conceptualizing central ideas within feminist research ethics, including politicization, positionality, and power.     

Analysis of the spatial distribution of geochemical signatures for the identification of prehistoric settlement patterns in ADE and TMA sites in the lower Amazon Basin

The Archeological Dark Earth (ADE) and Terra Mulata (TMA) anthrosols found at Juruti, on the lower Amazon River, extend over a wide area located within the local ferralsol domain. The ADE soils are dark in color and contain large quantities of fragmented ceramics, while the TMA soils are also relatively dark, but lack ceramics. Multi-element chemical analyses of soil samples of ADE and TMA from the A2 horizon (depths of 10–20 cm) indicated that the ADE soils are characterized by higher concentrations of P₂O₅, CaO, K₂O, MgO, Cu, Mn, and Zn, while the TMAs have median levels of these compounds, and the ferralsols have much lower concentrations. These chemical elements make up the geochemical signature of these anthrosols, whereas Al₂O₃, Fe₂O₃, TiO₂, Cr, Sr, La, Li, Ni, Pb, V, Y, and Zr characterize the geochemical signature of the ferralsols, which was identified partially in the ADEs and TMAs. The isoline maps of these two geochemical associations permitted the delimitation of the different areas and the identification of the ADEs as sites of long-term human occupancy, and the TMA as an area of temporary occupation associated with agricultural activities. Seven villages were delimited within the study area, and were separated by corridors of ferralsols. These settlements were established on the riverbank, with the more temporary cultivated areas behind them, running almost parallel to the river. The identification of functional patterns based on geochemical associations, the abundance of ceramic material, and concentrations of organic matter, indicated that an area of more than 350 ha was occupied.     

All aboard? Women working the spaces of gentrification in Toronto's Junction

Despite early attention being paid to the connections amongst ‘gender, work and gentrification’ in the urban geography literature, there have been few attempts to examine the experiences of women as workers in gentrifying neighbourhoods. This gap leaves open critical questions about the nature of the links between the production of gendered work practices and the production of gentrified urban landscapes. In this article, I explore how women working in a variety of differently precarious situations – as struggling small business owners, self-employed workers and part-time workers – manage the tensions and contradictions of struggling for economic survival while attempting to support community-building efforts and social reproduction needs in a gentrifying area. Using data drawn from interviews and urban ethnographic methods in Toronto's ‘Junction’ neighbourhood, I argue that precarious conditions of work in the context of gentrification engender a variety of diverse economic and social practices – developed through immaterial and affective labour – that, in turn, produce particular, and often contradictory, social and economic landscapes of gentrification. I will explore the ways in which gendered vulnerabilities and insecurities are ironically produced, in part, by the feminized consumption landscape, which primes neighbourhoods for widespread gentrification. Through examining these dynamics, we can begin to theorize the structural production of precarity, and in particular, gendered precarity, through urban processes such as gentrification.