The Dictionary of Human Geography (68 page)

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Authors: Michael Watts

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feminist geographies
These geographies focus on how gender and geographies are mutually produced and transformed, and the ways in which gender differentiation and het eronormativity permeate social life, and are interwoven with and naturalize other categor ical distinctions. The tradition dates from the mid 1970s, drawing inspiration from women?s movements of the 1960s (see feminism); it is both a sub field and a force that has reshaped the entire discipline. It now has a considerable institutional presence: the journal Gender, Place and Culture has been published since 1994 (a series of excellent reviews of sub areas within feminist geography appeared through out 2003 and 2004 to mark the journal?s tenth anniversary); there are over 12 titles in the Routledge International Studies of Women and Place series; regular progress reports of feminist geography appear in Progress in Human Geography and Urban Geography; and there are a good number of textbooks targeted to varying levels of undergraduate and (post) graduate students (e.g. Domosh and Seager, 2001; Jones III, Nast and Roberts, 1997; McDowell and Sharpe, 1997; Moss, 2002; Sharpe, Browne and Thien, 2004; Pratt, 2004), along with several key reference texts, including A companion to feminist geography (Nelson and Seager, 2005), a Feminist glossary of human geography (McDowell and Sharpe, (NEW PARAGRAPH) and The atlas of women (Seager, 2003a). Although there are distinguishable strands, some common tendencies cut across all feminist geographies: (NEW PARAGRAPH) They are critical, not only of gender op pression and various manifestations of heteronormativity in society, but of the myriad ways that these are reproduced in geographical knowledge. There is now a comprehensive critique of geographical traditions; for example, poLiticaL geog raphy (Staeheli, Kofman and Peake, 2004); historical geography (Domosh, 1991); humanistic geography (Rose, (NEW PARAGRAPH) ; geographies of modernity and postModernnr (Deutsche, 1991); and more recent literatures on transnation alism (Mitchell, 1997c) and globaliza tion (Nagar, Lawson, McDowell and Hanson, 2002). Rose (1993) extends her critique to the discipline as a whole, cata loguing its various and complementary forms of mascuLinism. What the relationship between feminist geography and the discipline now is and should be remains a matter ofdebate: some note the lack of impact that more than two dec ades of vibrant feminist scholarship have had on the discipline, while others prob lematize the increased exchange of ideas between feminist and other strands of criticaL human geography (for an ex cellent discussion of the potential for exchange between feminist geograph ers and non representationaL theory, see Jacobs and Nash, 2003). Feminist geographers? relations with the discipline have been framed through notions of am bivalence and the metaphors ofparadox ical and in between space (Bondi, 2004). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Sexism within geographical institutions (in the teaching of geography, the staffing of academic departments, and through the publication process) has been a persistent concern (Monk and Hanson, 1982; Rose, 1993; Bondi, 2004). In the past decade, this has been intertwined with critiques of persistent racism in the discipline. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Nelson and Seager (2005, p. 6) position feminist geography as ?an innately inter disciplinary sub field?. Within the discip line, feminist geographers practice this tendency by tracing the interconnections between all aspects of life, across the sub disciplinary boundaries of economic, sociaL, poLiticaL and cuLturaL geog raphy. This entails breaking down boundaries within sub disciplines as well; for instance, by demonstrating the interdependencies between informal and formal aspects of the economy (see domestic Labour). In an associated way, feminist geographers disrupt conven tional notions of scaLe, and move across scales to trace connections between similar processes in different places (Katz, 2001; Nagar, Lawson, McDowell and Hanson, 2002). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Most feminist geographers share a com (NEW PARAGRAPH) mitment to situating knowledge, the view that interpretations are context bound and partial, rather than detached and uni versal (see action research; phanocen trism, positionaLity; refLexivity; (NEW PARAGRAPH) quaLitative methods; situated know ledge). This has produced a large litera ture on feminist methodoLogies, including four journal symposia Far row, Moss and Shaw (1995), Hodge (NEW PARAGRAPH) and Nast (1994b) and two books (Jones III, Nast and Roberts, 1997; Moss, 2002). It has also led to ex perimental writing, including various modes of self refLexivity (for a critical evaluation of these experiments, see Rose, 1997b), and to efforts to disrupt the individualist author (e.g. the fused subject of Julie Graham and Kathy Gibson as J.K. Gibson Graham, the Women in Geography Study Group writ ing collective, and collaborations be tween academics and community groups). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Feminist geographers tend to emphasize the specificity of processes in particular pLaces. This has been tied to a critique of universalizing, masculinist knowledge claims, and a commitment to agency and an open, transformable future. Certainly, this has been an important strand of feminist geographers? criticism of mas culinist knowledge, but it has been extended to (non geographical) feminist theory as well (Katz, 2001a). Attending to the particularities of gendered pro cesses in specific places can be an import ant means of moving beyond highly polarized academic debates and to engage a messier, more nuanced and ambivalent politics (Nagar, Lawson, McDowell and Hanson, 2002; Pratt, 2004). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Feminist knowledge production is typic ally aligned with a political commitment to social transformation. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Despite these common themes, there is a great deal of variation within feminist geog raphy. Bowlby, Lewis, McDowell and Foord (1989) sketched an influential history of femi nist geographies, in which they identified two breaks, one in the late 1970s and the other towards the end of the 1980s (see figure on page 248). The first break was less decisive in the USA, where the influence of the geography of women approach has been stronger (for a more complete map of national variations in feminist geography, see Monk, 1994). There is also a danger that a model of stages will be read as a progress narrative, with later stages interpreted as more progressive than earlier ones. It should be noted, then, that traditions exist simultaneously and there is a great deal of heterogeneity (national and otherwise) within and outside these generalizations. (NEW PARAGRAPH) An important task for feminist geographers has been to make women visible, by develop ing a geography of women. The goal has been to achieve gender equality; the spatial vision one of integration (Bondi, 2004). Two points have been central: women?s experiences and perceptions often differ from those of (white) men, and the former have restricted access to a range of opportunities, from paid employment to services. This is largely an empirical trad ition, loosely influenced by liberal feminism and weLfare geography. It has tended to focus on individuals, documenting how women?s roles as caregivers and ?housewives?, in conjunction with the existing spatial struc tures, housing design and policy, and patterns of accessibiLity to transport and other services such as childcare, conspire to con strain women?s access to paid employment and other resources. (NEW PARAGRAPH) An early criticism of the geography of women approach was that gender inequality is typically explained in terms of the concept of gender roles, especially women?s roles as housewives and mothers, in conjunction with some notion of spatial constraint. Foord and Gregson (1986) argued that the concept of gender roles narrows the focus to women (as opposed to male power and the relations between women and men), emerges out of a static social theory, and presents women as victims (as passive recipients of roles). Further, although the geography of women shows how spatial constraint and separation enter into the construction of women?s pos ition, it typically provides a fairly narrow read ing of space, conceived almost exclusively as distance, or as transparent, and (potentially) gender free (Bondi, 2004). In early work in this tradition, insufficient consideration was given to variations in gender relations across places. There has been, however, a very useful planning component to this literature that outlines, for example, efforts to restructure the city so as to reduce gender inequalities and enhance quality of life (e.g. Wekerle and Whitzman, 1995). Both successes and frustra tions in attempts to implement some of these reforms have led to critical reconsiderations of the limits of liberal feminism and towards a fuller institutional analysis, confirming Eisenstein?s (1981) point that the practical and theoretical limits of LiberaLism are fre quently discovered in practice by liberal feminists themselves. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Socialist feminist geographers reworked Marxian categories and theory to explain the interdependence of geography, gender rela tions and economic deveLopment under cap italism (see marxist geography). One of the key theoretical debates within socialist feminist geography revolved around the question of how best to articulate gender and cLass analyses. At its most abstract, the question was addressed in terms of patriarchy and capitalism, and the relative autonomy of the two systems. Socialist feminist geographers first worked primarily at the urban and regional scaLes; arguably, it is a renewed version ofsocialist feminist that is now most insistent about the material effects of the globalizing forces of capitalism. At the urban scale, an early focus of Anglo American femi nist geographers was the social and spatial sep aration of suburban homes from paid employment; this was seen as crucial to the day to day and generational reproduction of workers and the development and continuation of ?traditional? gender relations in capitalist societies (MacKenzie and Rose, 1983). Given a feminist commitment to agency, efforts were made to read these processes in non functionalist terms and as strategies to man age the effects of a capitalist economy (cf. functionalism). For example, MacKenzie and Rose argued that the isolation of women as housewives in suburban locations emerged from the combined influence of working class household strategies, govern mental policy and male power within fam ilies and trades unions. Socialist feminist geographers also have been attentive to the ways in which gender relations differ from place to place, and are sedimented within place specific social and economic relations, in ways that not only reflect but partially determine local economic changes. This argument has been made at urban (Hanson and Pratt, 1995), regional (McDowell and Massey, 1984) and international scales (Pearson, 1986). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Beginning in the late 1980s, many feminist geographers moved away from an exclusive focus on gender and class systems, to consider more expansive geographies of difference (see identity; recognition). Feminist geog raphers were increasingly attentive to the dif ferences in the construction of gender relations across races, ethnicities, ages, (dis) abilities, religions, sexualities and national ities; to exploitative relations among women who are positioned in varying ways along these multiple axes of difference (see ageism; ethnicity; homophobia and heterosexism; race; racism; sexuality); and to the ways that gender classification orders the existence not just of men and women, but animals, commodities, ideas and other entities. Gender is a powerful means of naturalizing difference. They began to draw on a broader range of social, and particularly cultural, theory, including psychoanalysis, post colonialism, post structuralism and queer theory, in order to develop a fuller under standing of how gender relations and iden tities are shaped and assumed (see subject formation). This led to fundamental rethink ing of the category, gender, and attending to the contradictions and possibilities presented by the seeming instability of gender. With a focus on multiple identifications and perfor mativity, the emphasis shifted from material constraint and spatial entrapment to possibil ities beyond fixity. This was articulated in (NEW PARAGRAPH) Rose?s (1993) notion of paradoxical space: the sense that the multiplicity and contradict oriness of the ways in which we are positioned in space generates possibilities excessive to hegemonic heterosexual norms and spaces (for further thoughts about the ways in which performativity and space are intertwined, see also Gregson and Rose, 2000; Pratt, 2004). Metaphors of multiplicity, mobility and fluidity, of hybridity and paradoxical, in between, spaces were immensely popular in the 1990s, including Gibson Graham?s (2006b [1996]) influential re theorizing of capitalism and class processes. A considerable amount of writing developed around gendered cul tural representation, which extended the focus to imaginative and symbolic spaces (see film and geography; imaginative geog raphies; vision and visuality). A small but growing number of studies of masculinities (Berg and Longhurst, 2003) began to deliver on the promise of a gender relational approach, by directing the focus away from women to a larger network of heteropatriar chal relations. The influence of identity polit ics and post structural theories refocused attention on sexuality and the scale of the body. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Nonetheless, new fault lines emerged among feminist geographers. Monk (1994) observed that national differences between American and British geographers diminished as both pursued these new directions, but divi sions between feminist geographers located in the global north and global south increased, an institutional schism that repeats geopolit ical ones in troubling ways. By 2006, Ramon Garcia, Simonsen and Vaiou declared that Anglophone hegemony within institutional ized feminist geography was not improving; on the contrary, it was getting worse. And by the mid 1990s, cautionary reactions to a focus on mobility, identity and difference suggested the need to re invigorate links with a renewed socialist feminism. feminist geographies Interwoven strands of feminist geography (NEW PARAGRAPH) To a considerable extent this has happened, and a fourth strand of feminist geography could be called ?transversal? feminist geog raphy. Connections are being drawn in many directions. Seager (2003b) reviews fruits of ?boundary breakdown? within feminist polit ical ecology and animal geography. The lat ter traces structures of oppression across gender, race, class and species, as well as exposing gendered assumptions that underlie human relations

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