Search

Both fisheries and feminism have been the subject of much research spanning academic disciplines and topics for many years. The papers in this themed issue are considered 'fishy' in the sense that they are both about fisheries and fish in diverse places, but also because they use a feminist lens, and feminism is often taken as something suspicious that can be doubted by virtue of the social bias associated with the term. Feminism has long offered an understanding of how patriarchal frameworks are embedded within larger structures of societies that maintain social inequities. In their various papers, the authors bring critical insight to understanding the significance of feminist research and its potential for understanding the connections between place and the future of our relationship with oceans and marine ecosystems. This themed issue contributes to a hopefully growing interest in feminist insights to fisheries and ocean/maritime spaces, and addresses more broadly, the argument that (feminist) geography has remained 'land-locked'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines discourses of bullying in international climate politics. Drawing on two cases, first the (social) media coverage which surrounded climate activist Greta Thunberg's visits to the UK in 2019, and second Thunberg's interactions with former US President Donald Trump, alongside a theoretical framework inspired by feminist geopolitics, the paper argues that discourses of bullying can be conceptualised as a series of figurations (the 'bully', the 'bullied', and the 'anti-bully') which reproduce individuated relations of power. Overall, the paper argues that individuating bullying discourses perpetuate a politics of white innocence which preserves petro-masculine power in international climate politics. To contest these unequal power dynamics, the paper argues for an anti-bullying politics grounded in collective, intersectional challenges to climate injustice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on a community-based participatory action research project located in Seattle - before and during the COVID-19 pandemic - to examine the unanticipated impact that the pandemic has had on reducing barriers for survivors of domestic violence seeking protection through the legal system. We draw on interviews with survivors and victim advocates, along with autoethnographic participant observation during Domestic Violence Protection Order (DVPO) hearings, to trace survivors' experiences navigating the DVPO process before and after its transition from an analogue to digital system. We situate this research at the intersection of legal and digital geographic scholarship to analyze how the law and digital technologies reinforce the spatial operation of power and exclusion, while they simultaneously provide emancipatory potential for women's experiences of security, legal subjectivity and emotional personhood. By focusing on how the courts' transition to a digital system affects the emotional personhood and legal subjectivity of domestic violence survivors, this paper advances feminist calls within legal and digital geographies scholarship that encourage more sustained engagement with feminist thought to understand the varied effects of the law and digital technologies – respectively – on gendered bodies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates how gendered spaces are configured within local socio-cultural systems of beliefs and in what way energy interacts with cultural constructions in an Indigenous village of the Brazilian Amazon. Particularly, this paper explores the perceived changes brought by fuel availability and affordability on gendered division of space and local cosmologies. Ethnographic techniques were adopted in the collection of primary data, particularly participant observation and in-depth interviews were best suited to understand the lived experiences of these changes. This paper found that access to cooking gas and fuel for transportation can partially shift pre-existing gendered spaces and, in turn, gendered practices. However, this shift does not challenge pre-existing hierarchies of power which still limit women's freedom of movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores some of the institutional and theoretical silences within debates on infrastructural violence with reference to migrant women survivors of gendered violence. Drawing from feminist thinking around structural and symbolic oppression, it develops the notion of gendered infrastructural violence to help understand how migrant women survivors navigate statutory and non-statutory institutions when seeking support. Empirically, the paper elucidates how diverse Brazilian migrant women in London negotiate multiple forms of passive and active infrastructural violence played out in terms of xenophobia, discrimination and a hostile immigration environment. Such experiences can dissuade them from reporting due to actual and perceived fear of further violence being perpetrated against them. While infrastructural violence perpetrated by an oppressive racial state can exacerbate Brazilian migrant women's suffering of direct gendered abuse, migrant and/or feminist organisations provide invaluable support and an essential protective bulwark. Yet these experiences are mediated differently depending on women's social locations in terms of intersecting race, class, occupational and immigration status and language competencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Gender, Place & Culture journal has announced the winners of the Annual Award for New and Emerging Scholars. This year, the award was shared between Maria Teresa Braga Bizarria and Alexandra Lamiña. Maria Teresa's paper explores affective atmospheres of care in gender studies, focusing on urban gardens in New Zealand and the intersectional power dynamics and practices of care within them. Alexandra's paper examines the experiences of Kichwa women in Ecuadorian Amazonia and their enactment of Indigeneity in urban settings, challenging settler-mestizx urban notions. Both scholars will use the award to present their papers at upcoming conferences. [Extracted from the article]

A plethora of research has focused on how the pandemic has shifted human relations with space, place and wellbeing. Yet, to date few have focused on how the return to public spaces after extended periods of lockdown is impacting subjective wellbeing, particularly amidst a context with fluctuating levels of risk, rapidly changing policy demands and expectations, and different affective responses to such regulations. In this paper we re-turn with the voices of 17 women who were living in Aotearoa New Zealand during the early stages of the pandemic and working in the sport or fitness industry before, during and after the first national lockdown. Drawing upon insights from feminist materialist theory, we explore how indoor fitness studios materialised as 'riskscapes' in women's negotiations of the affects that shaped their re-turn. Whereas some women experienced fear and anxiety in re-turning to familiar spaces 'made strange' through new risks, responsibilities, routines and objects (i.e. sanitizer, floor markings), others came to new appreciations for the importance of human connection offered through shared movement experiences. Conceptualizing these different affective relations as processes of becoming, we trace the multiple and more-thanhuman relations through which wellbeing and risk were co-implicated in particular ways of knowing-moving-becoming in the re-turn to fitness. Recognising the effects of continued uncertainties, this paper contributes material feminist insights through women's affective engagements with the social world, surfacing more-than-human wellbeing in the processes of re-turning to familiar spaces 'made strange' in and through pandemic space and time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the entanglements of love and cruelty in the publicity of the 2018 wedding of Meghan Markle and Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex. We suggest that the wedding failed to inch closer toward a 'post-racialized' society. Rather, the wedding and public (but superficial) embracing of Markle promoted a 'comfort feminism' which obscured the mundane white supremacy and sexism of modern Britain. The paper concludes with a brief afterward which discusses the legacy of the royal wedding in the context of the social, political, and cultural challenges wrought by the intersections of the global pandemic and structural racism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Very few Kenyan universities offer modules on Gender or Feminism in their courses. Women are largely under-represented and very few hold senior positions. Due to the few numbers of female faculty, mentorship for young female scholars is lacking. Feminist writing by Female Kenyan geographers in professional geography journals is limited. Collective action among female geography faculty is also largely absent. This is largely due to the lack of feminist advocacy and policies in the universities. My journey to becoming a feminist geographer has received little or no support from the university. I have taken personal initiatives to link up with local and transnational gender associations in order to get insights on current feminist scholarship issues. My lived feminist experience and observations of the struggles of ordinary women in everyday livelihood negotiation have been my main motivation for continuing to do feminist work. Thus, my feminist work has concentrated on women in marginal economic informality. This paper presents my journey as a feminist geographer. It begins with a discussion on the state of feminist geography in three universities in Kenya namely, University of Nairobi, Kenyatta University and Egerton University. This is followed by a presentation of my journey toward becoming a feminist geographer in the absence of a supportive infrastructure. My journey has been inspired by my lived experience. The paper concludes with a call for a concerted effort for feminist advocacy in Kenyan Geography departments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractMy comment addresses a theme in several of the papers in this collection that gestures to the limits of queer theory, as a body of scholarship developed mainly from within Euro-American feminist frameworks. I will ask if perhaps groundedness in place and historical specificity might suggest registers of ‘queerness’ that exceed the potentials of queer theory. Particularly considering precarity - a sense of embodied vulnerability to each other - this piece will examine the potentials of frameworks that are rooted in place-based ideas about reciprocity, kinship, and intimacy as integral to understanding queer precarities. Indeed, such a view might suggest that what is ‘queer’ is often framed through a normatively modern and often colonial rendering of binary gender, and sexuality as fixed in sexual identity. It will ask what an archive of queer precarity might look like, and what geographies it might suggest if we decentred queer theory. Simultaneously, the essay will ask how forms of reciprocity, indebtedness, kinship, and homemaking that exceed the limits of coloniality might open up registers for queerness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract The British suffragettes are remembered for their dramatic and visually striking protests, such as their act of chaining themselves to public railings. However, this paper argues that the suffragettes’ protests were embodied acts of citizenship that disrupted the existing political order and laid claim to full participation in the Edwardian polis. Drawing on Jacques Rancière’s work, this paper argues that Edwardian women used their embodied protests to lay claim to political space and stage a scene of ‘dissensus’ and rewrite the political common sense and gendered norms of political participation at the time. Extrapolating on Judith Butler’s performative theory of assembly and Rancière’s performative theory of rights, this paper frames the suffragettes’ protests as attempts to lay claim to political rights and citizen status through the enactment of these rights. In order to contest their gendered exclusion from the political realm, the suffragettes forcibly inserted themselves into masculinised political space through political techniques like heckling politicians, public speaking, and petitioning the king. Nonetheless, while the suffragettes actively laid claim to their own political rights, they also attempted to act for others, specifically other women who they saw as downtrodden, vulnerable, and oppressed. Although the suffragettes’ attempts to act for other women demonstrated a degree of gender-based solidarity, it also illuminated the complicated class politics of the movement, and the tensions inherent in laying claim to rights on behalf of others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the professional trajectories of women in geography who were or are based at the University of São Paulo (USP) and who belong to generations which faced the Brazilian military dictatorship (1964–1985). Theoretically inspired by the ancient Greek notion of parrhesia in the Foucauldian sense of resistance and 'fearless speech', this paper extends recent literature on feminist historical geographies and histories of radical geography, and responds to pressing needs for challenging Anglo-American hegemonies in these fields. To this end, I draw upon exceptional sources, such as autobiographical archival materials and three interviews with 'privileged witnesses', to make internationally known outstanding cases of female leadership that disrupt narratives on 'big men' which have hitherto hidden these stories. Although most of these women do not display explicitly a feminist label, their trajectories show how feminist practices were put in place, sometimes implicitly, by female scholars mostly coming from working-class and migrant backgrounds. These cases from the Global South further expose the feminist and radical principle that emancipation should not be conceded from above but taken from below. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In light of the ongoing practice of non-Indigenous researchers conducting studies on Indigenous lands, new opportunities are needed for creative alternatives to fieldwork, along with an honest conversation about ethics, intent, and practices of place-based collaborative methods in Indigenous studies. In this paper, I explore the notion of story-listening as a creative methodological alternative to extractive methods for settler scholars in Indigenous communities. Through personal reflection, I argue that decolonizing research strategies should involve practices which minimize settler presence in, and demands on, Indigenous communities. A storied approach to research points to academic expectations of knowledge-production, which contribute to silencing Indigenous voices, while paradoxically setting Settler researchers as a privileged audience of Indigenous stories. Looking for told-but-unheard stories, I argue, is one way to find answers and guidance in research while respecting storytellers' agency and challenging colonial origin stories. Methodological ideas for unheard stories are explored in three phases: hearing, listening, and sharing. All stages of story-listening involve care and respect for the storyteller. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The term 'intersectionality' is usually attributed to Kimberlé Crenshaw, a legal scholar, who coined the term in 1989. In this paper, we reflect on how the concept has travelled through both space and time. We trace the longer history and more complex geography of intersectional approaches rooted in grassroots women's movements in the Global South, where radical claims were made against the dominance of white, middle-class women's analysis of the situation of women in the world. These, together with the Black women's movement in the US, paved the way for the emergence and coining of the term intersectionality. We then reflect on how the concept travelled in three domains of migration-related knowledge: academic research, international policy and advocacy politics. We find that, while some academic research is true to the original politics of intersectionality, there is also some research that has strayed much further away from the original aims of intersectionality, to the extent that we would question whether it can be called intersectional at all. In international policy, we find that the original radicalism of the term has been watered down in the translation of the term into policy targets and measurements. Finally, in advocacy politics we find the greatest continuity with the original aims of the term. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fisheries and aquaculture have been the subject of feminist research and activism globally for decades. The result is a rapidly expanding body of literature examining women and fisheries and gender relations from oceans to plate. This body encompasses diverse and substantive critiques of mainstream fisheries research, policy and practice that ignore women's contributions showing how local practices, political economies and state policies (re)produce gender inequalities around access to fisheries resources and related wealth. Their work has had positive results. Some fishy feminist work draws on ecofeminism and feminist political ecology to explore links between resource degradation, neoliberal capitalism and patriarchy, but more needs to be done. This paper places existing North Atlantic feminist fisheries research in conversation with an emerging body of feminist scholarship interrogating human-fish relations. It makes the case for applying an ecofeminist lens in future work foregrounding how relations among humans, fisheries and fish are shaped by intersecting capitalist, colonial, speciesist and patriarchal systems of oppression. This lens would highlight the multiple oppressions that arise from altered fishery and aquaculture arrangements and dynamics in the age of the Anthropocene. Putting these bodies of work into lively conversation contributes to both the feminist fisheries/aquaculture and the more-than-human literatures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractSquatting has long been a crucial form of direct action in housing struggles across the globe, in which women have always played an important part. However, despite recent calls to inflect housing studies with feminist, decolonial, and queer praxis, scholarship on women’s role in London’s squatting story remains significantly underdeveloped. Their absence becomes even more apparent when we consider that squatting’s second wave occurred simultaneously with that of feminism, during which time the home was articulated as a key site of feminist struggle. This paper therefore draws from materials authored by and about women during this period to trace broad contours of their involvement in London’s squatting history, focusing in particular on two avenues which call for further critical inquiry, namely: (1) the mobilisation of the ‘mother’ figure in press and public narratives, contrasted against the demonisation of young, single women for whom squatting defied popular understandings of how femininity should be performed; and (2) the world-building capacities of squatted domestic violence refuges, which provided safe spaces for women escaping violent partners and shared with squatting an autonomous, self-help ethos. At stake here is an understanding of what it meant for women to take (up) and remake space in late twentieth century London, and how similar feminist actions continue to enrich contemporary understandings of squatting as a radical, intersectional, and vital practice in ongoing struggles for urban housing justice worldwide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In northern Islamic Nigeria, prevailing traditions order society so that power is unequally distributed between the sexes. Almost all institutions and social processes in the region reproduce and exert the dominance of men over women, with existing dominance in the region rooted in Salafism. This is a version of Islam that rejects religious novelty and perpetuates the unequal distribution of power between men and women. My paper examines how activities promoting women empowerment destabilise the dominance by men as shaped by Salafist Islam in northern Isamic Nigeria. I used mixed research design for the study to tease out the interconnection of lived experiences, thoughts, and actions. Findings indicate that women empowerment activities of Oxfam, Isa Wali Empowerment Initiative, and post-secondary Hausa literature (Littattafan Soyayya, novels of love), challenge hegemonic imaginary of Salafism entrench in patriarchal dominance and the centrality of nature over culture. The paper concludes that women empowerment in northern Islamic Nigeria appeal to sensibilities of an ungendered pre-Salafist northern Nigeria where women were active, rational and public. Thus, patriarchy is open to disruption and change when shared indigenous values form the basis of women's empowerment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that women travelers engage with and subsequently re-tell stories of taboo sexual encounters as part of a wider discourse in securing cultural capital through independent, global travel and adventure. Using data from my research Emotion and embodiment in the experiences of independent women tourists (2009-2012), I give examples of sexual etiquette in travelling discourse by re-positioning the 'shocking' boundaries of sexual taboo through travel stories, analysing the performances of 'pleasure-seeking' discourses of third-wave feminist sexuality, and moving discussion beyond this to explore white privilege and fetishising the 'Other'. Many women's travel stories display a heightened heterosexuality that radically differs from some feminist concerns that female sexualisation is geared towards the fantasy male gaze (Pritchard and Morgan 2000) and these stories are integrated into her travelling journey of exploration, experience, stimulus, whilst providing some entertaining 'fodder'. Of further note is how these pleasure-seeking discourses tie into adventure narratives so prominent in backpacking literature; that of 'rough', 'dirty' and 'skanky' immersive experiences. The narratives of women travelers as they re-tell stories of sexual behavior throughout their travels reflect the desires for extreme experiences to enhance their stories. The language and sexual vocabulary of the women as they discuss sexual identity whilst travelling play with racial privilege, and cross the boundaries of classed, gendered and cosmopolitan 'respectability' in a conscious manner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The indication by female geographers outside of Japan that, due to the original dearth of female geographers, a gender perspective had been missing from geography held true for Japan as well. In 1993, Yoshida was the first person to discuss the importance of a gender perspective in a Japanese journal of geography. Nearly 25 years have passed since its publication, and the aim of this paper is to investigate what developments have taken place in Japanese geography on gender research. As the accomplishments of feminist geography in English-speaking countries was merely 'imported' to Japan around 1990, there is no firm starting point of 'feminist' geography, which originated in women's liberation movement of the 1970s, in the country. Rather, it can be said that Japanese geographers, regardless of sex, undertake gender geography, which does not limit a particular sex as the sole subject and/or object of research. The results of research on gender geography by men geographers began to appear from the year 2000. The use of life history method emerged as a trend in research since 2000. While there has been gradual progress in research on gender geography in Japan, the number of researchers are still by no means large. While Japanese geography has hitherto involved a one-way absorption of the fruits of overseas research on gender/feminist geographies, at least based on studies that have already accumulated in Japan, it is now necessary that Japanese study results also be communicated to overseas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on Jan Monk's contribution to reinforcing diversity and collaboration in the field of human geography. It illustrates how gendered diversity and feminism is promoted in her academic work both inside the Anglo-American academic world and outside, by exposing the feminist voices from around the world and mainstreaming them in her collaborative work. Fostering and reinforcing diversity has become a body of knowledge in her extensive publications in which she assesses the varying extent and nature of feminist geography in the Anglophone world and across countries, attempting to interpret differences in terms of geographical and cultural contexts and disciplinary trends. The paper emphasizes how fostering diversity and collaboration in Jan's academic work is not only about writing articles, editing books and producing a film, but also engages the formulation of organizational structures such as the Routledge book series and the initiation and establishment of the Commission of Gender and Geography of the International Geographical Union which have contributed to the production of collaborative feminist geographical knowledge across spaces and places. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Gender, Place & Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The emergence and institutionalization of feminist geography in Ghana was in tandem with the global feminist movement in the 1970s and its subsequent international women's conferences. This paper discusses the pioneering work and research at the Department of Geography and Resource Development, University of Ghana, and its effect on the institutionalization and diffusion of feminist geography in Ghana. Through research and external collaborations, the need for gender as an academic discipline was strongly argued for and instituted as an undergraduate course at the Department of Geography and Resource Development, University of Ghana. These external collaborations with other feminist geographers in international geography associations and universities served as a boost as they created opportunities for highlighting the spatial variations in the role and situation of particularly women's lives in Ghana. Subsequently, there was a diffusion of feminist geography research and its institutionalization as an academic sub-discipline in Geography departments in other Ghanaian universities. These notwithstanding, the departments of Geography in Ghanaian universities are still dominated by male faculty members. Moreover, research work has been mainly in the field of human geography more than the physical aspects calling for the mainstreaming of gender issues in all the systematic branches of the discipline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an overview of Women's, Gender and Feminist Studies in Portugal, focusing on gender and feminist geographies. Although there is a solid, diversified and mature corpus of feminist reflection in the Portuguese academia, there is a lack of institutional recognition with very few Women's, Gender and Feminist Studies formally organized in curricula or academic degrees. There have been, and still are, many resistances to a formal recognition of Women's, Gender and Feminist Studies as a scientific domain and Portugal is lagging behind in this area. The first and only scientific research centre entirely dedicated to Gender Studies was only created in 2012. The long period of dictatorship that Portugal endured for over 40 years in the past century, has had a major influence in the Portuguese society, preventing social movements, as the second wave feminism, to foster social change in the academia. The current debates at the present time in Portugal concern the widespread use of the concept of gender without an effective epistemological and methodological paradigm shift, and some researchers question the erasure of the word 'women' that is being almost always replaced by the word 'gender'. In this area of study, the intersections of activism and academia in Portugal are noteworthy, and there is a positive contamination that comes through the contact with the feminist empowering movements. The Portuguese researchers' resilience has proven to overcome the lack of support, both institutional and financial, making it possible to advance Women's, Gender and Feminist Studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Gender, Place & Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Many geographers benefit from the support of unheralded teachers whose inspiration leaves important marks on their thinking. This paper considers the legacy of Jan Monk's professional contribution in terms of her fostering of wider structures that support the development of a disciplinary capacity for and commitment to good educational practice, her work in researching and bringing to light the hidden disciplinary roles of women in the development of the discipline, particularly in the USA, and the place and significance of her early work in Australia at the intersection of geography and indigenous studies. It concludes that her insistence on the importance of place and context, her attention to people's own sense of place in shaping their relations with each other and their wider worlds, continues to provide a powerful starting point for benchmarking our work as teachers, mentors and researchers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main goal of the paper is to study Jan Monk's contribution to the development of international gender geography, in particular in Spain. Our aim is also to explain the experiences and numerous connections among places, people and ideas that she has been weaving to foster international scholarship and, in this way, how she has challenged hegemonic approaches in feminist geography. Jan Monk comes originally from the Southern hemisphere and therefore she is well aware of the extent to which 'Northern' (or Anglo-American) ways of seeing the world define concepts, theories and ideas in geography (and also in feminist geography). Being an 'insider' and an 'outsider' as well as her sensibility to the important of place has permeated Jan's contribution to international gender geography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Gender, Place & Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Opinion. Comments on the workshop on feminist geography organized by the Department of Geography at the University of Waikato in New Zealand on July 29-31, 1994. Notion of insider/outsider approach in feminist geography; Issues around the New Zealand feminist geography scene.

The article announces that Rituparna Bhattacharyya and Eunica Aure have won the 2011 Gender, Place and Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography Annual Award for new and emerging scholars in feminism, in New Zealand.

This article presents a concise overview of geographical studies with a gender perspective in Argentina. It begins with a synthesis of the expression of feminism in Argentina and its connection with the country's socio-historical and political contexts from the 1960s to the present, alongside a brief description of concurrent academic production. Subsequently, it analyzes the current state of degree training, research directions, and extension activities, then identifies future possibilities for the study of gender geography in Argentina. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Participatory action research (PAR) is gaining critical attention from scholars across the social sciences, and in the field of geography more specifically, as it promises a viable alternative for researchers concerned with social justice. If most of the benefits of PAR are identified in terms of its potential as a vehicle for social change and action, PAR's role in personal change is less understood. This paper considers the development of new subjectivities in a PAR process from a post-structural perspective. My objective is to reframe and connect the social justice orientation of PAR to a feminist post-structural project which emphasizes the fluidity and multiplicity of subject positions as the basis for personal (and social) transformation. Analysis draws upon collaborative research conducted with six young women in New York City and their project Makes Me Mad: Stereotypes of young urban womyn of color. Discussion addresses the role of critical reflection, dialogue, emotion, and narrative in the participatory research process. Building upon critical educator/theorist Paolo Freire's contributions to PAR, I address issues of power, scale, and the politics of location in order to contribute to understandings of spatial praxis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Along with a number of scholars in feminist, English-language geography, the author makes a case for renewed attention to be paid to causal processes of differentiation in the analysis of geographies of gender. In particular, she argues for a greater concern with the gendered spatiality of organisations and institutions themselves, rather than seeing them as 'black boxes', or unchanging and exogenous aspects of the contexts to be analysed. The paper discusses the manner and the extent to which feminist geographies have examined differentiating processes associated with three notional 'sites' examined closely in feminist geography: the city, the family and the nation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Gender, Place & Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In the 10 years since the first issue of Gender, Place and Culture was published, feminist geography has grown, matured, become part of the normal curriculum in most departments of geography. The need to consider gender as a fundamental aspect of social life has become accepted wisdom. We have much to celebrate. Over the same period, increasing attention has been paid to questions of racialisation, and to projects that set anti-racism on the academic agenda. While I would argue that, socially as well as academically, we have made more progress in overcoming gender barriers than racial barriers, a growing body of work recognises the intersection, indeed the simultaneity, of sexism and racism, as well as classism, ableism and homophobia. Such recognition has characterised the pages of Gender, Place and Culture from its very first issue. Indeed, no paper that addresses issues of social exclusion from a geographical perspective would fail nowadays to make several references to articles in this journal. Theoretically, the connection between gendered and racialised social constructions heightens social awareness of the ways in which social exclusion occurs. It is now received wisdom, well beyond the narrower confines of feminist and anti-racist scholarship, that human attributes are the result of social construction and, while many controversies rage over the findings--and the social effects--of the postmodern 'turn', this fundamental theoretical tenet is hardly questioned by intellectuals of the early twenty-first century. Broader attention has now been focused on issues of what kind of society--and what kind of theoretical underpinnings--will replace a world in which social constructions such as gender and 'race' are taken for granted. Perhaps the most significant general trend of the last decade, then, has been the fact that our journal has played such an active role in the transition from the early 1990s' struggle to overcome essential ideas to today's struggle to re-place essential ideas with a new geometry of human relations. Significant historical events on every social front emphasise the difficulties of that transition, both theoretically and empirically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Feminist environmentalism has become a significant intellectual and social policy force across fields as diverse as public health, political economy, philosophy, science, and ecology. Feminist environmental theory and activism together are challenging and redefining foundational principles, from animal rights to the environmental economy of illness and well-being, from global political economy to the role of Big Science as the primary arbiter of the state of the environment. Animal rights is one of the most intellectually challenging and innovative areas of intellectual activity and social activism, and within feminist environmentalism is one of the most radical subfields. This paper provides an overview of activity in this subfield, starting from the observation that feminist environmental scholarship and grassroots activism on animal rights pivot around three concerns: elucidating the commonalities in structures of oppressions across gender, race, class, and species; developing feminist-informed theories of the basis for allocating "rights" to animals; and exposing the gendered assumptions and perceptions that underlie human relationships to nonhuman animals. At the same time, the serious contemplation of animal rights makes a considerable contribution to destabilizing identity categories and adds new dimensions to theorizing the mutability of identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The following article is an interview with a pioneering -feminist geographer Linda McDowell based on an exchange of written questions and responses through email. It is organized in a way to combine McDowell's biographical journey into geography with her university experience as a student, researcher and academic. The themes explored include her work and influences ranging from geography to sociology and feminist scholarship; doing feminist geography; diversity, decolonization of the discipline and the future of feminist geographies; and in the age of global crises the potentials of feminist geographies. As a conversation between an emerita professor of human/feminist geography from the U.K. and a mid-career feminist urban sociologist from Turkey, the interview is intended to be a feminist dialogue across disciplines, geographies, and generations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What does discomfort do? What kinds of spaces, boundaries, and power relations are generated by comfort, and for whom? In this introduction to the themed section, we trace comfort/discomfort across borders and through spaces to see when and how these emotions and affective relations generate life and growth, and when they instead circumscribe possibilities. The introduction and the contributions to this issue question 'comfort feminism' to consider the role of comfort/discomfort across a range of settings: from protests and activist spaces, to royal weddings, academic institutions, academic disciplines, and the public portrayals of political figures. Across these moments and narratives, flashes of discomfort serve as starting points for analysis. What kind of feminism do we find if we begin from discomfort? What kind of fairytales do we tell ourselves in order to maintain the status quo? How is comfort produced and distributed? Is there be political potential in disrupting public comfort? Through this special issue, we encourage geographers to attend to how comfort makes and unmakes social worlds, senses of belonging, and disciplinary boundaries. We push geographers to trace discomfort as an analytic and as a method for feminist political geography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This intervention considers how the writings of María Lugones, a philosopher of feminist decolonial theory, might shape a callejera [streetwalker] feminist decolonial methodology and what such a methodology might look like in practice. I describe how a callejera methodology foments deeper relationality by highlighting as methodological tools three of Lugones' concepts: resisting ↔ oppressing, the collective and tantear en la oscuridad. To ground the theory and illustrate possibilities of deeper relationality offered by a callejera methodology, I reflect on on-going research with Colombian collectives actively negotiating experiences of indigeneity and womanhood in relation to histories of colonial and more recent armed violence, as well as ongoing state disinvestment. I make three contributions. First, I suggest that integrating an intersectional analytic of 'both/and' with the complex fluidity between Lugones' concept of resisting ↔ oppressing permits scholars to better understand the negotiation of multiple, intermeshed identities and oppressions, social inequality and power relations in relation to colonial histories and presents. Second, I encourage geographers to embrace a decolonial lens attentive to the relationality between and among collectives, from which many acts of resistance begin. Finally, I consider how a callejera methodology considers coalitional work as central to the research process. Such work embraces difficulty, discomfort and messy relationality often negotiated as if walking blindly through the dark (tantear). I conclude by arguing that geographers' relationally-based research can strengthen feminist decolonial thought in our attention to spatial and temporal scalar differences of place and our commitment to understanding contextually differentiated navigations of identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For decades Chicanx/Latinx feminists have mobilized important alternative onto-epistemologies and methodologies like testimonio that subvert dominant forms of knowledge production. Yet, these contributions have not been meaningfully engaged in the discipline of geography. This article seeks to address this gap by bridging methodological lessons across feminist geography, Chicanx/Latinx Feminist Studies and testimonio. Drawing on my experiences as a Latina feminist geographer doing research with my community, I critically reflect on how Chicanx/Latinx feminisms and testimonio create crucial openings to work towards a more ethical, relationally grounded, anti-oppressive praxis in geography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on the Annual Award for New and Emerging Scholars from the journal related to gender studies. It states that the award is targeted at emerging researchers in feminist geographies that are trying to establish research careers. It cites that the award applicants should be involved in independent research. It mentions that the award is intended to be used for attendance at an international conference.

The article invites applications for the 2012 Gender, Place and Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography Annual Award for new and emerging scholars in the field of feminism.

Reflects on the implications of the critical discourse on geographic information systems (GIS) in the 1990s for feminist geographic research. GIS methods; Limitations of the critical discourse on GIS; Forms of feminist engagement with GIS.

Examines feminism in Aotearoa/New Zealand by focusing on the debate about the differences within and between groups of women. Theoretical and political tensions arising from the implications of positionality; Concerns by New Zealand feminists about the task of establishing an autonomous existence premised on unique identities.

This essay draws on ongoing translations of, and reflections on, journeys undertaken since 2002 with members of Sangtin in Uttar Pradesh. Sangtin, originally imagined as an NGO, has steadily evolved into Sangtin Kisan Mazdoor Sangathan (SKMS), a largely women-led movement of 8000 small farmers and laborers, most of them identifying as Dalit. SKMS emerged from encounters with NGOs, academics, and artists whose fixed understandings of 'feminism' often failed to recognize that empowering women in isolation from the rest of their communities was not sustainable empowerment. Over the eighteen years of battling on this terrain for their rights, dignity, truths, and justice, the SKMS members and supporters have rejected the institutionalized categories of the development industry and academia that flatten the complexity and creativity of life and struggle. In refusing to separate the activist from the scholar, the expert from the ordinary, and the theoretical from the lived, the essay underscores how the struggles for socioeconomic justice of impoverished rural, Dalit peoples cannot be separated from the fight against epistemic violence and intellectual disempowerment of the same communities. Through situated solidarities that involve delicate dances of i/we/you/they, SKMS saathis – or co-travellers – from unequal locations walk together on bumpy terrains. As we do so, we interrogate our previous understandings of gender violence and entangle them with structures of caste-class, and we reconceptualize the terrain of sex, gender, public, and private while embedding our critiques within the violence of the developmental state and neo-liberal brahmanical capitalist patriarchy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Feminism provides a key analytical space for theory-building and re-centring historically marginalised narratives and epistemologies. However, the preponderance of women in feminist scholarship has been construed by some as meaning that feminism excludes the interest of men. Situated within a critical discourse analysis and drawing on interviews with men and key informant interviews with women, this essay investigates people's attitudes towards feminism in Ghana (with the concomitant discourses around what is African and what is Western). Feminism was largely perceived by most men and women as a dangerously feminising and Western construct, capable of destabilising the cultural exceptionalism of Ghanaian society. However, a few men appear to have embodied 'progressive' thinking about feminism and alternative constructions of masculinity. For such participants, embracing feminism comes at no cost to men and their manhood. They admit that men have benefited from a patriarchal system, which comes with opportunities and privileges; hence, the struggle for a better and gender equitable society continues. They propose the use and adoption of feminism as an important tool to precipitate shifts in how men approach both their relationships with women, and their own masculine identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inspired by Sara Ahmed's call to study what is near to you, we write about our sometimes-joyful, sometimes-furious, always passionate struggles as graduate students in the academy. As a site of imperialism, racism, and patriarchy, the university grinds especially hard on women, people of color, black, indigenous, queer, disabled, and otherwise oppressed scholars. Out of a desire not just to get by or get ahead in this hostile space of competition and scarcity, we write about a feminist praxis that subverts the academy. Using collaborative auto-ethnography, asynchronous online interviews, and co-theorization, we conjure a network of rebels - what we call the feminist coven. We solicited contributions from feminist graduate students in response to three prompts about forms of communication, emotional labor, and imaginaries. Our findings show a vibrant landscape of creativity, love, rage, and longing for academia to be a more hospitable place. We and our contributors, whose voices pepper this article, offer ideas for how to summon new worlds and ways of being through small actions and everyday practices, subverting the violence of the academy by being the storm that blows through it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]