Feminist geography is a sub-discipline of human geography that applies the theories, methods, and critiques of feminism to the study of the human environment, society, and geographical space.[1] Feminist geography emerged in the 1970s, when members of the women's movement called on academia to include women as both producers and subjects of academic work.[2] Feminist geographers aim to incorporate positions of race, class, ability, and sexuality into the study of geography. The discipline was a target for the hoaxes of the grievance studies affair.
The geography of women examines the effects geography has on gender inequality and is theoretically influenced by welfare geography and liberal feminism. Feminist geographers emphasize the various gendered constraints put in place by distance and spatial separation (for instance, spatial considerations can play a role in confining women to certain locations or social spheres). In their book Companion to Feminist Geography, Seager and Johnson argue that gender is only a narrow-minded approach to understanding the oppression of women throughout the decades of colonial history.[2] As such, understanding the geography of women requires a critical approach to questions of the dimensions of age, class, ethnicity, orientation and other socio-economic factors.[2] An early objection to the concept of geography of women, however, claimed that gender roles were mainly explained through gender inequality. However, Foord and Gregson argue that the idea of gender roles emerges from a static social theory that narrows the focus to women and portrays women as victims, which gives a narrow reading of distance. Instead, they claim that the concept of the geography of women is able to display how spatial constraint and separation enter into the construction of women's positions.[3] In 2004, theorist Edward Said critiqued the idea of geographical spaces in such a context where actions on gendered practices of representation are fabricated through dominant ideological beliefs.[4] In response, feminist geographers argue that misrepresentations of gender roles and taken-for-granted feminist movements reveal that the challenges of the colonial present lie within the confinement of women to limited spatial opportunities. Therefore, feminist geographies are built on the principle that gender should be applied and developed in terms of space.[5]
Socialist feminist geography
Socialist feminist geography, theoretically influenced by Marxism and Socialist feminism, seeks to explain inequality, the relationship between capitalism and patriarchy, and the interdependence of geography, gender relations, and economic development under capitalism. Socialist feminist geography revolves around questions of how to reduce the gender inequality caused by patriarchy and capitalism, and focuses predominantly on spatial separation, gender place, and locality. Uncertainty regarding appropriate articulation of gender and class analysis fuels a key theoretical debate within the field of socialist feminist geography. For example, when analyzing married mainland Chinese immigrant women living in New York City, women remain the primary object of analysis, and gender remains the primary social relation. However, socialist feminist geographers also recognize that many other factors, such as class, affect women's post-migration experiences and circumstances.[6]
Socialist feminist geographers first worked primarily at the urban scale: Anglo-American feminist geographers focused on the social and spatial separation of suburban homes from paid employment. This was seen as vital to the day-to-day and generational development and maintenance of traditional gender relations in capitalist societies.[7]
Socialist feminist geographers also analyze the ways in which the effects of geographical differences on gender relations not only reflect, but also partly determine local economic changes. Judith Butler's concept of "citationality"[8] explores the lack of agency surrounding the facilitation of the presence of women within the discipline of geography. Subsequently, feminist geographers conclude that whenever performative measures are taken to diminish women's rights in geographical space, surrounding conventions adapt to make it seem as the norm.[8] For instance, Susan Hanson and Geraldine Pratt's book "Gender, Work, and Space"[9] reveals how geographical elements, such as the configuration of workplaces, the distribution of resources, and the design of urban and rural environments, contribute to shaping and reinforcing gender disparities within the realm of work.
Feminist geographies of difference
Feminist geographies of difference is an approach to feminist geography that concentrates on the construction of gendered identities and differences among women. It examines gender and constructions of nature through cultural, post-structural, postcolonial and psychoanalytic theories, as well as writings by women of color, lesbian women, gay men, and women from third world countries. In this approach, feminist geographers emphasize the study of micro-geographies of body, mobile identities, distance, separation and place, imagined geographies, colonialism and post-colonialism, and environment or nature.
Since the late 1980s, many feminist geographers have moved on to three new research areas: categories of gender between men and women, the formation of gender relations and identities, and the differences between relativism and situational knowledge.
Firstly, feminist geographers have contested and expanded the categories of genders between men and women. Through this, they have also begun to investigate differences in the constructions of gender relations across race, ethnicity, age, religion, sexuality and nationality, paying particular attention to women who are positioned along multiple axes of difference.
Secondly, to gain a better understanding of how gender relations and identities are formed and assumed, feminist geographers have drawn upon a broader extent of social theory and culture. Building upon this theoretical platform, feminist geographers are more able to discuss and debate the influence that post-structuralist and psychoanalytic theories have on multiple identifications.[10]
Lastly, the difference between relativism and situated knowledge is a key area of discussion. Through these discussions, feminist geographers have discovered ways to reconcile partial perspectives with a commitment to political action and social change.
Critical human geography
Critical human geography is defined as "a diverse and rapidly changing set of ideas and practices within human geography linked by a shared commitment to emancipatory politics within and beyond the discipline, to the promotion of progressive social change and to the development of a broad range of critical theories and their application in geographical research and political practice."[6]
Critical human geography is understood as being multiple, dynamic, and contested.[11]
Rather than a specific sub-discipline of geography, feminist geography is often considered part of a broader, postmodern, critical theory approach, that draws upon the theories of Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, and Judith Butler, and many post-colonial theorists. Feminist geographers often focus on the lived experiences of individuals and groups in the geographies of their own localities, rather than theoretical development without empirical work.[1]
Many feminist geographers study the same subjects as other geographers, but focus specifically on gender divisions.[12] This has developed into concerns with wider issues of gender, family, sexuality, race, and class. Examples of areas of focus include:
Feminist geographers are also deeply impacted by and respondent to contemporary globalization and neoliberal discourses that are manifested transnationally and translocally.[2]
Feminist geography also critiques human geography and other academic disciplines, arguing that academic structures have been traditionally characterized by a patriarchal perspective and that contemporary studies which do not confront the nature of previous work reinforce the masculine bias of academic study.[13] British geographer Gillian Rose'sFeminism and Geography[1] is one such sustained criticism that claims that the approach to human geography in Britain is historically masculinist. This geographic masculinization includes traditions of writing landscapes as feminine spaces—and thus as subordinate to male geographers—and subsequent assumptions of a separation between mind and body. Johnston & Sidaway describe such separation as "Cartesian dualism" and further explain its influence on geography:[14]
"'Cartesian dualism underlines our thinking in a myriad of ways, not least in the divergence of the social sciences from the natural sciences, and in a geography which is based on the separation of people from their environments. Thus while geography is unusual in its spanning of the natural and social sciences and in focusing on the interrelations between people and their environments, it is still assumed that the two are distinct and one acts on the other. Geography, like all of the social sciences, has been built upon a particular conception of mind and body which sees them as separate, apart and acting on each other (Johnston, 1989, cited in Longhurst, 1997, p. 492)' Thus, too, feminist work has sought to transform approaches to the study of landscape by relating it to the way that it is represented ('appreciated' so to speak), in ways that are analogous to the heterosexual male gaze directed towards the female body (Nash 1996). Both of these concerns (and others)- about the body as a contested site and for the Cartesian distinction between mind and body - have been challenged in postmodern and poststructuralist feminist geographies."
Other feminist geographers have interrogated how the discipline of geography itself represents and reproduces the heterosexual male gaze. Feminist geographers such as Katherine McKittrick have asserted that how we see and understand space are fundamentally bound up in how we understand the hegemonic presence of the white male subject in history, geography and in the materiality of everyday space.[15] Building off of Sylvia Wynter's theories of the racialized production of public and private space, McKittrick challenges "social landscapes that presume subaltern populations have no relationship to the production of space" [15] and writes to document black female geographies in order to "allow us to engage with a narrative that locates and draws on black histories and black subjects in order to make visible social lives which are often displaced, rendered ungeographic."[16] McKittrick stakes claim in the co-articulation of race and gender as they articulate space, writing: "I am emphasizing here that racism and sexism are not simply bodily or identity-based; racism and sexism are also spatial acts and illustrate black women's geographic experiences and knowledges as they are made possible through domination."[17] Moreover, many feminist geographers have critiqued human geography for centering masculine knowledge emphasizing "objective" knowledge, arguing instead for the use of situated knowledge which understands both observation and analysis as being rooted in partial objectivity.[18]
Challenges of feminist geography
Linda McDowell and Joanne P. Sharp, both foundational feminist geographers and scholars, describe the struggle of gaining recognition in academia, saying that "[it has been] a long struggle to gain recognition within geography as a discipline that gender relations are a central organizing feature both of the material and symbolic worlds and of the theoretical basis of the discipline."[19] Feminist geographers struggle in academia in a variety of ways. Firstly, ideas that originate from feminist discourse are often seen as commonsense once the wider field accepts them, thereby rendering geography that is explicitly feminist invisible. Furthermore, feminist geography is understood to be the only subfield of geography where gender is explicitly addressed, permitting the wider discipline to disengage from feminist challenges. Finally, within the field, some geographers believe that feminist practice has been fully integrated into the academy, making feminist geography obsolete.
Challenges of feminist geography are also embedded in the subfield itself. The epistemology of feminist geography argues that the positionalities and lived experiences of the geographers are as central to scholarship as what is being researched. In this way, feminist geographers must maintain diverse identities to fully engage with the discipline. Linda Peake and Gill Valentine point out that, while feminist geography has addressed gender issues in more than twenty-five countries across the world, scholarship in the field of feminist geography is primarily conducted by white female scholars from institutions in the Global North.[20] In this way, feminist geography faces not only barriers rooted in the academy but a lack of diversity in its own field.[21]
Feminist geographers draw upon a broad range of social and cultural theory, including psychoanalysis and post-structuralism, to develop a fuller understanding of how gender relations and identities are shaped and assumed. This has led to the fundamental rethinking of gender and the contradictions and possibilities presented by the seeming instability and insistent repetitions of gender norms in practice. The focus on multiple identifications and the influence of post-structuralist and psychoanalytic theories has allowed feminist geographers to enter into dialogue with other strands of critical geography. This open dialogue, however, has also allowed tensions to build between geographers in the United States and geographers in Great Britain. Theoretical differences among feminist geographers are more obvious than in the past, but since 1994, the national differences between America and British geographers have begun to diminish as both parties pursue new directions.[10]
Controversies surrounding feminist geography
In 2018, a leading journal in feminist geography entitled Gender, Place and Culture was subject to a scholarly publishing hoax known as the Grievance studies affair. James A. Lindsay, Peter Boghossian and Helen Pluckrose disingenuously submitted a paper titled "Human Reactions to Rape Culture and Queer Performativity in Urban Dog Parks in Portland, Oregon."[22] The paper proposed that dog parks are "rape-condoning spaces", and a place of rampant canine rape culture and systemic oppression against "the oppressed dog" through which human attitudes to both problems can be measured and analyzed by applying black feminist criminology. The paper suggested that this could provide insight into training men out of sexual violence and bigotry. The paper has since been retracted.[23] The hoax has been criticized as unethical and mean-spirited, as well as race-baiting and misogynist and critics of the hoax have suggested that the hoaxers misrepresented the process of peer review.[24]
Human geography or anthropogeography is the branch of geography which studies spatial relationships between human communities, cultures, economies, and their interactions with the environment, examples of which include urban sprawl and urban redevelopment. It analyzes spatial interdependencies between social interactions and the environment through qualitative and quantitative methods.This multidisciplinary approach draws from sociology, anthropology, economics, and environmental science, contributing to a comprehensive understanding of the intricate connections that shape lived spaces.
Gender studies is an interdisciplinary academic field devoted to analysing gender identity and gendered representation. Gender studies originated in the field of women's studies, concerning women, feminism, gender, and politics. The field now overlaps with queer studies and men's studies. Its rise to prominence, especially in Western universities after 1990, coincided with the rise of deconstruction.
Sex segregation, sex separation, sex partition,gender segregation,gender separation, or gender partition is the physical, legal, or cultural separation of people according to their biological sex at any age. Sex segregation can refer simply to the physical and spatial separation by sex without any connotation of illegal discrimination. In other circumstances, sex segregation can be controversial. Depending on the circumstances, it can be a violation of capabilities and human rights and can create economic inefficiencies; on the other hand, some supporters argue that it is central to certain religious laws and social and cultural histories and traditions.
Feminist theory is the extension of feminism into theoretical, fictional, or philosophical discourse. It aims to understand the nature of gender inequality. It examines women's and men's social roles, experiences, interests, chores, and feminist politics in a variety of fields, such as anthropology and sociology, communication, media studies, psychoanalysis, political theory, home economics, literature, education, and philosophy.
Cultural feminism is a term used to describe a variety of feminism that attempts to revalue and redefine attributes culturally ascribed to femaleness. It is also used to describe theories that commend innate differences between women and men.
Political geography is concerned with the study of both the spatially uneven outcomes of political processes and the ways in which political processes are themselves affected by spatial structures. Conventionally, for the purposes of analysis, political geography adopts a three-scale structure with the study of the state at the centre, the study of international relations above it, and the study of localities below it. The primary concerns of the subdiscipline can be summarized as the inter-relationships between people, state, and territory.
Standpoint theory, also known as standpoint epistemology, is a foundational framework in social theory that examines how individuals' unique perspectives, shaped by their social and political experiences, influence their understanding of the world. Standpoint theory proposes that authority is rooted in individuals' personal knowledge and perspectives and the power that such authority exerts.
Cultural geography is a subfield within human geography. Though the first traces of the study of different nations and cultures on Earth can be dated back to ancient geographers such as Ptolemy or Strabo, cultural geography as academic study firstly emerged as an alternative to the environmental determinist theories of the early 20th century, which had believed that people and societies are controlled by the environment in which they develop. Rather than studying predetermined regions based upon environmental classifications, cultural geography became interested in cultural landscapes. This was led by the "father of cultural geography" Carl O. Sauer of the University of California, Berkeley. As a result, cultural geography was long dominated by American writers.
Critical geography is theoretically informed geographical scholarship that promotes social justice, liberation, and leftist politics. Critical geography is also used as an umbrella term for Marxist, feminist, postmodern, poststructural, queer, left-wing, and activist geography.
Feminist philosophy is an approach to philosophy from a feminist perspective and also the employment of philosophical methods to feminist topics and questions. Feminist philosophy involves both reinterpreting philosophical texts and methods in order to supplement the feminist movement and attempts to criticise or re-evaluate the ideas of traditional philosophy from within a feminist framework.
Feminist anthropology is a four-field approach to anthropology that seeks to transform research findings, anthropological hiring practices, and the scholarly production of knowledge, using insights from feminist theory. Simultaneously, feminist anthropology challenges essentialist feminist theories developed in Europe and America. While feminists practiced cultural anthropology since its inception, it was not until the 1970s that feminist anthropology was formally recognized as a subdiscipline of anthropology. Since then, it has developed its own subsection of the American Anthropological Association – the Association for Feminist Anthropology – and its own publication, Feminist Anthropology. Their former journal Voices is now defunct.
Feminist political ecology is a feminist perspective on political ecology, drawing on theories from Marxism, post-structuralism, feminist geography, ecofeminism and cultural ecology. Feminist political ecology examines the place of intersectional social relations in the political ecological landscape, exploring them as a factor in ecological and political relations. Specific areas in which feminist political ecology is focused are development, landscape, resource use, agrarian reconstruction and rural-urban transformation. Feminist political ecologists suggest gender is a crucial variable – in relation to class, race and other relevant dimensions of political ecological life – in constituting access to, control over, and knowledge of natural resources.
Feminism is a broad term given to works of those scholars who have sought to bring gender concerns into the academic study of international politics and who have used feminist theory and sometimes queer theory to better understand global politics and international relations as a whole.
Feminist theory in composition studies examines how gender, language, and cultural studies affect the teaching and practice of writing. It challenges the traditional assumptions and methods of composition studies and proposes alternative approaches that are informed by feminist perspectives. Feminist theory in composition studies covers a range of topics, such as the history and development of women's writing, the role of gender in rhetorical situations, the representation and identity of writers, and the pedagogical implications of feminist theory for writing instruction. Feminist theory in composition studies also explores how writing can be used as a tool for empowerment, resistance, and social change. Feminist theory in composition studies emerged in the late 1960s and early 1970s as a response to the male-dominated field of composition and rhetoric. It has been influenced by various feminist movements and disciplines, such as second-wave feminism, poststructuralism, psychoanalysis, critical race theory, and queer theory. Feminist theory in composition studies has contributed to the revision of traditional rhetorical concepts, the recognition of diverse voices and genres, the promotion of collaborative and ethical communication, and the integration of personal and political issues in writing.
A variety of movements of feminist ideology have developed over the years. They vary in goals, strategies, and affiliations. They often overlap, and some feminists identify themselves with several branches of feminist thought.
Feminist political theory is an area of philosophy that focuses on understanding and critiquing the way political philosophy is usually construed and on articulating how political theory might be reconstructed in a way that advances feminist concerns. Feminist political theory combines aspects of both feminist theory and political theory in order to take a feminist approach to traditional questions within political philosophy.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to social science:
Katherine McKittrick is a Canadian professor and academic, writer, and editor. She is a professor in Gender studies at Queen's University. She is an academic and writer whose work focuses on black studies, cultural geography, anti-colonial and diaspora studies, with an emphasis on the ways in which liberation emerges in black creative texts. While many scholars have researched the areas of North American, European, Caribbean, and African black geographies, McKittrick was the first scholar to put forth the interdisciplinary possibilities of black and black feminist geography, with an emphasis on embodied, creative and intellectual spaces engendered in the diaspora.
Linda Margaret McDowell is a British geographer and academic, specialising in the ethnography of work and employment. She was Professor of Geography at the University of Oxford from 2004 to 2016.
Embodiment theory speaks to the ways that experiences are enlivened, materialized, and situated in the world through the body. Embodiment is a relatively amorphous and dynamic conceptual framework in anthropological research that emphasizes possibility and process as opposed to definitive typologies. Margaret Lock identifies the late 1970s as the point in the social sciences where we see a new attentiveness to bodily representation and begin a theoretical shift towards developing an ‘Anthropology of the Body.’
↑ Gregory, D. (2004). The colonial present. (pp. 18-19). Victoria: Blackwell Publishing.
↑ Massey, Doreen (1990). Space, Place, and Gender. University of Minnesota Press Minneapolis.
1 2 Longhurt, Robyn (2002). "Geography and gender: a 'critical' time?".{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
↑ MaccKenzie, S.; Rose, D. (1983). Industrial change, the domestic economy and home life.
1 2 McKenzie, J. (2001). Perform or Else: From Discipline to Performance. London, GBR: Routledge.
↑ Hanson, Susan; Pratt, Geraldine; Pratt, Geraldine J. (1995). Gender, work and space. International studies of women and place (1. publed.). London: Routledge. ISBN978-0-415-09941-7.
1 2 Monk, J. (1982). On not excluding the other half from human geography.
↑ Warf, Barney (2010). Encyclopedia of Geography Critical Human Geography. University British Columbia-vancouve.
↑ McDowell, Linda (1993) "Space, place and gender relations" in Progress in Human Geography 17(2)
↑ Moss, Pamela, 2007 Feminisms in Geography: Rethinking Space, Place, and Knowledges Rowman & Littlefield Publishers ISBN978-0-7425-3829-0
↑ Johnston, R.J. & J.D. Sidaway. (2004). Geography and Geographers. London: Arnold, p. 312.
1 2 McKittrick, Katherine. Demonic Grounds: Black Women and the Cartographies of Struggle. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2006. p. 92
Vera Chouinard and Ali Grant. (1995) 'On being not even anywhere near 'the project': ways of putting ourselves in the picture.' Antipode 27(2): 137-166.
Domosh, Mona and Seager, Joni. (eds) (2001) Putting Women in Place: Feminist Geographers Make Sense of the World. New York: Guilford Publications.
McKittrick, Katherine. Demonic Grounds: Black Women and the Cartographies of Struggle. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2006.
McDowell, Linda (1992) Doing gender: feminisms, feminists and research methods in human geography. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 17, 399-416.
McDowell, Linda; and Sharp, Joanne P. (eds). (1999). A Feminist Glossary of Human Geography. London: Arnold.
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