a growing city is modernized, attracts more
inmigrants, and so grows even further. The
two loops are linked via variable S: MODERNI-
ZATION allows greater control over disease and
the negative checks are reduced — thereby
making the morphogenetic loop dominant
and advancing the rate of population growth,
Ry
Reference
Langton, J. 1972: Potentialities and problems of adopt-
ing a systems approach to the study of change in human
‘geography. In C. Board et al., eds, Progress in geography,
volume 4. London: Edward Arnold, 125-79.
Cd istgeograpties Perspectives thatdraw
on feminist politics and theories to explore
how GENDER relations AND GEOGRAPHIES are
mutually structured and tansformed. The
tradition dates from the mid 1970s, drawing
inspiration from women’s movements of the
1960s. Ir now has a considerable institutional
presence: the journal Gender Place and Culture
has been published since 1994; there are more
than eleven titles in the Routledge International
Studies of Women and Place series, regular pro-
gress reports of feminist geography appear in
Progress in Human Geography and Urban Geog-
raphy, and three new textbooks appeared in
1997 (Jones, Nast and Roberts, 1997; Mc-
Dowell and Sharpe, 1997; Women and Geog-
raphy Study Group, 1997). Although there are
distinguishable strands, some common con-
cers cut across all feminist geographies.
First, they have developed as critical dis-
courses, critical not only of women’s oppression
in society but also of the various ways that this
is reproduced in geographical theory. Reflect-
ing their different theoretical and substantive
starting points, each refutes a different aspect
of geographical theory. This has built towards
comprehensive critique of geographical trad-
ions, for example: POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
(Kofman and Peake, 1990); HISTORICAL GEOG-
RAPHY (Domosh, 1991); HUMANISTIC GEOG-
RAPHY (Rose, 1993); SOCIAL AREA ANALYSIS
and FACTORIAL ECOLOGY (Pratt and Hanson,
1988); GENTRIFICATION studies inspired by
Weberian and MARXIST theory (Rose, 1984);
and geographies of MODERNITY and PosT-
MODERNITY (Deutsche, 1991; Massey, 1991).
Rose (1993) extends this critique to the dis-
cipline as a whole, cataloguing its various and
complementary forms of MascuLinism, What
the relationship between feminist geographies
and the discipline now is and should be remain
matters of debate: some note the lack of
impact that more than a decade of vibrant
feminist scholarship has had on the discipline,
FEMINIST GEOGRAPHIES
while others emphasize the increased exchange
of ideas between feminist and other strands of
critical geography (Women and Geography
Study Group, 1997). Feminist geographers’
relations with the discipline have been framed
through the metaphors of paradoxical and in-
between space
Second, sexism within geographical institutions
(in the teaching of geography, the staffing of
academic departments, and through the pub-
lication process) has been a persistent concern
(Monk and Hanson, 1982; Rose, 1993).
Third, most feminist geographers share a
commitment 10 situating knowledge, to the view
that interpretations are context-bound and
partial, rather than detached and universal
(see PARTICIPATORY ACTION RESEARCH; QUALI-
TATIVE METHODS; sITUATIONIsTS). This has
produced a large literature on feminist meth-
odologies, including four journal symposia
(Moss, 1993; Nast, 1994; Farrow, Moss and
Shaw, 1995; Hodge, 1995) and a book (Jones,
Nast and Roberts, 1997). It has also led to
experimental writing, including various
attempts at self-reflexivity (see Rose, 1997 for
a critical evaluation of these experiments) and
efforts to disrupt the individualist author (for
example, 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 between
academics and community groups).
Fourth, feminist geographies trace the inter
connections between all aspects of daily life, across
the subdisciplinary boundaries of ECONOMIC,
SOCIAL, POLITICAL and more recently CULTURAL
GEOGRAPHY.
Despite these common themes, there is a
great deal of variation among feminist geog-
raphers. Bowlby, Lewis, McDowell and Foord
(1989) sketch an influential history of feminist
geographies, in which they identify two breaks,
one in the late 1970s and the other towards
the end of the 1980s (see figure on p.260). The
first break that they identified wasless decisive in
the USA, where the influence of the geography
of women approach has been stronger than
in the UK. (See Monk, 1994, for a more com-
plete map of national variations in feminist
geography.) It should be noted, then, that trad-
itions exist simultaneously and there is a great
deal of heterogeneity (national and otherwise)
within and outside these generalizations.
‘An important task for feminist geographers
has been to make women visible, by develop-
ing a geography of women. Two points have
been made: women’s experiences and percep-
tions often differ from those of men; and
259FEMINIST GEOGRAPHIES
THE GEOGRAPHY OF WOMEN
topical focus:
description of
the effects of
gender inequality
‘SOCIALIST FEMINIST GEOGRAPHY
topical focus:
explanation of
inequality, and
relations between
capitalism and patriarchy
feminism
FEMINIST GEOGRAPHIES OF DIFFERENCE
topical focus:
the construction of
gendered, heter(sexed)
identities; differences
among women; gender and
constructions of nature;
heteropatriarchy and
geopolitics
women have restricted access to a range of
opportunities, from paid employment to ser-
vices. This is largely an empirical tradition,
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 con-
junction with the existing spatial structures,
housing design and policy, and patterns of
accessibility to transport and other services
such as childcare, conspire to constrain
women’s access to paid employment and
other resources. In historical geography, it
has taken the form of recovering both the
everyday lives of women and the work of
women travel writers (Domosh, 1991).
‘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
260
THREE STRANDS OF FEMINIST GEOGRAPHY
theoretical influences:
welfare geography,
liberal feminism
theoretical influences:
marxism, socialist
theoretical influences:
cultural, poststructural,
postcolonial, psychoanalytic
theories; writings of women
of colour, lesbian women,
gay men, women from
‘developing’ countries
geographical focus:
constraints of
distance and
spatial separation
‘geographical focus:
spatial separation,
gender place,
localities
geographical focus
micro-geographies
of the body; mobile
identities; distance,
separation and place;
imaginative geographies;
colonialisms and
postcoionialisms;
environment/nature
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 position, it provides a
fairly narrow reading of space, conceived
almost exclusively as distance (e.g. the journey
to work and the separation of SUBURB from
paid employment: England, 1993). Little con-
sideration has been given to variations in gen-
der relations across PLACES (although sec
Momsen and Kinnaird, 1993). There has
been, however, a very usefull planning compo-
nent to this literature that outlines, for ex-
ample, efforts to restructure the city so as to
reduce gender inequalities and enhance qual-
ity of life (Eichler, 1995; Wekerle and Whitz-
man, 1995). Both successes and frustrations in
attempts to implement some of these reforms
have led to critical reconsiderations of the lim-
its of liberal feminism and towards a fuller
institutional analysis, confirming Eisenstein’s
(1981) point that the practical and theoretical
limits of LIBERALISM are frequently discovered
— in practice — by liberal feminists themselves.
Socialist feminist geographers have
reworked Marxian categories and theory to
explain the interdependence of geography;
gender relations and economic development
under CAPITALISM (see MARKIST 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 PaTRI-
ARCHY and capitalism, and the relative auton-
omy of the two systems.
Socialist feminist geographers first worked
primarily at the urban and regional SCALES;
arguably, it is now the strand of feminist geog-
raphy that is most insistent about the material
effects of the globalizing forces of capitalism
(Katz, 1998). At the urban scale, an carly
focus of Anglo-American feminist geographers
was the social and spatial separation of subur-
ban homes from paid employment; this was
seen as crucial to the day-to-day and gener-
ational reproduction of workers and the devel-
opment and continuation of ‘traditional’
gender relations in capitalist societies (Mac-
Kenzie and Rose, 1983). Efforts were made
to read these processes in non-functionalist
terms and as strategies to manage the effects
of a capitalist economy (see FUNCTIONALISM);
for example, MacKenzie and Rose argued that
the isolation of women as housewives in sub-
urban locations emerged from the combined
influence of working-class household strat-
egies, governmental policy and male power
within families and trade unions.
Socialist feminist geographers became
increasingly attentive to the ways that gender
relations differ from place to place and not
only reflect but also partially determine local
economic changes. At the urban scale, Nelson
(1986) argued that employers of clerical work-
ers in the USA began moving to suburban
locations in the 1970s to gain access to mid-
dle-class, suburban ‘house-wives’ willing to
work for relatively low wages on a part-time
basis. Broadly similar arguments, about the
importance of local gender relations and the
FEMINIST GEOGRAPHIES
attractions of cheaper, female labour for indus-
trial and geographical restructuring, have been
made at the regional (Massey, 1984) and inter-
national (Pearson, 1986; Chant and Mcll-
waine, 1995) scales.
Since the late 1980s, many feminist geog-
raphers have moved away from an exclusive
focus on gender and class systems. ‘This new
phase can be identified as feminist geographies
of difference (see IDENTITY POLITICS). It has
three characteristics.
First, the category of gender is contested and
expanded beyond the duality: man, woman.
Feminist geographers are increasingly atten-
tive to the differences in the construction of
gender relations across races, ethnicities, ages,
religions, sexualities, and nationalities, and to
exploitative relations among women who are
positioned in varying ways along these multi-
ple axes of difference.
Second, feminist geographers are drawing on a
broader range of social, and particularly cultural,
theory, including PSYCHOANALYSIS and PosT-
STRUCTURALISM, in order to develop a fuller
understanding of how gender relations and
identities are shaped and assumed (see SUBJECT
FORMATION, GEOGRAPHIES OF). This has led to
fundamental rethinking of the category gender
(See GENDER AND GEOGRAPHY), and the contra~
dictions and possibilities presented by the
seeming instability and insistent repetitions of
gender norms in practice. The focus on multi-
ple identifications and the influence of post-
structuralist and psychoanalytic theories have
brought feminist geographers into dialogue
with other strands of critical geography (see
POST-COLONIALISM). But another consequence
is that theoretical differences among feminist
geographers are more obvious than in the past
(and although Monk, 1994, observes that
national differences between American and
British geographers may be diminishing as
both pursue these new directions, divisions
between feminist geographers located in ‘the
north’ and ‘the south’ may be increasing, an
institutional schism that repeats geopolitical
ones in troubling ways: Katz, 1998).
‘Third, there has been a more explicit shift
away from objectivist epistemologies through the
espousal of situated knowledge claims (see
EPISTEMOLOGY). A key area of discussion con-
cerns the distinction between relativism and
SITUATED KNOWLEDGE, and ways to reconcile
partial perspectives with commitments to po-
litical action and social change. There are now
concrete examples of the challenges of creating
feminist alliances across differences (e.g.
Gibson-Graham, 1994; Jacobs, 1994).
261FEMINIST GEOGRAPHIES
New areas are receiving attention, some of
which entail different conceptions of geog-
raphy and space. A considerable amount of
writing has developed around gendered cul-
tural REPRESENTATION, which extends the focus
to imaginative and symbolic spaces (see FILM,
GEOGRAPHY OF; IMAGINATIVE GEOGRAPHIES;
VISION AND VISUALITY). A small but growing
number of studies of masculinities (e.g. Sparke,
1994; Phillips, 1997) begin to deliver on the
promise of a gender relational approach, by
directing the focus away from women to a
larger network of heteropatriarchal relations.
The influence of identity politics and post-
structural theories has refocused attention on
SEXUALITY AND GEOGRAPHY, and the scale of
the BODY (GEOGRAPHY AND). A theory of PER-
FORMATIVITY developed within QUEER THEORY,
which posits that gender is performed through
repetitions and approximations of a normative
ideal (rather than existing as a stable identity),
suggests the importance of context and con-
tingency; the geographical implications of this
are just beginning to be explored. Metaphors
of mobility and fluidity, of Hypriprry and
paradoxical, inbetween spaces have been
immensely popular in feminist geography in
the 1990s, including Gibson-Graham’s
(1996) influential retheorizing of capitalism
and CLASS processes; it will be interesting to
see whether cautionary reactions (e.g. Hanson
and Pratt, 1995; Seager, 1997; Katz, 1998)
also reinvigorate links with a renewed socialist
feminism, GP
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