Doing groups: Situating knowledge and creating stories

This paper presents group research as a potentially powerful research tool for cultural geographers interested in the ways knowledge is produced at the interpersonal level. I argue that groups can create unique research spaces that incorporate 'sociality', the everyday social norms, logics and languages that guide ordinary conversations, into the research agenda. By concentrating on these discursive norms, insights can be obtained into the ways that knowledge is negotiated, produced and constrained in different places. To demonstrate the value of group research, a case study involving Australian environmentalists is analysed, to show how forests are constructed, contested and naturalised within this particular subculture. The article concludes by emphasising the importance of group research to critical geographers interested in social empowerment and change.     

Women at work—experiences and identity in rural East Germany

The economic restructuring since German unification has produced gender-differentiated patterns in the rural workplace. Most studies of East German labour market changes have illustrated the nature of such patterns in quantitative terms whilst neglecting their impact on everyday life. The relationship between the significance of work for women's quality of life and self-identification, and women's withdrawal from the public has, however, remained under-explored. Based on data obtained through correspondence and in-depth interviews in Mecklenburg-Westpommerania, this paper aims to address this relationship by discussing women's work-related experiences before and since unification.     

The Retention,Revival, and Subjugation of Indigenous Fire Knowledge through Agency Fire Fighting in Eastern Australia and California

This article explores the potential impact of training and employment with wildfire management agencies on the retention of Indigenous fire knowledge. It focuses on the comparative knowledge and experiences of Indigenous Elders, cultural practitioners, and land stewards in connection with “modern” political constructs of fire in New South Wales and Queensland, Australia, and California in the United States of America. This article emphasises the close link between cross-cultural acceptance, integration of Indigenous and agency fire cultures, and the ways in which knowledge types are shared or withheld. While agency fire fighting provides an opportunity for Indigenous people to connect and care for country, it simultaneously allows for the breaking of traditional rules surrounding what knowledge is shared with whom in the context of Indigenous cultural burning. By highlighting how privilege intersects with ethnicity, class, gender and age, this article demonstrates how greater cross-cultural acceptance could aid ongoing debates on how to coexist with wildfire today.     

Ecofeminism in the twenty-first century

This paper considers the influence of ecofeminism on policy concerning gender (in)equality and the environment during the past 20 years. It reviews the broad contours of the ecofeminist debate before focusing on the social construction interpretation of women's relationship with the environment. It will argue that there have been substantial policy shifts in Europe and the UK in both the environmental and equalities fields, and that this is in part a result of lobbying at a range of scales by groups informed by ecofeminist debates. Nevertheless, the paper cautions that these shifts are largely incremental and operate within existing structures, which inevitably limit their capacity to create change. As policy addresses some of the concerns highlighted by ecofeminism, academic discourse and grass roots activity have been moving on to address other issues, and the paper concludes with a brief consideration of contemporary trajectories of ecofeminism and campaigning on issues that link women's, feminist and environment concerns.     

中关村高校周边居住区社会空间特征及其形成机制

目前国内城市社会空间研究偏重于宏观层次,对于微观层次社区社会空间特征的研究相对缺乏。基于质性研究(Qualitative Research)和深度访谈的调查方法,以北京大学周边若干居住区为例,探讨了中关村高校周边居住区社会空间的特征及其形成机制。研究发现:中关村高校周边居住区的社会空间经历了从"同质性"向"异质性"转变的发展阶段;社区居民的社会阶层分异显著;居民的整体流动性较强,且以水平流动为主,垂直流动相对较少;阶层内社会网络联系较强,阶层间社会网络联系较弱,存在明显的阶层分隔现象;空间结构呈现出在高校和社会双重力量作用下,各种类型居民分布既混合又有序的复杂型式。在市场经济体制下,中关村高校周边居住区外来人口与原住居民共同构建了一种具有高流动性、松散社会网络等特征的社会空间,它为理解社区流动性、社会网络特征和社会空间成熟度之间的关系带来启示。     

Back and forth with hopes and fears: Sri Lankan men's narratives on gender and mobility in transnational livelihoods

Although in the past Sri Lanka has had a higher number of women migrant workers, recent statistics show that the gap between the percentages of female and male migrants is decreasing. Since 2007, male migrants have outnumbered female migrants. The article explores how Sri Lankan men have responded to the increased economic needs of their families and lack of proper income-generating activities within the country by engaging in transnational livelihoods, as well as how their roles and identities are contested and negotiated through labour migration. The study is based on men's narratives on their reasons for migration and their experiences of transnational labour migration. The concepts of hope and life course are used to analyse the intertwined relationships of gender and mobility in transnational livelihoods. The author identifies that men's mobility is motivated by their hopes of fulfilling traditional gender norms as providers and protectors of their families in combination with their new identity as successful men. Further, the study provides evidence that men's mobility is not only gendered but also a repeated act during their life course. The study contributes to strengthen research on mobility and gender by adding men's perspectives on transnational labour migration.     

Gendering Climate Change: Geographical Insights

Although climate change is expected to increase vulnerabilities, marginalization, and sufferings of many in the Global South, impacts will be unevenly felt across social strata. Intersectionalities of social difference, especially along gender and class lines, differentiate the ways in which impacts of climate change are experienced and responded to. Feminist political ecology and feminist geography insights can explain how different groups of people understand, respond to, and cope with variability and uncertainties in nuanced and critical ways, thereby elucidating the gendered implications of climate change. With a regional focus on South Asia, the article underscores the key issues that can be applied geographically elsewhere. Gendered implications of climate change in South Asia are particularly poignant as patriarchal norms, inequities, and inequalities often place women and men in differentiated positions in their abilities to respond to and cope with dramatic changes in socioecological relations but also foreground the complex ways in which social power relations operate in communal responses to adaptation strategies. This is particularly evident in water-related productive and reproductive tasks in agrarian societies that constitute the majority of South Asia. As climate change is expected to exacerbate both ecological degradation (e.g., water shortages) and water-related natural hazards (e.g., floods, cyclones), thereby transforming gender–water geographies, it becomes imperative to undertake careful multiscalar and critical analyses to better inform policymaking. This article elucidates the complex ways that climate change will affect gender and social relations, thereby highlighting the ways that existing policy narratives and adaptation programs might be better informed by geographical insights. To this end, the article encourages feminist and critical geographers to more forcefully and fruitfully engage with global debates on climate change.     

Uneven urban metabolisms: toward an integrative (ex)urban political ecology of sustainability in and around the city

ABSTRACT

Expanding cities present a sustainability challenge, as the uneven proliferation of hybrid landscape types becomes a major feature of 21st century urbanization. To fully address this challenge, scholars must consider the broad range of land uses that being produced beyond the urban core and how land use patterns in one location may be tied to patterns in other locations. Diverse threads within political ecology provide useful insights into the dynamics that produce uneven urbanization. Specifically, urban political ecology (UPE) details how economic power influences the development decision-making that proliferate urban forms, patterns of uneven access, and modes of decision-making, frequently viewing resource extraction and development through the urban metabolism lens. The political ecology of exurbia, or, perhaps, an exurban political ecology (ExPE), examines the symbolic role nature and the rural have played in conservation and development efforts that produce social, economic, and environmental conflicts. While UPE approaches tend to privilege macroscale dynamics, ExPE emphasizes the role of landowners, managers, and other actors in struggles over the production of exurban space, including through decision-making institutions and within the context of broader political economic forces. Three case studies illustrate the strengths and weaknesses of these approaches, demonstrating the benefits for and giving suggestions on how to integrate their insights into urban sustainability research. Integrated political ecology approaches demonstrate how political-economic processes at a variety of scales produce diverse local sustainability responses.     

Spatial practices and imaginaries: Experiences of colonial officers and development professionals

This paper explores the spatiality of colonial and postcolonial power and discourse as produced, performed and imagined by former British colonial service officers and contemporary UK international development professionals. It focuses on two key aspects of spatial practices. The first addresses the spaces inhabited by these colonial officers and development professionals overseas and how their locatedness, embedded or enclavic, shapes relationships to others. The second explores this distinctive social and spatial distancing through their relationship to, and imagined geographies of, home and away and how these are embodied in their institutional and cultural capital. The paper examines the regularities and consistencies that stand out from numerous individual practices through which both former colonial officers and development professionals negotiate the situations in which they live and work. It also specifies how authoritative management, privilege and distance informs their spatial practices despite changing global contexts and a more diverse composition of those who articulate contemporary relationships between 'first' and 'third' worlds. Finally, the paper suggests that the cultures which travelled over colonial space through being performed by colonial officers have been reworked throughout the postcolonial period, belying epochal historical periodizations that conjure up a clear disjuncture between colonial and development eras.     

Obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD): Gendered metaphors,blogs and online forums

In order to understand social recovery from mental illness, it is important to examine the role played by social space, including virtual space. This article examined blogs and online forums for people with obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD). In particular, it addressed gender differences in the metaphors used by men and women in these virtual spaces. Empirical data illustrated that, in general, women are more likely to frame their experiences of OCD as a journey, whereas men are more likely to frame them as a battle. Use of these different metaphors has potential implications for social recovery.     

基于女性主义地理学的消费空间性别关系建构——以西安“世纪金花”购物中心为例

近年来,女性主义地理学的研究内容转向身体、身份认同和象征空间等微观地理,消费空间的性别研究成为关注热点。文章基于女性主义视角,借助对典型消费空间的实证调查,考察空间性别化特征以及性别因素决定下的空间之权力隐喻关系,总结了人—地互动模式中的性别建构特征。研究发现,消费空间为女性提供了参与城市公共空间的场所,见证了女性空间权的觉醒与实践,但女性仍受男性规训与控制;现代女性在消费空间中的行为延续了传统的角色定位,公共空间参与度并未显著改变她们的性别角色和在家务上的性别化分工;消费空间再现和建构的性别关系、性别地位是一种典型的隐形歧视,女性处于实际上的不平等地位。因此,空间和性别不可分割且互为构成,两性在消费空间中的表现实质上是性别权力关系的投射,折射出这一地理空间中两性的宰控关系。     

Geography and gender

Most people in Britain today work in jobs dominated very markedly by either women or men. Sex-typing occurs in many other activities. For example, child care and domestic work, whether paid or unpaid, are generally considered to be tasks for women. However, with the exception of domestic work and child care, the allocation of activities to women or men varies between societies. For example, in much of sub-Saharan Africa, women work in fields, growing basic subsistence crops for their families, whereas in much of Latin America, women's agricultural work is confined to tending animals and food processing. Inequality arises because the role of women is generally associated with inferior status, socially, politically and/or economically. When mapping the geography of gender, an example shows that female life expectancy at birth is highest in the developed countries and lowest in the poorest countries of the Third World. Regarding the relationship between gender divisions and various aspects of spatial organization within societies most attention has focused on differences in ethnic group, social class, and stage in the life cycle. In mid-19th century Britain large-scale factory production precipitated a spatial separation between home and work and created the possibility of separate spheres of life for women and men. A particular social form, namely a nuclear family with a dependent wife, can operate as a factor contributing to changes in the spatial organization of urban areas in the form of suburban growth. After decades of outward movement by affluent social groups, a return to small pockets within inner-urban areas is now evident. This process is known as gentrification. An additional factor of significance in connection with gentrification is the increasing success of middle-class women in obtaining well-paid career jobs.     

THE NEGOTIATION OF SPACE AMONG SEX WORKERS IN CEBU CITY, THE PHILIPPINES

The paper examines the experiences of space among sex workers in Cebu City, a major service and commercial centre in the Visayan region of the Philippines. It explores the issue of space from a number of perspectives and scales: first, at the national level in terms of migration patterns among sex workers; second, at the local level in relation to how sex workers experience and construct urban spaces through residence and working patterns; and finally, from a community perspective, the nature of domestic spaces among these women. The underlying theme of the paper centres around the contradictory ways in which social opprobrium is often reflected in spatial seclusion among sex workers. On the one hand, they are constrained in their experiences of space. On the other, the construction of their own particular spaces reflects a high degree of resourcefulness and resistance. This is corroborated further by the fact that involvement in the sex industry creates a different set of spatial aspirations and awareness among sex workers compared with those of the wider population.     

You have to be twice as good to be equal: 'placing' women in Plymouth's Devonport Dockyard

Summary This paper explores the dynamics of gender relations in Plymouth's Devonport Dockyard. It focuses on the day-to-day, lived experiences of working women in a male-dominated workplace. Two issues are put forward for particular consideration: the first concerns the way in which social structures in the dockyard give rise to a set of gender relations specific to this workplace; the second concerns the relationship between space, place and the fluidity of gendered social boundaries.     

儿童地理学视角下的留守儿童研究述评

文章通过梳理在WOS（Web Of Science）核心数据集、谷歌学术、中国知网（CNKI）等平台筛选出的较高引用率、方法比较规范、与留守儿童主题相关性强的国内外文献159篇,从理论层面总结了儿童地理学研究的新转向：关注儿童与空间的关系,强调儿童在空间使用中的主体性,重视不同情境下儿童地理体验的差异性。并梳理了跨国迁移背景下留守儿童的3个研究主题：从空间视角探讨留守儿童的日常生活实践;从主体性出发探讨儿童在迁移链中的体验;在童年的差异性基础上讨论本土儿童的问题。同时从问题视角和积极视角分析了国内城乡迁移背景下留守儿童的研究主题,指出因现有研究范式中的经验主义和成人中心主义而存在的局限性。尝试勾勒出符合中国情境的留守儿童研究新范式,提出留守儿童的日常生活空间,留守儿童的能动性、异质性和多样性是国内留守儿童研究亟需关注的内容。呼吁学者采用历时和动态的研究设计,充分展现儿童如何理解、体验和应对复杂的流动背景下的日常生活。     

西方城市女性时空行为研究的新趋势及其对中国的启示

为满足当前城市社会发展与城市建设需要,西方女性时空行为研究近年来取得了长足进展,研究主题覆盖行为特征、社会公平、可持续性等方面。中国城市女性在转型期同样面临着重大的挑战,城市空间的性别不平等正在深刻地影响女性的日常行为与生活质量。本文系统梳理了近50年来西方女性时空行为研究成果,介绍了女性通勤行为、非工作活动等传统议题和家庭关系、联合行为、可达性等新问题的研究进展,并总结了女性时空行为研究的理论解释。西方女性时空行为研究早期关注经济转型背景下的女性出行行为,对就业可达性、通勤和非工作活动的性别差异进行了大量研究。近年来,西方研究呈现出多元化趋势,研究重点转向家庭关系、家庭联合行为与时空可达性等新主题,指出女性在日常生活中面临社会排斥与空间不平等。为理解女性时空行为模式的形成机制,学者从经济学、社会学、地理学等角度进行探讨,提出了地租与工资理论、劳动力市场隔离理论、家庭责任假说、女性的自我认知与社会文化、家庭资源分配说、时空固定性制约等解释理论。这些研究为中国城市女性时空行为研究提供了借鉴。针对中国女性面临的城市社会转型的独特背景,其时空行为受制度、家庭和自身的多重制约,提出了中国城市女性时空行为研究的框架和未来研究方向。     

Mapping the Urban Debtscape: The Geography of Household Debt in Canadian Cities

Abstract

Vulnerability resulting from debt is part and parcel of the risk society and a salient characteristic of current neoliberal times under financialized global capitalism. Rising indebtedness increases the susceptibility of homeowners to housing and labor market restructuring, and if the degree of leverage is very high, can threaten the solvency, living standards, and social stability of local communities. However, very little is understood regarding how levels of household indebtedness are spatially distributed within or across cities, and how private debt maps onto the geography of race, class, housing, urban form, and other social variables, especially outside of the United States. It remains unknown whether and how higher and unsustainable levels of indebtedness might be associated with urban growth, decline, suburbanization, gentrification, immigration, racialization, and/or greying. This article examines the spatial distribution of household debt in Canadian cities at multiple scales of analysis. It analyzes how levels of household debt relate to a number of key socio-demographic and housing variables from the census, including those related to changes occurring over the 2000s. It simultaneously models the geography of debt at the metropolitan and neighborhood scales using multi-level hierarchical linear modeling methods, and in doing so, it identifies some key drivers and correlates of household debt and the scales at which they operate. The article concludes by discussing the implications of the empirical findings for understanding the role of the emerging urban debtscape in the restructuring of the social geography of the city.     

Cycling willingness: Investigating distance as a dependent variable in cycling behavior among college students

We present a novel approach to understanding distance as a barrier to cycling and its use as a dependent variable in multinomial logistic regression. In doing so, this study explores distances in relation to spatially and relevant human factors such as gender and propensity to cycle among college students. College students (N = 949) participated in a health survey and stated possible predictors of cycling based on their cycle usage and preferences in the previous 30 days. While utilizing GIS in a bicycle-friendly network, we created geo-statistical GIS-groupings and performed multinomial logistic regression analysis. We examined college students to discover how their demographic and personal characteristics may mediate the deterrent properties of distance when considered as a dependent variable in cycling to a college campus. Age and propensity for cycling for transportation mediate the negative effect of distance on the likelihood of cycling. The findings also suggest that infrastructure improvements could lessen the impact of distance as a barrier to cycling and increase the likelihood of cycling for commuting.     

Manoeuvring the middle ground: Social mobility and the renegotiation of gender and family obligations among Chinese Singaporeans

The article examines Singaporeans' experiences of upward social mobility and how traditional gender roles within the family are renegotiated and reinterpreted in Singapore. When the former British colony gained independence in 1965 its post-colonial government embarked on an ambitious modernization programme, under which villages were demolished and residents relocated to new high-rise estates, farmland gave way to factories, the education system was reformed, and women entered the workforce. The transformation has been accompanied by a rapid upward social mobility, whereby Singaporeans born in the midst of the transformation, in the period 1960s – 1980s, lived remarkably different lives compared with preceding generations. The article is an ethnographic analysis of how Singaporean middle-class women and men, who have experienced rapid upward social mobility, handle and negotiate changing expectations regarding gender and intergenerational support. The analytical framework is constructed around the concepts of social mobility, modernity, and spaces of contestation and negotiation. The ethnographic data illuminate how traditional family values, such as filial piety, are contested and renegotiated. The data also show how social mobility intersects with other forms of mobility, such as the spatial movement involved in urbanization. Women entering the labour force have to spend their days away from home and can no longer fully attend to their elderly family members and/or young children. However, spatial movement in the sense of increased access to transportation and communication has also enabled members of extended families to maintain their ‘urban kinship network’ without having to live together.     

Faculty Reappointment,Tenure, and Promotion: Barriers for Women

Women faculty continue to experience academe differently than male faculty. A review of recent literature indicates that women's representation on university faculties has advanced slowly; women are less likely to be tenured or promoted compared to male faculty; and women faculty earn less than their male colleagues. A recurring theme is that the intellectual and social isolation of women faculty affects their research productivity. Gender stereotypes held by colleagues, departmental and college administrators, and students also contribute to the difficulties women face in the reappointment, tenure, and promotion process. A personal perspective on the reappointment process is provided in order to illustrate how isolation and naïvete regarding the social structure of academe can affect a woman's career advancement. The benefits of greater representation of women on university faculties are reviewed, and departmental and college administrators are reminded of the important role they play in ensuring future gender‐balanced faculties.