Introduction
This Handbook reflects the immense depth of interest, developments, directions and tensions in gender and feminist geographies. It brings together 48 chapters by new, emerging and established scholars, activists and artists in order to highlight original international work in gender and feminist geographies. For nearly five decades â from the 1970s onwards â geographers have employed feminist and other critical social theories to understand gender, power, place and space. There is now a vast and considerable literature in gender and feminist geographies, and also a growing number of scholars who bring feminist theory and praxis to diverse topics and locations. There are continuities between earlier compendiums, such as Geographies of New Femininities (Laurie et al. 2014), Feminist Geography in Practice (Moss 2002) and A Companion to Feminist Geography (Nelson and Seager 2005) and this Handbook. The differences between earlier volumes and this one suggest that the field of scholarship continues to mature in theory and practice, in part by diversifying the voices and perspectives that refocus its scholarship towards new questions, new approaches and new critical theories.
This Handbook aims to provide a window into established gender and feminist geographies while pointing readers towards new directions. We, as editors, are deeply honoured to be caretakers of the chapters. From the outset, our main goal has been to represent the diversity of research, different theoretical frameworks, the variety of methodological tools and the multiplicity of practices within gender and feminist geographies. The range and merit of different approaches to gender and feminist geographies are based on different interpretations of what is regarded as salient and significant for scholars and activists. Where we have succeeded in achieving our goal, we are indebted to the contributors to this compendium. Where we have failed, we look with hope towards the scholars who will generate their own inspired points of departure.
Early in our collaboration as editors, we recognized that producing this Handbook provides the opportunity to encourage contributors to bring their commitments into their authorship. Gender and feminist geographers were invited to contribute a chapter and, wherever possible, to co-author the chapter with others, such as established or new and emerging scholars, students, activists, community groups and artists. We are delighted to have 100 authors from 18 countries. This Handbook, then, provides a comprehensive statement, thematic overview and reference point for contemporary feminist geographies and gender studies in an international and multidisciplinary context. Specifically, it provides critical reviews and appraisals of the current state of the art and future development of conceptual and theoretical approaches, as well as empirical knowledges and understandings of feminist geographies and gender studies.
As editors and feminist scholars from different parts of the world â India, Britain, Aotearoa New Zealand, the USA and Brazil â our experiences of feminist theory reflect the ways that our own biographies in place and space intersect with dominant forms of knowledge. Our conversations have raised questions about what it means to publish a feminist handbook in English with a Western press or what to recommend by way of authorsâ writings, which use a specialist, theoretical language that can be inaccessible even to seasoned scholars. We have worked to try to decentre Anglo-American and Eurocentric Western knowledge. The politics of knowledge production is crucial to feminism, and it is a central concern within this Handbook. We hope this collection continues to transform the discipline of geography through building capacity with new practitioners and early career researchers. We also hope this collection enables geographers to critique and question static concepts and paradigms (Johnson 2009, 2012; Peake 2015).
Our diverse positionalities in the global networks of scientific production allow us to reflectively engage with the advantages and disadvantages of a coloniality of knowledge (language skills, access to economic and technological resources and networks of personal and professional relationships). The solidary conciliation of our simultaneous strengths and weaknesses, not always easy, was the energy that created cracks in power structures so that we could advance towards pluri- and multi-located geographies.
Gender and feminist geography scholarship is, of course, dependent on time and place. Knowledge, therefore, is diverse in its aims, articulations and practices. We embrace this diversity and the many links that the authors make to other critical geographies, such as queer, social, cultural, anti-racist and post-colonial geographies. What unites this diverse scholarship is the disruption of inequalities and an articulation of difference. This collection, then, enables us to showcase the different places and concepts identified and detailed by contributors as vital to the establishment and development of gender and feminist geographies. Living a feminist life (Ahmed 2017) happens somewhere, as this Handbook shows.
The Handbook focuses on contemporary social and political places and gives an ongoing feminist commentary on gender, places and spaces at a variety of scales. Our aims for the Handbook were ambitious. They were to: establish thematic overviews of gender and feminist geographies; provide critical reviews and appraisals of the current state of the art and future development of conceptual, theoretical and methodological approaches, as well as empirical knowledge and understanding of gender and feminist geographies; engage simultaneously with different geographical scales and societal issues, such as violence, resistance, agency and desire; reflect the politics, methods, theories and practices involved in feminist geographies; and showcase the ongoing transformative research that arises from feminist geographical knowledges. As we write this Introduction and review the chapters one more time, we are truly delighted with the exciting, engaging and challenging content that authors have brought to the Handbook.
In what follows, we briefly outline some existing research and literature upon which this Handbook rests and extends, noting also the current social and political context in which these chapters were written. We have called this âChanging places, politics and genderâ to recognize the powerful gendered geopolitical geographies across the globe. Second, we offer an overview of each part: Establishing feminist geographies; Placing feminist geographies; Engaging feminist geographies; and Doing feminist geographies. By introducing each part, we hope to clarify connections and divergences between chapters. Finally, we offer personal and political reflections about the editorial work that we did in and around our lives in five different countries. The âpersonal is politicalâ is a well-established feminist theoretical tool, and we highlight events that impacted on the making of this Handbook.
Changing places, politics and gender
It is generally agreed that feminist geography took root in the 1970s, along with the rise of social movements and when the concept of gender began to take hold (Mackenzie 1984; Nelson and Seager 2005). The âstrange case of the missing female geographerâ (Zelinsky 1973) was not an isolated incident (see, for example: McDowellâs 1979 Women in British Geography; Momsenâs 1980 Women in Canadian Geography; the Women and Geography Study Group of the Institute of British Geographersâ Geography and Gender, IBG 1984; and GarcĂa RamĂłn et al.âs 1988 Women and Geography in Spanish Universities). Yet, while this groundbreaking work is important, feminist geographer Janice Monkâs (2004) research shows us that since the late-nineteenth century there have been hundreds of women professional geographers (see also Maddrell 2009). Monk (2004, 1) points out that âhistories of American geography have tended to concentrate on geographic thought and on the men who have been seen as major figures in researchâ. Monk (2004; see also Peake 2015) highlighted the women geographers working in and beyond the margins of the academy, but at the centre of social movements, many of whom, such as AfricanâAmerican Thelma Glass (1916â2012), were civil rights activists.
These early reflections â perhaps better framed as an insistent intervention â serve as a reminder that feminist geographers have long been rethinking key geographical concepts, such as: class (Gibson-Graham 2006); work (McDowell 1997); development (Momsen and Kincaid 1993); migration (Pratt 2012); mobility (Hanson 2010); methodologies (Kindon and Cupples 2014); and, âspace, place and knowledgeâ (Moss and Al Hindi 2007). Feminist geographers have developed new subject areas and foci of inquiry for the broader discipline, for example: bodies (Longhurst 2001); home (Blunt and Dowling 2006); emotion and affect (Davidson and Bondi 2004; Thien 2005; Tolia-Kelly 2006); political ecology (Mollett and Faria 2013); sexuality and space (Bell and Valentine, 1995); Indigenous (Radcliffe 2014; Simmonds 2011); and, transgender and gender-variant geographies (Browne et al. 2010; Doan 2010; Johnston 2018; Sullivan 2019).
During the half-century that gender and feminist geography has been recognized as a field of study, scholars have cultivated three recognizable strands of inquiry. In-depth detail of the history of feminist geography can be found elsewhere (see Nelson and Seager 2005), so we provide only a brief outline here. It is generally agreed that the first strand â the geography of women â grew from the womenâs liberation movement of the 1960s and 1970s. This prompted geographers to address gender inequalities, particularly the absence of women from geographical research and teaching (Bowlby et al. 1989; Johnston et al. 2000; Tivers 1978). Linda McDowell (1992) identifies four reasons for the absence of women from geography, and related issues, in the 1970s. She notes:
The second strand â associated with scholarship emerging first in the 1980s and 1990s â focused on feminist geographies of gender, work, place and space. This âsocialist feminist geographyâ (Johnston et al. 2000) was produced at the intersection of gender and class relations. The relationship between patriarchy and capitalism received a great deal of interest, particularly in the UK (see debates in the journal Antipode). A landmark publication â Doreen Masseyâs 1994 book Space, Place and Gender â unravels the accepted distinctions and categories of the time, such as gender versus class, economic versus cultural, feminine versus masculine, local versus global, space versus time, partial versus universal and political versus academic. Such was the influence of Masseyâs early work that we reprint from this book a chapter on politics and space/time that was also published in New Left Review in 1992.
Postmodernism shaped the third stand of feminist geography â a feminist geography of difference. From the mid-1990s, feminist geographers have been producing a substantial amount of research focused on the intersection of bodies, identities, place and space. Early and important publications â such as: BodySpace (Duncan 1996); Places through the Body (Nast and Pile 1998); Mind and Body Spaces: Geographies of Illness, Impairment and Disability (Butler and Parr 1999); and Bodies: Exploring Fluid Boundaries (Longhurst 2000) â reshaped the geographical discipline, and some were the forerunners of queer geographies. Early landmark publications on sexuality, place and space are Mapping Desire (Bell and Valentine 1995) and Closet Space: Geographies of Metaphor from the Body to the Globe (Brown 2000).
Before we outline each part of the Introduction, we first consider the ways that place matters to the construction of knowledge (Monk 1994). There is, however, a risk in presenting gender and feminist geography as a single, universal field. The history of feminist geography, itself, is beset with an historical unevenness that reinforces Monkâs (1994) emphasis on the significance of place to the construction of knowledge. The uptake of feminist geography and the concept of gender are deployed unevenly by geographers, and this is not surprising. Power relations in specific places influence knowledge construction. What it means to do research on gender issues and to be a feminist and/or queer geographer varies across time and place. Attention to local, regional, national and international contexts clearly illustrates the heterogeneity of feminist and gender geography.
Maria Dolors GarcĂa RamĂłn and Janice Monk (2007, 247) note: âIt is now widely acknowledged that knowledge is âsituatedâ, reflecting its cultural, political and intellectual contexts as well as the personal values of those engaged in its creation. This recognition presents an especially interesting perspective for geographers.â Often, as noted by GarcĂa RamĂłn and Monk (2007), those feminist or gender geographies not produced in the âAnglo-American centreâ are marginalized and/or deemed less important. This happens in several ways. For example, research publications that do not rely on Anglo-American and European texts or theories are constructed as lacking theoretical sophistication, and empirical evidence that is not situated in Anglo-American or European places is often deemed âirrelevantâ (Longhurst and Johnston 2015).
Even within Anglo-American or European schola...
