Lorraine Dowler

• PhD Geography
• Pennsylvania State University

On July 19th, 2005, American Army Private First Class LaVena Johnson died in Balad, Iraq, just 8 days shy of her 20th birthday. On July 13th, 2015, almost 10 years later, 28-year-old Sandra Bland’s life came to an abrupt end in a jail cell in Waller County, Texas. Both women’s deaths were ruled suicides, and both women’s families and friends reject...

This article builds on the geographic literature of nonviolence with the feminist literature of care ethics and positive security to explore the potential for a praxis that promotes relational urban social justice. We examine two cities—Belfast, Northern Ireland, and Orumiyeh, Iran—that have historically endured political struggles that continue to...

In this paper we bring together Billig's notion of banal nationalism and recent feminist geopolitical examinations of fear in order to analyze two cases studies of fear among U.S. college students and U.S. soldiers experiencing sexual violence. Putting banal nationalism and feminist geopolitics into conversation, we argue, reveals both their compat...

Geographers have demonstrated how discourses and practices of security are unevenly experienced and mapped onto space, often paradoxically creating insecurities in people's lives. Yet, all too often, the fluid nature of power is difficult to articulate; the intimate is either eclipsed or treated as a passive victim of national and global processes....

The aim of this Viewpoint is to suggest a feminist intervention into the Sandusky scandal at Penn State University as a radical alternative to rethinking institutional violence at places of higher learning. Jerry Sandusky, former Penn State assistant football coach, was found guilty on 45 charges related to child sexual abuse. The horrific nature o...

Many areas of Belfast were considered no-go areas, places where the police had lost jurisdiction, whilst the media designated these neighbourhoods as terrorist enclaves. The urban scars that remain after the signing of the peace agreement, have transformed these marginalised areas into places of hospitality for tourists curious about the past confl...

Militarization is a process that we often consider restricted to the boundaries of the state. However this essay offers a feminist reformulation of militarization as a banal process that is furtively present in our everyday spaces. This essay focuses on some of the arguments put forth by both scholars of geopolitics and feminist political geography...

IntroductionStout Boots and Hairy Chests: Fieldwork TraditionsFeminist and Postcolonial ChallengesPerforming the FieldFamiliar FieldsConclusions References

Halford Mackinder has had a posthumous existence that many of us might envy. Long after his earthly demise, some of his ideas, particularly that of the ?geographical pivot of history,? keep coming back to life. Currently, some well-known pundits in US foreign-policy circles, typically thought of as neo-conservative and keen on a ?muscular? US milit...

Studies of the female partners of politically motivated prisoners have generally studied women via a caring paradigm. Less well observed are those women who privately transgressed and challenged masculine-centred renditions or political imprisonment. This lacuna in the research dedicated to such women has been constructed around stereotypical depic...

Tourism development in mountain regions is reported to bring economic growth to host communities. However, the literature reveals that the economic, environmental and cultural impacts of tourism development in these regions vary greatly and that a number of critical factors may explain that variability. Therefore, the purpose of this paper was to e...

The purpose of this exploratory study is to examine how ethnic tourism is impacting host women in two destinations in Yunnan. To accomplish this, the paper compares the perceived impacts of ethnic tourism on women from a matriarchal and a patriarchal host community. The findings reveal that tourism income had a greater effect on women from a patria...

According to Doris Humphrey, "Nothing so clearly or inevitably reveals the inner man [sic] than movement and gesture...the moment you move you stand revealed, for good or ill, for what you are" (The dance notebook, 1984). Tourette Syndrome, characterized by motor and vocal tics, elicits stigma for just this reason: the tics and movements it causes...

In this paper we examine the ways that traditional definitions of masculinity are challenged within the domestic space of the volunteer firehouse. Our aim is to blur the dichotomies of public - private, masculine - feminine, heroic - weak, and moral - immoral. By examining practices associated with being a volunteer firefighter we present deeper an...

This study explores the meaning of the serious leisure experience for volunteer firefighters. The 70,000 volunteer firefighters in Pennsylvania are the basis of this study. Volunteer firefighting contrasts with other serious leisure pursuits examined to date in two ways. First, individuals are involved in a highly visible, emotionally charged publi...

This paper examines how to incorporate a feminist pedagogy into teaching World Regional Geography in order to empower students to seek social change. This paper also addresses the fragile relationships that develop in the feminist classroom, such as challenging students' inherent prejudices in a safe and comfortable setting.

Inherent to the conflict in Northern Ireland has been the spatial segregation of men from women, whereby men go to prison and women are left to support and take care of their families. As a result of this segregation, a power relationship has been established that informs men's relationships both with women and with other men. While in prison, Iris...

The events of September 11th have triggered the establishment of war narratives, both academic and popular, trying to make sense of this tragedy. However very little discussion in the United States has focused on the gendering of the attack. What we have witnessed is the tendency to masculinize the heroes of the attack as gallant warriors and ignor...

This article historically examines the intersections between racism, sexism, and class difference and how they shaped the lives of white people in the U.S. We do this in an effort to avoid the customary practice of treating the experiences of whites as raceless and therefore the norm. More specifically, this essay will explore the construction of a...

It is the intent of this article to deconstruct the practices of border crossers, whereby the political identities of women have been relegated to the domestic/private sphere rendering them political innocents. However in West Belfast, women's designation to the home is what facilitated their ability to not only to transcend the borders of West Bel...

Divis Flats, it should be called Divis Prison, we were herded up and put in here without ever once being asked where we might want to live. I was lifted(1) in 1958, put in prison without a trial, and when I was forced to move into Divis it was as if it was happening all over again. At night when I lay in bed I can hear the soldiers walking on the b...

ABSTRACT This article examines the spatial construction of gender roles in a time of war. During a period of armed conflict both women and men are perceived as beings who exemplify gender-specific virtues. The relationship of gender and identity in this case is a paradoxical one: war-usually a catalyst of change-can often become an agent of conserv...

The purpose of this study was to examine whether or not Butler's Tourist Area Lifecycle (TALC) is useful in explaining the development of ethnic tourism in Yunnan, China. Qualitative methods including Nominal Group Technique (NGT), Participant Rural Appraisal (PRA), secondary data from the provincial tourism bureau, and participant observation were...

From past projects, we have learned that the primary challenges for technology-based entrepreneurial ven- tures focusing on Bottom-of-the-Pyramid customers are not on the engineering side but on the business, social, and ethical aspects—understanding the social environment, assessing social impact, and inculcating "business sense" in the partnering...

The purpose of this dissertation is to examine the spatial construction of gender roles in a time of war. During a period of armed conflict both women and men are perceived as beings who exemplify gender-specific virtues. The relationship of gender and identity in this case is a paradoxical one: war--usually a catalyst of change--can often become a...