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Girls, consumption space and the contradictions of hanging out in the city
Social & Cultural Geography
Abstract
Geographers have effectively examined girls' reactions and resistances to adult control in public space, but the ways that girls learn about and reinscribe social differences like race and class through 'hanging-out' practices in public, urban space have yet to be sufficiently explored and theorized. Therefore, in this paper I consider the normative productivity of girls' spatial practices, as well as girls' resistances to adultist space. I examine the case of consumption space and focus on how girls utilize, create and reproduce myriad social identifiers as they hang out in public, urban space. Consumption space and consumerism dominate the urban spaces and hanging-out practices of teenagers, and while girls complain about the ubiquity of consumption space, girls' public social-spatial activities inevitably involve consumption space. Therefore, consumption's symbols and spaces are central to the normative production of girls' identities like class and race, and of social difference more generally in urban space.
... Les adolescentes, en tant que jeunes et femmes, subissent le contrecoup d'une double discrimination dans leur pratique de l'espace public et dans leur participation aux initiatives de développement urbain et social (Skelton, 2000 ;Boudot, 2019). Les rares recherches en Occident qui se sont intéressées aux adolescentes -précisément et non en partie -comme usagères de l'espace public 1 (Skelton, 2000 ;Thomas, 2005 ; 1. La question du genre féminin et de la sécurité urbaine est amplement traitée dans la littérature scientifique et grise. C'est pourquoi nous cherchons à élargir la problématique aux pratiques urbaines des adolescentes (et aux besoins ou envies liés à ces pratiques) de façon générale, ce qui est bien moins documenté, notamment dans le contexte montréalais. ...
... Elles investissent alors des espaces et des équipements en retrait, inoccupés, mais non prévus pour les activités de sociabilité, comme des estrades de sport vides (Cossette et Boucher, 2021). Mais certaines se restreignent (ou sont contraintes) à fréquenter des lieux privés (le domicile ou celui d'une amie) ou des lieux publics de consommation (Thomas, 2005 ;Matthews et Tucker, 2006 ;Lloyd, Burden et Kiewa, 2008 ;Danic, 2016). ...
... La mise en place de ces groupes de discussion a été facilitée par son expérience en tant que bénévole pour l'association jeunesse et le contact privilégié avec ses coordonnateurs et coordonnatrices. Mary E. Thomas (2005) explore la manière dont des adolescentes de Caroline du Sud utilisent, créent et reproduisent certains identifiants sociaux dans leur fréquentation des espaces de consommation (centres commerciaux, établissements de restauration rapide, cinémas, etc.). La chercheuse a rencontré 27 adolescentes en entrevues, puis elle a donné des appareils photo jetables à 15 d'entre elles, les invitant à photographier des lieux représentatifs de leur quotidien. ...
Dans cet article, nous présentons un examen critique de la démarche méthodologique du projet ADOES sur la relation d’adolescentes à l’espace public de leur quartier montréalais, à la lumière de la recherche participative (et féministe). L’objectif est de documenter la recherche participative avec les adolescentes et d’en encourager l’essor dans le respect de sa spécificité. L’exercice montre que les défis de conjugaison entre participantes adolescentes et recherche participative sont à la fois synonymes d’obstacles et d’opportunités. Après une caractérisation des facteurs relatifs à l’adolescence féminine qui peuvent influencer leur participation dans le cadre de la recherche, nous évaluons les apports d’une autre forme et mesure de participation à la recherche, plus en adéquation avec la réalité et les contraintes spécifiques des participantes. Ici, la figure du kaléidoscope est utilisée par analogie pour illustrer comment la succession de groupes de participantes à travers le temps, et donc la co-construction par étapes des savoirs et des modalités de la recherche, permet un processus très riche d’agencement-réagencement de méthodes, d’images et de connaissances.
... The occupation of public spaces by adolescents may be perceived as inappropriate or undesirable by adults (Bell, Thompson, and Travlou 2003;Matthews, Limb, and Percy-Smith 1998;Matthews et al. 2000). As a result, adolescents are sometimes banned from streets, parks, vacant lots and other public places (Owens 2002;Thomas 2005). Perceived community threats may also lead to increased parental control over children due to anxieties about adolescents' safety in public spaces (Cops 2013;Slater, Fitzgibbon, and Floyd 2013). ...
... For the first group, urban space use is characterised by a strong preference for private-public spaces (Johnson and Glover 2013), which is mainly because they are perceived as more suitable for their needsmainly "hanging-out" with their friends. This leisure activity is very important for teens (Depeau 2001;Percy-Smith 1998, 2000;Thomas 2005;Tucker and Matthews 2001), and the function of public space for peer-based social gatherings (Hou 2010;Lieberg 1995;Matthews, Limb, and Percy-Smith 1998) was substituted from most of the interviewed adolescents in our study by private-public spaces, especially shopping streets or malls and cafés or fastfood restaurants. This finding is also supported by other studies (Matthews et al. 2000;Thomas 2005). ...
... This leisure activity is very important for teens (Depeau 2001;Percy-Smith 1998, 2000;Thomas 2005;Tucker and Matthews 2001), and the function of public space for peer-based social gatherings (Hou 2010;Lieberg 1995;Matthews, Limb, and Percy-Smith 1998) was substituted from most of the interviewed adolescents in our study by private-public spaces, especially shopping streets or malls and cafés or fastfood restaurants. This finding is also supported by other studies (Matthews et al. 2000;Thomas 2005). ...
Urban public spaces are important areas for leisure, recreation and physical activity and therefore contribute to the quality of life in cities. In particular, for adolescents they provide important spaces to meet with their peers, away from parental or school control. In many cities worldwide, public spaces have undergone severe developmental processes, and often a withdrawal from public space is noted. With regard to the opportunities those spaces provide for adolescents, it is necessary to investigate their current meaning for adolescents in a leisure context. In this article, qualitative research methods were used to investigate factors affecting adolescents’ use of public spaces in Vienna, Austria. In total 45 adolescents were interviewed. Results show that public open spaces are not regarded as important leisure spaces, and data reveal a strong retreat to private areas for leisure purposes. Perceived insecurities and fears support these processes and often result in avoidance of public spaces but also the wish for more control by authorities.
... Des de la perspectiva de la gent jove, la majoria dels espais públics estan supervisats per la presència de persones adultes i han estat definits, governats i controlats per aquestes de la manera que més els ha convingut (Driskell et al., 2008). La gent jove hi és vista com a perillosa, ja que suposa una amenaça per l'ordre adult de l'espai públic (Thomas, 2005), n'és exclosa i no hi és benvinguda. A aquesta adultificació espacial s'hi afegeix la concepció dicotòmica que es té sobre aquest grup d'edat, que, segons Valentine, es basa en el binomi «àngels o dimonis»: o bé són persones vulnerables a qui cal protegir o bé són una amenaça, és a dir, estan en risc o són el risc pròpiament dit (Valentine, 1996a;Mattingly, 2001). ...
... En estratègies que podrien semblar transgressores, com ara el fet que una noia se senti afalagada per la mirada masculina a l'espai públic i es resisteixi al discurs que la fa vulnerable, no deixa de ser una reproducció del patriarcat (Hyams, 2003). En la mateixa línia, Thomas mostra com les noies, tot i que van als centres comercials i resisteixen el control adult, acaben fent seves i reproduint les identitats socials diferenciadores, ja siguin de gènere, de classe o d'ètnia (Thomas, 2005). ...
... En resum, tot i que la por és un factor fortament marcat pel gènere i d'una importància rellevant en l'ús dels espais a les ciutats, hi ha unes altres causes que també en determinen els diferents usos. En general, els espais que usen més són els privats o domèstics (Abott-Chapman i Robertson, 2009;Hyams, 2003;Erhkamp, 2008) o aquells llocs tancats que proporcionen certa seguretat per la vigilància que hi ha -com ara centres comercials o cafeteries- (Koning, 2009;Thomas, 2005). Els nois, en canvi, prenen els carrers ocupant voreres i cantonades (Erhkamp, 2008), amb la qual cosa contribueixen a generar la sexualització de l'espai privat amb la seva mirada masculina (Hyams, 2003;Koning, 2009). ...
L’us i l’experiencia de l’espai public per part de la gent jove estan fortament determinats pel genere. L’objectiu d’aquest article es veure com aquesta interseccio entre l’edat i el genere provoca una serie de practiques i de comportaments determinats que repercuteixen en la manera com la joventut viu les ciutats. Basant-se en una revisio bibliografica i partint de la dificil definicio de joventut i la controvertida relacio que viu amb l’espai public, l’analisi se centra en la rellevancia que te la visibilitat del cos sexuat al carrer i en la manera com el patriarcat determina tant les practiques com l’experiencia d’aquests espais. Posant com a exemple la por als carrers, s’hi analitza com el genere, pero tambe la sexualitat o l’etnia, condiciona l’acces i la mobilitat a l’espai public urba. Aixi, s’hi fa pales que el genere i la sexualitat son factors determinants de l’experiencia de la gent jove al carrer i s’hi mostra la necessitat d’investigar sobre l’us de l’espai tenint en compte les diferents identitats de la gent jove per tal de no caure en biaixos homogeneitzadors.
... Place, and geography more specifi cally, is also a contentious reality that shapes girls' lives; girls and young women struggle to assert their rights to territory and autonomous spaces, to represent their experiences of belonging to and relating with others in key spaces of learning, working, playing, consuming, and, as Mary Thomas (2005) argues, hanging out in the city. They may do so in ways that resist or oppose adult forms of spatial control and also in ways that confl ict directly with institutionalized forms of adult power with dire results, such as, for example, the targeting of racialized girls for lockup by the local police. ...
... They may do so in ways that resist or oppose adult forms of spatial control and also in ways that confl ict directly with institutionalized forms of adult power with dire results, such as, for example, the targeting of racialized girls for lockup by the local police. However, Thomas (2005) argues against a model that sees girls' spatiality as primarily a reactive response to adult control of social space. For Doreen Massey, the issue of control over, and of, spatiality "is part of the process of defi ning the social category of 'youth ' itself" (1998: 127;quoted in Thomas 2005: 588), in particular by adults invested in containing youth through, for example, practices of racialized and sexualized surveillance and control. ...
... This includes well-known planning problems that ultimately jeopardize our pursuit of more sustainable development, such as linear commute lines and roadways that do not allow for multiple stops, or "trip-chaining"; auto-centric transportation networks that connect the disparate "home" and "o ce"; sprawling, suburban developments that isolate women and children from education and social access; indoor and outdoor sport spaces designed for male-centered relationship-building (Hayden 1980;Valentine 2013;Kern 2020). Noticeably, there are scant public spaces designed for young girls to socialize, save for the privacy of bedrooms in private homes, or commercialized spaces that require a fee for friendship (Thomas 2005). This reality is not an accident; it's a result of deep-rooted patriarchal assumptions about where women and girls belong in both private and public spaces. ...
... If we are to remain active contributors in mitigating the climate crisis, we must continue to build alternative requieren una tarifa por amistad (Thomas 2005). ...
... Social scientists have developed several methods for working with participatory photographs, such as auto-photography, photo-diaries, photo-elicitation, photo-voice, photo-walks and photo-talks (e.g., Latham, 2003;Lombard, 2013;Pyyry, 2015;Rose, 2007;Thomas, 2005;Williams & Whitehouse, 2015). All of these methods are built on the practice of participants taking photographs that become the visual archive to be discussed and analysed. ...
... Autophotography (and participatory photographs) recently has been developing in geography and several studies have effectively used this method (Thomas, 2009). Most of these studies evaluate urban space and environment (e.g., Dodman, 2003;Johnsen et al., 2008;Lombard, 2013;Noland, 2006) and explore geographies of specific vulnerable groups (Byrne et al., 2016;Lombard, 2013), such as children (Dodman, 2003;Young & Barrett, 2001), young girls (Thomas, 2005), urban poor (Lombard, 2013), homeless people (Johnsen et al., 2008) and elderly people (Kohon & Carder, 2014). ...
Recent developments in cultural geography have brought forth everyday life and emotions as critical categories for understanding place. Yet, the focus on everyday emotional geographies also presents methodological challenges. This paper argues that auto‐photography is a particularly well‐suited method to explore the intricate relations between everyday practices, emotions and the formation of places. Auto‐photography combines participant‐generated photographs and participants’ interpretative narrations of these photographs. Our argument is based on auto‐photographic research we conducted with 38 young women in Czechia in 2016. We asked participants to photograph everyday places that they associate with positive or negative emotions, or religious meanings, and to discuss their emotions in a following interview. We analysed participants’ photographs together with their narrations. This analysis reveals the emotions and meanings participants attached to photographed places. We argue that the method of auto‐photography helps understand the complexity of everyday emotional geographies that may not be possible through other geographical methods. The strength of auto‐photography is its combination of visual representations and narratives, which help identify how ordinary everyday places without any apparent significance, such as a door or a staircase, might be sites of strong emotional intensity. The insights gained by analysing photographs and narratives together and in relation to one another produce an understanding of emotional bordering practices, anxieties and desires of place‐making. Auto‐photography thus provides multiple layers of visual and textual data that help understand the complexity of emotional geographies in mundane everyday places.
... In terms of other groups investigated using similar methodologies, studies have been done specifically on young women, from an explicitly feminist theoretical perspective. For example, Thomas (2005) looks at the geographical patterns of girls' urban movement and consumption patterns in Charleston, South Carolina, and finds that teenaged girls' choose (albeit out of necessity due to lack of alternatives) spaces of consumption as their preferred locations for socialization, and that furthermore which spaces of consumption they choose is tied into their racial and class backgrounds. ...
... Furthermore, Rose cites a large body of work using photo-elicitation that is focused on the experiences of young people in urban environments, a body of work which my thesis research can be compared to. One example of such work has been the work of Thomas (2005), who used photo-elicitation in her research into the relationships between consumption and socialization among teenage girls. ...
The United States, and within it specifically the city of New York, have long held the reputations of being host to large numbers of transnational migrants. However, in 2016 the United States elected a President, Donald Trump, who is openly hostile toward migrants; this event had ignited an upswing in anti-migrant discourse within US society. The aim of this study is to investigate how these political changes in the United States have influenced the lives of individual migrant young adults living in contemporary New York City. Specifically, this research study seeks to shed light on the emotions and affects of young migrants in New York, as well as their subjective spatial perceptions of the city they live in, and the everyday practices associated with those perceptions. It also seeks to see how these practices and perceptions have changed over the course of the past year (the period during which Donald Trump was elected President), and these geopolitical events are connected with the aforementioned practices and emotions.
This study takes as its theoretical starting point a conception of space as a zone of social contestation. It then investigates this social contestation from four interconnected theoretical standpoints: the theoretical traditions of emotional geographies and of Pierre Bourdieu’s Theory of Practice, and the idea of banal geopolitics and imagined geographies. In terms of method, this study involved four types of data collection. These were semi-structured verbal interviews with participants, participatory mapping tasks, photo submission tasks, and secondary data collection of demographic statistics about areas participants identified as being emotionally salient. These four types of data were then integrated and triangulated together.
In total, fifteen migrants between the ages of 18 and 26 took part in this study, recruited for the most part through universities. These migrants had very diverse backgrounds in terms of race, ethnicity, and national origin. Over the course of the study, they discussed which areas of New York City they considered to be safe, which they considered to be dangerous, and which they considered to be locations in which they felt belonging, as well was what factors influenced those emotions. They also discussed their daily routines and practices of movement throughout the city, as well as how these practices and emotions have changed over time.
Through these methods, it was found that participants had strong connections and feelings of belonging toward specific places and things: their homes, their families and friends, and the educational institutions they attended. Participants also reported a particular preference for spaces that are highly diverse and multicultural. Yet overall, participants reported feeling as if they would be able to feel safe anywhere in the entirety of New York City, and did not report feeling in danger very often in their daily lives. Furthermore, participants also often constructed imagined geographies of places they had never been, especially places outside of the United States, as locations of danger and not-belonging. Finally, in terms of practices around space, participants enjoyed spending time in large, popular public spaces. I theorize that these emotions, affects, and practices constitute the formation of a habitus specific to young migrants of the kind studied in this thesis; furthermore, I also theorize that this habitus serves as a means of political resistance against anti-migrant forces and discourses.
... In this sense, finding a balance between celebratory and critical accounts of the experience of consumption and consumption spaces remains an ongoing concern within this area of inquiry (Mansvelt 2008;Pyyry 2016). As Thomas (2005) notes in her work on girls' experiences of consumption spaces, 'hanging out' at the mall can be understood as an ambivalent practice, involving both resistance to social and consumer norms, but also an instantiation of difference and the reproduction of social stratification. This ambivalence is present in the 'choices' girls make about where to hang out and consume: ...
... This was partly because she couldn't afford the high prices but also because she sensed that her own body did not approximate the norms of slimness and 'beauty' that pervade the retail environment. Pam's experience resonates with other research on the ways in which large bodies -especially women's bodies -can be made to feel out of place within sites of consumption (Colls 2006;Longhurst 2010), and with arguments about the capacity of the mall to (re)produce social difference (Thomas 2005;Pyyry 2016). ...
In this paper, we examine the social geographies of people with intellectual disabilities. We focus particular attention on the significance of shopping and spaces of consumption as they relate to questions social inclusion and belonging in the lives of PWID. The focus on consumption offers a useful counterpoint to a prevailing policy emphasis on social inclusion through productive activities. The paper also contributes to the literature on intellectual disability within social and health geography, shedding light on the varied socio-spatial experiences of people beyond the confines of community-care facilities and other separate spaces. Our analysis draws on data collected from a participatory research project in Toronto (Canada). The project involved a small but diverse group of people with intellectual disabilities, who led academic researchers on a series of excursions designed to explore those places and routes that make up their everyday social geographies. Shopping emerged as a significant but often ambivalent theme in the context of these geographies, and the analysis demonstrates the complex interplay of autonomy and control, pleasure and restraint, care and support that shape people’s experiences of consumption. We conclude by discussing the significance of these findings for notions of social inclusion and belonging.
... Many of their images presented skateboarders in the square, but there were also numerous pictures of young people seeming to be spending their time not doing anything special ( Figure 2); they were simply with their peers, posing, sitting, standing or walking. In these images, nevertheless, one of the most essential elements of hanging out was presented: its social dimension (e.g., Lieberg, 1995; Thomas, 2005;van Lieshout and Aarts, 2008;Woolley, 2006). This was something I did not manage to catch in my photographs because I was an outsider. ...
... Later, when I interviewed a management representative of the mall, I understood how blurred the boundaries between different spaces Sirpa Tani regarding ownership and appropriate use were inside the building: certain walkways were public while most were semi-public, owned by the mall. Further, different regulations cover the freedom to photograph in different areas of shopping malls (see, e.g., Thomas, 2005). According to the mall's representative, although it was legal to take photographs on the mall's walkways, it would nevertheless be polite to inform the management if a large photography session was planned. ...
The article deals with the ethical questions that a researcher encountered when planning, conducting and reporting on research concerning young people’s everyday lives. The empirical data based on observations, photographs and interviews were gathered from among teenagers who were spending time, or ‘hanging out’, at a shopping mall in the centre of Helsinki, Finland. First, ethical dilemmas regarding the planning phase of the research are described. The data-gathering phase is then analyzed, and the status of the researcher in the ‘research field’ is explored. Lastly, the different positions of the adult researcher and young participants are illustrated by giving examples of the photographs taken. Complex issues relating to young people’s roles as either active participants in research or potentially vulnerable objects of study are discussed, and the importance of more flexible and context-sensitive solutions regarding ethical decisions is highlighted.
... The girls mostly appreciated the shops, and also the presence of friends and meeting boys, who seemed to be their main motivation for going there. In some ways these observations almost resemble the situation described by Thomas [2005], who states that teen girls produce their own social and spatial niches as manoeuvres to respond to adult spatiality. However, in this manner they reproduce the gender ideals of adult society, where women like to shop and create their identity through the consumption of fashionable goods and other lifestyle products. ...
... They were present all the time during the survey, irrespective of the weather or day of the week. Malls thus form a central aspect of their life and are their frequent target destination [Baker and Haytko 2000;Thomas 2005;Vanderbeck and Johnson 2000]. ...
Geographies of children and youth are a surprisingly neglected research topic in the transforming (post-communist) countries, where many societal changes are taking place. This article introduces a research project that focused on teenagers and their leisure-time activities, concentrating especially on teenagers who spend the majority of their leisure time in shopping malls. The goal of the article is to reveal how such teenagers use the micro-space of the shopping mall, how they socialise, and how their social identities may be produced through different practices in the mall space. The study focused on teenagers aged 14-17 'hanging out' in shopping malls in the largest Czech cities. The data were collected by participant observation and interviews. The teenagers studied have abandoned typical public spaces used for leisure time and produced their own spatial identities in the specific space of the shopping mall. They have created a true microculture through a combination of the personalities, locations, and events that they share in in the mall environment. The article also discusses interesting results concerning preference factors for leisure time activities in the mall environment. The concluding part of the article draws implications from the study for the future research agenda in the geographies and sociologies of youth.
... E. Thomas, 2005, p. 588). Notably, some studies suggest that boys are less controlled in their spatial mobility than girls (Gagen 2000; Hyams 2000, as cited in Thomas, 2005), and highlight differences in terms of how young females spend their leisure, bypassing "activities which are dirty, dangerous or hedonistic, such as motorcycle riding or hanging around the urban streets" (Valentine et al., 1998, p. 17). Additionally, Thomas' (2004) research into how girls' spatialised practices "perform social-sexual norms and meanings" (p. ...
This reflexive ethnographic study aims to contribute to the knowledge about minoritised young Russian speakers in Latvia by understanding how a group of young Russophone high-school students (aged 16-18) perceive and perform difference in the context of long-lasting exclusionary minority politics in the country. By applying the theoretical lens of Chantal Mouffe’s agonistic pluralism, the study was able to foreground moments of disagreement and conflict – as opposed to the conventional focus on the moments of consolidation and unity – with ‘the other’. The methodological approach to extend school ethnography to an urban walking experiment allowed to account for Mouffe’s emerging and nomadic conception of identity as well as to observe the group’s engagement with ‘the different’ in a less confined setting.
The study contributes to the pool of previous research in this field by unpacking complexity behind the relations of the research participants with ‘self’ and ‘the other’. The process of perceiving and performing difference by these young people can be described as a balancing act of two contradictory yet complementary behaviours: 1) displacement across various discursive fields in the process of self-making, and 2) fixation – when the research participants perform their difference according to the context and structures of power in place. By being able to navigate complex structures of power, social norms and expectations ‘on the surface’, these young people thus negotiate a ‘backstage’ space where they can be many, i.e., enact multiple, at times conflicting discursive fields in the process of self-making. By depicting the research participants as constituted through multiple subject positions, the study contributes to the critique of binary conception of Latvian society along ethnic lines, as well as to more global issues of democratising minority/majority relations in post-Soviet/post-colonial contexts.
... It also extends geography to the collective rather than keeping it confined to personal in the sense of the individual. Feminist geographers might find it interesting for a relationship between body and geography, especially when it comes to observing how gender plays a role in making sense of and navigating space (Longhurst, 1995; M. E. Thomas, 2005). ...
Affect towards islands is a unique approach to engage with in discussions of the phenomenology of fictional islands. This affect complements the already identified tropes within island poetics: those of sensorial exploration, spatial practices, and textural detailing of islands. This article turns to a work of fiction about a fictional island based on the island city of Kochi in south India to unpack an alternative aesthetic of spatiality, the kind that changes the personal/political relationship to personal/spatial one. We argue that the novel, Litanies of Dutch Battery (the novel in question) by N.S. Madhavan, expands inquiries into phenomenology of fictional islands by making space for corporeal memory and collective memory in storytelling. These memory-oriented narrative devices, we suggest, “provincialize” island poetics to add a hermeneutic of postcolonial angst to the repertoire of formal features of literary islandness.
... Clark points out that the photos were not used as data per se but as a means to create research data (2012, p.225). This distinguishes this method from other participatory visual methods in which, for example, participants are asked to take photos themselves or draw maps or pictures, which are then interpreted and analyzed as data within the research context (Hubbard, 1994;Thomas, 2005) For the research I describe here, the method was further adapted by increasing the number of photos that were to be ranked from nine to 20 in order to cover all relevant indicators for structural inequalities, while still ending up with a managable number of pictures. This decision was inspired by Q-sorting techniques, which work usually with picture sets of 30-80 cards (Lobinger & Brantner, 2020). ...
This paper discusses the use of photo ranking exercises together with qualitative interview data to study migrants’ perception of social status. It draws on data from a mixed-method study, involving in-depth interviews with migrants from different socio-economic backgrounds and mobility experiences in Germany. The paper focuses on how photo ranking exercises can be combined with more traditional interviewing techniques in order to elicit peoples’ subjective perceptions of status mobility in transnational spaces. It demonstrates that ranking exercises can be helpful in the effort to design data collection methods which are combining substantialist and relational approaches to the study of social class and social positions.
... Cela sans compter les commentaires sexistes et autres abus verbaux des hommes de tout âge dont la présence limite le nombre de lieux où elles peuvent se retrouver entre elles (Matthews et Tucker 2006, Boucher et Cossette 2021. Les couches additionnées d'inconfort et d'insécurité dans la pratique et les trajets dans l'espace public encouragent plutôt les adolescentes à se rencontrer à la maison, au centre commercial ou dans d'autres lieux publics de consommation qui offrent, vraisemblablement, ce que les parcs n' offrent pas (Thomas 2005). La position des adolescentes nécessite une attention particulière si l' on souhaite réellement comprendre leurs pratiques, leurs désirs et leurs besoins en vue de favoriser leur participation au développement des espaces publics et pour qu'elles y trouvent une place viable. ...
Cette étude de cas se consacre aux adolescentes en tant qu'usagères de l' espace public dans les parcs du quartier Pointe-aux-Trembles à Montréal. À l'intersection d' enjeux sociaux liés au genre et à l'âge, elles cumulent une expérience d' occupation des espaces publics très différente de celle des femmes plus âgées ou des garçons de leur âge. Mobilisant les géographies féministes et l'anthropologie de la communication, nous suggérons dans ce texte que la position des adolescentes nécessite une attention particulière pour favoriser leur participation au développement des espaces publics et qu' elles y trouvent une place légitime. Les données empiriques proviennent d' observations et d'entrevues réalisées au cours de l' été 2019. Si les pratiques des adolescentes dans les parcs sont généralement sociales, l'aménagement et les équipements disponibles ne répondent pas à leurs besoins. Elles se retrouvent donc dans des situations de transgression des normes ou comme cibles des transgressions commises par d'autres usagers. Les adolescentes développent toutefois des tactiques d' occupation et d'interaction qui les positionnent comme usagères actives, expertes et expérimentées de l' espace public.
... They find part of their identity in the presence and consumption of this space. Thomas (2015) sees the presence of teenage girls in consumer spaces as a result of their willingness to define their identity beyond control and supervision of their parents. It is here that two types of cultural consumption of space (communicative and innovative) as semantic content of Rappoport can be interacted with shopping centers, stores and passages, and provided an initial framework for this analytical approach ( Table 3). ...
Consumption lies at the ideological core of the contemporary city, and, as such, consumption spaces lie at the very heart of what it means to be a citizen of the society in which we live. As cities have become evermore outward-looking, as they have sought to establish their role on the world stage, they have simultaneously been compelled to look within themselves. The city's environmental identity is in a constant battle with the parameters that consumer society has laid down for it.
Spaces for consumption are worthy of particular attention insofar as they traverse notions of public space and the public sphere and offer a new kind of public realm, but one over which the public appears to have less control. Furthermore, shopping malls and large commercial centers demand suitable inter-disciplinary research because of their complicated behavioral and formal natures. These places are defining different meanings in relation to their roles in everyday life of post-modern society people. So, semantic studies with emphasis on the consumption of space seem necessary.
As a result, while these places and their designers (as elite specialists) do their utmost to create a high-quality space and produce connotative meanings in the minds of the audience before they enter and use the space, but after experiencing space by the audience and consuming it in their everyday lives, what remains is not the original associational meanings, but generally perceptual meanings based on post-modern, collapsing, and collage images. Although these spaces differentiate between two categories of consumers, the bond between the rich and the poor in the shopping centers, and the presence of different classes, will undermine the semantic system produced by capitalist models. The presence of the "poor" and "cultural minorities" in rich people led to the dismantling of unique styles provided through the commodities, architecture, and geographical location of shopping malls.
... Many respondents touched upon the concept that coffee shops may appear to be more welcoming spaces than pubs or bars. In particular, coffee shops appear more welcoming to women, young people (Thomas, 2006), and to some extent they are more socially acceptable places to frequent, particularly in the daytime. One manager explained that: ...
Coffee shops have been described as ‘third places’ in urban lives separate from the work and home, providing places for people to meet, relax and develop connections. However, the growing presence of coffee shops in the urban landscape has meant that they increasingly take on a wider range of roles, becoming spaces of both leisure and work but also providing spaces of sociality in which people can develop connections, and potentially communities. The roles of coffee shops in five cities in England are explored in order to consider how they can be understood not only as spaces of consumption, but spaces which facilitate connection in increasingly isolated urban lives, and generate the potential for communities to develop. By understanding the varied ways in which businesses and consumers co-create these spaces, it may be possible to increase their potential as ‘spaces of community’.
... Fear has been analysed as an essential factor of gender inequality in the access to, and spatial mobility of women within cities (Koskela, 1997(Koskela, , 1999Pain, 2001;Ruddick, 1996;Valentine, 1989), conditioning their experience and limiting their freedom of movement (Rodó and Estivill, 2016). The mobility is less controlled among men (Thomas, 2005), as women experience specific restrictions due to the mechanisms of gender normativity that rule over the exercise of an 'appropriate femininity' (Butler, 2004) and delve into feelings of insecurity and self-protection, reinforcing the socially produced view of women's vulnerability (Falú, 2009;Koskela, 1997). According to Fanghanel and Lim (2015), fear and guilt internalised through traditional gender roles determine the way in which women use public spaces at night. ...
This article provides an analysis of the perception of fear in nightlife spaces, its relationship with sexual violence and the strategies that young people implement to combat these situations in two provinces of Andalusia (Seville and Granada), Spain. To this end, qualitative research was carried out through in-depth interviews and discussion groups with 73 boys and girls between the ages of 16 and 22. The article asserts that there are gender differences in the spaces of fear. Girls are the ones who experience fear the most when they walk alone, and at specific times – a feeling that is made worse in specific public spaces. The study results show that girls’ fear is associated with sexual assault and boys’ fear with robberies or fights. Results show that three main types of strategies are used in the face of these fears: avoidance, confronting risks and empowerment. All these strategies include the use of new communication technologies. This article seeks to provide a theoretical contribution to enhancing a gender perspective in the field of urban geography.
... Forståelsen af offentlige steders og bykvarterers rolle i samme forbindelse Gravesen 2013aGravesen , 2013b tillaegges stadig større betydning i ungdomsforskning. Den mere ustrukturerede socialisering i urbane rum og det at haenge ud (Thomas 2005;Pyyry 2015;Tani 2015) uden voksenopsyn, tilskrives betydning som noget attraktivt (Fotel 2007) og vigtigt i forbindelse med børn og unges hverdagsliv. ...
Denne artikel handler om børn og unges ustrukturerede socialiseringsprocesser i offentlige urbanerum. Med udgangspunkt i et feltarbejde i en mellemstor provinsby i Jylland studerer forfatterne, medhver deres videnskabelige afsæt – hhv. antropologien og sociologien, gruppen Thuqz og deres selvudnævnte leder Bezim. Feltarbejdet finder sted på byens centrale torve, hvor kommunen har skænketbyens børn og unge et skateranlæg. Empiriske eksempler om gruppens adfærd, og kropslige udtryksammenholdes med andre grupperinger, som også indtager anlægget og det analyseres hvordan forskelle markerer sig grupperne imellem. Analyserne påpeger at om end den sociale synergi udspillersig og kultiveres uden forældre, pædagoger og lærere, så findes der hverdagslige praksisser og koderfor adfærd, som antager relativt rutiniserede mønstre. I den forstand fremstår socialiseringsprocesserne ikke så ustrukturerede, som først antaget.
... Teenagers and racial minorities are also aware of the social scrutiny they face while using public space, due to the conflicting sentiments that children must be protected but not heard (Valentine, 1996). Young people's use of public spaces to socialize often violates the intended uses because they are rarely intended users of the public space (Childress, 2004;Lieberg, 1995) and activities such as loitering or skateboarding are prohibited (Borden, 2019;Thomas, 2005). Some teens congregate in public spaces with less explicit surveillance, such as parking lots or green spaces, or hang out in privately owned and managed quasi-public spaces such as shopping malls while minimizing their presence or resisting adults' gaze in protest (Kato, 2009;Pyyry & Tani, 2016). ...
This report, a renewed inquiry into urban public spaces, synthesizes research to guide decision making and shape future investments in, and maintenance of, our urban public spaces.
https://williampennfoundation.org/what-we-are-learning/benefits-and-costs-urban-public-spaces
... en particular la ciudad representa, en las geografías de la juventud, un campo de investigación privilegiado sobre las vidas de los y las jóvenes (Cahill, 2000;Leyshon, 2008;Béneker, sanders, tani, & taylor, 2010;Blazek, 2011;Leahy Laughlin & Johnson, 2011). el espacio, y sobre todo el espacio público, está considerado un elemento clave en la experiencia de los y las jóvenes, tanto desde el punto de vista del desarrollo de la identidad y del sentido de pertenencia, como de la construcción de relaciones sociales y competencias espaciales (Matthews, Limb, & Percy-smith, 1998;Thomas, 2005;skelton, 2013). el papel del espacio es considerado como particularmente significativo en la adolescencia, marcada por un proceso, ni uniforme ni lineal, de transición de la infancia a la edad adulta: es justamente en este momento que las personas jóvenes empiezan a experimentar y negociar el espacio público de manera autónoma, independientemente del control y de la mediación de los padres. ...
In this article I will present the results of a research project about the first practices of nightlife among adolescents in Barcelona (Spain). The discovery of nightlife represents a key moment in teenagers' lives and takes part into multiple dynamics, from the negotiation of security to the expansion of social networks, from the exploration of identity to emancipation. The research was developed in Barcelona between 2014 and 2016, using different qualitative methods. The article focuses on the importance of daily life spaces in the first practices of nightlife; more specifically, it analyses three categories of spaces that play a particularly important role: the neighbourhood, the "legitimated spaces" and the ephemeral places of the party. In the first part I will briefly introduce the research and its theoretical framework; then I present the methods employed; I will subsequently show the main findings and finally discuss the conclusions, that will underline how these spaces offer the conditions for a first autonomous experience of nightlife.
... En esta línea, se han realizado algunos estudios que tratan la interacción de los y las adolescentes con el espacio público focalizando en el tiempo libre (Vanderstede, 2011), en el uso y la representación en los espacios de consumo (Matthews, Taylor, Percy-Smith y Limb, 2000;Thomas, 2005;Kato, 2009), las redes de amistad (Reynolds, 2007;Giró, 2011) o reflexiones acerca de sus subjetividades y los discursos sobre la adolescencia (Raby, 2002). Y algunas lo hacen desde una clara perspectiva feminista tratando la diversidad de chicas adolescentes y su comportamiento en el espacio público en función de su etnia, clase o sexualidad (Hyams, 2003;Morris-Robert, 2001;. ...
... This perspective also resonated with other critical work on the privatization of public space, as well as broader concerns around post-modern geographies (Crawford, 1992;Soja, 1989). 2 However, as Gregson (1995) and Domosh (1998) pointed out, these approaches were often unable to pursue other important questions around the spaces and geographies of consumption, primarily around gender and sex (also see Morris, 1993). Along with these feminist critiques, researchers pursued various ethnographic studies of shopping malls that are informed by a more diverse political and epistemological cannon open to race, ethnicity, class and other vectors of identity and subjectivity (Chin, 2001;Miller et al., 1998;Stillerman, 2006;Stillerman andSalcedo, 2011, 2012;Thomas, 2005;Whitson, 2018). As we will see in the following section, work on the affective dimensions of the built environment signals a new kind of magic that is less ideological than it is embodied and visceral (Allen, 2006). ...
This article reviews recent literature on shopping malls that reaffirms their importance for human geography. Taking Goss’s seminal work on the ‘magic of the mall’ as a starting point, we trace how recent works attuned to emotion and affect have updated and inspired a re-conceptualization of this potential ‘magic’. Synthesizing the linkages between consumer architecture with spatial politics and emotional and affective sensibilities in those spaces, the article seeks to help set the agenda for further research in this field by emphasizing how social difference infuses the retail atmosphere and the way it reveals the workings of geopolitics.
... In the past, society has also considered young people hanging out to be a problem, a threat to public order and an activity affecting a young person's reputation (Sleight, 2016;Tani, 2015). Historically, boys hanging out were associated with gang activity, while girls risked their reputations as 'good girls' (Maynes, 2008;Thomas, 2005;van Nijnatten, 1985). Over the past three decades, research into hanging out among young Dutch people has become increasingly focused on criminality (Muller, 2016). ...
Young people’s ‘hanging out’ has had different meanings in the recent and distant past in various countries and cultures, including delinquency or a common social phenomenon. Although there is evidence for hanging out as social behaviour in various countries, Dutch research on hanging out as a common social phenomenon is scarce. This article retrospectively explores the practice and meaning of hanging out for young people in the Netherlands between 1930 and 1960. Semi-structured qualitative interviews (n = 60) were analysed using the Constant Comparative Method, resulting in three key themes: familiarity, features and the meanings assigned to hanging out. Results indicate that hanging out was practised and known by most respondents, and included particular features (time, location, gender and routines). Meet, flirt with and date other young people was the most frequently mentioned meaning associated with hanging out. Accordingly, hanging out can indeed be considered to have been a common social phenomenon.
... They find part of their identity in the presence and consumption of this space. Thomas (2015) sees the presence of teenage girls in consumer spaces as a result of their willingness to define their identity beyond control and supervision of their parents. It is here that two types of cultural consumption of space (communicative and innovative) as semantic content of Rappoport can be interacted with shopping centers, stores and passages, and provided an initial framework for this analytical approach ( Table 3). ...
... However, the notion of generational orderings that extend beyond families has also been central to geographical research on children and young people over the past two decades, although the term "generational order" is itself only rarely used explicitly. In particular, a major emphasis of research since the 1990s has been to critique unequal power relationships and problematic patterns of interaction between children and adults in a range of spaces, including urban public spaces (Valentine 2008), consumption spaces (Vanderbeck and Johnson 2000;Thomas 2005), educational spaces (Mannion, chapter "▶ Intergenerational Education and Learning: We Are in a New Place"; Millei, chapter "▶ Generationing Educational and Caring Spaces for Young Children: Case of Preschool Bathroom"), residential child care settings (Punch and McIntosh 2014), social welfare settings (Esser, chapter "▶ Children's Agency and Welfare Organizations from an Intergenerational Perspective"), and elsewhere. Often informed by notions of children's rights and children's competent social agency, much of this work argues that children and young people's lives (particularly in Minority World countries) are becoming increasingly subject to forms of adult control and surveillance that limit their independent spatial mobility (Loebach and Gilliland 2016) and opportunities to develop personal autonomy (McIntosh et al. 2010). ...
This volume addresses children and young people’s relationships both within and beyond the context of the family. It begins with familial relationships and the home by examining the social and cultural complexities of families, intimacies and interdependencies, including the dynamics of families as spatial units (nuclear, multi-generational, alternative) and the roles that children play (as carers etc.). In addition to considering child/parent relations, sibling relationships and birth order, the initial section includes particular dimensions of children's familial relationships in diverse contexts, such as family food practices, aspirations and work practices.
The second section explores geographical dimensions of adult/child relationships beyond the dynamics of the family and across the lifecourse. It considers the roles that intergenerationality plays in children's and young people's lives as well as their links with wider communities. The section addresses broader conceptual issues and themes (child-adult relationships outside the home; intergenerational geographies and spaces; and the intergenerational city) while also providing more focused discussions of current issues related to the geographies of intergenerationality including adoption, looked after children and fertility.
The final section addresses children and young people's relationships with one another: friendship, peer group relations, and sexualities. It explores the geographies and spatialities of affective relations and emotional practices among children and young people. Geographies of bodies and embodiment and their connection to identities is an important part of this section. The chapters range from cross-cultural comparisons of age mixing among children to specific kinds of relationship formations between children and young people (e.g. friendship; sexual relations; gangs; bullying) and the spaces and places (including cyberspace) that facilitate, impede and organise these relationships. The diverse relationships that children and young people form with both one another and with adults have significant geographical dimensions.
... However, the notion of generational orderings that extend beyond families has also been central to geographical research on children and young people over the past two decades, although the term "generational order" is itself only rarely used explicitly. In particular, a major emphasis of research since the 1990s has been to critique unequal power relationships and problematic patterns of interaction between children and adults in a range of spaces, including urban public spaces (Valentine 2008), consumption spaces (Vanderbeck and Johnson 2000;Thomas 2005), educational spaces (Mannion, chapter "▶ Intergenerational Education and Learning: We Are in a New Place"; Millei, chapter "▶ Generationing Educational and Caring Spaces for Young Children: Case of Preschool Bathroom"), residential child care settings (Punch and McIntosh 2014), social welfare settings (Esser, chapter "▶ Children's Agency and Welfare Organizations from an Intergenerational Perspective"), and elsewhere. Often informed by notions of children's rights and children's competent social agency, much of this work argues that children and young people's lives (particularly in Minority World countries) are becoming increasingly subject to forms of adult control and surveillance that limit their independent spatial mobility (Loebach and Gilliland 2016) and opportunities to develop personal autonomy (McIntosh et al. 2010). ...
... Challenging these boundaries carries the risk of psycho-social dissonance and assault of various kinds. (Butcher 2015; see also Thomas 2005 on South Carolina.) ...
Across the world, people in urban rather than rural areas are more likely to support gender equality. To explain this global trend, this paper engages with geographically diverse literature and comparative rural-urban ethnographic research from Zambia. It argues that people living in interconnected, heterogeneous, densely populated areas are more likely to see women performing socially valued, masculine roles. Such exposure incrementally erodes gender ideologies, catalysing a positive feedback loop, and increasing flexibility in gender divisions of labour. Women in densely populated areas also tend to have greater access to health clinics and police, so are more able to control their fertility and secure external support against gender-based violence. However, the urban is not inevitably disruptive. Experiences of the urban are shaped by international and national policies, macro-economic conditions, and individual circumstances. Through this comparative ethnography, this paper contributes to literature on the drivers of change and continuity in gender ideologies.
... However, the notion of generational orderings that extend beyond families has also been central to geographical research on children and young people over the past two decades, although the term "generational order" is itself only rarely used explicitly. In particular, a major emphasis of research since the 1990s has been to critique unequal power relationships and problematic patterns of interaction between children and adults in a range of spaces, including urban public spaces (Valentine 2008), consumption spaces (Vanderbeck and Johnson 2000;Thomas 2005), educational spaces (Mannion, chapter "▶ Intergenerational Education and Learning: We Are in a New Place"; Millei, chapter "▶ Generationing Educational and Caring Spaces for Young Children: Case of Preschool Bathroom"), residential child care settings (Punch and McIntosh 2014), social welfare settings (Esser, chapter "▶ Children's Agency and Welfare Organizations from an Intergenerational Perspective"), and elsewhere. Often informed by notions of children's rights and children's competent social agency, much of this work argues that children and young people's lives (particularly in Minority World countries) are becoming increasingly subject to forms of adult control and surveillance that limit their independent spatial mobility (Loebach and Gilliland 2016) and opportunities to develop personal autonomy (McIntosh et al. 2010). ...
... For the purposes of this paper, we approach 'public space' on the grounds of its use, not based on its ownership or governance. Understood this way, 'public space' also covers many privately owned spaces, such as shopping malls, which can be viewed as the new town centers since they are often used by people as public meeting places (Thomas, 2005;Vanderbeck & Johnson, 2000). With this focus, we move the emphasis from regulative practices and governance to highlighting the potential that dwelling with urban spaces has in opening up the city for diverse ways of being. ...
This paper is a conceptual argument for more-than-human playful politics in young people’s practices of spending their free time in the city. Reworking of urban space happens in a mode of playful experimentation and emerges from human-material encounters in the city: it arises from ‘dwelling with’. This understanding grants agency to the material world and has consequences to how we conceptualize everyday politics. Spatial reworking in ‘dwelling with’ is a more-than-human endeavor in which the city plays an active part: it is joint-participation. When young people are playfully engaged with the city, they are open to being differently with ordinary things and spaces. Openness to difference cultivates meaningful being-in-the-world and makes it possible to rework the city through new associations. Events of reworking become political in certain landscapes. Everyday spatial politics, then, is not always ‘serious business’ of political coordination – it can also arise from spontaneous intra-active play with the city.
... This depends on shared understandings and definitions of public space. As mentioned before, some researchers have defined consumption spaces as "public" even though they are normally owned and monitored by private companies (e.g., Vanderbeck and Johnson 2000;Thomas 2005). By this definition, the researchers want to highlight the fact that despite the private ownership, people use these spaces as if they were public. ...
This chapter looks into young people’s hanging out in the context of urban public space. Against a reviewed background of earlier research, the phenomenon is explored by discussing the privatization of public space that is taking place in Western countries. Due to “security talk” and widely shared notions of “safety,” young people have few opportunities for independent mobility. Young people’s lives are often highly scheduled with school and organized activities, and they are pushed to spend even their limited free time at places specifically appointed for them. They are thus spatially planned “out” from the public. As a result of this development, shopping malls and other commercial spaces that are considered safe have become important scenes in the geographies of hanging out. For that reason, the chapter gives special attention to hanging out that goes on in consumption spaces and the ways in which young people negotiate the boundaries of public and private. This discussion is connected both to considering young people’s rights to the city and to evaluating urban spaces by their “tightness”/“looseness.” Finally, hanging out is approached as play with urban space. While hanging out, young people “actively do nothing” and are thus open to changes of direction and to encounters with people and places. They creatively carve out space away from the adult gaze and, though often only momentarily, make “loose spaces.” Hanging out thus adds to cultivating lively, mixed-use cities.
... This depends on shared understandings and definitions of public space. As mentioned before, some researchers have defined consumption spaces as "public" even though they are normally owned and monitored by private companies (e.g., Vanderbeck and Johnson 2000;Thomas 2005). By this definition, the researchers want to highlight the fact that despite the private ownership, people use these spaces as if they were public. ...
This chapter looks into young people’s hanging out in the context of urban public space. Against a reviewed background of earlier research, the phenomenon is explored by discussing the privatization of public space that is taking place in Western countries. Due to “security talk” and widely shared notions of “safety,” young people have few opportunities for independent mobility. Young people’s lives are often highly scheduled with school and organized activities, and they are pushed to spend even their limited free time at places specifically appointed for them. They are thus spatially planned “out” from the public. As a result of this development, shopping malls and other commercial spaces that are considered safe have become important scenes in the geographies of hanging out. For that reason, the chapter gives special attention to hanging out that goes on in consumption spaces and the ways in which young people negotiate the boundaries of public and private. This discussion is connected both to considering young people’s rights to the city and to evaluating urban spaces by their “tightness”/“looseness.” Finally, hanging out is approached as play with urban space. While hanging out, young people “actively do nothing” and are thus open to changes of direction and to encounters with people and places. They creatively carve out space away from the adult gaze and, though often only momentarily, make “loose spaces.” Hanging out thus adds to cultivating lively, mixed-use cities.
... Interviews 15 Beal, 1995;Bradley, 2010;Freeman, 2002;Karsten, 2006;Korpela, 2001;Kraftl, 2006Kraftl, , 2008L'Aoustet, 2004;Nolan, 2003;Owens, 2002;Robinson, 2000;Shannon, 2008;Simpson, 2000;Thomas, 2005 Focus Groups 9 Clark, 2002;De Visscher, 2008;Horton, 2006;Pomerantz, 2004;Robinson, 2009;Travlou, 2004;Veitch, 2007;Wheaton, 2003;Woolley, 2001 Archival Research 9 ...
Accessing insights from underrepresented populations, such as adolescents, remains a persistent challenge in the research and design process. The paper will investigate the utility of online videos of user-posted materials as an innovative research tool. Unlike traditional in situ approaches to studying human behavior and public space, online videos permit access to multiple sites based upon the population or activity of interest. The approach is similar to studies of behavior using unobtrusive observation—where participation or interviews might interrupt the activity under observation or where access to the setting of the activity would otherwise remain inaccessible to the researcher. Methods. The use of YouTube remains largely untapped in urban design research, yet it is well situated amongst a discipline well versed in using visual research methods to understand the relationship between behavior and design. The following paper describes how anonymously posted online videos of adolescents skateboarding in 17 public, open spaces in New Orleans, LA were collected and coded for further analysis. Collectively, this culminated with 104 unique videos that contained 278 individual scenes gathered from online video search engines such as YouTube. Findings. Videos were reliably coded (k>.75) for prosocial behavior and risk-taking behavior across locations which varied in terms of physical features, social groups, and urban context, showing that YouTube content could, indeed, provide useful data. Overall, the findings have important implications for research into the use of public space by underrepresented populations, alternative activities, or spontaneous events. The innovative strategy could incite positive changes in research methods in landscape architecture and urban design by employing strategies that access relevant streams of human behavior through online sources.
... En esta línea, se han realizado algunos estudios que tratan la interacción de los y las adolescentes con el espacio público focalizando en el tiempo libre (Vanderstede, 2011), en el uso y la representación en los espacios de consumo (Matthews, Taylor, Percy-Smith y Limb, 2000;Thomas, 2005;Kato, 2009), las redes de amistad (Reynolds, 2007;Giró, 2011) o reflexiones acerca de sus subjetividades y los discursos sobre la adolescencia (Raby, 2002). Y algunas lo hacen desde una clara perspectiva feminista tratando la diversidad de chicas adolescentes y su comportamiento en el espacio público en función de su etnia, clase o sexualidad (Hyams, 2003;Morris-Robert, 2001;. ...
This article presents the role of age as an important axis of analysis in the framework of social and cultural geography. The fieldwork includes focus groups, interviews and walking tours around the neighborhood, to identify the more used places, the preferred places and the places young people don't like. We want to know how they build their lives in the neighborhood, how they spend their time and how they use public spaces. Analyzing the neighborhood life is essential to understand the different needs and interests of boys and girls in relation to their experiences and perceptions of lived spaces.
... Day-to-day practices are at stake in feminist urban studies. Fear in these practices produces power relations tied to difference rooted in gender (Pain, 2001; Thomas, 2005). Gendered fear, or fear of difference, emerges which is not that of the 'unwanted', as described in individual model. ...
... While the literature clearly creates a platform where adolescents have the capacity to appropriate settings that support their desired activity, few studies (Kraftl and Adey, 2008;Janssen, 2009;Thomas, 2005) have focused on how these settings, in turn, may have positive or negative implications for youth behaviour. The neighbourhood effects of urban areas and suburbs on the physical activity of youth have become an important point of discussion regarding childhood obesity (Aarts et al., 2009;Binns et al., 2009;Cradock et al., 2009;Dunton et al., 2009). ...
Hot, humid, cracking, and sinking, the Crescent City seems unlikely for skateboarding. Frequently referenced for being 'up to no good,' unsupervised adolescents seem an unusual candidate to create opportunities for environmental justice. The paper examines how settings afford prosocial behaviours amongst skateboarding adolescents. Young people have a unique capacity to improve settings for play. Using evidence collected from site observation and YouTube videos, sk8ters reveal that supportive places can arise from blight and vacancy. The research has broader implications for sustainability and environmental justice professionals working with vulnerable populations to transform degraded spaces into beneficial places.
Shopping centres function as meeting places, and people are using them for various non-shopping purposes. Knowledge about different social spaces, and how they are used and perceived, is important for understanding health and wellbeing in the community and for developing health promoting societies. This scoping review provides an overview of existing research examining people's positive experiences and motivations for visiting shopping centres when shopping is not the main purpose. The results showed that people are motivated by the variety of available activities found in shopping centres and that they valued specific site features of the shopping centres. People reported a range of positive experiences when visiting shopping centres including social interactions, opportunities to escape their everyday life, and experiences of place attachment and social cohesion. This shows that, non-shopping use of shopping centres seems to be important for people's wellbeing and might facilitate health promotion and social sustainability in local communities.
بیان مسئله: نگرش انتقادی به هژمونی سرمایه بر روابط انسانی در جامعه امروز آنگاهکه با فضا پیوند میخورد، وارد محدوده مطالعات شهری شده و موردتوجه واقع میشود. از این منظر در مطالعه شهری فضا، بهعنوان مفهومی مناقشهانگیز (پروبلماتیک)، دو دسته ادبیات تولید (اجتماعی) و مصرف (فرهنگی) فضا قابلتشخیص هستند که بهنظر میرسد بیش از همه ذیل دو دیسیپلین مطالعات فرهنگی و اقتصاد سیاسی مورد بسط قرارگرفتهاند. همچنین فضای عمومی که در کانون مطالعات طراحی شهری قرار دارد، طی سالهای اخیر با نوعی فهم انتقادی آمیختهشده است. اینجاست که ماهیت میانرشتهای طراحی شهری، آن را ناگزیر از توجه توأمان به ادبیات تولید و مصرف فضا برای فهم عمیقتر تحول فضاهای عمومی در میانه تنازع نیروهای قدرت و مردم نموده است.
هدف: پژوهش حاضر با هدف توسعه فهم انتقادی از فضای عمومی خصوصاً ذیل دانش طراحی شهری به کمک تطبیق ترکیبی دو انگاره نظری تولید اجتماعی و مصرف فرهنگی فضا برآمده است.
روش: این جستار نظری با بررسی سلسلهمراتبی از ریشههای فلسفی تا بروندادهای ملموس حاصل از مفاهمه دو انگاره فوقالذکر، تلاش میکند تصویری خوانا از جایگاه فضاهای عمومی شهری در قالب یک منظومه نظری ارائه نماید.
یافتهها: یافتههای مقاله چگونگی ارتباط مفاهیم موردتوجه سه دسته ادبیات تولید اجتماعی فضا، مصرف فرهنگی فضا و مطالعات انتقادی طراحی شهری را در سه سطح پارادایمی، نظری و عینی نشان میدهد.
نتیجه گیری: این پژوهش نشان میدهد عرصه زندگی روزمره کانون مفاهمه دو انگاره مصرف فرهنگی و تولید اجتماعی فضا است؛ عرصهای که بخش نمایانی از آن در فضاهای عمومی بهعنوان میدان عمل طراحی شهری و میدان تبلور دائمی تولید و مصرف جاری است. بر این مبنا دانش طراحی شهری میتواند زندگی روزمره را از دریچه مفهوم همگن شدن فضا مورد خوانش قرار دهد؛ جایی که نیروهای بالادستی تولید انتزاعی در دیالکتیکی با نیروهای پاییندستی مصرف عینی، در حال تحول فضاهای شهری معاصر هستند
This chapter is dedicated to adolescents’ initial practices of nightlife in Barcelona and their role in young people’s transition towards adult socio-spatial practices in the city. The chapter outlines the academic literature regarding adolescence, urban space and nightlife leisure and presents how data was obtained through qualitative methods. Fieldwork results are then presented, focusing on the role of three main socio-spatial dimensions in adolescents’ daily lives: neighbourhood, legitimated leisure spaces (like cinemas, malls and restaurants) and ephemeral spaces of the popular festivals. Finally, the chapter advocates for the importance of studying youth street cultures from the point of view of leisure and nightlife, since this dimension can offer valuable insight into complex identity, and spatial and social processes.
The paper explores the connections between nightlife leisure, everyday places and young people in the transition towards adulthood. When thinking about the discovery of nightlife, the places where leisure takes place are central: they are often places of confidence and belonging – features that offer both young people and families the conditions for the first autonomous explorations of urban space at night. These places also give young people the possibility for new practices and interactions with peers, that are in key in identity processes. The analysis is based on qualitative data collected in Barcelona, Spain, with young people (14–16 years old). The paper will focus on three dimensions: the neighbourhood, the ‘legitimate spaces’ of consumption and the ephemeral places of festivals. I argue that these places’ specific features play an important role in how adolescents progressively build autonomous practices of space and new social networks during the night.
Noora Pyyry and Inka Kaakinen write about More-than-human politics in the new Arctic landscape: shifts in atmospheres at the shopping mall. They examine the shopping mall as “a landscape, which has become axial in the everyday geographies of contemporary Arctic youth”. In their analysis, they probe politics at the mall by looking at the practices of hanging out. By thinking of shifts in the rhythms and atmospheres of the mall, they discuss the politicization of events. A more-than-human take on the issue gestates a relational political human subject. Politics is then approached beyond the subject–object divide: it is an affectual response to the prevailing circumstances that emerges from the joint-participation of diverse materialities. This makes it possible to analyze encounters at the mall without characterizing young people through the binaries of victim/rebel, angel/devil, consumer/activist etc. The new arctic landscape is approached in its complexity.
Based on qualitative research among female Dutch-Moroccan teenagers in two underprivileged neighborhoods in the city of Utrecht, the Netherlands, this article focuses on the spatial practices of young Muslim women in public space. Compared to their male counterparts, who “hang around” in groups, female teens spend less time in public space. We focus on girls’ “wandering practices” through the neighborhood, a spatial practice structured by their search for freedom (to spend time outside the home, to talk to friends in private) and by social control (to avoid the presence of young men, to avoid being gossiped about). Our research shows that wandering both decreases their visibility and pushes against gendered cultural norms about women in public space. By analyzing their wandering as a form of social navigation, we show how these teenagers maneuver through both the physical neighborhood and the gendered cultural norms regarding appropriate behavior in public space.
This chapter explores how Asian American girls form identity, construct girlhood, and develop belonging through consumption practices in neighborhood malls and stores. I examine how they use commercial spaces to negotiate “Asianness” and “Americanness” through browsing, purchasing, and consuming products—from t-shirts and stationary to ethnic food. The girls were sophisticated in building multiple ibasho in consumer spaces such as shopping malls and grocery stores where they could hang out with their friends, interact with material objects, and explore racial and ethnic identity. Specifically, second-generation girls were active in creating “Asianized” spaces in their neighborhood and consuming commodities featuring characters from Japanese popular culture. They attached symbolic meaning of “Asianness” to Asia-related commodities, which allowed them to develop racial and ethnic identity while acknowledging its multiplicity and complexity. The girls also conveniently adopted kawaii goods into a natural girlhood style acknowledged in the United States and developed a hybridized femininity. While hanging out at malls and consuming goods might be dismissed as a typical teenage behavior, this chapter proposes that consumptive practices offer empowering resources and tools for the girls to foster identity, community, and girlhood.
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In welke stad je ’s avonds ook rondwandelt, overal zie je jonge mensen uitgaan, plezier maken en drinken. In de latere uurtjes levert deze mix van jongeren en alcohol vaak dronken en zelfs alarmerende taferelen op. Vrouwen gaan op zo’n momenten op zoek naar het soms wankele evenwicht tussen plezier en controle.
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Young people and children have the neighborhood as an essential place in their everyday lives. The neighborhood is the place where young people not only have their daily geographical experience but it is also the place that shapes their identities. The intersections of gender, class, and ethnicity are basic for understanding how young people reshape the socio-spatial imaginations of their everyday life at both the city and neighborhood scales. This chapter analyzes the everyday lives of young people, specifically teenagers, boys and girls (aged 14 and 15), in Barcelona’s Besós-Maresme neighborhood, a traditionally peripheral area which has undergone extraordinary urban changes in recent years that have led to major morphological and social changes.
Focus groups, semi-structured interviews, and participatory walks have been used to approach teenagers to ascertain how they construct their identities in the neighborhood, what they do in their free time, whom they share it with, and what spaces around them they frequent the most. The teenagers expressed their opinions and criticisms regarding spaces they feel are their own, where they felt included in public space and shared opinions on what they would like changed. Using the spaces, appropriating them, sharing opinions or intervening directly in these spaces are activities and attitudes that form a sense of citizenship.
In this paper, I talk about young teenage girls' hanging out at the shopping mall. I approach hanging out as ‘dwelling with’ commercial spaces by thinking of it as 1) a meaningful practical engagement, and as 2) marking and claiming spaces as one's own. Hanging out with friends often goes on without much reflection, but it is deeply affectual. Because hanging out is wonderfully purposeless, space is cleared for the inspiring mood of enchantment. This receptivity can make ‘dwelling with’ possible. Hanging out can be conceptualized as playful being-in-the-world that allows for improvisations with one's surroundings in movement: an event of different rhythm, openness and experiment. By drifting at the mall, ‘actively doing nothing’, girls are open to the new and surprising. Therefore, hanging out can provide a momentary way out from the seriousness of adult life and make space for enchantment. A micro-atmosphere of play is produced when girls engage with the commercial space and artifacts. A kind of counter-politics of affect actuates from the intra-active play between girls and the things that matter to them. While hanging out, girls make temporary ‘hangout homes’ for themselves, and acquire situated rights to spaces by dwelling with them.
Recent work by geographers concerned with the enduring presence of racism has called for an interrogation of the privileges and contingencies of whiteness. Central to this project of denaturalizing White Identity has been the disclosure of its co-constitution with a host of social practices. Building on the work of critical theorists in the humanities and social sciences concerned with masculinist and post-colonial epistemologies, this paper outlines a socio-spatial epistemology of whiteness. Whiteness's central tenets are an essentialist and non-relational construction of space and identity that underwrite its claims to be realized independent of an Other. Spatially, this refusal manifests itself in the deployment of discursive categories associated with scales, boundaries and extensivity in ways that reify space into discrete, unrelated parcels. We discuss some of the implications of this non-relational construction of space and identity in the context of residential segregation and spatial mobility. The paper concludes by noting that historically and geographically specific forms of whiteness have drawn upon a common socio-spatial framing and that further study in this field will benefit anti-racist activism by disclosing the workings of racialization in numerous human geographic contexts.
In recent years there have been repeated calls for a convergence between 'the cultural' and 'the economic'. This paper provides a specific take on these issues through an exploration of the contested geographies of contemporary commercial culture. Traditionally, 'culture' has been associated with meaning and creativity, with works of the imagination and aesthetic practices that are far removed from the pursuit of economic profit. By contrast, 'commerce' has conventionally been regarded with disdain by critically minded social scientists, signalling a vulgar and materialistic world, devoid of morality, where human agency is subordinated to the logic of capital. This paper aims to challenge such dualistic thinking by exploring the commod- ification of cultural difference and by demonstrating that the rational calculus of the market is inescapably embedded in a range of cultural practices. The argument moves from an analysis of linear commodity chains to an exploration of more complex circuits and networks, illustrated with examples from contemporary commodity culture, looking specifically at the food and fashion sectors. Rather than demonstrating complexity for its own sake, the objective is to identify new forms of understanding and new possibilities for intervention in what can sometimes seem like an all-encompassing 'consumer culture' where every act of resistance is immediately recuperated in successive rounds of commodification.
For qualitative researchers, selecting appropriate sites in which to conduct interviews may seem to be a relatively simple research design issue. In fact it is a complicated decision with wide-reaching implications. In this paper, we argue that the interview site itself embodies and constitutes multiple scales of spatial relations and meaning, which construct the power and positionality of participants in relation to the people, places, and interactions discussed in the interview. We illustrate how observation and analysis of interview sites can offer new insights with respect to research questions, help researchers understand and interpret interview material, and highlight particular ethical considerations that researchers need to address.
This article draws on Foucault's claim that power is invariably accompanied by resistance. We argue that the recent academic discourses about space have tended to position young people as the hapless and passive victims of the state and/or of corporate and globalizing economic forces. While it is true that young people are subject to increased policing in public and private domains, we argue that it is important not to loose sight of young people's ability to actively resist such impositions, and to carve out new, meaningful spaces for themselves. Drawing on the idea of resistance, we consider some of the strategies young people use in asserting and redefining their presence in urban space.
This paper is concerned with exploring the potential of performance and performativity as conceptual tools for a critical human geography. We begin by emphasising the importance of recognising the different ways in which performance can be theorised, and their very different critical effects. We then argue that, although the geographical literature is apparently characterised by two contrasting discussions of performance (those of Goffman and of Butler), these accounts form a consensus around Goffman. By contrast, and along with Butler, we maintain that performance is subsumed within and must always be connected to performativity-that is, to the citational practices which produce and subvert discourse and knowledge, and which at the same time enable and discipline subjects and their performances. But we also take Butler elsewhere, arguing that spaces too need to be thought of as performative, and that more needs to be made of the complexity and instability of performances and performed spaces. To illustrate our general arguments, but also to show how they work out rather differently in the specificities of particular social practices, we draw on two very different pieces of research which we have separately been involved in: a study of community arts workers and projects in Edinburgh and another on car-boot sales as alternative spaces of consumption. We conclude the paper by arguing for the necessity of extending our arguments to encompass academic performances and performativity, reflecting on our own production, both through particular academic performances of our respective research projects and this paper.
This paper follows the case of one city that has deliberately fashioned itself as a regional, indeed global, hub for the information age. Singapore has shaped itself into a global hub in what is often seen as a global information space that depends upon key. The state conceived of the island’s development through a vocabulary of networks and hubs in a space of global flows. This paper follows the Singapore government’s efforts to embrace the new possibilities of being a global hub while coping with the ramifications of changing social and spatial relationships at a range of scales from the local to the global. The paper focuses upon the initiative to create a so-called Intelligent Island and the SingaporeONE project to create a pervasive networked environment. These two linked initiatives aimed to allow Singaporeans to exploit digital technology but also reconfigured the relationship of Singapore to the outside world. The paper will examine the material and discursive consequences of these plans – suggesting that the rhetorical and discursive effects are probably as significant as many of the alleged benefits through information processing. These initiatives are set in the context of a range of other flows – of people and things – to raise issues about the city state as, on the one hand, a purposive actors shaping the environment and, on the other, being pushed by forces that destabilise the linkage of people and place upon which the state relied.
It is an interesting moment to write Progress in Human Geography’s first report on qualitative methods. In one sense, it suggests these methods have, at long last, arrived and been accepted as established approaches. That this is an overdue recognition needs little emphasizing when surveying the number of articles drawing upon, at least in part, qualitative material. However, a less encouraging omen is the recent column in the UK Economic and Social Research Council’s Social Sciences, penned by the chief executive (Marshall, 2001). In it he asserts: ‘British universities and colleges are not producing quantitatively competent social scientists in sufficient numbers.’ Although he does not mention what ‘non-quantitative’ research is doing, he discusses a series of remedial measures - such as compulsory training in statistics, prioritized awards for quantitative PhD projects, tied studentships and specialist research centres. To paraphrase Spike Milligan’s comment on army training, the attitude appears to be - if someone dies when you hang them, keep hanging them until they get used to it. It is already feeding through into new postgraduate Research Training Guidelines. The problem we are told is acute, though the evidence presented is scant and, moreover, ironically seems to consist of unanalysed, qualitative reports from meetings with civil servants: ‘Failure to [remedy the shortage] is likely to result in Britain falling behind the rest of Europe, both in the provision of talented quantitative social researchers, and the ability to design public policy on a reliable evidence base.’ It seems to imply that qualitative research has not only arrived but gone too far. Within geography, the last decade has undoubtedly seen an expansion in qualitative work both in terms of the types of work and the topics addressed. So in this first report I want to spend some time looking at the range of topics, then beginning to look at the range of methods that might be covered. I want to suggest that we have moved from a period when papers were prefaced with legitimations of qualitative work to a time when we are seeing debates within qualitative methods over establishing orthodox approaches and standards. I want to conclude this report by pointing towards some gaps.
Consumption spaces such as shopping malls have become central parts of many young people's geographical imaginations and social worlds. In this paper, we utilize qualitative evidence to examine the role of the shopping mall in the lives of young people (ages 12 to 13) living in a set of economically distressed inner-city neighborhoods in a southern city. We argue that understanding these young people's preference:for the space of the mall requires an approach that takes into account aspects of their local context, including their perception of neighborhood violence and resource availability. Our findings suggest that many of these young people's expressed preferences for the mall reflect relatively mainstream desires, such as to be safe, to interact with other young people, and to feel a sense of possibility and choice, which they cannot successfully enact in other spaces. These findings can inform recent debates regarding young people's use of "public" spaces.
Girls in gangs are usually treated as objects of public criticism and rejection. Seldom are they viewed as objects worthy of understanding and even more rarely are they allowed to be active subjects who craft their own public persona-which is what makes this work unique. In this book, Marie "Keta" Miranda presents the results of an ethnographic collaboration with Chicana gang members, in which they contest popular and academic representations of Chicana/o youth and also construct their own narratives of self identity through a documentary film, It's a Homie Thang! In telling the story of her research in the Fruitvale community of Oakland, California, Miranda honestly reveals how even a sympathetic ethnographer from the same ethnic group can objectify the subjects of her study. She recounts how her project evolved into a study of representation and its effects in the public sphere as the young women spoke out about how public images of their lives rarely come close to the reality. As Miranda describes how she listened to the gang members and collaborated in the production of their documentary, she sheds new light on the politics of representation and ethnography, on how inner city adolescent Chicanas present themselves to various publics, and on how Chicana gangs actually function.
I revisit a participatory research project, carried out with domestic workers at the Philippine Women Centre, to assess how persistent conventions dictated what did and did not count as evidence. I attempt to push against these conventions, to entertain a broader range of evidence. Beyond this, our writing can be thought of as a performance; I try to imagine writing performances that provoke productive tensions within the audience/reader, between identification and dis-identification. Finally, our research itself is a performance; framing it as such may enable us to imagine and experiment with a broader repertoire of research strategies, beyond the documentary and the confessional, and multiple research objectives: here, now, and then and there.
This article draws upon in-depth discussions conducted with young British Muslim women to explore the ways in which embodied differences are negotiated in the construction and contestation of identity. The author argues that dress is an overdetermined signifier for Muslim women, illustrating the role of clothing, particularly the veil, in the discursive formation of 'Muslim women'. The author explores some of the possibilities for reworking dress to create alternative femininities within different spaces, focusing in particular on the construction of 'hybrid' identities and the articulation of 'new' Muslim identities.
In the 1980s and 1990s, North America and Europe have experienced a rising tide of concern about the behavior and well-being of children. On the one hand, there is increased popular concern about young children's vulnerability to stranger-dangers in public space. On the other hand, adults also appear to be concerned about the violence and unruliness of older children in public places. This paper uses these contradictory concerns to explore how public space is being produced as a space that is "naturally" or "normally" an adult space. It also examines the way that this "normality" is being disrupted by teenagers, who are provoking anxieties among adults concerning their continued ability to regulate the activities of the young and therefore maintain their spatial hegemony. In doing so, the paper questions the extent to which "public" is an appropriate term to describe the streets and the suburbs, if their maintenance requires the exclusion or marginalization of young people. It also explores the paradoxical meanings of the home as a public space and the street as a private space for many children.
This article addresses the discussion, particularly prominent among feminist geographers, of reflexivity as a strategy for marking geographical knowledges as situated. It argues that, if the aim of feminist and other critical geographies is to acknowledge their partiality, then the particular form of reflexivity advocated needs careful consideration. Feminist geographers most often recommend a kind of reflexivity that aims, even if only ideally, at a full understanding of the researcher, the researched and the research context. The article begins with the author's failure at that kind of reflexivity, and that particular reflexivity is then discussed and described as ‘transparent’ in its ambitious claims to comprehensive knowledge. The article then goes on to explore critiques of transparent reflexivity, many of which have been made by feminist geographers themselves. The article concludes by suggesting that some recent discussions of the uncertainties of research practice offer another model of feminist reflexivity that may succeed more effectively in questioning the researcher's practice of knowledge production.
Community art is one u>ay the stories and perceptions of typically marginalized community residents can reach a large audience, as well as one means of community development and improvement. This paper draws on the author's ethnographic research and personal experience ii'orking for two years with a community theatre programme in an impoverished, multi-ethnic neighbourhood of San Diego, California. Like many community arts programmes, Around the World in a Single Day community theatre project targeted 'at risk' teenagers. The community theatre project provides a vehicle for discussing two aspects of representation: narrative authority and the symbolic economy. The paper argues that community arts programmes can empower the self-representation of marginalized teenagers, but these representations arc given meaning in the context of the representation of their neighbourhood.
In two programmatic essays, Peter Jackson has reviewed new critical research on the geographical lives of commodities. This paper offers a constructive critique of his particular reading of this research. It is argued that three major issues require urgent attention if critical geographers and fellow‐travellers are to take their commodity research forward. First, there is too much imprecision in the use of the related terms ‘commodities’, ‘commodification’ and ‘commoditization’. This threatens to render all three terms meaningless or at the very least confusing. Secondly, this lack of conceptual clarity is linked to the problem of superficial engagements with normative issues. It is argued that the recent geographical research on commodities has thus far glossed over important questions of both academic and lay judgement. Finally, the paper suggests that the ‘modest’ role for critical academics envisaged by Jackson and other commodity researchers is only defensible if questions of voice, message and audience are addressed systematically. Overall, the paper presents a menu of explanatory and normative issues that require attention if critical commodity analysts like Jackson are to maximize the potential of their research agenda.
Many contemporary feminist research methods employed in the interest of realizing social justice advocate ‘listening’ to subordinated others, groups variously categorized and marginalized by gender, sexuality, race, age, and so on, in order to examine the sources and workings of knowledge construction and social power. Increasingly, feminist scholars are using group discussion or focus groups, in an effort to give subordinated others ‘a voice.’ Group discussions are seen as potentially empowering in exploring and enabling group members’ social agency and knowledge production while at the same time diminishing the unequal power relations between the researched and researcher. In this article, I argue that the attention given to ‘voices’ in group discussions (dis)misses meaning‐ful silences thereby limiting its political potential. There exists an ‘epistemological messiness’ inherent in a feminist group discussion method that makes it difficult to hear meaning‐ful silences. Through reflection on my own research into the spaces of adolescent Latina gender identities, this article offers some insights into this messiness and recommends that a feminist group discussion method be guided by a politics of voice which includes ‘silence within voice.’
Heterosexuality is often perceived by geographers to be a dominant social force in the production of space, yet the ways that heterosexuality achieves this domination have not been scrutinized. In this paper I focus on two straight girls' narratives to explore, first, how they sexualize space and thus make space heterosexual; and, second, how space and spatiality imbue their everyday social and sexual practices and thus exist as a central component of subjectivity. I argue that considering the spatiality of their sexual practices presents a theoretical advantage over current feminist conceptualizations that place girls in gendered relationships in which boys maintain control. Instead, I suggest that a close reading of the pleasures and proprieties of sex and sexuality in these two girls' stories illustrates how the girls become invested with and perform social-sexual norms and meanings through spatialized practices.
What it means to be a child varies over space and time. Historically, the dominant Western construction of childhood has oscillated between representing children as the bearers of original sin-devils-or as innocent-angels. In the United Kingdom in the 19th and for much of the 20th century it was this latter imagining of childhood that took hold. But the murder of toddler Jamie Bulger by two 10-year-old boys in 1993 has been pivotal in reengaging a demonised conceptualisation of what it means to be a child. The author begins by considering some of the contested meanings of childhood and then goes on to explore the contemporary 'othering' of children and some of the spatial restrictions being imposed on young people by adults in an attempt to (re)draw boundaries between 'us' and 'them'.
In this paper I'explore the ways in which Latinas, young US-born Mexican-descent teenage girls, construct national belonging through difference: corporeal, spatial, and temporal difference between themselves and their Mexican contemporaries, young Mexicanas. Specifically, I analyse their representations of Mexico-and-Mexicanas; in narratives of their own and others' travels, and experiences of living, 'over there' and 'back then'. I argue that, in and through an engagement of body image with national narratives and transnational hierarchies, the young women intervene in and reproduce hegemonic narratives of nation and gender. In so doing they simultaneously construct a transgressive modern national subjectivity for themselves and a regressive domestic subjectivity for the young Mexicanas, both of which are fixed in place and ordered differentially in time.
The Geographical Concept of ‘Race’Antiracist Geography in Context
This paper reports the results of an autophotographic study carried out in Kingston, Jamaica. Cameras were distributed to high school students from different social backgrounds in order for them to record their own impressions and interpretations of the urban environment. This combination of an unusual methodology with a high level of youth participation provides a unique insight into the human–environment interactions taking place in the city, and reveals a variety of information about the ways in which social class, age and gender influence perceptions of and relationships with the urban environment.
This paper explores how participatory video – a methodology increasingly used in community development and anthropological research – may enable a feminist practice of looking which does not perpetuate hierarchical power relations and create voyeuristic, distanced and disembodied claims to knowledge. I reflect on experiences from a participatory video project with members of a Maaori tribe in Aotearoa New Zealand in light of geographers’ uses of video to date. I argue that participatory video, if used within carefully negotiated relationships, has potential to destabilize hierarchical power relations and create spaces for transformation by providing a practice of looking ‘alongside’ rather than ‘at’ research subjects.
Few geographical studies have explicitly examined the place use and place behaviour of young teenagers, especially within the UK. In this article we report on a survey of a group of 13 year olds, living in a socially and economically deprived neighbourhood in Midland England. Attention focuses on the ‘fourth environment’ that is how these teenagers come into contact with a range of everyday places beyond their home, school and playground. For each individual, the sum of this relationship constitutes a microgeography, which when grouped together provides a spatio-temporal map of experience. The results suggest four recurrent themes, which we present as important aspects of the microgeography of this group of teenagers. We label these as: worlds apart; emblems of difference; special places; and landscapes of powerlessness. The environments of teenagers are not just appendages of the adult world, but are special places, created by themselves and invested with their own values. We argue that teenagers are not adults in waiting but are active cultural producers in their own right. When discussing the results we draw upon research and concepts in cognate disciplines to provide additional insights into teenagers' microgeographies.
This paper provides new insights into girls’ use of recreational spaces within rural areas. We draw upon data from in-depth discussion work with 10–14 year old girls undertaken in rural Northamptonshire to show how conflict between adults and children, rival groups of children, and boys and girls influences the social ownership of recreational spaces. In contrast to the rural childhood myth, we disclose geographies of anxiety, tension anddisharmony.
The paper examines the use of four visual ‘action’ methods for eliciting information from street children about their interactions with the socio-spatial environment. These methods were adapted and used to encourage child-led activities and minimize researcher input. The advantages and constraints associated with the successful implementation of visual methods with children are examined, followed by a brief examination of the ‘real’ and ethical considerations surrounding their use. The paper concludes that visual methods allow a high level of child-led participation in research, as well as providing a stimulus for eliciting further oral material.
Against a backdrop of widespread panic about children's safety and the unruliness of teenagers, efforts to remove young people from public space are becoming increasingly pervasive. Public space is being constructed as adult space through legal mechanisms such as curfews, which seek to curtail young people's spatial freedoms and contain them within their homes. Ostensibly motivated by a desire to reduce youth crime and victimisation, curfews reflect a contemporary preoccupation with achieving social control through the control of space. This is certainly the case in the US – the Western nation where juvenile curfews are most prevalent, despite rhetoric about the `fundamental' nature of individual freedoms. In this paper, critical discussion of the American situation provides a backdrop for considering curfews recently imposed in Paeroa and Te Kuiti, two New Zealand towns. It is contended that these curfews were as much about enforcing a particular notion of `parental responsibility' as controlling young people themselves. We conclude that a discourse of rights provides a particularly strong foundation for arguing against curfews.
An exposé of the realities facing poor black children in our consumer society. What does it mean to be young, poor, and black in our consumer culture? Are black children "brand-crazed consumer addicts" willing to kill each other over a pair of the latest Nike Air Jordans or Barbie backpack? In this first in-depth account of the consumer lives of poor and working-class black children, Elizabeth Chin enters the world of children living in hardship in order to understand the ways they learn to manage living poor in a wealthy society. In order to move beyond the stereotypical images of black children obsessed with status symbols, Elizabeth Chin spent two years interviewing poor children living in New Haven, Connecticut, about where and how they spend their money. An alternate image of the children emerges, one that puts practicality ahead of status in their purchasing decisions. On a twenty-dollar shopping spree with Chin, one boy has to choose between a walkie-talkie set and an X-Men figure. In one of the most painful moments of her research, Chin watches as Davy struggles with his decision. He finally takes the walkie-talkie set, a toy that might be shared with his younger brother. Through personal anecdotes and compelling stories ranging from topics such as Christmas and birthday gifts, shopping malls, Toys-R-Us, neighborhood convenience shops, school lunches, ethnically correct toys, and school supplies, Chin critically examines consumption as a medium through which social inequalities-most notably of race, class, and gender--are formed, experienced, imposed, and resisted. Along the way she acknowledges the profound constraints under which the poor and working class must struggle in their daily lives. "Elizabeth Chin's Purchasing Power: Black Kids and American Consumer Culture has both vitality and immediacy, thanks to Natalia, Tionna, Asia, and the other pseudonymous children of Newhallville whose voices we hear. The book's purpose is well served, too, by an identifiable first-person narrator whose relationships with several of her 'subjects' grow close and affectionate. Chin's vignettes from life with the Newhallville kids are touching, funny, troubling, strange, and familiar." ââ¬âRuminator Review ââ¬ÅCompelling. As a result of a multilevel perspective, the reader gets to see firsthand how these African-American children struggle each day with the inequality of their economic status. Not only is this book a primer for the uninitiated in ethnographic research, it also serves as a valuable tool for the seasoned reader interested in such participant-observer studies. Chin adds significantly to the literature of an understudied areaââ¬âminority children as consumers.ââ¬? ââ¬âMultiCultural Review Elizabeth Chin is an associate professor in the Department of Anthropology at Occidental College in Los Angeles.
In this paper we explore the contested spaces of contemporary commodity culture through case-study research with two fashion companies that are involved, in linked but contrasting ways, with the production and marketing of cultural difference. One company, the British-based women's wear firm EAST, is striving to extend its high-street presence via a generalised 'ethnic' aesthetic, combined with culturally constructed notions of design individuality. The other firm, the Indian-based company Anokhi, has a more ambivalent relationship with the commercial 'mainstream', emphasising its use of traditional hand-block printing methods, combined with a sense of social responsibility and ethical commitment to its workforce. The case studies demonstrate that cultural difference is actively constituted through the process of commodification, justifying an emphasis on the production of difference as well as on its consumption. We draw on in-depth interviews and participant observation with key actors in both firms, examining how the meaning of goods is shaped as they move along the commodity chain from production to consumption. We examine the retail spaces and marketing strategies of the two firms and explore (via focus-group research) the further transformations of meaning and value undertaken by consumers as they purchase and wear these clothes. We conclude that commercial culture is a contested space characterised by competing discourses and practices, the outcome of which can only be determined empirically.
The focus of this paper is the significance of an urban high school in the process of gender and sexual identity construction for a group of adolescent Latinas in Los Angeles. I explore multiple discourses of adolescent femininity, masculinity, sexual morality, and achievement conveyed through consecutive, in-depth group discussions with friendship groups of young Latinas. I argue that for these young women, studenthood is not a generic stage in the life course, but one that is embedded in society's expectations of and anxieties about young women. In and through dominant discourses and institutional practices they are constituted as vulnerable and as out of control in terms of sexual desire (their own as well as others' for them). In a 'spatiality of protection' they are positioned, precariously, as singularly responsible for both their academic diligence and their bounded sexuality in order to succeed as young women in high school and realise their goals as adult women beyond high school.
Youth gangs and moral panics in Santa Cruz, California Cool Places: Geographies of Youth Cultures
- T Lucas
Lucas, T. (1998) Youth gangs and moral panics in Santa Cruz, California, in Skelton, T. and Valentine, G. (eds) Cool Places: Geographies of Youth Cultures. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 145 –160.
Geographies of consumption Acknowledging Consumption: A Review of New Studies
- P Jackson
- N Thrift
Jackson, P. and Thrift, N. (1995) Geographies of consumption, in Miller, D. (ed.) Acknowledging Consumption: A Review of New Studies. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 204 –237.
Dana's mystical tunnel': young people's designs for survival and change in the city Cool Places: Geographies of Youth Cultures
- M M Breitbart
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