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Youth dis/comforts in everyday spaces: an intersectional and mixed methods approach in Catalonia
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El creciente interés por la investigación en el campo de las sexualidades no normativas nos ofrece la posibilidad de sumergirnos en un terreno hasta ahora poco explorado y cuyos límites aún desconocemos. Por esta razón, la lectura de Intersecciones es una excelente oportunidad para tomar contacto con estos nuevos espacios de reflexión sobre los contextos producidos en las fronteras de lo que conocemos como "normalidad". La obra coordinada por Raquel/Lucas Platero reúne un amplio número de investigaciones, reflexiones y experiencias que, desde perspectivas multidisciplinares, nos enseñan unas realidades ocultadas que suponen una amenaza para el mantenimiento del orden socio-sexual. Intersecciones es la culminación de una amplia producción literaria en la que Platero profundiza sobre la violencia institucionalizada sobre las sexualidades alternativas. De ahí que sus anteriores publicaciones versen sobre cuestiones, muchas de ellas tratadas en diferentes capítulos de este libro, como la transexualidad (2009) 1 ; la construcción del sujeto lesbiano (2008) 2 ; la diversidad funcional (2003) 3 o el bullying homofóbico (2007) 4. Si bien la estructura de la obra queda claramente constituida en dos bloques, el propio contenido nos invita a crear desorden, especialmente en su segunda parte, que puede ser
La prevención de la violencia de género ha sido una cuestión central de la intervención con jóvenes. Entre las diferentes medidas adoptadas por las administraciones a fin de erradicar este tipo de violencia, el trabajo con chicas y chicos jóvenes se ha visto como fundamental para transformar la realidad.
A menudo, sin embargo, tanto la investigación como las acciones relativas a la violencia de género se basan en una mirada adultocéntrica, que parte de prácticas, problemáticas y acciones que tienen que ver con la violencia que sufren mujeres adultas. De acuerdo con esta lógica, la prevención con población joven se acostumbra a hacer con el objetivo de transformar las nuevas generaciones, entendiendo la juventud como futuras personas adultas que se pueden modelar en etapas anteriores. Esta mirada tiende a centrarse en unas determinadas formas de violencia de género, como la que se da en las relaciones de pareja, que no es la forma más común de violencia contra las mujeres jóvenes, en gran medida porque, en determinadas edades, ni se tiene pareja ni se ha tenido. En cambio, en edades como la adolescencia hay otras formas de violencia que pueden tener una incidencia mucho más importante: agresiones sexuales en espacios de ocio, violencia sexual por parte de amistades, acoso por parte de iguales en centros educativos, ciberacoso, etc.
Además, aparte de los sesgos por razón de edad que se observan en algunas intervenciones, es habitual encontrar propuestas sobre prevención que se basan en una idea de mujer que se presenta como neutra en relación con otros ejes de desigualdad. Se acostumbra a pensar en mujeres víctimas de la violencia de género como mujeres (adultas) blancas, autóctonas, cisgénero, con plenas capacidades, heterosexuales, etc. La realidad, sin embargo, es que las mujeres que sufren este tipo de violencia son mujeres posicionadas de forma muy diversa en todos estos ejes: mujeres gitanas, niñas migradas con discapacidad visual, chicas católicas lesbianas, etc. Y las formas en que estas personas sufrirán la violencia de género se configurarán por el cruce de todas estas posiciones. Así pues, su experiencia de la violencia será muy diferente según su situación y el contexto en que se dé.
Por otro lado, y en consonancia con la legislación sobre esta materia, la concepción de la violencia de género generalmente se focaliza en las agresiones que sufren las mujeres por parte de hombres. Esta violencia, la machista, es un tipo de violencia de género muy importante y con una incidencia altísima en la población joven. Dentro de la violencia de género, sin embargo, hay otros tipos de violencia, como la causada por la identidad de género, la expresión de género o la orientación sexual. El hecho de que estas violencias se traten de forma separada de la violencia machista implica una concepción muy limitada del género, y no permite ver las relaciones entre los diferentes tipos de violencia ni crear una visión más amplia sobre las configuraciones de las normas de género y las discriminaciones y las desigualdades que comportan. Por eso, en esta guía hablamos de violencias de género, en plural, y nos proponemos dar algunas herramientas para aplicar una perspectiva interseccional sobre la prevención de las violencias de género con jóvenes que tenga en cuenta:
1. Los diferentes ámbitos y formas en que se producen las violencias de género en la población joven, de forma que se superen las concepciones adultocéntricas.
2. La interacción entre diferentes ejes de desigualdad y la importancia de estos ejes en la configuración de las violencias de género.
3. Las diferentes dimensiones del género y las normatividades, violencias y discriminaciones que provocan.
Estas tres ideas guían los planteamientos que presentamos en este documento y pretenden servir también como propuesta política que establezca vínculos entre las diferentes formas de violencia y reconozca, a la vez, las especificidades de cada una.
El Barómetro Juventud y Género es una herramienta propia de consulta periódica (bianual), que recoge la percepción de adolescentes y jóvenes entre 15 y 29 años en ámbitos relacionados con las diferencias y desigualdades de género, las identidades, experiencias afectivas y percepciones sobre la desigualdad entre hombres y mujeres. Con la edición de 2021 culmina la tercera oleada del barómetro, tras las realizadas en 2017 y 2019.
Como muestran numerosos estudios, el miedo es una de las limitaciones más importantes para el acceso de las mujeres al espacio público. En este artículo examinamos la configuración del mismo y sus consecuencias en base al trabajo empírico cualitativo realizado con 70 chicos y chicas jóvenes en tres localidades del País Vasco. El objetivo es analizar la percepción del miedo desde una perspectiva de género y espacial para comprender en qué se basa, cómo se percibe y qué implicaciones tiene para las mujeres. Los principales resultados muestran que el género y la edad condicionan la percepción del miedo, que este se fundamenta en la dicotomía público/privado y que la misma dicotomía es la que invisibiliza y perpetúa determinadas formas de violencia contra las mujeres.
The concept of intersectionality has fundamentally changed feminist theorizing and the study of women and gender. However, intersectional research, theorizing, and practice also have been subject to important critiques. This article provides a brief genealogy of intersectionality and summarizes major critiques. We recognize value in these critiques as well as the ongoing power of an intersectional lens. We therefore advocate what we call “context‐driven intersectionality,” arguing that attention to the historical, political, economic, and social factors that shape power relationships and social structures is critical to conducting robust intersectional analyses that avoid reification of social categories and inequalities.
Objective: This paper explores the experiences and interconnection of young people’s online and offline (face-to-face) experiences of interpersonal violence and abuse (IPVA) victimization across 5 European countries (i.e., Bulgaria, Cyprus, England, Italy and Norway) and its subjective impact. Evidence on the association between online and offline forms of IPVA in young people’s relationships remains rare and even fewer studies address the subjective impact of these experiences. To our knowledge this is the first study to address these issues within a European context. Method: As part of a wider mixed-method study, a school-based survey was completed with 4,564 young people aged 14–17 across 5 European countries. Results: The findings showed that IPVA through new technologies, especially controlling behavior and surveillance, represented a common aspect of IPVA behaviors across the 5 country samples. There was a substantial intersection between online and offline forms of IPVA. In 3 of the 5 country samples, IPVA prevalence rates were not significantly associated with gender. However, for each form of IPVA studied, the reported subjective impact was gendered: Girls reported greater negative impact than boys. Conclusion: Our research showed that youth programs aimed at preventing or responding to adolescent IPVA need to pay careful attention to how new technologies are used within young people’s relationships and the ways in which these experiences may be differentiated by gender.
This article examines the role of emotions for young children’s social identities of ethnicity, race, nationality, class, gender and culture in the context of a Scottish primary school. It argues that emotions contribute to how intersectional identities are performed in children’s peer relationships within the discourses available to them, and that analysing emotions is crucial for understanding how children’s intersectional belongings come to be constructed and politicised. This makes emotions a highly political matter, important for understanding the complexity of intersectionality and for informing childhood policy and practice.
Children and adolescents in Nicaragua have intersected identities as both school students and child workers. Most of the literature supposes that a child must be one or the other, and problematises ‘child workers’ as either victims or heroes. Yet, in Nicaragua, this is seldom the case, as most children and adolescents are both workers and students. Crenshaw’s concept of intersectionality helps to understand these young people’s lives: As students, they face multiple difficulties getting a decent education; as workers, they struggle for respect and fair treatment. However, as school students who also work, they face challenges specific to their intersected roles. In an empirical study, a group of socially committed adolescents accepted neither work nor school as identity-defining factors, emphasising instead their role in the community as rights defenders and builders of the future. Internationally, this ‘intersectionality lens’ may be helpful in developing policies that respect the rights of young worker-students.
Intersectionality has become something of a buzzword in psychology and is well-known in feminist writings throughout the social sciences. Across diverse definitions of intersectionality, we find three common assumptions: (1) There is a recognition that all people are characterized simultaneously by multiple social categories and that these categories are interconnected or intertwined. (2) Embedded within each of these categories is a dimension of inequality or power. (3) These categories are properties of the individual as well as characteristics of the social context inhabited by those individuals; as such, categories and their significance may be fluid and dynamic. Understanding intersectionality as an approach and critical theory, rather than as a falsifiable theory, we consider its potential within research using quantitative methods. We discuss positivism, social constructionism, and standpoint epistemology in order to examine the implications of these epistemologies for research methods and to explore how compatible an intersectional approach may be with each. With an eye toward expanding the incorporation of intersectional approaches in the psychology of women, we discuss both the challenges and the potential of combining quantitative methods and intersectionality. We contend that quantitative methods can be used within an intersectional approach and that doing so will expand and develop the study of intersectionality, insofar as more research tools will be available to intersectionality researchers. We also contend that quantitative researchers should incorporate an intersectional approach into their work and that doing so will enrich and deepen our understanding of psychological constructs and processes.
Controlling one’s romantic partner through digital media is a form of cyber dating abuse. To design effective educational campaigns, a deeper understanding of how some young people become victim of this type of abuse within their romantic relationships is warranted. This study is the first to adopt a lifestyle-routine activities theory perspective toward online romantic partner monitoring, by looking at whether secondary school students’ risky digital lifestyle and their digital media use are linked to a higher chance of being controlled by a romantic partner, taking into account gender, age, and the length of the romantic relationship. The data of 466 secondary school students (71.0% girls, n = 331) between 16 and 22 years old (M = 17.99 years; SD = 0.92) who were in a romantic relationship are analyzed. Linear regression analysis suggests that engagement in online risk behavior, the length of the romantic relationship, engagement in sexting with the romantic partner, and the amount of social networking site use were significantly linked to victimization of digital controlling behavior. The results are important to practitioners, as they indicate that messages about safe Internet use should be incorporated in prevention and educational campaigns with regard to cyber dating abuse. Suggestions for future research are discussed.
Much is written about quantitative techniques and feminist and gender studies. Despite convincing arguments in favour of utilizing these methods, they are still largely absent in the heartland of gender studies. In this article, this is related to the observation that methods are tied to epistemological positions and consequently quantitative studies are a priori associated with overgeneralization. A new perspective – the diversity continuum – is presented in order to contextualize research and make it possible to judge it relatively. This shows that quantitative research can increase the understanding of differences and similarities. Subsequently, it is discussed how quantitative research can be utilized to understand differences between people using existing basic techniques. In line with the conceptualization of diversity, this includes techniques to study intersectionality and how developments have different effects on men and women. The continuum and techniques are illustrated by an example of political interest (in the Dominican Republic).
The ‘street’ and ‘youth’ have long been issues of social concern and the subject of research both in Brazil and elsewhere. The perception and experiences of youth in relation to the street, however, and the corresponding gender and class relations which permeate these, remain an under-researched topic. Drawing on fieldwork conducted in low- and middle-income neighbourhoods in Recife, this paper shows how the street consists of different spaces and how the youth experience corresponding layers of socio-spatial exclusions and inclusions which vary over time.
The notion that social identities and social inequality based on ethnicity, sexual orientation, and sex/gender are intersectional
rather than additive poses a variety of thorny methodological challenges. Using research with Black lesbians (Bowleg, manuscripts
in preparation; Bowleg et al., Journal of Lesbian Studies, 2008; Bowleg et al., Cultural Diversity & Ethnic Minority Psychology 10:229–240, 2004; Bowleg et al., Journal of Lesbian Studies, 7:87–108, 2003) as a foundation, I examine how these challenges shape measurement, analysis, and interpretation. I argue
that a key dilemma for intersectionality researchers is that the additive (e.g., Black + Lesbian + Woman) versus intersectional
(e.g., Black Lesbian Woman) assumption inherent in measurement and qualitative and quantitative data analyses contradicts
the central tenet of intersectionality: social identities and inequality are interdependent for groups such as Black lesbians,
not mutually exclusive. In light of this, interpretation becomes one of the most substantial tools in the intersectionality
researcher’s methodological toolbox.
In intersectionality studies, the lived experience of inequalities has been a central concern since its origins. Crenshaw referred to Black women’s experiences of oppression as the phenomenon to be studied and the reason why new theoretical tools, such as intersectionality, were needed. Here I approach intersectionality and lived experience from an emotional and geographic perspective, focusing on how spatiality is lived and constructed through emotions and on their role in (re)producing intersectional dynamics. I rely on Ahmed’s (Feminist Theory, Vol. 8 [2007], 149–68) conceptualization of (dis)comforts and the inhabitability of places by different bodies to show the genuinely spatial character of emotions. Applying the conceptualization to an intersectional framework, I develop a differentiation of (dis)comforts in relation to geometries of power and argue that emotions and their spatialities can be used as pointers to intersectional inequalities. I illustrate the theoretical proposals through the Relief Maps as a tool for the collection, analysis, and visualization of the social, geographic, and emotional dimensions of intersectional inequalities and reflect on how feminist research methods could consider emotions for studying intersectional dynamics.
Current approaches to radical democratic citizenship seek to open up new spaces for political action and politicise ordinariness. However, a question remains as to the extent to which current radical approaches to citizenship include one of the most overlooked groups: very young children. This article focuses on radical democratic citizenship and early childhood (0 to 8 years old), where rights are often violated and activism is not always recognised, particularly in everyday public spaces. Drawing on critical reflections from recent research projects focusing on young children’s rights in everyday public spaces, I argue that radical democratic citizenship in early childhood can be conceptualised through intergenerational and intersectional activism and through an analysis of children’s ordinary political acts which render visible processes of radical change.
Children's participation rights, enshrined in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989), have been a popular area of research, policy and practice for decades. Despite a great deal of interest and activity, participation rights have posed a particular challenge to implement. In response, researchers have consistently called for more in-depth and nuanced analyses of the way participatory rights are actually lived and experienced by children and young people, within the complexity of interdependent relationships. However, there has been surprisingly little focus on the emotional relations of children's participation rights. The analytical links between emotions and participation rights are rarely the focus and, where emotions are discussed, they are rarely discussed as a central concern in their own right. This article provides a review of the field and identifies three ways in which making emotions a central concern can help to advance debates on children's participation rights: by helping to unsettle ‘traditional’ constructions of the child-adult binary, by increasing sensitivity to ethical and safeguarding issues, and by making visible and challenging intersectional power relations.
This paper marks the study of childhood creativity as a geographical concern and examines children’s experiences of creativity in school spaces, paying particular attention to how such experiences are understood intersectionally and spatially. It draws on findings from an ethnographic research project that was conducted in one Scottish primary school classroom. It argues that the performance of children’s intersectional identities during peer-group interactions influences the way power operates in and through school spaces, creating cultures of inclusion or exclusion. It reaches the conclusion that childhood creativity is directly linked to, and affected by, the way children’s intersectional identities are performed within social spaces, and suggests that it is important for creativity research to take into account the operations of power among children. Implications for further research include the need for more dialogue on children’s experiences of creativity in various places and spaces in both the global North and South.
With this paper, we document aspects of a year‐long project with 11th‐grade students from a high school in City Heights, San Diego. The students chose to become present, to share their experiences, explore others' understandings of their neighborhood, and collaborate to create an online multi‐media narrative that reflected them and their relations to the neighborhood. Theoretically, we involve a transversal politics that embrace young people's multiplicities of relations. We assume multiculturalism as a foil to engage young people's community presence. We show how the project moved toward a vibrant, layered, networked, and lyrical presence for young people in City Heights.
Children have an intrinsic right to urban space. Yet children’s perspectives and agency are largely absent from research and public policy on issues that concern them. Common conceptualisations of children as vulnerable, incompetent, or unruly designate their marginalised status in the city. When gender is added, the deficit approach is reinforced. In this paper, we draw from theoretical and methodological approaches that affirm children’s agency and focus analytical attention on how gendered spatialities are performed. Using cognitive mapping and semi-structured interviews with children aged eleven and twelve in Melbourne, Australia, the study explored the ways in which children’s relationships with their neighbourhoods reflect, reproduce and resist gendered spatialities. We demonstrate that children are skilled ‘spatial agents’, actively producing spatialities with awareness and intention, and clear gendered embodiment. Our analysis indicates the importance of engaging children in urban design and considering intersections of gender, age and power in contemporary cities.
In this article we argue that what is missing in children’s rights studies is not so much the presence of theories, but rather reflections and discussions about the normative relevance, analytical qualities and explanatory powers of the mobilised theories. We consider theorisations in children’s rights, first, on the normative level, where there is a need to continue reflecting about the moral and legal rights children have and/or should have, and about how these rights can be further exercised, or need to be balanced against one another. Next, we look at the analytical merits of the concept intersectionality to consider simultaneously differences and similarities between children’s rights and other categories of fundamental rights, as well as to reflect on the very categories that are employed. We then discuss empirical implications of globalisation processes, that have significantly impacted on how children’s rights are taking shape in the world, and how interconnections between local and global spheres shape imaginations, discourses, normative frameworks, policies and programmes in the field of children’s rights.
Islamophobia is a reality today that finds its manifestations at different levels of society and has been researched through diverse gendered, ethnic, and regional perspectives. The sensitivity of the topic has resulted in limited work around exploring consequences of Islamophobia on Muslim children. As religiously charged crimes against Muslims in the West continue to grow, Islamophobia has crept into the schools, classrooms, and playgrounds of many countries and needs to be recognized and effectively mitigated. Based in a child rights-based context, this chapter is a review of empirical literature that attempts to characterize and theorize Islamophobia to understand why and how it affects the lives of Muslim children. It accounts for varied Islamophobic experiences that children encounter in regions of North America and Europe. It is inferred that educational institution cannot be isolated from global incidents of Islamophobia and become sites for further propagating racist sentiments. The chapter ends with school social work model directed towards prevention and reduction of Islamophobia.
Within feminist theory and a wide range of social sciences, intersectionality has been a relevant focus of research. It has been argued that intersectionality allowed an analytic shift from considering gender, race, class, sexuality and other categories as separate and added to each other to considering them as interconnected. This has led most authors to assume mutual constitution as the pertinent model, most times without much scrutiny. In this paper we review the main senses of mutual constitution in the literature, critically examine them, and present what we take to be a problematic assumption: the problem of reification. This is to be understood as the conceptualization of social categories as entities or objects in a broad sense and not as properties. We then present the property framework, together with the emergent experience view, which conceptualizes categories and social systems in a way that maintains their ontological specificity while allowing for their being deeply affected by each other.
Through testimonies of guardians and young adults looking back upon their lives as unaccompanied minors in Belgium, this paper aims to obtain better understanding of the multifaceted and simultaneous intersections that shape the unaccompanied minors’ care relationships. It claims that while age as a criterion for the entitlement to care might work as an enabling structural element in the care trajectories of unaccompanied minors, the young people’s intersectional positioning as both minor and immigrant translates into a minimalistic and bureaucratic apparatus of care that often fails to accommodate the young people’s actual needs. The paper aims to explore what a focus on care relationships can offer in light of the prevalent emphasis in policy on equal rights, rationality and equal opportunities and argues that an intersectional focus on affect and relationships might need us to reconsider assumptions of just care in greater depth.
This paper examines how children are able to think intersectionally in a context of imagined nationalist discourses and geographies that shape children’s understandings of hyphenated and ethnic identifications. We draw on data from three different field studies we have carried out during the last two decades in a divided Cyprus which examine how Greek-Cypriot children categorize and understand the labels ‘Greek’, ‘Turkish’ and ‘Cypriot’ and their hyphenated versions (i.e. ‘Greek-Cypriot’ and ‘Turkish-Cypriot’). Through its focus on children’s intersectional identities, our paper illustrates how children’s ability to border cross on the island allow for more nuanced understandings of both ‘self’ and ‘other’. The paper situates children’s emerging intersectional identities within the geographic realities of political and territorial division on the island. We argue that the dimension of ‘generation’ is an important intersectional addition to the concepts of gender and race. The paper shows that children’s spatial engagements during their visits to the ‘other side’ gave rise to a new, more intersectional understanding of themselves and others.
A large body of research has documented that exposure to images of thin fashion models contributes to women's body dissatisfaction. The present study aimed to experimentally investigate the impact of attractive celebrity and peer images on women's body image. Participants were 138 female undergraduate students who were randomly assigned to view either a set of celebrity images, a set of equally attractive unknown peer images, or a control set of travel images. All images were sourced from public Instagram profiles. Results showed that exposure to celebrity and peer images increased negative mood and body dissatisfaction relative to travel images, with no significant difference between celebrity and peer images. This effect was mediated by state appearance comparison. In addition, celebrity worship moderated an increased effect of celebrity images on body dissatisfaction. It was concluded that exposure to attractive celebrity and peer images can be detrimental to women's body image.
In this groundbreaking book, Nira Yuval-Davis provides a cutting-edge investigation of the challenging debates around belonging and the politics of belonging. Alongside the hegemonic forms of citizenship and nationalism which have tended to dominate our recent political and social history, the author examines alternative contemporary political projects of belonging constructed around the notions of religion, cosmopolitanism, and the feminist ‘ethics of care’. The book also explores the effects of globalization, mass migration, the rise of both fundamentalist and human rights movements on such politics of belonging, as well as some of its racialized and gendered dimensions. A special space is given to the various feminist political movements that have been engaged as part of or in resistance to the political projects of belonging.
Social scientists report difficulties in drawing out testable predictions from the literature on intersectionality theory. We alleviate that difficulty by showing that some charac-teristic claims of the intersectionality literature can be interpreted causally. The formal-ism of graphical causal modeling allows claims about the causal effects of occupying intersecting identity categories to be clearly represented and submitted to empirical test-ing. After outlining this causal interpretation of intersectional theory, we address some concerns that have been expressed in the literature claiming that membership in demo-graphic categories can have causal effects. © 2016 by the Philosophy of Science Association. All rights reserved.
In this paper I analyze how different aspects of identity combine to shape the experiences of seven young lesbians in public space in Manresa, a non-metropolitan city in Catalonia. I argue that their experiences need to be understood intersectionally and spatially, as complex processes that involve the mutually constituted identities that shift in space. I focus on interviews and Relief Maps to show how these dynamics work and how they are related to larger social processes such as the heteronormalization and adultification of public space.
The conceptualisation of intersectionality has been one of the most important contributions to feminism, as it allows for theorisation about multiple and intersecting oppressions. This contributes to a more complex and dynamic understanding of social relations and power structures, and it acknowledges the differences between categories, but it has no methodological direction. I try to take this debate a step forward, by developing what I have called Relief Maps: a new way of collecting, analysing and displaying intersectional data. I consider Relief Maps to be a sound tool for studying the Geographies of Intersectionality, as they show the relationship between three dimensions: power structures (the social), lived experience (the psychological) and places (the geographical). By showing some examples of them, I demonstrate how Relief Maps make empirical work on intersectionality possible and how they are able to take into account both privilege and oppression without using categories in a fixed and rigid way. Taking the spatial dimension as a central part of the analysis, they show how the relationship between power structures varies depending on places and also illustrate how subject formations are done and undone through everyday spaces. Relief Maps aim to take the potentialities of intersectionality and minimise its limitations: they intend to disrupt homogeneous categories while pointing towards the material consequences of oppression. Finally, Relief Maps also provide some insights on intersectionality itself, as they help to think about how power structures relate to each other and the role that experience and place play in these processes.
Over the last two decades, women have organized against the almost routine violence that shapes their lives. Drawing from the strength of shared experience, women have recognized that the political demands of millions speak more powerfully than the pleas of a few isolated voices. This politicization in turn has transformed the way we understand violence against women. For example, battering and rape, once seen as private (family matters) and aberrational (errant sexual aggression), are now largely recognized as part of a broad-scale system of domination that affects women as a class. This process of recognizing as social and systemic what was formerly perceived as isolated and individual has also characterized the identity politics of people of color and gays and lesbians, among others. For all these groups, identity-based politics has been a source of strength, community, and intellectual development. The embrace of identity politics, however, has been in tension with dominant conceptions of social justice. Race, gender, and other identity categories are most often treated in mainstream liberal discourse as vestiges of bias or domination-that is, as intrinsically negative frameworks in which social power works to exclude or marginalize those who are different. According to this understanding, our liberatory objective should be to empty such categories of any social significance. Yet implicit in certain strands of feminist and racial liberation movements, for example, is the view that the social power in delineating difference need not be the power of domination; it can instead be the source of political empowerment and social reconstruction. The problem with identity politics is not that it fails to transcend difference, as some critics charge, but rather the opposite- that it frequently conflates or ignores intra group differences. In the context of violence against women, this elision of difference is problematic, fundamentally because the violence that many women experience is often shaped by other dimensions of their identities, such as race and class. Moreover, ignoring differences within groups frequently contributes to tension among groups, another problem of identity politics that frustrates efforts to politicize violence against women. Feminist efforts to politicize experiences of women and antiracist efforts to politicize experiences of people of color' have frequently proceeded as though the issues and experiences they each detail occur on mutually exclusive terrains. Al-though racism and sexism readily intersect in the lives of real people, they seldom do in feminist and antiracist practices. And so, when the practices expound identity as "woman" or "person of color" as an either/or proposition, they relegate the identity of women of color to a location that resists telling. My objective here is to advance the telling of that location by exploring the race and gender dimensions of violence against women of color. Contemporary feminist and antiracist discourses have failed to consider the intersections of racism and patriarchy. Focusing on two dimensions of male violence against women-battering and rape-I consider how the experiences of women of color are frequently the product of intersecting patterns of racism and sexism, and how these experiences tend not to be represented within the discourse of either feminism or antiracism... Language: en
ABSTRACT This article explores women's fear of urban violence from a spatial perspective. It is based on qualitative data collected in Finland. It shows first that women do not have to be fearful. Boldness is associated with freedom, equality, and a sense of control over, and possession of space. Secondly, the article considers how and why fear of violence undermines some women's confidence, restricting their access to, and activity within, public space. Fear of violence is a sensitive indicator of gendered but complex power relations which constitute society and space. Women's fear is generally regarded as 'normal' and their boldness thought to be risky: the conceptualisation of women as victims is unintentionally reproduced. However, a more critical view might regard fear as socially constructed and see how it is actually possible for women to be confident and take possession of space.
The paper suggests that we can usefully approach whiteness through the lens of phenomenology. Whiteness could be described as an ongoing and unfinished history, which orientates bodies in specific directions, affecting how they `take up' space, and what they `can do'. The paper considers how whiteness functions as a habit, even a bad habit, which becomes a background to social action. The paper draws on experiences of inhabiting a white world as a non-white body, and explores how whiteness becomes worldly through the noticeability of the arrival of some bodies more than others. A phenomenology of whiteness helps us to notice institutional habits; it brings what is behind to the surface in a certain way.
In this paper we think about the performance of sexual identities in space, and try to explore the notions of transgression and parody implicit in recent queer theory, particularly in the work of Judith Butler. To do this, we take a long hard look at two current dissident sexual identities—the hypermasculine ‘gay skinhead’ and the hyperfeminine ‘lipstick lesbian’. We describe their evolution as sexual‐outlaw styles of the 1990s, and assess the effects of their performance in spaces which are, we argue, actively constructed as heterosexual. Although we are ultimately unsure and unable to agree about what kinds of trouble these identities cause, and for whom, and where, we want to share our unease, our questions, our own troubles.
In late modernity there has been a shift in the ways that individuals relate to society, in which traditional ideas, expectations, and hierarchies are being reworked. Released from the constraints and social norms of tradition, individuals, it is argued, are now freer to choose between a range of options in the pursuit of their own happiness. Notably, these social changes have been understood to provide more opportunities for lesbians and gay men to 'come out'-disclose their sexuality and live the lifestyle of their choice. Coming out is often implicitly discussed in academic literatures as an individual decision, and the consequences of coming out are also usually explored in relation to the personal narratives of the individual who has disclosed a lesbian and gay sexuality. To date, little attention has been paid to the actual processes through which sexual dissidents negotiate their identities with others, and to the consequences of such disclosures for those who are close to them or share their lives in various ways. In this paper we address this omission by focusing on young people's experiences of coming out with, and in, families of origin. We begin by examining what is at stake in the decision whether to come out or not by examining the role that families of origin play in young people's lives. We then explore how the process of coming out is actually negotiated within different families. Finally, we consider the 'outcomes' of these choices. In doing so we contribute to research on geographies of sexualities, geographies of the 'family', youth transitions, and the emerging field of social studies of emotions.
Acknowledgements. 1. Feminism and Geography: An Introduction. 2. Women and Everyday Spaces. 3. No Place for Women?. 4. The Geographical Imagination: Knowledge and Critique. 5. Looking at Landscape: The Uneasy Pleasures of Power. 6. Spatial Divisions and Other Spaces: Production, Reproduction and Beyond. 7. A Politics of Paradoxical Space. Notes to Chapters.
In the past twenty years, intersectionality has emerged as a
compelling response to arguments on behalf of identity-based politics
across the discipline. It has done so by drawing attention to the
simultaneous and interacting effects of gender, race, class, sexual
orientation, and national origin as categories of difference.
Intersectional arguments and research findings have had varying levels of
impact in feminist theory, social movements, international human rights,
public policy, and electoral behavior research within political science
and across the disciplines of sociology, critical legal studies, and
history. Yet consideration of intersectionality as a research paradigm has
yet to gain a wide foothold in political science. This article closely
reads research on race and gender across subfields of political science to
present a coherent set of empirical research standards for
intersectionality. a
This essay examines the local, everyday practices of heteropatriarchal power-dominating and resisting power, through which young Latina women negotiate teenage, sexual and gender subjectivity and spatial ordering of young heterosexual bodies. Their negotiations are shaped by and give shape to the material, discursive and representational social spaces of Los Angeles, worsening "landscapes of neglect" attributable to the changing geographies of private and public investment. Their narratives convey and construct a visceral experience of being tied, materially and discursively, to homely spaces as young carers, and their struggle to untie their competencies to the private, domestic sphere, or "inside," and their vulnerabilities to the public sphere, or "outside." In their struggle, the young Latinas variously reproduce, rework and resist the dominant norms and materiality of local places and their dispositionality in bodily terms.
Yuval-Davis discusses three interconnected questions relating to identity. She first examines whether and in what ways the notion of identity should be theorized, on the one hand, and empirically researched, on the other, focusing on the opposing views of Stuart Hall and Robin Williams. She then examines the contested question of what is identity, positioning it in relation to notions of belonging and the politics of belonging, and in relation to several influential schools of thought, especially those that construct identity as a mode of narrative, as a mode of performativity or as a dialogical practice. Her third interrelated question concerns the boundaries of identity and the relationship between self and non-self. She explores both social psychological and psychoanalytical approaches to that question, and deals with questions such as reflexivity, identifications and forced identities. The last part of the article explores several types of relationships between self and non-self, such as: 'me' and 'us'; 'me/us' and 'them'; 'me' and other 'others'; 'me' and the transversal 'us/them'. Yuval-Davis's basic argument here is that dichotomous notions of identity and difference, when theorizing boundaries of individual and collective identities, are more misleading than explanatory.
Social class is increasingly being recognized as an important factor in the development of population-based variation in health among teens. However, little consensus exists regarding its measurement or conceptualization.
This study examined beliefs about social class of 48 working class and 50 upper middle class 16-year-old, white teens.
Working class teens were more likely to misclassify themselves with regard to social class position. Significant class differences were present in beliefs regarding social mobility, parents' equity, equality of opportunity within society, and financial status as adults. How this conceptualization of social class translates into population-based variation in health remains an important area for further inquiry.
Mapping Desire: Geographies of Sexualities
- D Bell
- G Valentine
- Bell D.
Bell, D., and G. Valentine, eds. 1995. Mapping Desire: Geographies of Sexualities. Londres: Routledge.
Homofobia. Barcelona: Bellaterra
- D Borrillo
- Borrillo D.
Borrillo, D. 2001. Homofobia. Barcelona: Bellaterra.