LAST CALL FOR PAPERS
AAG 2004
The 100th Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting
14-19March, 2004, Philadelphia
URBAN WOMEN SPACE, EMBODIMENT, AND CONTROL
Hille Koskela, University of Helsinki & Carina Listerborn, Stockholm
University
This session seeks to explore the ambiguity of women’s experience of urban
life. Cities are places for fun, emancipation and excitement, loaded with
mystique, expectations and dreams. But depending on gender, race, sexuality
and age the uses of the urban spaces are also restricted. The access to
public urban life is not equally distributed. Feminists have emphasized
both the liberating and the oppressing aspects of the city and urban life.
Fear and lack of safety have been heavily discussed during the latter part
of the 1990s in relation to urban environments. Feminist researchers have
pointed to the fact that women and men experience urban life differently
and that, specifically, fear of sexual assault restrict women in their
mobility. Policies to make public spaces safer, such as the increased use
of CCTV, are often controversial and contradictory. Urban Women involves
many different issues because women’s needs and desires in relation to
urban life differs there is no single, monolithic, ‘womanhood’. This call
invites paper abstracts dealing with one or more of the following themes:
1) Ethnicity, Safety and Control: It is a feminist and democratic project
to pursue women's equal right to the city and urban life such as a safer
city. Ethnic groups are at the same time also often subjected to exclusion
due to gentrification and crime prevention work. How could the diversity
and differences be analyzed in relation to the safety work?
2) Prostitution and Trafficking Reshaping Urban Gender Roles: At a global
level we are now facing a situation where 700 thousand to 2 million women
are trafficked across international borders annually. The problem is
emerging as the gap between the rich and poor countries increases and
wherever a war has hit a country it will induce prostitution and
trafficking industries often of a violent nature. How are urban gender
roles shaped and re-shaped by the growing sex industries and the growing
acceptance of ‘sex work’ that is appearing all over the world?
3) Sexual Harassment in Public Space: The everyday experience in urban life
contains of both ‘pleasure and pain’. Sexual harassment is a part of the
gender relations in urban life. In what way does this threat influence
women’s life and experience of urban spaces? What kind of strategies do
women adopt to respond to harassment?
4) Resistance: Women have reclaimed urban public space through political
action, demonstrations and acts of resistance throughout modern history.
Many acts of resistance have been occasional events, such as "Take back the
night" - marches. However, women also use more routinized resistance
strategies in their everyday lives. How does resistance help to change
urban life and reshape gender roles?
5) The Politics of Looking; ‘Bodily Control Embodied Control’: Since
women have shown to be the one's that most often feel insecure it is often
claimed that women would also be the ones who benefit from increased
control. However, there is another interpretation of control, especially
the visual one: it can be understood as a form of offensive scrutiny. How
is the embodied participation in urban life controlled and restricted? How
are women making themselves free and empowered within the controlling
space?
6) Work and Leisure in the City: Migration to cities has always been a way
for women to be able to live the life they choose. Historically,
urbanization gave women the possibilities to have economic independence, as
well as own time and (sub)culture. What role does migration play today in
women’s life? How is urban space emancipating at present times? How do women
negotiate between urban dangers and pleasures?
Papers of a theoretical and/or empirical nature on any of these six themes
would be welcome. No geographical or historical limits have been set for
case studies. NGO representatives are also welcome to participate.
Abstracts of no more than 200 words should be sent by September 28th 2003
to one of the following addresses:
****
Dr. Hille Koskela
Department of Geography
University of Helsinki
PO Box 64
00014 HY, FINLAND
Phone + 358 40 732 7325
e-mail [log in to unmask]
********
Dr. Carina Listerborn
Department of Human Geography
Stockholm University
S-106 91 Stockholm, SWEDEN
Phone +46-8-164835
e-mail [log in to unmask]
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