CFP: Young people, public space and gender
Paper session at the RGS-IBG Annual International Conference 2016, London, August 30-September 2, 2016
Session sponsorship: Geographies of Children, Youth and Families Research Group (GCYFRG)
Session convenors: Mattias De Backer (Vrije Universiteit Brussel) & Claske Dijkema (Université de Grenoble)
In our increasingly surveilled, commercialised, privatised and sanitized public spaces (Sorkin, 1992; Davis, 1998; Zukin, 2000; Atkinson, 2003; Lofland, 1998; Davis, 1998) young people negotiate their way and claim their place in particular ways. On top of this, young women have to take the gendered nature of the public domain into account. Dominant family role patterns transform public space in a masculine realm, pushing young women to the safe feminine spaces of the household (Valentine, 1989). Also among youngsters territory is claimed and demarcated by boys. In mixed groups, boys usually dominate the division of space: girls do not exert any direct influence on the composition, shape and activities of groups (Karsten, 2001).
Irrespective of ethnicity or class, girls and young women, much more than boys and men, negotiate fear and possible danger in the public domain, especially in the evening. Fear of violent crime, daily events of harassment and unwelcomed comments may result in a variety of coping mechanisms ranging from avoidance tactics to dressing ‘appropriately’, or young women may prefer to stay at home or obey to a self-imposed curfew. But not only women are victims of violence. Rather on the contrary, civil society organisations such as the black lives matter campaign in the USA and the 1st of June mouvement in Marseille call attention to the fact that the main victims of physical violence (police violence, fights and drug-related violence) in public space are men, especially if they are have roots elsewhere and live in poorer neighbourhoods (Muchielli, 2002).
In this session we hope to pose and answer some of the following questions: To what extent are traditional gender roles taken over by young people? How are these related to power dynamics? How do young women or young men negotiate daily fear and feelings of insecurity? How does class or income change young people’s mobilities in the city? What cultural or religious factors (in Islam culture, for instance) reinforce the above image or distort it? How is the interaction between the sexes shaped by dominant images of the female body?
We invite qualitative papers from the fields of geography but also sociology, criminology and other disciplines concerned with the above. We accept papers on (but not limited to):
- the gendered nature of public space
- surveillance, policing and gender
- cultural factors and practices of veiling
- coping mechanisms against (fear of) violent crime
- harassment and masculinities
- intersectionality of gender and ethnicity
- gender roles and power dynamics
- seduction and the (female) body
- male violence, masculine performance and the ‘cool pose’
- urban ethnography of young people in public space
Applicants should submit a 250-word abstract, including a preliminary title, to Mattias De Backer ([log in to unmask]) and Claske Dijkema ([log in to unmask]) no later than February 12th.
Yours,
Mattias & Claske
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