patrolled by private security guards. They are
also frequently governed by community asso-
ciations that regulate residents’ activities and
design decisions. The proliferation of gated
enclaves, private governanceandsecurity
is generally understood to lead to the delegiti-
mization ofpublic servicesand is a physical
manifestation of growing resistance to ‘dem-
ocratization, social equalization, and [the] ex-
pansion of citizenship rights’ (Caldeira, 2000,
p. 4; but see Salcedo and Torres, 2004). Thus,
gated communities have been the focus of
research not only because of their global pres-
ence but also because of what they suggest
about perceptions of security, community,
citizenship,public space,propertyand the
role of thestatein contemporary urban soci-
eties (cf.surveillance). em
Suggested reading
Caldeira (2000).
gender A categorical distinction between
men and women; a technology ofclassifica-
tionthat naturalizes sexual difference and is
intertwined with other distinctions, such as na-
ture/culture, and racial and national differenti-
ation.placesbecome coded as masculine or
feminine, and this can be one important
means of naturalizing gender difference
(Bondi and Davidson, 2003). Haraway
(1991b) provides a thorough discussion of the
history and meaning of the term ‘gender’
within feminist theory through to the mid-
1980s (seefeminism). The term has a broadly
similar history withingeography: there has
been a move away from theories of relatively
static gender roles to gender relations, and
towards a fuller exploration of how diverse
gender relations are constructed in all spheres
of life. Emphasis has been placed on the variety
of femininities and masculinities – ways of liv-
ing gender, depending on context and intersec-
tions withrace,class,religion,sexuality,
nationality and other social and geographical
differences(Bondi and Davidson, 2005; see
alsofeminist geographies).
Within Anglophone feminism, ‘gender’ is
typically contrasted to ‘sex’: the former is
understood as asocial construction, the
latter defined by biology. The distinction
has been part of an effort to denaturalize
conventional understandings of women and
femininity, to remove women fromnature
and place them withincultureas constructed
and self-constituting social subjects (see
phallocentricism). The treatment of gender
withingeographyis slightly unusual in this
regard, as it has not been ‘quarantined from
the infections of biological sex’ (Haraway,
1991b, p. 134) to the same extent as in other
disciplines. In an effort to theorize patri-
archy, for instance, Foord and Gregson
(1986) identified necessary relations that con-
stitute gender relations. Following the analyt-
ical procedures ofrealism, they reasoned that
two genders, male and female, are the basic
characteristics of gender relations. In order to
theorize the necessary relations between these
basic characteristics, they ask ‘Under what
conditions do men and women require each
other’s existence?’, to which they answer, for
biological reproduction and the practice of
heterosexuality. Foord and Gregson’s analysis
was quickly criticized, because it made it diffi-
cult to theorize how capitalismstructures
gender relations (McDowell, 1986) and for
its biologism, especially in terms of its por-
trayal of heterosexuality as biologically or psy-
chologically fixed (Knopp and Lauria, 1987).
The latter criticism signalled important new
ways of thinking about the relations between
sex and gender. The feminist distinction
between sex and gender may save gender
fromessentialistor naturalizing versions of
femininity, but it repeats the problems of the
nature/culture dualism insofar as it posits gen-
der as the (active) social that acts upon the
(passive) surface of sex. It is itself thus vulner-
able to the charge ofmasculinism: ‘‘Is sex
to gender as feminine to masculine [as nature
to culture]?’ (Butler, 1993a, p. 4). A further
problem is that within the terms of the sex/
gender dualism sex seems to disappear once
it is gendered: gender absorbs and displaces
sex (these tendencies within geography are
discussed by Nast, 1998).
Drawing upon theories of discourse,
deconstructionandpsychoanalysis, Butler
(1993a) tackled this problem by arguing that
both sex and gender are socially constructed.
Neither sex nor gender hasontologicalsta-
tusandneithercan be theorized apart from
regimes of (hetero)sexuality. For Butler, sex is
neither extra- nor pre-discursive: the sexed
bodyis brought into being through the regu-
latory regime of heterosexuality. Withinhet-
eronormativity, we must be gendered and
sexed as either male or female to be human:
she argues that those who are not properly
sexed are threatened by psychosis (unstable
bodily and psychic boundaries) andabjec-
tion. Gender is a truth effect of a discourse
of a primary and stable identity: this identity
emerges out of repetitive gender perform-
ances, which are instantiations of an ideal/Gregory / The Dictionary of Human Geography 9781405132879_4_G Final Proof page 268 2.4.2009 6:30pmGENDER