both politically and for its ability (potentially) to
provoke learning (or ‘unlearning’,^6 as the case
may be).
Perhaps the oldest and most developed body
of literature dealing with sexuality and space
(and one in which both of us have been deeply
involved) is that which addresses sexuality in the
context of ‘the urban’. Both within and beyond
the discipline of geography, scholars and
activists have written quite widely about
processes of gay community development, terri-
toriality, neighborhood change, gentrification,
social movements, urban politics and the cultural
politics of urban space (as these pertain to sexua-
lity). Most but not all of this work focuses on
gay, lesbian and other sexual minority identities
and communities. Because it has a nearly quarter-
century history, this literature, as a whole, is less
dominated by queer and other forms of post-
structuralist theory than some of the more con-
temporary literatures discussed above. Some of it
is in fact quite descriptive and empiricist: for
example, Ketteringham’s (1979; 1983) work on
the role of gay business enterprises in revitaliz-
ing the Broadway corridor of Long Beach, CA,
and Winters’ (1979) consideration of the role of
gay people in the social identities of evolving
neighborhoods. Other efforts address gay and
lesbian territoriality from the perspectives of
symbolic interaction, oppression/resistance and
anarchism (Levine, 1979; McNee, 1984; 1985;
Murray, 1979; Weightman, 1980). And much of
the work produced in the 1980s and early 1990s
proceeded from a Marxian or neo-Marxian urban
political economy perspective, with focuses on
gay gentrification, the roles of gay and lesbian
interest groups and social movements in urban
politics, and the emergence of gay and lesbian
residential and commercial spaces in cities
(Castells, 1983; Castells and Murphy, 1982;
Davis, 1995; Knopp, 1990a; 1990b). But beginn-
ing in the early 1990s, poststructuralist and queer
theories – responding in part to the rise of queer
politics and AIDS activism, and in part to the
demonstrated inadequacies of more structuralist
paradigms – began to inform work on sexuality
and space even while the empirical focus
remained heavily on urban areas and experiences
(for example, Bech, 1993; Bell, 1994; Bell and
Valentine, 1995; Binnie, 1993; Brown, 1994;
1999; Ingram et al., 1997; Knopp, 1998; Seebohm,
1994; Valentine, 1993b; but see Kramer, 1995).
Attention began to be paid to the erotic signifi-
cance of urban public space, conflicts over how
space is constructed, coded and used through
sexualized performances (for example, in
parades), and spatial strategies for both enforcing
and resisting heterosexism and other forms ofsexual control. ‘Sexuality’, meanwhile,finally
began to be construed much more broadly, to
include various constructions of heterosexuality
as well as minority sexualities (Nast, 1998).
Non-geographers have also been insightful in
exploring the intersection of sexuality and the
city, as evinced by the work of Bill Leap (forth-
coming). Indeed, his innovative work on how
sexualities intersect with race, class and gender
through fragments of metropolitan Washington,
DC has the potential to queer classic regional
geography!
Even more recently a body of work has begun
to appear that focuses on non-metropolitan and
rural queer sexualities (Phillips et al., 2000).
Because it is so new, this work is, not surpris-
ingly, heavily influenced by queer theory.
Interestingly, it seems focused primarily on get-
ting non-metropolitan and rural queer issues ‘on
the map’ in the discipline of geography, in much
the same way that the urban work that preceded
it seemed interested in getting sexual minority
issues addressed. What awaits future researchers
is the very exciting project of exploring the links
between sexuality issues in different places and
at different scales (see below).
At a somewhat broader scale, a small but
growing body of explicitly geographical work
now addresses the mutual constitutions of sexu-
alities and discourses of nationhood, citizenship
and the state.^7 Bell (1995) and Binnie (1997), for
example, consider the significance of laws
regarding minority sexual practices and their
enforcement through borders and immigration
policies for notions of European citizenship and
individual European national identities (for
example, British, Dutch). Michael, meanwhile
(Brown, 1997; 2000), has yoked modes of citi-
zenship and Foucauldian notions of governmen-
tality by exploring challenges to state-centered
discourses of citizenship implicit in much AIDS
activism and the closeting effect of the positivist
epistemology underlying the British and US
national censuses. And Nast (1998; 1999) has
explored the ways in which discourses of nation-
hood are not only always sexualized, but classed,
gendered and racialized as well (again, in a
mutually constitutive way).
One area that is as yet still underdeveloped
within geography is global-scale studies of sexua-
lity and space (but see Kidron and Segal’s 1984
The New State of the World Atlasand Seager’s
1997 The State of Women in the World Atlas).
Non-geographers, such as Robert Aldrich (1993),
Neil Miller (1992), Lars Ebenstein (1993) and
Dennis Altman (1997) have looked at issues such
as the globalization of western ‘gay’ culture, the
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