LOCATING GENDER

This chapter examines gender as an aspect of

subjectivity that is both taken for granted and

extraordinarily elusive. We illustrate the power

of gender categories both experientially and the-

oretically, arguing that some kind of gender

binary is very deeply woven into the fabric of

cultural life. At the same time we illustrate how

gender is always bound up with other dimen-

sions of human experience and subjectivity

including those described by such terms as class,

race, sexuality, age and so on. That gender is

inseparable from these contributes to its elusive-

ness: the meaning(s) of gender cannot be isolated

from the specificities of class, race and so on.

Moreover, although the categories ‘men’ and

‘women’ seem readily distinguishable from one

another, on closer inspection it turns out to be

impossible to locate the source of this distinction

unambiguously. Gender therefore poses us with

puzzles.^1 It is a profoundly influential concept

through which our lives are marked and lived,

but if we scratch the surface of its meanings per-

plexing questions and confusions are revealed.

The combination of familiarity and elusive-

ness that characterizes gender can be understood

in terms of the influence of claims to knowledge

that purport to be universal in scope, which are

characteristic of dominant traditions of western,

anglophone thought. Such claims have been sub-

ject to extensive criticism by feminists among

others, who have pointed to biases implicit in

statements about people ‘in general’ that treat as

universal the experiences of some (Gilligan, 1982),

and to the very particular kind of human subject

(typically white, male, western, affluent, hetero-

sexual, able-bodied, adult) invoked in the making

of such claims (Lloyd, 1984; Nicholson, 1990).

Criticisms do not, however, demolish patterns of

thought overnight. Indeed critiques of universal

knowledge claims necessarily draw on the very

traditions they criticize. Nowhere is this clearer

than in feminist discussions of gender: feminists

cannot avoid using gender categories but at the

same time repeatedly question their validity and

meaning (Weir, 1997).

One of the most influential responses to this

dilemma is to ‘situate’ and pluralize claims to

knowledge, including those advanced by others

and by ourselves (for a classic statement see

Haraway, 1988). Situating or locating gender

(and any other potentially or purportedly univer-

sal concept) requires both a cultural and a geo-

graphical imagination: it requires that we attend

to particular meanings in particular contexts, and

it problematizes conceptualizations of space as

well as gender. This chapter aims to illustrate

and to extend the application of such an imagi-

nation, and it does so by drawing out some of the

ideas about human subjects and the spatialities of

subjectivities invoked in cultural geography’s

engagements with gender. We begin this task by

elaborating and situating our claim about the per-

vasive and problematic qualities of gender. We

then explore in greater depth four themes that

emerge from this account, and which illustrate

the range of, and some key directions in, current

research about gender in and around the special-

ism of cultural geography. Our account is neces-

sarily a positioned one and arises specifically

from our own commitment to, and participation

in, the development of feminist perspectives in

human geography in general and in cultural

geography in particular (Bondi et al., 2002). As

we will illustrate, ‘feminism’ is itself multi-

faceted and contested, but we assume throughout

that concepts and practices of gender are bound

up with the exercise of power.

17

Troubling the Place of Gender

Liz Bondi and Joyce Davidson

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