Audrey Kobayashi

Unnatural discourse. ‘Race’ and gender in geography

Abstract Geographers’ long‐term involvement in the construction ‘race’ and gender has occurred through literally and metaphorically mapping out the world in ways that highlight, perpetuate and naturalize difference. This paper provides a critical analysis of the naturalization of these categories by revealing parallels in their social construction and in the ways in which they have been independently conceptualized. The focus is on the extent to which ‘race’ and gender as social constructs have been, and are, predicated upon biological categories. We argue for a conceptualization which, while eschewing notions of essentialism and determinism, integrates the biological and social, recognizing that distinctions between the biological and cultural are invariably socially constructed. We also highlight the extent to which social constructions are political constructions, sexism and racism being modes of thought which construct the body for ideological ends. We begin to chart the political strategies whereby d...

Policies and Practices for an Antiracist Geography at the Millennium

As we enter the new millennium, geographers have a momentous opportunity to reflect upon the historical development of our discipline and the academic culture within which it thrives, with the aim of setting out an antiracist agenda. We advocate a fundamental refashioning of the discipline, not simply an extension of its research agenda; for racism, like gender, is not just another item in the lexicon of geographical subjects. The agenda includes, but is not limited to: clarifying relations between racism and law; racism and immigration policy; racism and poverty; and mobilizing racialized groups around policy issues. These items need to be addressed both through scholarship and through activism, as centering geographical practices in the streets rather than in the academy impels not only more effective social change, but also new theoretical understanding of geographies of engagement. Our agenda for antiracist geography also involves three aspects of institutional change: to build up on and extend traditional geographical scholarship; to change the basis of the discipline by extending the principles of antiracism throughout our institutional practices, particularly in the classroom; and to change the face of the discipline by increasing the participation and contributions of geographers of color.

Remaking human geography

Introduction: Humanism and historical materialism in contemporary social geography, Suzanne Mackenzie and Audrey Kobayashi. Part 1 Issues: the social and economic imperatives of restructuring - a geographic perspective, John Bradbury restructuring the relations of work and life - women as environmental actors, feminism as geographic analysis, Suzanne Mackenzie theory, hypothesis, explanation and action - the example of urban planning, Jeanne M. Wolfe synthesis in human geography - a demonstration of historical materialism, Richard Harris. Part 2 Methods: quantitative techniques and humanistic historical materialist perspectives, Geraldine Pratt theory and measurement in historical materialism, Simon Foot et al agency in economic geography and the theories of economic value, Trevor Barnes responsive methods, geographical imagination and the study of landscape, Edward Relph a critique of dialectical landscape, Audrey Kobayashi. Part 3 Directions: historical considerations on humanism, historical materialism and geography, Denis Cosgrove on the dialogue between humanism and historical materialism in geography, Andrew Sayer fragmentation, coherence and limits to theory in human geography, David Ley.

Geographies of Peace and Armed Conflict: Introduction

This is the first annual special issue of the Annals of the Association of American Geographers. It represents a commitment on the part of the four section editors to highlight themes of major inte...

Transnationalism, Gender, and Civic Participation: Canadian Case Studies of Hong Kong Immigrants

It is widely claimed that recent migration trends show increasing levels of transnational activity, but there is a need for a more detailed understanding of the relationship between transnationalism and citizenship participation, particularly from a gendered perspective. A study of immigrants from Hong Kong to Vancouver and Toronto, the largest group of immigrants to Canada in the period 1989 to 1997, shows that, although migration occurred in a context of anticipated political instability around reunification with the Peoples Republic of China, the most significant justification for emigration was to further the interests of the family, particularly childrens education. Gender differences are subtle, but women tend to focus more strongly on family considerations, whereas men are somewhat more concerned with economic and political issues. Transnational activities focus around ties of family and friendship, rather than around political or economic ties. Women and men both seek formal rights of citizenship, and are beginning to express a desire for more participation in Canadian society. Contrary to theories of hypermobility among Hong Kong emigrants, transnationalism and citizenship participation are seen as a basis for settlement. Gendered approaches to transnationalism need to understand how the concept of citizenship, and citizenship participation, develops as a result of wider social relations that are structured differently for women and men.

Place, affect, and transnationalism through the voices of Hong Kong immigrants to Canada

The emergence of a significant transnational community of immigrants from Hong Kong to Canada, and their Canadian-born children, during the 1990s can be understood through the experience of the affect of place, which gives meaning to the emotional experiences of community members. In contrast to theories that treat affect as a preconscious attribute, we treat affect as an emergent, socially constructed, and contextual capacity for individual emotional experiences in place. Affect is a discursive product of, and is produced by, the experiences of people situated in place. The affects of suburban residential communities of concentrated Hong Kong immigrants and their children in Vancouver and Toronto are expressed through a narrative of a ‘natural’ and wholesome Canadian lifestyle that is situated in spacious suburban houses that contain close-knit family relations. For these participants, the wholesome suburban lifestyle contrasts with the unwholesome, and unnatural, urban lifestyle of Hong Kong.

Why Women of Colour in Geography

The dismally low number of women of colour in the discipline of geography in dominantly English-speaking countries can be explained by a number of systemic features of the discipline. Evidence suggests that a culture of whiteness in academic hiring has overtaken more overt forms of racial and sexist discrimination to limit the number of women of colour hired. More fundamentally, a lack of mentoring discourages women of colour from entering the discipline from undergraduate studies onward. We now face the ironic situation that as more and more studies of racism and other forms of discrimination appear in the geographical literature, the number of women of colour doing those studies remains static. ¿Por qué mujeres de color en geografía? Las cifras deplorablemente bajas de mujeres de color en la disciplina de geografía anglo-americana pueden ser explicado por varios característicos sistemático de la disciplina. La evidencia sugiere que una cultura de blancura en la contratación académica ha alcanzado formas más explícito de discriminación racial y sexual que limita el número de mujeres en la disciplina. Más fundamental, la falta de dar consejo disuade mujeres de color de abrazar la disciplina desde los estudios universitario no graduado hacia adelante. Nos enfrentamos con la situación irónica que mientras se publican más y más estudios de racismo y otras formas de discriminación en las revistas geográficas, el número de mujeres de color que produce estos estudios queda estático.

The Dialectic of Race and the Discipline of Geography

This article uses a biographical approach to trace the ways in which major thinkers in the discipline and, in particular, past presidents of the Association of American Geographers (AAG) in their Presidential Addresses have conceptualized race. Race thinking emerged during the Enlightenment and, in geography, became more explicitly environmentalist through the nineteenth century and the early years of the twentieth century. By the mid-twentieth century, environmentalism was surpassed, but most human geographers, including cultural geographers, urban geographers influenced by the Chicago School of urban sociology, or radical geographers, tended to avoid projects on race. I want to highlight the advances in antiracist scholarship by geographers of color since the 1970s. They have received too little attention, although they influenced a new generation of geographers.

Affirmative Action and Employment Equity: Policy, Ideology, and Backlash in Canadian Context

Abigail B. Bakan and Audrey Kobayashi take up the issue of “backlash” in “Affirmative Action and Employment Equity: Policy, Ideology, and Backlash in Canadian Context.” But where most studies examine the social forces orchestrating backlash, Bakan and Kobayashi consider the ways in which policymakers, including those on the “Left,” respond to and make room for the politics of backlash. In their case study of “employment equity,” Bakan and Kobayashi explore how policymakers abandoned “affirmative action” in favour of “employment equity” in response to an anticipated backlash. Drawing on interviews with policymakers involved in the Abella Report and the Rae NDP government in Ontario, Bakan and Kobayashi argue that the fear of backlash was a central, though often overlooked, factor in shaping employment equity in Canada. The result was that important social policy objectives were abandoned early in the policymaking process. Their study is a timely indicator of the need to consider how and to what extent the politics of backlash may be indirectly shaping public policy in Canada.

Situated Knowledge, Reflexivity

The concept of situated knowledge was adopted initially by feminist geographers during the 1990s, in response to historian of science Donna Haraway’s definition of ‘situated knowledges’ as epistemic positions that are partial, embodied, and localized. Geographers have used the concept to deepen their understanding of the ways in which geographical knowledge is produced, emphasizing both the specific social location of, and the spatial interactions among, people. Discussions of situated knowledge follow two major strands in the geographical literature, one focusing on reflexivity as a means of understanding the geographical self in relation to others; the other strand focusing on the construction of the other through geographical imaginations. The practice of reflexivity in geography, while a necessary part of situating the researcher, has also had the ironic result of resituating the researcher in a position of privilege. The practice of geographical imagination provides a means of going beyond the self to understand the recursive ways in which self and other are constructed under the geographical gaze. The practice of geographical imagination, however, also runs the ironic risk of respatializing the other as subordinate. The two approaches cannot be clearly separated and together represent a critical epistemology with both moral and political implications.