Jon Binnie

Cosmopolitan knowledge and the production and consumption of sexualized space: Manchester's gay village

According to }i~ek (1997) the logic of late capitalism offers opportunities for the incorporation of previously marginalised groups, whilst simultaneously dividing them at the same time. These possibilities for incorporation create divisions on the basis of gender, race, sexuality and class. Here, we examine how the capitalist desire for opening new markets for leisure consumption with new forms of branding, alongside the desire for the territorialisation of space by campaigning gay and lesbian groups, has led to the formation of a ‘gay space’ marketed as a cosmopolitan spectacle, in which the central issue becomes a matter of access and knowledge: who can use, consume and be consumed in gay space? We also ask what is the radical political impetus of sexual politics when commodified as cosmopolitan and incorporated spatially? The paper grounds the examination of the politics of cosmopolitanism within a specific locality drawing upon research undertaken on the contested use of space within Manchesters gay village. The paper is organised into four sections. The first examines competing definitions of cosmopolitanism, exploring how sexuality and class are framed as conceptual limits. The second describes how Manchesters gay village is imagined and branded as cosmopolitan. The third considers the navigation and negotiation of difference within this space. The final section evaluates the exclusions from cosmopolitan space and pursues the significance of this for arguments about incorporation in late capitalism.

Geographies of sexuality - a review of progress:

This article examines the recent rapid growth of work on the geographies of sexuality. The authors argue that while sexuality has become an area of considerable interest within social and cultural geography, much remains to be done to tackle homophobia within the discipline as a whole. The article critiques the ease with which sexuality as an object of study has become assimilated into the discipline while homophobia remains deep seated. The authors discuss how feminist geography has been both supportive and restrictive in this respect. Reviewing the development of work on geographies of sexuality, the article argues we need to move away from a simple mapping of lesbian and gay spaces towards a more critical treatment of the differences between sexual dissidents. Finally, the authors argue for a greater forging of links with writers outside the discipline to consolidate work in this emerging area.

Coming out of Geography: Towards a Queer Epistemology?

In this paper I argue that in order to challenge the marginalisation of lesbians, gay men, and other sexual dissidents within the discipline, we need to pay more attention to how geography has been studied. I consider how different theoretical approaches to the subject have treated sexual dissidence. While positivism has been particularly guilty of ignoring the interests of lesbians and gay men, the new cultural geography, and feminist geography, though enabling a limited amount of work on the geography of lesbians and gay men, may also reproduce heterosexism. This raises the question of which methodological and epistemological frameworks work best in promoting the interests of sexual dissidents within the discipline, and the academy more generally. Last I consider the material components of sexual dissident identity and how these impact upon the production of geographical knowledge.

Mundane mobilities, banal travels

All of us are caught up in banal or mundane mobilities, whether it is the walk to the bus stop and catching the bus to town, the daily commute by train to work, the trip by car to the supermarket, the cycle ride to school or the holiday visit to a tourist attraction. What makes these everyday voyages mundane is their commonplace and regular occurrence, so they are not generally conceived as extraordinary or special trips through time and space but are enmeshed with the familiar worlds we inhabit, constituting part of the unreflexive, habitual practice of everyday life. We believe that this focus upon the banal or mundane dimensions of mobility is timely with regard to recent claims that have been made about the expansion of mobilities through technological and social developments and the ways in which people increasingly coordinate their activities in new and complicated ways under conditions of accelerating and expanding journeys through space and time. This ‘mobility turn’ or ‘new mobilities paradigm’ has appositely identified the flows which make up the spatial and social complexity of the expanding, variegated relationships between people and places and critiqued static, bounded conceptions of place, space and belonging. While we welcome their timely critique of geographical sedentarism, Sheller and Urry somewhat hyperbolically claim that ‘all the world seems to be on the move’ despite the fact that movement has always been endemic to social life. They exemplify their claim by identifying the large-scale travel of the likes of tourists, migrants and business people, implying that contemporary mobility is distinctive by virtue of its trans-national characteristics (Sheller and Urry 2006: 207). Yet while they warn against the hyperbolic tendencies that overstress disembedding and deterritorialization processes without acknowledging the ways in which ‘all mobilities entail specific, often highly embedded and immobile infrastructures’ (2006: 210), the examples they discuss tend to focus upon the spatially extensive movements across the planet rather Social & Cultural Geography, Vol. 8, No. 2, April 2007

Invisible Europeans: sexual citizenship in the new Europe.

In this paper I consider issues of transnational sexual citizenship. I examine the issue of international migration of lesbians and gay men. For lesbian and gay prospective migrants, obtaining citizenship rights is difficult owing to the laws affording status being based on bloodlines and marriage. This immediately excludes lesbian and gay relationships, which are generally not recognised for the purpose of obtaining rights of residence. I explore these issues in the context of the different policies towards the migration of lesbians and gay men in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom.

‘Like a Bomb in the Gasoline Station’: East–West Migration and Transnational Activism around Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer Politics in Poland

This article examines the relationship between East–West migration in Europe and activism around lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) politics in Poland. EU accession in 2004 was accompanied by an intensification of homophobia in Polish political discourse particularly associated with neo-populist Radical Right parties such as Law and Justice and the League of Polish Families. Marches for the tolerance and equality of lesbians, gay men and other sexual dissidents were banned or attacked by far-right counter-protestors in a number of Polish cities. This article examines the connections between East–West (and other) migrant flows to and from Poland and the emergence of transnational activist networks forged in response to these events. These migratory flows facilitated the forging of these networks and activist solidarities, generating material and affective support. The discussion of these issues draws on interviews with activists participating in these networks. Our argument shows that there is concern among activists about how to represent the post-accession East–West migration of lesbian and gay Poles and the extent to which this is due to homophobic oppression in Poland. Moreover we find that there is considerable investment in the potential for East–West migration to transform the attitudes of socially conservative Polish citizens.

Solidarities and tensions: Feminism and transnational LGBTQ politics in Poland:

This article explores the significance of feminism in transnational activism around LGBTQ protest events, namely equality marches and associated festivals in Kraków, Poznań and Warsaw in Poland. The arguments advanced in this article are based on a multi-method qualitative research project focusing on transnational cooperation in the planning and realization of LGBTQ protest events in Poland, conducted in the years 2008–2009. The authors highlight the decisively coalitional nature of the activist networks around LGBTQ politics in some of the locations studied. They argue that feminists are core actors in these ‘networked solidarities’ around the oppression and marginalization of lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer and transgender people both in local and transnational contexts. Solidarity is a concept used by many research participants to account for their political actions and to rationalize intra- and intergroup dynamics shaped by complex webs of differences. The authors draw on postcolonial feminist discussions on the limits and potentialities of politics of solidarity as a ‘politics of location’ to account for tensions which some activists reported regarding their experience of ‘coalition work’. Some of these tensions related to gender politics and gender relations, always articulated in the conjunction of wider webs of power relations.

The Politics of Age, Temporality and Intergenerationality in Transnational Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer Activist Networks

Age, temporality and intergenerationality have often been neglected in debates on intersectionality within sexuality studies. This article contributes towards these debates by examining how age and generation operate within transnational activism around LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer politics) in Poland. Drawing on interviews with activists in Poland, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and the UK, this article examines age and generation as significant aspects of activists’ positioning with regard to each other and to archives of political experiences and discursive repertoires. The article argues that age and generation matter on the level of personal inter-subjectivity and are frequently rationalised by recourse to different national and local narratives of LGBTQ movement histories.

'Because it was a bit like going to an adventure park': the politics of hospitality in transnational lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer activist networks.

This article explores the overlaps between tourism and forms of political activism. The authors examine the politics of hospitality and solidarity within transnational lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer activist networks formed to combat homophobia, biphobia and transphobia in Poland. Based on interviews with participants in the March for Tolerance in Krakow – the city’s annual tolerance and equality march – the authors argue that questions of hospitality were significant in the formation of activist networks related to this event. Conflicts between Polish and foreign activists were often expressed through the language of hospitality. We discuss the labour of producing hospitality and the ethics of recognition of hospitality as a form of solidarity. The failure on parts of activists to inhibit roles recognized as central to the practice of hospitality in an adequate manner led to disenchantment and even disengagement of activists from the event. The discussion of hospitality as a form of solidarity contributes towards existing understandings of both solidarity tourism and queer tourism.

Critical queer regionality and LGBTQ politics in Europe

Abstract This article examines what a critical focus on the region can contribute to the study of LGBTQ politics in Europe. It is argued that a regional lens can challenge methodological nationalism in existing studies of European LGBTQ politics. It can also contribute towards a broader examination of the politics of scale in relation to the Europeanisation of LGBTQ politics. The article discusses alternative theoretical approaches to the region and examines the queer affinities of these approaches in turn. The argument proceeds to consider the political effects of these alternative theoretical framings of the region in contemporary LGBTQ politics in Europe. It is suggested that a regional critical lens can foreground sub-national and transnational regional political formations, which otherwise may be overlooked in an uncritical focus on the national scale of LGBTQ politics. A regional perspective can also help unsettle Anglo-American framings of sexual politics.