Melissa R. Gilbert

“Race,” Space, and Power: The Survival Strategies of Working Poor Women

Feminist geographers have documented that the spatial entrapment of many women negatively affects their economic opportunities. The experiences of many African-American women, however, suggest that the spatial-entrapment thesis requires refinement. I argue that the spatial-entrapment thesis is based on a problematic conceptualization of the links between space and power in peoples daily lives, one that equates immobility with powerlessness and mobility with power. The thesis not only theorizes power as unidirectional (i.e., more power, more mobility), it also masks important differences among women by undertheorizing mobility and immobility relative to social relations other than gender, such as “race.” I argue that, depending on the constellation of power relations, the spatial boundedness of womens lives is a potential resource for, as well as a constraint on, their economic security. The utility of this reconceptualization of the links between space and power for examining the opportunities for and b...

THEORIZING DIGITAL AND URBAN INEQUALITIES

Contemporary research on disparities in access to and use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) – what is commonly referred to as the digital divide – is limited in terms of its ability to explain the interrelationships between digital and urban inequalities. Drawing upon critical geographical conceptualizations of the relationships between power, place, and scale, and a Bourdieusian conceptualization of technological and social capital, this article proposes a model of the interconnections between urban and digital inequalities from the vantage point of the everyday experiences of economically marginalized urban residents in the United States. On the basis of this model, the author suggests a future research agenda that examines the empowerment or disempowerment of people related to ICTs in relation to their own frameworks for ICT use; how technological capacity is related to technological and social capital embedded in particular places; and how technical capacity is developed across multiple spaces and multiple arenas situated in a broader analysis of inequality.

The Implications of Including Women's Daily Lives in a Feminist GIScience

In this paper, we argue that a feminist geographical analysis that examines women as active agents in their daily lives, pays attention to the multiplicity of women’s experiences in relational space, and values knowledge for transformative purposes, provides insights as to how GIScience might develop in the near future. We draw upon our research with two different community organizations in North Philadelphia to show how a feminist geographical analysis can shape the conceptualization of a community GIS. We argue that collaborative work with community organizations based on “a view from below” necessitates alternative institutional arrangements while providing rich data to better understand the intersection of daily life and information and communication technologies (ICT) as experienced, in the particular case of our work, by poor women. Our research illustrates that understanding ICT frameworks from the perspective of women and in the context of their daily lives has important implications for GIScience.

FEMINISM AND DIFFERENCE IN URBAN GEOGRAPHY

(1997). FEMINISM AND DIFFERENCE IN URBAN GEOGRAPHY. Urban Geography: Vol. 18, No. 2, pp. 166-179.

GEOGRAPHIES OF WELFARE REFORM

Beginning with the Contract with America of the 1994 Congress, and continuing through the passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunities Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) in 1996 to the present, the issue of welfare has once again permeated political debates at the federal, state, and local levels. As initial results of evaluation projects and research emerge in this period of early implementation of the new rules, geographers are particularly well positioned to examine the impacts of welfare reform on different groups of people, in different places, and the variations in representation of welfare/workfare rhetoric and discourse. Far from merely documenting spatial variations, however, the papers in this issue demonstrate the commitment geographers have to bringing a spatial perspective to critical research and debate on welfare reform, social policy, and poverty. The papers further suggest that analyzing and theorizing changes in public assistance requires a broader analysis of issues of representation and rhetoric, state devolution, economic restructuring, spatial scale and place context, and the differentiated trajectories of industrialized countries in an increasingly global economy.