Robyn Longhurst

Dis)embodied geographies

Geographers are beginning to show interest in corporeality. The body is becoming evident in numerous geographical studies. It is timely, therefore, momentarily to ‘step back’ and address the question ‘what is a body?’ This article begins with an examination of some recent approaches to understanding embodiment – for example, phenomenological, psychoanalytic and ‘inscriptive’ approaches. Secondly, it reviews the work of geographers who claim that a Cartesian separation between mind and body underpins geographical discourse. Also discussed in this section are some of the ‘costs’ of this dualism underpinning geographical discourse. Finally, readers are alerted to a range of recent geographical literature in which the body is made explicit. This literature has the potential to prompt new understandings of power, knowledge and social relationships between people and places.

Placing Masculinities and Geography

Introduction There has been an increasing focus in feminist and pro-feminist inspired studies on examining men, male subjectivities and masculinities in the decade since Gender, Place and Culture began publication. Our aim in this article is to provide readers with a brief overview of some of this recent research, and then to place these works within a critique of the Anglocentric character of geographic knowledge production. The article proceeds in the following manner. We begin with a brief definition of masculinity, in order to stress its temporal and geographical contingency. We follow this discussion with a brief review of some of the research on masculinities undertaken in the past two decades, with a particular emphasis on studies of the social and cultural geographies of masculinity completed in the decade since Gender, Place and Culture began publication. It is important to note that our review is far from exhaustive, but rather, more indicative. Our purpose here is to provide a context for our subsequent critique of a specific scaling of knowledge that constitutes much of the context for the way that work on masculinities is understood in Anglo-American geography.

VIEWPOINT The Body and Geography

This paper highlights some of the major issues involved in theorising the body. Dualisms such as mind/body, sex/gender and essentialism/constructionism are discussed in order to provide a starting point for understanding the historical privileging of the conceptual over the corporeal in the production of hegemonic, masculinised and disembodied geographical knowledges. The paper also reviews some of the current literature in feminist geography that problematises the mind/body split and makes the sexed body explicit. This literature, I believe, provides fertile ground for further interdisciplinary and geographical inquiry .

‘Corporeographies’ of Pregnancy: ‘Bikini Babes’:

Drawing on Judith Butlers notion of performativity I examine some of the ambivalences and contradictions surrounding the exposure of pregnant bodies in public places. I focus on a bikini contest that was held on 7 October 1998 for pregnant women in Wellington, Aotearoa/New Zealand. I also focus on the narratives of thirty-one women who were pregnant for the first time and living in Hamilton, Aotearoa/New Zealand. There are normative expectations that women will do pregnancy in specific ways. For example, when occupying public places they are expected to act in a manner that is demure and modest. Such behaviours are repeated over time, eventually taking on the appearance of being ‘natural’. The pregnant women who entered the bikini contest momentarily destabilised these expected behaviours causing ‘pregnancy trouble’. The contestants were described by organisers of the contest as “pregnant women with attitude”. Parodying more normative beauty pageants the contestants (im)pregnated the streets. Yet at the same time the contestants reiterated hegemonic discourses of pregnancy by celebrating motherhood as a glorious and beautiful thing. This indicates the multiple ways in which pregnant women and others negotiate pregnancy resulting in a variety of complex subject positionings.

Critical geographies of love as spatial, relational and political

Geographers to date have resisted writing about feelings, affects, places and spaces of love. It is timely to put love on the geographical agenda. We begin by addressing the question ‘what does love do?’, and we review the work of geographers who have been thinking about love via a number of different theoretical lenses. We then argue for a consideration of love as spatial, relational and political. We prompt geographers to think critically about love in its entire multisensory, lived, embodied, felt and contradictory guises. Finally, the work of Ahmed, Sedgwick and Berlant is useful for furthering geographers’ insights on love.

Bodies, gender, place and culture: 21 years on

This article examines research on embodiment published in Gender, Place and Culture (GPC) over the past two decades. We searched using the keywords ‘body’, ‘bodies’, ‘embodiment’, ‘embody’, ‘flesh’, ‘fleshy’, ‘corporeality’ and ‘corporeal’, the titles and abstracts of all the articles that have appeared in GPC since it first began publication in 1994. Articles containing these keywords were listed in a searchable bibliography. What we found was a growing volume of research inspired by ‘body politics’ produced over a 21-year period that compares favourably to cognate geography journals. We also found that various themes have emerged including maternal and geopolitical bodies. In other areas, we identified gaps. Throughout the article, we engage with the question: has the upsurge of interest in embodiment, as expressed in the pages of GPC since 1994, led to an upheaval of masculinist ways of thinking in the discipline? We conclude by expressing our feelings of ambivalence.

(Ad)dressing Pregnant Bodies in New Zealand: Clothing, fashion, subjectivities and spatialities

The article examines the ways in which pregnant women in the West use clothing as a means of constructing a range of complex and seemingly contradictory gendered subjectivities in public spaces. The article draws on interview data collected from 19 first-time pregnant women in Hamilton, New Zealand. These women were asked about maternity wear, body image, fashion, activities they had continued, reduced or stopped during pregnancy, and the places/spaces they occupied during pregnancy. The article focuses on four different ‘looks’ and subjectivities that pregnant women in this research tried on: the thrifty, self-sacrificing mother to be; the sexy, proud pregnant woman; the growing woman who fears her body will be read as fat; and the pregnant professional. For first time pregnant women making the transition to motherhood clothing the body can be a complex act. What women wear during pregnancy speaks volumes about their subjectivities—what they reveal, what they conceal, what images they create, for whom and where. Este artículo examina las maneras en que mujeres embarazadas en el Oriente utilizan ropas como medio de construir una gama de complejo y evidentemente contradictorio subjetividades de género en espacios públicos. Este artículo emplea información se dedujo de 19 entrevistas de mujeres se embarazan por primera vez en la ciudad de Hamilton, Nueva Zelanda. Se preguntaron estas mujeres sobre ropas maternidades; sus imágenes de cuerpos; moda; las actividades normales ellas han continuado, reducido o detenido; y los lugares/espacios ellas ocuparon durante sus embarazos. Este artículo enfoca las 4 ‘apariencias’ diferentes y los subjetividades que las mujeres embarazadas en esta investigación se han probado: la económica, abnegada, futura madre; la sexy, orgullosa mujer embarazada; la mujer engordada que tiene miedo de que su cuerpo se interpretaría como gordo; y la profesional embarazada. Para las mujeres embarazadas por primera vez y que hacen la transición a la ropa de maternidad, el cuerpo pueda ser un acto complejo. Lo que llevan las mujeres durante sus embarazos habla fuerte de sus subjetividades—lo que revelan, lo que ocultan, cuales imágenes crean, para quien y por donde.

(Troubling) spaces of mountains and men: New Zealand's Mount Cook and Hermitage Lodge

In this paper we trace one pervasive expression of hegemonic New Zealand national identity that developed around the sport of mountaineering from the 1880s, culminating in Sir Edmund Hillarys historic first climb of Mount Everest in 1953. The image of the masculine mountaineering hero, developed on and around New Zealands highest peak, Mount Cook, is, however, inherently unstable, and we focus on two sites of potential disruption. First, we examine the experiences of white mountaineering women on Mount Cook. These women both embraced the masculinist identity of hero and destabilized it. Womens mountaineering points to the active and complex construction (rather than simple reproduction) of imperialisms, nationalisms and masculinities. Second, we examine the role played by the Hermitage Lodge situated at the base of Mount Cook. Narratives about mountaineering too often ignore the huts, lodges, the places of staying behind. The roles performed by women (and some men) who never had the opportunity and/or ...

Sexy beasts and devoted mums: narrating nature through dolphin tourism

This paper focuses upon a growing activity within New Zealands ecotourism market: viewing and swimming with dolphins. Drawing on poststructuralist feminist theory we examine some of the ways in which New Zealand dolphin tour operators and others represent dolphins in relation to sex and gender. Three sets of data inform this research: (1) promotional materials, such as postcards, brochures, Internet websites, and advertising; (2) participant-observation on dolphin swim tours; and (3) interviews with tour operators. We argue that dolphins are constructed paradoxically as sexually polyamorous and promiscuous—sexy beasts—and as loving and maternal—devoted mums. These seemingly contradictory narratives about dolphins and nature perform different functions. The discourse of dolphins as sexy beasts can be read as an attempt by tour operators to use sex to enhance the quality of a product. Tourists are offered an opportunity to experience ‘wild nature’ as sexualized ‘other’. The discourse of dolphins as devoted mums can be read as an attempt by tour operators to anthropomorphize dolphins and offers tourists an opportunity to experience ‘domestic nature’. Fostering a connection between humans and dolphins helps to highlight the need for environmental protection to ensure the continuation of the species and ‘tourist dollars’.

Mothering, digital media and emotional geographies in Hamilton, Aotearoa New Zealand

This article traces a line between two literatures that can usefully be drawn into deeper conversation: geographies of digital media, and geographies of emotion. Its broad theoretical aim is to ascertain what insights might be gleaned by increasingly bringing together these two literatures. The more specific and primary aim, however, is an empirical one and that is to offer a materially grounded example of 35 mothers who live in Hamilton, Aotearoa New Zealand who use digital media to communicate with their children. Particular attention is paid to the capacities of different digital media, both individually and combined, to help facilitate, but certainly not guarantee, different emotions. The research is informed by a feminist geographical reading of theories of digital media and emotion. Findings illustrate that increasingly mothers are making use of digital media, both singularly and collectively, to increase the chances of a particular desired emotional outcome with their child or children. This article concludes that bodies, devices, screens, sounds and images comingle to mediate emotions over time and space.