Cultural Landscapes
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McDowell, Linda.
Gender, Identity, and Place: Understanding Feminist Geographies.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999.
In what ways are gender,
identity, and geography related in a collective power struggle? And (as with
any cultural landscape study) how is this relationship between the three reciprocal
and interdependent? These are the major questions framing Gender, Identity,
and Place. In this comprehensive and instrumental book, McDowell uses feminist
approaches to walk us through the various locations of human inhabitation to
prove that gender identity is both affected by and effects certain elements
of a place. She convincingly illustrates that "explicit and implicit rules
and regulations about whose bodies are permitted in which spaces between them
and their internal divisions" [166]. Power and resistance are integral
parts of McDowell's cultural landscapes, which range from the local to the transnational
(body, home, city, work, public, nation, world) as the chapters progress.
The ultimate promise of the book is the insistence that by considering gender
as part of geography, not only can we conceptualize a new past (in which, e.g..
women and other minorities were not passive agents) and a new present (in which,
e.g., we understand the connections between turning women into symbols or objects
and foreign relations), but we can also be confident that power relations are
variable and therefore open to changes.
The book is an introduction
to feminist geography useful for its accessibility, its wealth of encyclopedic
definitions and case studies, and its survey of related literature and research
in more fields than geography. Included with each chapter is an annotated
outline of suggestions for further reading that encourages more in-depth and
concentrated research. The concluding chapter is particularly useful
to the scholar as it analyzes how a feminist/alternative study might differ
from more conventional/mainstream studies. Here, McDowell presents benefits
and drawbacks of each method, helping us make our own methodological choices.
[S. Dangelas.]