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Abstract
This article explores intersections between academic work and emotional work at a feminist geography reading weekend held by the Women and Geography Study Group of the Royal Geographical Society-Institute of British Geographers in the UK in 2006. It points to the importance of the fleeting, often unreported, spaces of feminist geographical praxis and of inserting these in our disciplinary histories. Using a performative textual strategy it offers a poly-vocal reflection on the complex, challenging and productive experiences of this kind of academic workspace. In so doing it contributes to feminist engagements with the practices of neo-liberal academia, to debates about the emotional geographies of feminist geographical work, and to discussions of the value of activities outside the norms of academia in providing potentially supportive and creative spaces for geographical praxis.
Trabajo y asombro durante el fin de semana: sobre emociones en la praxis geográfica feminista
Este trabajo explora las intersecciones entre el trabajo académico y el trabajo emocional en un fin de semana de lectura sobre geografía feminista llevado a cabo por el Grupo de Estudio de la Geografía y la Mujer del Royal Geographical Society-Institute of British Geographers en Gran Bretaña en 2006. Apunta a remarcar la importancia de los fugaces, y a menudo no reportados, espacios de praxis geográfica feminista, y a insertarlos en nuestras historias disciplinarias. Utilizando una estrategia textual de actuación, se ofrece una reflexión poli-vocal sobre las complejas, desafiantes y productivas experiencias de este tipo de espacio académico. De esta manera, contribuye a las participaciones feministas con las prácticas del mundo académico neoliberal, a los debates sobre las geografías emocionales del trabajo geográfico feminista, y a las discusiones sobre el valor de las actividades que están fuera de las normas del ámbito académico para proveer espacios creativos que potencialmente apoyen la praxis geográfica.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank all the participants at the Hebden Bridge Reading Weekend, and in particular those who contributed reflections on the event to this article, for their inspiration and enthusiasm for this project. Thanks also to Jo Norcup for permission to use her photographs. The authors would also like to thank the helpful and thoughtful comments from the reviewers and from the editor, Brenda Yeoh.
Notes
1. Reference here is to the Women and Geography Study Group (Citation1997) book, Feminist geographies.
2. The Women and Geography Study Group (WGSG) was set up in 1980 within the then Institute of British Geographers. Since the institutional merger of the 1990s, WGSG has been an academic research group of the Royal Geographical Society (incorporating the Institute of British Geographers) (http://www.rgs.org). The Group sponsors sessions at the RGS conference, holds mid-year events, offers prizes for undergraduate dissertations in feminist geography, has published a number of collectively authored or edited volumes, and has residential reading weekends on feminist geography themes approximately every two years. Further information can be found on the Group's website (http://www.wgsg.org.uk).
3. Readings discussed at the Weekend are listed with an asterisk in the list of references.
4. The session, entitled ‘International Perspectives on Gender and Geographical Knowledges’, was co-sponsored by the WGSG and the History and Philosophy of Geography Research Group and was convened by Avril Maddrell and Alison Blunt. The audio file and audio-visual presentation used are both available from the WGSG website (http://www.wgsg.org.uk).
5. See parallels to Pamela Moss and Karen Falconer Al-Hindi's (Citation2007) publication of an ‘anti-anthology’ of feminisms and feminist geographies, which both creates an anthology and challenges the very notion of how feminist geographical knowledges are diversely constructed.
6. Industrial action on pay and conditions involving academic staff in UK universities was underway in spring 2006 and was not resolved when the reading weekend took place.
7. The weekend might also be ‘placed’ more broadly within the UK context. Discussions in feminist geography have recently highlighted the variation and locatedness of the development of feminist geographical knowledges and praxis between different national and/or linguistic contexts (Bauriedl Citation2007; Garcia-Ramon and Monk Citation2007; Moss and Falconer Al-Hindi Citation2007). It is therefore useful to see that this article is about one element of feminist geographical practice in the UK. It emerges out of the long-term development of the WGSG as a group and a set of practices, it is situated at least in part within the intellectual terrains of the development of what has elsewhere been highlighted as a particularly ‘anglophone’ feminist geography (Garcia Ramon et al. Citation2006), and it depends in part on particular issues such as the relatively short distances around the UK which make such a weekend meeting more feasible. (The WGSG makes some bursaries available to postgraduates and non-waged geographers who wish to participate through some of its annual research grant from the RGS. The group also seeks to include childcare provision at its events.) However, evoking a ‘progressive’ notion of place to think about the weekend is important – while the weekend is ‘placed’ within a particular context, it is only one example of the diverse practices which constitute the field of feminist geographies in the UK. All 24 participants at the weekend were women, both postgraduates and academic staff and while the majority were from British universities, and the meeting was based around English-language papers, there were participants at this particular event from Zimbabwe, the USA and Australia, and participants' research interests ranged from the Middle East to Latin America or urban England. The WGSG membership includes many people who were not at the weekend, but who are involved in diverse ways in the group, and many who attend WGSG events, including this one, are not formal members of the group.
