Vertical and horizontal communities of practice: gender and geography in South Africa

Abstract

For this special edition marking the centenary of geography in South Africa, we have documented the communities of practice associated with geography and gender; and we have presented a review of the scholarship emerging from this community. The South African gender and geography community of practice is connected to communities of practice at different scales. We examine the relationship of this community to international initiatives and we examine the contribution of South African feminist geographers to broader feminist discourse. We also document the embeddedness of this community of practice with other local gender-based research communities of practice. Finally, we examine challenges to the South African geography and gender community of practice.

Keywords:

• Community of practice
• gender and geography

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank David Hedding, who is currently researching employment equity statistics, for sharing figures on the number of geographers and their positions in South Africa. We would also like to express our appreciation to Mandy Young and the reviewers for their helpful comments on previous drafts of the paper.