Narrations and practices of mobility and immobility in the maintenance of gender dualisms

Boyer, Kate ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8356-4412, Mayes, Robyn and Pini, Barbara 2017. Narrations and practices of mobility and immobility in the maintenance of gender dualisms. Mobilities 12 (6) , pp. 847-860. 10.1080/17450101.2017.1292027

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Abstract

This paper analyses the role of practices and representations of mobility in supporting particular kinds of gender orders. While scholarship has shown the various ways women are materially and symbolically ‘fixed’ in place, less attention has been paid to how discourses and practices of mobility interface with systems of gender differentiation more broadly. This work is based on a robust empirical base of 55 interviews, 90 hours of participant observation and an analysis of museum displays in Kalgoorile, Western Australia, an iconic frontier mining town selected for this investigation as a site of strongly bifurcated gender discourses. Analysing our field data through the lens of feminist theory which problematizes gender binaries (Braidotti 2002; Coole and Frost 2010; Haraway 1991), we argue that while some narrations of gender mobilities serve to reinforce gender binaries, lived practices of movement can also destabilise (idealised) notions of gendered movement. This paper extends conceptual work by advancing understanding about the role of mobility within systems of gender differentiation, showing how lived practices of mobility are just as likely to challenge idealised patterns of gendered movement as they are to reinforce these patterns.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Published Online
Status:	Published
Schools:	Geography and Planning (GEOPL)
Subjects:	G Geography. Anthropology. Recreation > G Geography (General)
Uncontrolled Keywords:	mobility, sex-work, skin-work, gender binaries, mining, Kalgoorlie Australia
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
ISSN:	1745-0101
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	3 November 2016
Date of Acceptance:	18 October 2016
Last Modified:	02 Dec 2024 10:00
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/95830

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