Gender & Space Project
Hi,
Just starting a blog for the PUKAR Gender & Space Project to connect with other groups and people.
The Gender and Space Project focuses on gender as a category to examine the ordering and experience of the city and its varied spaces, particularly public space. Public space in the context of the study refers to public places, ranging from streets, public toilets and market places (across class contexts) to recreational areas and modes of public transport. The project is located in and focuses on the city of Mumbai. Research on this project combines traditional social science research such as ethnography, interviews and group discussions along with methodology drawn from the areas of film, photography, architecture. The project also has a strong pedagogic component involving elective courses in architecture and liberal arts colleges and short workshops. The project aims to understand the hierarchies and boundaries that determine access to public space along a variety of axes (class, caste, religion, geographic location and gender). It hopes to unsettle the gendered binaries regulating women’s presence in public space, raising questions about the ways in which ideas of private-public, respectability-unrespectability, safety-violence, rational-risky are reflected the discourses of public space and citizenship.
You can find more information at : www.pukar.org.in
Shilpa Phadke
posted by Gender & Space @ 3:55 PM
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We are very pleased to inform you that the last issue of Economic and Political Weekly (April 28 - May 4, 2007; Vol. 42, No17) carries three essays which are based on research conducted by the Gender & Space Project at PUKAR (funded by the Indo Dutch Programme on Alternatives in Development).
The three essays are as below:
Shilpa Phadke. ‘Dangerous Liaisons: Women and Men; Risk and Reputation in Mumbai’.
This paper interrogates the discourse of safety in public space to argue that making a claim to the right to take risks in public space rather than petitioning for safety might take women further in the struggle to access public space as citizens. The paper also argues that women’s exclusion from public space is linked to the exclusion of other marginal citizens.
Shilpa Ranade. ‘The Way She Moves: Mapping the Everyday Production of Gender-Space’.
This paper examines the everyday practice of gendered public space through an analysis of three ‘mapping' studies conducted in the city of Mumbai. It focuses on how male and female bodies locate themselves in and move through public space in their everyday negotiation of space, in the process participating in the production and reproduction of a hegemonic gender-space.
Sameera Khan. ‘Negotiating the Mohalla: Exclusion, Identity and Muslim Women in Mumbai’.
This essay suggests that the restrictions imposed on Muslim women by their own community are closely linked to the exclusion of the Muslim community as a whole. The essay contends that Muslim women’s capacity to engage risk in public spaces is dependent on their entire community also being able to take similar risks.
The authors would welcome any comments on these essays.
More information on the Gender & Space Project is available at: www.genderandspace.org
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