Feminisms in Geography

Book excerpt: In this innovative reader, Pamela Moss and Karen Falconer Al-Hindi present a unique, reflective approach to what feminist geography is and who feminist geographers are. Their carefully crafted textbook invigorates feminist debates about space, place, and knowledges with a fine balance among teaching chapters, reprints, and original essays. Offering an anthology that actually questions the very purpose of an anthology, the editors create and then negotiate a tension between reinforcing and destabilizing scholarly authority. They challenge the idea that there is one set of works that acts as the vision, interpretation, voice, and feel of feminist geography while both reproducing key previously published works and including fresh essays from a number of feminist geographers in a single volume. The first chapter frames feminism, geography, and knowledge as a m lange of ideas, principles, and practices. Each of the three major sections of the volume begins with an introductory essay that places individual contributions into the overarching argument about the construction of feminist geography. Each introduction is then followed by a combination of reprints and original essays that contribute both to understanding how feminist geographical knowledge is constructed differently in different places and to showing what feminist geographers do wherever they are. The final chapter extends the anti-anthology arguments and raises questions that feminisms in geographies have yet to address. Students and scholars will find both the approach and the discussion essential for a full and nuanced understanding of feminist geography. Contributions by: Sybille Bauriedl, Kath Browne, Joos Droogleever Fortuijn, Kim England, Karen Falconer Al-Hindi, Anne-Fran oise Gilbert, Melissa R. Gilbert, Ellen Hansen, Susan Hanson, Audrey Kobayashi, Clare Madge, Michele Masucci, Janice Monk, Pamela Moss, Ann M. Oberhauser, Linda Peake, Geraldine Pratt, Parvati Raghuram, Bernadette Stiell, Amy Trauger, Dina Vaiou, The Sangtin Writers: Anupamlata, Ramsheela, Reshma Ansari, Vibha Bajpayee, Shashi Vaish, Shashibala, Surbala, Richa Singh, and Richa Nagar