Sex, Gender, Becoming - PULP

64 Jeanne van Eeden
The investigation of shopping and malls as explicitly gendered social
practices and spaces 17 is based on the recognition that the economic
structure of capitalism and the ideology of patriarchy contribute to
the definition of gender and space in society. Gender relations are not
consistent, but can vary according to the social spaces where they are
enacted, which means that most social spaces are symbolically
gendered in some manner. 18 From the 1960s onwards, the constitutive
power of spatial practices and the desire to uncover the
hidden geographical texts that underpin the masculinist and
phallocentric gendering of space generated considerable debate. 19
This found expression in cultural geography, which is particularly
concerned with modalities of power, hegemonic practices, and
representational strategies that operate in landscapes. 20 The manner
is which the unequal status of women has been rendered in spatial
practices forms one of the focus areas of feminist cultural geography,
which interrogates the ‘spatial dimensions of power relations
between the sexes [as embodied in] ... the differential use, control,
power and domination of space, place and landscape for social,
economic, [leisure] and environmental purposes’. 21 According to
Meagan Morris, a feminist analysis of shopping malls ought therefore
to be concerned with the ‘critical study of myths of identity and
difference, and the rhetoric of “place” in everyday life’. 22
3. Spatial practice and gender
Michel Foucault’s conviction that space is ‘fundamental in any
exercise of power’ has assumed significance in contemporary cultural
studies and the analysis of the social construction of space. 23 Space
and place are constructed in terms of social beliefs concerning
gender, class, race, and ethnicity, and are informed by ideologies
such as capitalism and modernism. In this manner, symbolic and
material manifestations of power and value systems become
embedded in landscape. Henri Lefebvre’s statement that ‘([s]ocial)
space is a (social) product’ alludes to the fact that all constructed
spaces embody a process of signification that operates according to
social practices that reflect power relations. 24 This implies that space
17 R Bowlby ‘Modes of shopping: Mallarmé at the Bon Marché’ in N Armstrong & L
Tennenhouse (eds) The ideology of conduct (1987)?; Fiske (n 8 above); Morris (n 8
above).
18 C Barker Cultural studies. Theory and practice (2000) 293.
19 E Soja Postmodern geographies. The reassertion of space in critical social theory
(1989) 2.
20 D Gregory & D Ley ‘Editorial: culture’s geographies’ (1988) 6 Environment and
Planning D: Society and Space 115.
21
C Aitchison ‘New cultural geographies: the spatiality of leisure, gender and
sexuality’ (1999) 18 Leisure Studies 24, 25.
22 Morris (n 8 above) 395.
23
M Foucault ‘Space, power and knowledge’ in During (n 8 above) 168.
24 H Lefebvre The production of space (1991) 17, 26.