Geographies of social difference and participation

1. Geographies of social difference and participation Victoria Lawson University of Washington

2. Social Difference: • Results from the operation of economic, political and social/cultural processes that shape meanings and identities around race/ethnicity, gender, class, disability, sexuality, age…. • I examine “the ways in which gendered, racialized, and classed identities are fluid and constituted in place – and therefore in different ways in different places” (Pratt and Hanson, 1994: 6)

3. Which social differences matter where and when? • Why these events seem ‘out of place’? • Spatial unevenness of processes • Spatial embeddedness of processes

4. Place and the embeddedness of processes: • Place: not a stable ‘thing’ with a pre-given coherence. Rather, place is the constellation of processes; their coming together in space (Massey, 2005).

5. Role of place poorly understood… • “More attention to the role of ‘place’ on poverty and anti-poverty policies is long overdue” (Blank, 2005: 459) • We lack a robust understanding of both the role of place in contributing to poverty and of spatial variations in poverty processes.

6. Empirical work on place and difference: • Jamie Winders ‘White in all the Wrong Places’ (2003) • Laura Pulido (1996) ‘Environmentalism and Economic Justice: two struggles in the Southwest’

7. ‘Employment versus Empowerment: women’s work in Ecuador’ (Faulkner and Lawson, 1991) • Putting labor market segmentation in place.

8. Lessons for broadening participation: • A ‘social hierarchy of work’ reclassifies occupations according to worker’s access to productive resources, responsibility, autonomy in work processes and conditions. • Research must constantly question our measures of incorporation – drawing on comparative research across place and time.

9. Structuring of (re)productive activities across urban, regional and international space-economies (Massey, 1994). Spatial divisions of labor:

10. Tailoring is a Profession, Seamstressing is Work! (Lawson, 1999) • Examines spatial division of labor produced by economic austerity programs (1990s) and through gendered constructions of skill and professionalism in garment production.

11. Lessons for broadening participation: • This project examined place-specific narratives and spatial practices that perpetuate gender discrimination. • Similar processes of constructing different others are at work in the academy (often unwittingly) and they maintain privilege for middle class whites and construct barriers for underrepresented people [Linda Kerber, March 18th, 2005 Chronicle of Higher Education].

12. Geographical imaginaries: • Understandings of social difference rely upon imaginary landscapes (abstracted spaces) to represent particular subjects. • David Wilson (2005) traces how imagined geographies of inner city neighborhoods are produced by city leaders and property developers as ‘deadly gang space’, as ‘gang turf’ or as filled with ‘welfare households’ to bolster an urban politics of gentrification.

14. Rural Poverty Project: Imagined Homeplaces (Lawson and Jarosz, 2008) • County Commissioner’s imaginary of Daine Co. is romantic, he describes it “…like a Norman Rockwell picture, right there and I live it” (2006). • ‘Yes…I am treasurer for the Ministerial Association and have been since I got here, so for 13 years. And basically, what we take care of is transients. People coming through’ (2006).

15. Poor Whites choose not to work: • “……there’s not many [White] people who want to do pipe moving for those long hours and the work…specifically, irrigation pipes…There is an extreme lack of people who could do it….people got out of that because it was so seasonal and because, you know, it was such a mundane type of work…” (Job services staffer, ID 2006).

16. ‘Criminal Latinos’ • “…this is going to come across as being a racist remark, and I don’t mean it to be – but, read the legals in the newspaper sometime, where they list what the police department … has charged people…look at the ethnic break down of what those charges are….It’s really aggravating to see the small percentage of the population [Latinos] have the big percentage of the violation” (County Commissioner, Highgate Co., 2005).

17. In conclusion • Cultural narratives of difference intersect with uneven economic development, leading to consequential differences in incomes, access to resources, access to employment and to political voice. • These processes are embedded in places and interconnected with spatial divisions of labor and broader cultural and political projects.

18. Tailors: • Men interpret their success in terms of toughness and stamina, rather than being politically enabled: • “Look, I hire men because tailoring work is a hard job…making a suit is hard work… you have to have many skills, it isn’t like a seamstress who makes a blouse…, that is simple, that is light work…making and finishing a suit is extremely hard” (personal interview)

19. Seamstresses: • Women see their garment work as enabling their roles as mothers, wives and daughters: • “My parents didn’t have the resources to provide an education to all their children (there are eight of us)…they provided an education to my oldest brother…each of us has our destiny at it fell on me to go out and work to help so that they could provide money for my brother’s education” (personal interview).