Robyn Longhurst
Biographic Data
| ID | 213671 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Robyn Longhurst |
| GIVEN NAMES | Robyn |
| FAMILY NAME | Longhurst |
| SIGNATURE | LONGHURST R |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Waikato |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-9192-0643 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 47 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 1410 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 47 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1994 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2022 |
| H-INDEX | 18 |
Postfeminism, consumption and activewear
Activewear (clothing designed specifically for fitness and functional movement) has become a hugely popular fashion style for women around the world. Scholars have critiqued the activewear industry for reproducing postfeminist and neoliberal discourses, with advertising and marketing primarily featuring heteronormative women’s bodies (thin, toned, white, young), with a strong emphasis on consumption and choice. In this article, we contribute to t…
Everyday activisms
This paper considers the everyday spaces and places of disability activism for parents of disabled children in Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand. Geographers and disability scholars are yet to consider disability activism in a range of everyday child–parent spaces. Parents resist, rework, and subvert ableist structures and spaces in ways that may seem unremarkable, but that are indeed significant acts. We question the meaning of activism by examin…
Fashioning hybrid Muslim women’s veiled embodied geographies in Hamilton, Aotearoa New Zealand
In this article, we foreground the intersection of hijab and fashion as multiple expressions of Muslim women’s gendered identities and geographies in Hamilton, Aotearoa New Zealand. Muslim women use their bodies to express adaptations of femininity, religion, and nationalities. Using an embodied geography lens, this article grapples with mutual intersecting identities, including gender, religion and nationality and wider relations of power. Drawi…
Disabled people's embodied and emotional geographies of (not)belonging in Aotearoa New Zealand
Embodying 'accidental ethnography
This research brings together two key areas, ‘embodied geographies’ and ‘accidental ethnography’. ‘Embodied geographies’ involve making bodies central to geographical studies. ‘Accidental ethnography’ involves researchers having to (re)negotiate the initial terms of engagement in their fieldwork. By bringing together these two areas, we aim to enrich both. In order to do this, we focus on a research project that examines Bhutanese women and girl …
Thinking about research, space, Skype and swamps
This ‘Intervention’ reflects on how over the past few years it has taken me longer to complete the early research processes that precede empirical work. I draw on an example of a feminist qualitative project I recently completed on people’s everyday experiences of using Skype. One reason why it took me longer in the early stages of this project is that I needed to engage with literature in a broader array of disciplines than in the past. In addit…
Thinking geographically with wombs
How can we think geographically with wombs, especially in relation to labour? This is my reading of the question posed by Sophie Lewis in this article ‘Cyborg uterine geography’. The article is challenging not just because the author sets an ambitious task but also because it addresses ‘messy’ bodies long associated with femininity and because it contains terms, phrases and theories that will likely be unfamiliar to some readers. Woven into these…
Gender
Gender refers to the socially constructed, rather than biological, differences between men and women. The concept was introduced into the discipline of human geography in the 1970s via feminist geography. Initially the focus was on gender roles but in the 1980s it shifted to gender relations in an attempt to not just describe but explain patriarchal relations. In the 1990s, inspired by feminist poststructuralism, geographers came to understand ge…
Reflecting on regendering care at different scales
This commentary on Boyer et al.’s (2017) article reflects on producing knowledge on regendering care at different geographical scales. I begin with my own story about my partner being a stay at home father as a contrast to the authors’ focus on regendering care at the scale of the nation – United Kingdom. Different things are gained and lost by focusing on different scales and yet geographers, traditionally, have tended to pay more attention to b…
At least in person there would have been a cup of tea’
Fieldwork is being stretched in new directions across time and space. In this article we examine the kinds of emotional and affective encounters constructed in online interviews. We draw on Lefebvre's notion of rhythm and Ash's concept of ‘affective atmospheres’ to help identify moments of disjuncture in research interviews. These moments of disjuncture can be prompted by researchers and participants not being able to share a range of senses (tou…
Mothering, digital media and emotional geographies in Hamilton, Aotearoa New Zealand
This article traces a line between two literatures that can usefully be drawn into deeper conversation: geographies of digital media, and geographies of emotion. Its broad theoretical aim is to ascertain what insights might be gleaned by increasingly bringing together these two literatures. The more specific and primary aim, however, is an empirical one and that is to offer a materially grounded example of 35 mothers who live in Hamilton, Aotearo…
Rethinking Feminist Interventions into the Urban
Bodies, gender, place and culture
This article examines research on embodiment published in Gender, Place and Culture (GPC) over the past two decades. We searched using the keywords ‘body’, ‘bodies’, ‘embodiment’, ‘embody’, ‘flesh’, ‘fleshy’, ‘corporeality’ and ‘corporeal’, the titles and abstracts of all the articles that have appeared in GPC since it first began publication in 1994. Articles containing these keywords were listed in a searchable bibliography. What we found was a…
It’s complicated’
Addressing the question ‘does using the term “Other” in relation to geographies of love flatten out difference?’ we argue that, while it may have this potential, it can also recognize collectivity (which is not necessarily the same as uniformity) among people. Politics involves working out which differences matter, when and where. Critiquing oppositional categories such as Self/Other (also love/hate, universal/particular) may do more to prompt cr…
Using Skype to Mother
This research examines how a group of mothers in Hamilton, Aotearoa New Zealand are developing and maintaining emotional and familial links with their children of a variety of ages via video calls using Skype. More specifically it seeks to deepen understanding of how seeing one's child or children as part of the communication affects mothers' feelings towards their children. The research is informed by Sara Ahmed's work on 'queer phenomenology' a…
Maternities
Over the past decade geographers have shown a growing interest in 'the body' as an important co-ordinate of subjectivity and as a way of understanding further relationships between people, place and space. To date, however geographers have published little on what is one of, if not the, most important of all bodies - bodies that conceive, give birth and nurture other bodies. It is time that feminist, social, and cultural geographers contributed m…
Becoming Smaller
This research focuses on the spaces and politics of weight loss . It is informed by “fat studies”, critical geographical scholarship on fat, and two contrasting feminist readings of Michel Foucault's notion of “care of the self”. Using autobiography as a method of inquiry I share my experience of “becoming smaller” through weight loss dieting. I argue that losing weight for me has been paradoxical on at least three counts: first, by being a femin…
Critical geographies of love as spatial, relational and political
Geographers to date have resisted writing about feelings, affects, places and spaces of love. It is timely to put love on the geographical agenda. We begin by addressing the question ‘what does love do?’, and we review the work of geographers who have been thinking about love via a number of different theoretical lenses. We then argue for a consideration of love as spatial, relational and political. We prompt geographers to think critically about…
Placing guilt and shame
This study examines twelve lone mothers' experiences of higher education at two universities in New Zealand. Interviews illustrated that lone mothers are often constructed by society as people who deserve to feel guilt for burdening taxpayers and for raising children without a live-in father. This guilt is visceral. It is felt in and lived through bodies on a daily basis. For most of the interviewees, however, succeeding at university also prompt…
Birthing a mother
BOOK Review - Elly Teman begins Birthing a mother with a prologue about a woman, Yael, whom she met in Haifa, Israel. Yael had been married for fifteen years and was ‘completely focused on having her own genetic child, created from an egg harvested from her ovaries and gestated in another woman's womb’ (p. xvii). Yael's story about the emotional highs and lows that she faced in the process provides a powerful opening to this highly accessible yet…
Embodied geographies of food, belonging and hope in multicultural Hamilton, Aotearoa New Zealand
Author meets critics
Vincent J. Del Casino Jr., Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009, 336pp., $89.95 hardback, (ISBN 978-1-4051-5499-4), $39.95 paperback, (ISBN 978-1-4051-5500-7). I found a lot to admire in Del Casino's
Space, Place, and Sex
Introduction: Geography, Bodies, Sex, and Gender Chapter 1: Geography Closest In: The Body Chapter 2: At Home with Chapter 3: Communities: A Sense of Belonging Chapter 4: Sex and the City Chapter 5: Rural Erotics Chapter 6: Nations and National Identity Chapter 7: Global Intimacies Conclusion
A visceral approach
People's visceral experiences of food - the tastes, textures and aromas - can tell us a great deal about their emotional and affective relations with place. Questions of bodies and embodiment are increasingly becoming a focus for geographers and migration scholars. In this article we extend some of this work by examining how the visceral can shape (and be shaped by) a range of socio-political relations. We concentrate on food and eating as a cent…
Youtube
Birth, in many societies, is considered to be a private affair. Although health and medical professionals usually assist, the only other people who share the birth process with mothers are their nearest and dearest. With the rise of information communication technologies, however, birth is no longer an exclusively private event. Some women are now sharing their birthing experiences with millions of viewers who are part of the online video 'commun…
(Dis)embodied geographies
Geographers are beginning to show interest in corporeality. The body is becoming evident in numerous geographical studies. It is timely, therefore, momentarily to ‘step back’ and address the question ‘what is a body?’ This article begins with an examination of some recent approaches to understanding embodiment – for example, phenomenological, psychoanalytic and ‘inscriptive’ approaches. Secondly, it reviews the work of geographers who claim that …
Using ‘the body’ as an ‘instrument of research
Often researchers position themselves in relation to race, age and gender, but the body is less often discussed as an actual ‘instrument of research’. We aim to extend thinking on this point by reflecting on a project we conducted on migrant women and food in New Zealand. We present a vignette as an example of how we used our bodies as ‘instruments of research’ at a ‘shared lunch’ attended by new migrants from a range of different countries. At t…
A visceral approach
People's visceral experiences of food - the tastes, textures and aromas - can tell us a great deal about their emotional and affective relations with place. Questions of bodies and embodiment are increasingly becoming a focus for geographers and migration scholars. In this article we extend some of this work by examining how the visceral can shape (and be shaped by) a range of socio-political relations. We concentrate on food and eating as a cent…
Viewpoint The Body and Geography
This paper highlights some of the major issues involved in theorising the body. Dualisms such as mind/body, sex/gender and essentialism/constructionism are discussed in order to provide a starting point for understanding the historical privileging of the conceptual over the corporeal in the production of hegemonic, masculinised and disembodied geographical knowledges. The paper also reviews some of the current literature in feminist geography tha…
Bodies, gender, place and culture
This article examines research on embodiment published in Gender, Place and Culture (GPC) over the past two decades. We searched using the keywords ‘body’, ‘bodies’, ‘embodiment’, ‘embody’, ‘flesh’, ‘fleshy’, ‘corporeality’ and ‘corporeal’, the titles and abstracts of all the articles that have appeared in GPC since it first began publication in 1994. Articles containing these keywords were listed in a searchable bibliography. What we found was a…
Using Skype to Mother
This research examines how a group of mothers in Hamilton, Aotearoa New Zealand are developing and maintaining emotional and familial links with their children of a variety of ages via video calls using Skype. More specifically it seeks to deepen understanding of how seeing one's child or children as part of the communication affects mothers' feelings towards their children. The research is informed by Sara Ahmed's work on 'queer phenomenology' a…
Corporeographies' of Pregnancy
Drawing on Judith Butler's notion of performativity I examine some of the ambivalences and contradictions surrounding the exposure of pregnant bodies in public places. I focus on a bikini contest that was held on 7 October 1998 for pregnant women in Wellington, Aotearoa/New Zealand. I also focus on the narratives of thirty-one women who were pregnant for the first time and living in Hamilton, Aotearoa/New Zealand. There are normative expectations…
Critical geographies of love as spatial, relational and political
Geographers to date have resisted writing about feelings, affects, places and spaces of love. It is timely to put love on the geographical agenda. We begin by addressing the question ‘what does love do?’, and we review the work of geographers who have been thinking about love via a number of different theoretical lenses. We then argue for a consideration of love as spatial, relational and political. We prompt geographers to think critically about…
Placing Masculinities and Geography
Introduction There has been an increasing focus in feminist and pro-feminist inspired studies on examining men, male subjectivities and masculinities in the decade since Gender, Place and Culture began publication. Our aim in this article is to provide readers with a brief overview of some of this recent research, and then to place these works within a critique of the Anglocentric character of geographic knowledge production. The article proceeds…
Fat bodies
Over the past decade geographers, especially social, cultural, critical and feminist geographers, have shown a keen interest in the mutually constitutive relationship between bodies and spaces. There is, however, one aspect of embodiment that has escaped geographers' attention, that is, fatness. In this paper I aim to develop some geographical research agendas that examine fatness as an important component of subjectivity. The paper begins by dis…
Bodies
This is one of the first books to introduce students to the key concepts and debates surrounding the relationship between bodily boundaries, abject materiality and spaces. The text includes original interview and focus group data informed by feminist theory on the body and uses case studies to illustrate the social construction of bodies. It will critically engage students in topical questions around sexuality, cultural differences and women's su…
(Troubling) spaces of mountains and men
In this paper we trace one pervasive expression of hegemonic New Zealand national identity that developed around the sport of mountaineering from the 1880s, culminating in Sir Edmund Hillary's historic first climb of Mount Everest in 1953. The image of the masculine mountaineering hero, developed on and around New Zealand's highest peak, Mount Cook, is, however, inherently unstable, and we focus on two sites of potential disruption. First, we exa…
Geography and gender
Plots, plants and paradoxes
Currently, gardens, gardening and horticulture—plots and plants—are receiving increasing attention from geographers and others interested in spatial disciplines because they provide a useful lens for understanding the complex politics surrounding social and cultural life. In this paper I aim to add to this literature by examining contemporary domestic gardens as paradoxical spaces. The paper begins by outlining some of the reasons for choosing to…
Mothering, digital media and emotional geographies in Hamilton, Aotearoa New Zealand
This article traces a line between two literatures that can usefully be drawn into deeper conversation: geographies of digital media, and geographies of emotion. Its broad theoretical aim is to ascertain what insights might be gleaned by increasingly bringing together these two literatures. The more specific and primary aim, however, is an empirical one and that is to offer a materially grounded example of 35 mothers who live in Hamilton, Aotearo…
Embodied geographies of food, belonging and hope in multicultural Hamilton, Aotearoa New Zealand
At least in person there would have been a cup of tea’
Fieldwork is being stretched in new directions across time and space. In this article we examine the kinds of emotional and affective encounters constructed in online interviews. We draw on Lefebvre's notion of rhythm and Ash's concept of ‘affective atmospheres’ to help identify moments of disjuncture in research interviews. These moments of disjuncture can be prompted by researchers and participants not being able to share a range of senses (tou…
Becoming Smaller
This research focuses on the spaces and politics of weight loss . It is informed by “fat studies”, critical geographical scholarship on fat, and two contrasting feminist readings of Michel Foucault's notion of “care of the self”. Using autobiography as a method of inquiry I share my experience of “becoming smaller” through weight loss dieting. I argue that losing weight for me has been paradoxical on at least three counts: first, by being a femin…
(Ad)dressing Pregnant Bodies in New Zealand
The article examines the ways in which pregnant women in the West use clothing as a means of constructing a range of complex and seemingly contradictory gendered subjectivities in public spaces. The article draws on interview data collected from 19 first-time pregnant women in Hamilton, New Zealand. These women were asked about maternity wear, body image, fashion, activities they had continued, reduced or stopped during pregnancy, and the places/…
Geography and gender
In the first of my commentaries on geography and gender, I focused on one aspect of feminist geography – the flurry in the late 1990s of geographical research on masculinity, male identity and men. In this second commentary, in the hope of illus-trating that feminist geography is a diverse and proliferating field situated at the
Disabled people's embodied and emotional geographies of (not)belonging in Aotearoa New Zealand
Rethinking Feminist Interventions into the Urban
Youtube
Birth, in many societies, is considered to be a private affair. Although health and medical professionals usually assist, the only other people who share the birth process with mothers are their nearest and dearest. With the rise of information communication technologies, however, birth is no longer an exclusively private event. Some women are now sharing their birthing experiences with millions of viewers who are part of the online video 'commun…
Going Nuts
This paper is based mainly on the stories of 31 women who were living in Hamilton, Aotearoa/New Zealand between 1992 and 1994 and were pregnant for the first time. The majority of these women claimed that they tended to withdraw from public places (for example, night clubs, bars, pubs, restaurants, cafes) and from public activities (for example, sport, leisure, and paid employment) as their pregnancy progressed. 1 argue that this withdrawal can, …
Placing guilt and shame
This study examines twelve lone mothers' experiences of higher education at two universities in New Zealand. Interviews illustrated that lone mothers are often constructed by society as people who deserve to feel guilt for burdening taxpayers and for raising children without a live-in father. This guilt is visceral. It is felt in and lived through bodies on a daily basis. For most of the interviewees, however, succeeding at university also prompt…
The Geography Closest In ‐ the Body… the Politics of Pregnability
This paper aims to make questions of the body explicit in geography. Constructionist and essentialist feminist approaches to the body are outlined and the distinction that is commonly made between them is prob‐lematised. Also problematised is the mind/body split. The Pregnant Woman is used to question the epistemology and ontology of geographical discourse. These epistemological and ontological questions underlie the discussion of the geography o…
Viewpoint The Body and Geography
This paper highlights some of the major issues involved in theorising the body. Dualisms such as mind/body, sex/gender and essentialism/constructionism are discussed in order to provide a starting point for understanding the historical privileging of the conceptual over the corporeal in the production of hegemonic, masculinised and disembodied geographical knowledges. The paper also reviews some of the current literature in feminist geography tha…
Producing Feminist Geography 'Down Under
Going Nuts
This paper is based mainly on the stories of 31 women who were living in Hamilton, Aotearoa/New Zealand between 1992 and 1994 and were pregnant for the first time. The majority of these women claimed that they tended to withdraw from public places (for example, night clubs, bars, pubs, restaurants, cafes) and from public activities (for example, sport, leisure, and paid employment) as their pregnancy progressed. 1 argue that this withdrawal can, …
(Dis)embodied geographies
Geographers are beginning to show interest in corporeality. The body is becoming evident in numerous geographical studies. It is timely, therefore, momentarily to ‘step back’ and address the question ‘what is a body?’ This article begins with an examination of some recent approaches to understanding embodiment – for example, phenomenological, psychoanalytic and ‘inscriptive’ approaches. Secondly, it reviews the work of geographers who claim that …
Bodies
This is one of the first books to introduce students to the key concepts and debates surrounding the relationship between bodily boundaries, abject materiality and spaces. The text includes original interview and focus group data informed by feminist theory on the body and uses case studies to illustrate the social construction of bodies. It will critically engage students in topical questions around sexuality, cultural differences and women's su…
Geography and gender
Corporeographies' of Pregnancy
Drawing on Judith Butler's notion of performativity I examine some of the ambivalences and contradictions surrounding the exposure of pregnant bodies in public places. I focus on a bikini contest that was held on 7 October 1998 for pregnant women in Wellington, Aotearoa/New Zealand. I also focus on the narratives of thirty-one women who were pregnant for the first time and living in Hamilton, Aotearoa/New Zealand. There are normative expectations…
Geography and gender
In the first of my commentaries on geography and gender, I focused on one aspect of feminist geography – the flurry in the late 1990s of geographical research on masculinity, male identity and men. In this second commentary, in the hope of illus-trating that feminist geography is a diverse and proliferating field situated at the
Geography and the body
(Troubling) spaces of mountains and men
In this paper we trace one pervasive expression of hegemonic New Zealand national identity that developed around the sport of mountaineering from the 1880s, culminating in Sir Edmund Hillary's historic first climb of Mount Everest in 1953. The image of the masculine mountaineering hero, developed on and around New Zealand's highest peak, Mount Cook, is, however, inherently unstable, and we focus on two sites of potential disruption. First, we exa…
Geography and gender
The recent growth in critical geography suggests this may be a ‘critical’ time for raising issues about the intersections between feminist and critical geography. This is not the first time these issues have been aired. For example, the Women and Geography Study Group (1997: 49–85) questions whether feminist geographers ought always to accord primacy to gender as the central analytical category or whether there are instances where gender ought to…
Placing Masculinities and Geography
Introduction There has been an increasing focus in feminist and pro-feminist inspired studies on examining men, male subjectivities and masculinities in the decade since Gender, Place and Culture began publication. Our aim in this article is to provide readers with a brief overview of some of this recent research, and then to place these works within a critique of the Anglocentric character of geographic knowledge production. The article proceeds…
(Ad)dressing Pregnant Bodies in New Zealand
The article examines the ways in which pregnant women in the West use clothing as a means of constructing a range of complex and seemingly contradictory gendered subjectivities in public spaces. The article draws on interview data collected from 19 first-time pregnant women in Hamilton, New Zealand. These women were asked about maternity wear, body image, fashion, activities they had continued, reduced or stopped during pregnancy, and the places/…
Fat bodies
Over the past decade geographers, especially social, cultural, critical and feminist geographers, have shown a keen interest in the mutually constitutive relationship between bodies and spaces. There is, however, one aspect of embodiment that has escaped geographers' attention, that is, fatness. In this paper I aim to develop some geographical research agendas that examine fatness as an important component of subjectivity. The paper begins by dis…
Landscapes
Plots, plants and paradoxes
Currently, gardens, gardening and horticulture—plots and plants—are receiving increasing attention from geographers and others interested in spatial disciplines because they provide a useful lens for understanding the complex politics surrounding social and cultural life. In this paper I aim to add to this literature by examining contemporary domestic gardens as paradoxical spaces. The paper begins by outlining some of the reasons for choosing to…
Afterword—Geographies of Sexuality and Gender ‘Down Under’
The specialist sessions on ‘Geographies of Sexuality and Gender ‘‘Down Under’’’at the Australian Geographers’ conference in Melbourne in July 2007, and the subsequent publication of the essays presented here, is long overdue. The editors, in their introduction, explain that the aims of the sessions and this subsequent themed issue are (1) to showcase specifically Australasian-based research on spaces, places and scales of sexuality and gender; an…
Queer(ing) Geographies ‘Down Under
Over the past 15 years geographers in the UK, USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere have been increasingly concerned with issues of sexuality and space and have produced an array of work under the heading ‘queer geographies’. This paper considers the importance of place in the production of queer geographies. Material representing queer geographies is drawn from Web pages, conversations and e-mail exchanges (a questionnaire survey) wi…
Using ‘the body’ as an ‘instrument of research
Often researchers position themselves in relation to race, age and gender, but the body is less often discussed as an actual ‘instrument of research’. We aim to extend thinking on this point by reflecting on a project we conducted on migrant women and food in New Zealand. We present a vignette as an example of how we used our bodies as ‘instruments of research’ at a ‘shared lunch’ attended by new migrants from a range of different countries. At t…
Sexy Beasts and Devoted Mums
This paper focuses upon a growing activity within New Zealand's ecotourism market: viewing and swimming with dolphins. Drawing on poststructuralist feminist theory we examine some of the ways in which New Zealand dolphin tour operators and others represent dolphins in relation to sex and gender. Three sets of data inform this research: (1) promotional materials, such as postcards, brochures, Internet websites, and advertising; (2) participant-obs…
Lecture Theatre to Classroom-Feminist Geography
Space, Place, and Sex
Introduction: Geography, Bodies, Sex, and Gender Chapter 1: Geography Closest In: The Body Chapter 2: At Home with Chapter 3: Communities: A Sense of Belonging Chapter 4: Sex and the City Chapter 5: Rural Erotics Chapter 6: Nations and National Identity Chapter 7: Global Intimacies Conclusion
A visceral approach
People's visceral experiences of food - the tastes, textures and aromas - can tell us a great deal about their emotional and affective relations with place. Questions of bodies and embodiment are increasingly becoming a focus for geographers and migration scholars. In this article we extend some of this work by examining how the visceral can shape (and be shaped by) a range of socio-political relations. We concentrate on food and eating as a cent…
Youtube
Birth, in many societies, is considered to be a private affair. Although health and medical professionals usually assist, the only other people who share the birth process with mothers are their nearest and dearest. With the rise of information communication technologies, however, birth is no longer an exclusively private event. Some women are now sharing their birthing experiences with millions of viewers who are part of the online video 'commun…
Sociology (41 works) · Gender Studies (27 works) · Gender Studies (25 works) · Political science (18 works) · Epistemology (17 works) · Geography (15 works) · Geographies of human-animal interactions (14 works) · Aesthetics (13 works) · Psychology (13 works) · Aotearoa (11 works)