Reading to Be Done Before This Discussion:

Swanson, Kate. 2007. 'Bad Mothers' and 'Delinquent Children': Unraveling anti-begging rhetoric in the Ecuadorian Andes. Gender, Place & Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography 14, no. 6 (December): 703-720. Available http://search.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.valpo.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=27268870&site=ehost-live

Things to Bring to This Discussion: Your own notes on the article and/or a printout
Due in Discussion This Week:  Answers to questions belowEssay 2
Due in Discussion Next Week: Answers to Questions  
Concepts/Places: identity, gender, ethnicity, social reproduction, class, migration, activity segregation, resistance, resilience, reworking, Ecuador, Quito,  

How is This Discussion Connected to the Lecture?

In lecture we explore geographies of identity.  We will ask questions about how we derive our identities from our geography and how we in turn inscribe our identities upon the landscapes that we create.  We will also discuss how issues of identity and power intersect.  Gender is a particularly important facet of identity that refers to the social differences between men and women rather than biological differences related to sex.  We will talk about the gender division of labor where men and women are assigned different roles or tasks in society based upon the belief that certain jobs are more appropriate for one gender or the other.  Furthermore, you will learn how the gender division of labor helps to reinforce activity segregation where men and women, though they may not be segregated absolutely as in residential segregation, use space differently and unequally.  Historically this has meant that men are free to inhabit the public sphere and public spaces, while women's lives have been restricted to the private spaces of the home. Much in our own culture might lead us to believe in the existence of essential differences related to sex.  Indeed the title of a popular psychology book, Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, geographically reinforces this belief by metaphorically arguing that men and women come from different places.  The questions of what it means to be a man and what it means to be a woman do not have easy and simple answers though.  Furthermore, because gender relations vary over space and through time, the answers will be different in different places and at different times.

To prepare for discussion: The article you read for this week integrates a number of issues that we are concerned with this semester.  Most immediately it explores how indigenous women in Ecuador manage to creatively deal with the lack of employment opportunities due to gender, class, and racial discrimination. Moreover it shows how the larger society views beggars and gum sellers as dangerous and delinquent and misinterprets their efforts to make a living. Indigenous women and children are perceived as being "out of place" in the streets of the city. This ideological view of the beggars works by ignoring the larger geographical and economic context which creates the need to beg on the streets in the first place. At the same time the beggars and gum sellers take advantage of negative stereotypes and perform the racialized and gendered roles expected of them in order to garner sympathy. Pay attention to the ways that gender, class, and race intersect in this case study. As you read, think about how it illustrates the ways that these and other issues we have talked about this semester interrelate. 

Additional Questions to be discussed

 

Questions to be Answered and Turned in at the Beginning of Class

Name:
Honor Code:

1. What is the difference between resistance, resilience, reworking, and resistance?

 

 

 

2.  What drives women to beg or sell gum in the streets of the city?

 

 

 

3.    Why does the dominant society believe that indigenous women are "out of place" in the city?

 

 

 

4.  What purpose does the negative rhetoric about indigenous beggars serve?

 

 

 

5. What is one issue or question from the reading that you would like to see discussed in class?