Getting comfortable: gender, class and belonging in the ‘new’ Port Moresby
Port Moresby is consistently represented as a place that is dangerous for women. While recent transformations in the city have benefited some more than others, developments in the city are allowing for the creation of new ‘spatial texts’ in a place notorious for constraining women. In this article,...
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| Vydáno v: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/jso, |
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| Médium: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Jazyk: | Anglais |
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Journal de la société des océanistes
2017
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| On-line přístup: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| Shrnutí: | Port Moresby is consistently represented as a place that is dangerous for women. While recent transformations in the city have benefited some more than others, developments in the city are allowing for the creation of new ‘spatial texts’ in a place notorious for constraining women. In this article, I explore feminist geographer Linda McDowell’s idea that the city is a place in which the active, independent woman comes into her own. Drawing on focus groups, emails and photos sent to me by educated, ‘middle class’ Papua New Guinean women living in Port Moresby, I demonstrate that the city’s new places are paradoxical, even liberating places. The article reveals both the extent of women’s subordination in the city and the emerging possibilities for middle class women to experience a degree of autonomy. Nevertheless as Radice notes, women must endlessly renegotiate their experience of comfort in relation to others, including those whose lives are less comfortable. |
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