Font-Casaseca, N., & Rodó-Zárate, M. (2024). From the margins of Geographical Information Systems: Limitations, challenges, and proposals. Progress in Human Geography.

Some of the most exciting progress to address central limitations in GIS is currently originating from the margins of cartographic traditions. This article explores the potential of a proactive engagement with mapping technologies from peripheral positions, such as humanist, feminist, decolonial, queer, and black perspectives, to overcome what we identify as five intrinsic challenges of GIS: the representation of place; emotions; scales; time and change; and relational approaches. The proposals deal with specific concerns that do not fit in existing GISystems and suggest how a creative engagement with mapping technologies further expands our understanding of what GIS could be.

Read the article: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/03091325241240231

Pascual-Bordas, J. (2023). The domestic bathroom: a strongbox for gender performativity and transgression. Social & Cultural Geography, 1-19. 

Public bathrooms are key sites for understanding gender identities, gender expressions, and sexual orientations that are out of the norm. Research has shown that they are places of discrimination but they also provide opportunities for transgression. Domestic bathrooms, however, have not received much attention. Through the experiences of 27 LGBT+ youth from Bages, an interior region of Catalonia, this research shows how the bathroom at home is a significant place where gender and sexual norms are reproduced and transgressed. Using a qualitative methodology, I examine how LGBT+ youth experience the domestic bathroom, both in the family home and their own home, according to their age, gender, and sexual orientation. The domestic bathroom is shown to be relevant in terms of gender performativity and sexuality and a place of privacy where gender expression is tested and sexual pleasure is enjoyed. The study sheds light on the understanding of how social norms around gender and sexuality work, destabilizing the conception of cisheterosexuality as something innate.

Read the article: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14649365.2023.2257644

Rodó-Zárate, M. (2023). Intersectionality and the spatiality of emotions in feminist research. The Professional Geographer, 75(4), 676-681.

In intersectionality studies, the lived experience of inequalities has been a central concern since its origins. Crenshaw referred to Black women’s experiences of oppression as the phenomenon to be studied and the reason why new theoretical tools, such as intersectionality, were needed. Here I approach intersectionality and lived experience from an emotional and geographic perspective, focusing on how spatiality is lived and constructed through emotions and on their role in (re)producing intersectional dynamics. I rely on Ahmed’s (Feminist Theory, Vol. 8 [2007], 149–68) conceptualization of (dis)comforts and the inhabitability of places by different bodies to show the genuinely spatial character of emotions. Applying the conceptualization to an intersectional framework, I develop a differentiation of (dis)comforts in relation to geometries of power and argue that emotions and their spatialities can be used as pointers to intersectional inequalities. I illustrate the theoretical proposals through the Relief Maps as a tool for the collection, analysis, and visualization of the social, geographic, and emotional dimensions of intersectional inequalities and reflect on how feminist research methods could consider emotions for studying intersectional dynamics.

Read the article: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00330124.2022.2075406

Pascual Bordas, J. (2022). Resilience in the face of heteronormativity: Experiences of non-heterosexual young women in the family home in Manresa, Catalonia. In Mapping LGBTQ Spaces and Places: A Changing World (pp. 595-612). Cham: Springer International Publishing.

Widening the research of the LGBTI+ community’s experiences in private spaces is essential to provide more data about the state of the art so it can contribute to the identification of the violence LGBTI+ youth experience in these spaces. The present chapter studies a group of young cis women of non-normative sexuality, from an intracategorical complexity approach, to investigate their experiences in their family homes in Manresa, a medium-sized city in Catalonia. The reporting of these women brings to light the discrimination and inequality they experience due to their condition as non-heterosexual young women. Additionally, it portrays the strategies they develop to face these situations. The results show that the family home is based on heteronormative standards and that young non-heterosexual women use resilience strategies within it. This chapter shows the discrimination and inequality that lesbians, bisexuals and diverse sexuality women undergo and resist throughout their youth at home.

Read the article: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-03792-4_35