ABSTRACT
The concept of space in social science has been in a continuous state of becoming and a site for profound contestations. Space has been perceived as the ‘means’ which aids an individual in manoeuvring and accomplishing his/her pursuit of interests as well as the ‘end’ for which people negotiate since access to and control over space is posited as key elements in power dynamics. Space is not simply ‘a neutral container waiting to be fi lled, but is a dynamic, humanly constructed means of control, and hence of domination of power’ (Lefebvre 1991: 24 cited in Gaventa 2006: 26). Power relations demarcate the boundaries of spaces and determine the legitimacy of users who enter these spaces as well as their ‘identities, discourses and interests’ (Gaventa 2006: 26). Korpela (1989) acknowledges that physical space is frequently utilised as strategy to reproduce self which, as a consequence, ‘embody, reify, and sometimes naturalize’ (cited in Kilde 1999: 455) such behavioural strategies with passage of time. It is through the replication of such identities that specifi c spaces come to be associated with either masculine or feminine attributes that ‘strongly infl uence men’s and women’s actual behaviour and power within them’ (Kilde 1999: 452). As Niranjana (2001: 34-35) observes:
... both space and gender are better approached as sets of relationships between phenomena, groups or persons, negotiated within certain given frames of reference. These relations are neither pre-determined nor programmed, but contingent, changing according to the contexts and the identities involved.
