ABSTRACT
It is salutary to reflect on changes in the sub-discipline, on why particular types of work and different theoretical perspectives are important at different moments. And, for those of us who have long argued against the notion of the monastic, disembodied intellectual, living on thought and air alone, much like an angel, the circumstances of everyday life that both stimulate new research questions and constrain their exploration must also enter the story. For this reason I have not only outlined changing approaches and research questions but linked them to changes in my own life. Methodological debates about reflexivity have transformed the domain of geography from the days when ‘objectivity’ was paramount and the personal attributes of a scholar were regarded as irrelevant. But feminist scholarship has challenged this assumption. And feminist theory and practice is what has framed my work over the years, as I was influenced by and contributed to the exciting expansion of feminist-inspired work within and beyond geography from the 1960s. From 1968, when I was a new and timid undergraduate, in different ways at different times I have continued to think, read and act within a framework largely influenced by a commitment to moving towards greater equality between men and women in the home, in the workplace and in other arenas of daily and political life. Over the intervening years there has been a remarkable shift in some of these arenas. Feminist geographical scholarship is, for example, now visible and vibrant and considerable numbers of women, and men, are involved in exploring geographies of difference, of gender relations in different parts of the world and at different times, publishing in a range of journals as well as in the specialist journal in our discipline – Gender, Place and Culture.
