ABSTRACT
The concluding chapter re-grounds the book in Geography by advocating for a spatially sensitive approach to Bears. It also re-iterates the conclusions of each individual chapter. It then synthesises and develops these chapters’ arguments into the three interventions stated at the end of Chapter 1. First, it shows how the idea of a ‘critical mass’ has been developed through different chapters, arguing for scholarship on Bears to attend closely to actual proximate bodies to understand what’s happening in Bear/y communities, scenes and spaces. Second, it draws on poststructural scholarship to advance the conceptualisation of ‘Bear/y’, stressing that this is a deliberately ambiguous term intended to force a reminder of the uncertainty of who and what falls into the ‘Bear’ category. And third, it brings together a critique of universalising approaches to Bears and argues for greater attention to geographic variance in particular. The book ends by stressing the specificity of the Bearspace project, with recommendations for future research.
