The Social Construction of Space and Gender

Abstract

Over the past 10 years two concepts of central significance in the social sciences have come up for rediscussion: ‘space’ and ‘gender’. Today the two concepts are seen as relational, as a production process based on relation and demarcation. Gender and space alike are a provisional result of an – invariably temporal – process of attribution and arrangement that both forms and reproduces structures. This article takes a microsociological look at the construction of the local, seeking to trace the genderization of spaces. For this purpose, it discusses the organization of perceptions, in particular of glances and corresponding body technologies. Referring to the example of beach life, the article shows that the genderization of perception (including a culture of the glance) leads, in the sense of an embodiment of social order, to a practice of localization that reproduces the structural principles of society (including gender). In other words, gender may be seen as inscribed, via body practices, in the production of spaces.