Gender and urban restructuring
K Gibson
8 points * 3 hours per week * Second semester * Clayton * Prerequisites: As for GES2130
Contemporary cities are being restructured by the introduction of new technologies in the worksite and at home, changing patterns of capital ownership and control, the relocation of jobs within cities, and the reshaping of urban work, leisure and household practices. An examination is made of the implications for women of these processes. Recent debates emerging from feminism and Marxism are employed to critically situate gender in the overarching theories of capitalist development which provide a conceptual backdrop to most restructuring analysis. A number of key relationships will be examined in the context of specific case studies of industries and places in modern Australian cities, eg relationships between the `sphere of production' and `sphere of reproduction' in the city, between household processes and processes of industrial restructuring, and between capitalist and non-capitalist urban activities.
Assessment
Written (4500 words): 75% * Examinations (1.5 hours): 25%
Prescribed texts
Gibson K and Watson S (eds) Metropolis now: Planning and the urban in contemporary Australia Pluto, 1994
Little J and others (eds) Women in cities Macmillan, 1988
Rose G Feminism and geography Polity Press, 1994