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Growing Girls/Closing Circles: Limits on the Spaces of Knowing in Rural Sudan and United States Cities

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Gendered Modernities

Abstract

Social power is reflected in and exercised through the production and control of space. These socio-spatial relations are gendered and vary across the life course, riddled by differences associated with class, ethnicity, race, and nationality. From “dad’s chair” to occupied national territories, the spatial forms of control are charged with and interpenetrated by political-economic power, cultural meaning, and personal significance. These conjunctures are neither stable over time nor distributed evenly across space. This chapter explores their form and significance at particular periods and transitions in the life course of females emphasizing the shifts from childhood to youth and womanhood in two divergent settings—rural Sudan and urban United States.

I am grateful to Sallie Marston, Janice Monk, and Neil Smith who commented on an earlier draft of this chapter, and to Harouna Ba who provided research assistance. I gratefully acknowledge support for this research from the National Science Foundation, the American Association of University Women, the Aaron Diamond Foundation, and the Professional Staff Congress of the City University of New York.

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© 2001 Dorothy Hodgson

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Katz, C. (2001). Growing Girls/Closing Circles: Limits on the Spaces of Knowing in Rural Sudan and United States Cities. In: Hodgson, D.L. (eds) Gendered Modernities. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-09944-0_7

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