Queer worldings in the urban age. Die sub\urban Journal Lecture beim Deutschen Kongress für Geographie im Oktober 2015 in Berlin

Der Beitrag stellt die Frage, in welchem Bezug die vieldiskutierte globale Urbanisierung, die sich in den vergangenen Jahrzehnten besonders im Globalen Süden weiter beschleunigt hat, mit einer ebenfalls zu beobachtenden verstärkten Thematisierung sexueller und geschlechtlicher Identitäten weltweit steht. Denn Kämpfe um Sichtbarkeit, Anerkennung und nicht-normative Lebensweisen artikulieren sich gerade in städtischen Kontexten mit besonderer Virulenz. Ein bislang weitgehend vernachlässigtes Potenzial wird dabei in Überschneidungen von Kritiken tradierter eurozentrischer Stadtkonzepte in den Urban Studies einerseits und der Infragestellung sexueller und geschlechtlicher – und ebenfalls oft an westlichen Standards orientierter – Normen in den Queer Studies andererseits gesehen. Sowohl Urban Studies als auch Queer Studies treiben ein worlding, eine Verweltlichung der untersuchten Probleme voran. Die Fragestellungen, die aus einer Zusammenführung von urban worlding und queer worlding entstehen, ermöglichen neue Blicke auf die Rolle, die gerade marginalisierte Subjekte in Prozessen von Urbanisierung und Globalisierung spielen

Here Versus There: Creating British Sexual Politics Elsewhere

This reflection draws upon two recent ‘moments’ in British sexuality politics—a series of Parliamentary debates on Global LGBT rights and Brighton Pride’s campaign to ‘Highlight Global LGBT Communities’. It contrasts these two moments in order to demonstrate how, at a time when LGBT rights have ostensibly been ‘won’ in the UK, there is an increasing tendency to shift focus to the persecution of SOGI minorities elsewhere in the world. This shift in focus sets up a binary of here versus there that is politically persuasive but ultimately limited and limiting. By reflecting on the way that this growing trend of creating sexual politics elsewhere occurs in two very different locations in British politics and activism, we seek to begin a conversation about the relational affects of placing sexual politics ‘elsewhere’

The normal homosexual in post-apartheid South Africa : new queer geographies

In the United States, from whence much of Euroamerican queer theorizing stems, the radical heritage of the gay and lesbian movement has been dealt a serious blow by the emergence of a "new gay politics" that aims simply to secure a place at the table for the "good gay" citizen. Thus a line between the normal and the queer has been conceptually entrenched. The maintenance of such a binary is problematic because it betrays the underpinnings of queer theory. It also limits the ways in which we understand queer normalizations as they have taken place in various contexts around the globe over the last decade. There is a worldwide (though sporadic and diffuse) trend towards greater recognition of human rights for sexual minorities at the national scale. Further, the purported economic benefits of gay-friendliness have given rise to official pink tourism marketing strategies. This thesis examines the validity of the queer-normal divide outside the heated context of the United States by considering the cultural politics of homosexuality in South Africa. In 1996, South Africa became the first country in the world to constitutionally affirm homosexuals' rights. Since then, the state has made gay-friendliness a central facet of tourism marketing strategies at both the local and national scales. It is thus officially normal to be queer in post-apartheid South Africa. Utilizing archival and qualitative methods, I have examined expressions of gay and lesbian culture and politics in the country and found neither the straightforward appropriation of queerness by the state or market nor a resistant queer politics outside their purview. Queer theorists within and beyond geography are used to theorizing from a position of exclusion just as scholars engaged in feminist and anti-racist studies are. But since the queer and the normal coexist in South Africa, I conclude that the tendency to dismiss spaces of inclusion as inconsequential sites of study renders our analyses of the nature and extent of space available to identity politics struggles partial. As such, I suggest that those working on geographies of sexualities might usefully explore the notion of a queer geopolitics.Arts, Faculty ofGeography, Department ofGraduat

Critical geographies and the uses of sexuality: Deconstructing queer space

10.1177/0309132507085213Progress in Human Geography32189-10

The end of queer (as we knew it): Globalization and the making of a gay-friendly South Africa

10.1080/09663690601122358Gender, Place and Culture14193-11

Introduction: Mobile city Singapore

10.1080/17450101003665002Mobilities52167-17