Space Invaders Race, Gender and Bodies Out of Place

Women and minorities are increasingly entering fields where white male power is firmly entrenched. The spaces they come to occupy are not empty or neutral, but are imbued with history and meaning. This groundbreaking book interrogates the pernicious, subtle but nonetheless widely held view that certain bodies are naturally entitled to certain spaces, while others are not. How are positions of authority racialized and gendered? How do people manage their femininity and/or blackness while in a predominantly white male context? How do spaces become naturalized or normalized, and what does it mean when they are disrupted? Engaging with a range of material from a variety of institutions, Space Invaders is a timely contribution to wide-reaching debates on race, gender and space. It is the first book to articulate the full complexity of diversity in organizations.

Nirmal Puwar is Senior Research Fellow and Lecturer in Sociology, University College Northampton. She is the co-editor of South Asian Women in the Diaspora, and Fashion Theory: Volume 7 Issue 3-4, a special double issue on Orientalism (Berg Publishers, 2003).