Bodies: Exploring Fluid Boundaries

Geography has recently seen something of a 'body craze'. It is no longer enough to simply examine the broad and wide sweeping maps of power and meaning. The micro-level politics that imbue bodies and spaces are increasingly being held up to scrutiny. the body is as political as the nation state. However, there is litle in the discipline that attests to the fluid, runny, gaseous nature of bodies. The leaky, messy zones of the inside and outside of bodies and their resulting spatial relationships remain largely unexamined in the discipline.This book revolves around three case studies:*pregnant bodies in publicplaces,*Men's bodies in domestic toilets and bathrooms, *Managers' bodies in Central Business Districts. These bodies share an abject materiality. The pregnant body threatens to expel matter from inside. It is often constructed as 'ugly' and as 'matter out of place' in the public sphere. Geographers have ignored men's bodies in domestic toilets and bathrooms boundaries are broken and then made solid again.Women and men managers in Central Business districts are increasingly expected to have firm and flexible bodies. highly tailored, dark coloured business suits provide straight lines and starched creases that give the appearence of a body which is impervious to leakage or penetration. The case studies illustrate that bodies and spaces are socially constructed and yet have an undeniable materiality and fluidity. Ignoring the everyday materiality of bodies that leak and seep is not a harmless ommission, rather it contains a political imperative that helps keep masculinism intact.

Robyn Longhurst is Senior Lecturer of Geography at the University of Waikato, New Zealand.