Sexuality and Space: Queering Geographies of Globalization

In 2001, the Sexuality and Space Specialty Group of the Association of American Geographers and the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies of the City University of New York cosponsored a one-day collaborative conference, `̀ Sexuality and Space: Queering Geographies of Globalization''. Whereas the conference represented the major programmatic undertaking to date for the Sexuality and Space Specialty Group, for the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies the event was one of a series of interdisciplinary endeavors aimed at addressing globalization and sexuality. This meeting was designed to generate conversations between scholars writing on sexualities and space within and outside the discipline of geography. Over the past twenty years, geographers have produced a rich and increasingly complex body of work on sexualities, building on the work of other geographers as well as theorists outside the discipline. More recently, scholars outside of geography have come to recognize the importance of social space, developing a new selfconsciousness around it as an object of study and as a conceptual tool of analysis. Despite this spatial turn in social theory and the concomitant rise in conferences designed to address it, there has been (with some important exceptions) little genuinely interdisciplinary dialogue that takes space seriously. Indeed, after some debate among members of the organizing committee, in the call for papers for the Sexuality and Space conference it was (merely) noted that scholars outside of geography have a concept of space that `̀ is often distinct from that in geography''. Despite the increasingly rich theorizations of space within geography, outside of the discipline scholars continue to cite a narrow range of theorists, such as Michel de Certeau, David Harvey, Henri Lefebvre, and Edward Soja, with an occasional nod to Doreen Massey or Neil Smith. Although referencing the same writers, and grappling with the same processes of globalization that influence our political, cultural, and socioeconomic landscapes, scholars inside and outside of the discipline of geography are rarely mutually engaged in conversation. Timed to take advantage of the New York City location of the Association of American Geographers meetings, the Sexuality and Space preconference offered an opportunity to generate constructive interactions that might further the cause of true interdisciplinary approaches to space. The conference brought together scholars from a wide range of disciplinary and physical locations. Working on sites from Spain to Egypt to South Africa, and located in programs ranging from geography to literature to art, participants engaged with critical questions surrounding the relationships between globalization and the formation and articulation of sexual identities and landscapes. In reanimating dialogues about local/global paradigms, the presenters challenged static notions of geographical place that sometimes plague queer theorizations of identities. Transversal circuitry and alliances, as well as multiple formations of scaleöhome, body, neighborhood, community, region, to name but a fewöpredominated in the discussions of nation, immigration, tourism, public policy, legislation, consumption, and gentrification. The papers included in this issue represent a small cross-section of the works presented at the conference. Other contributions have been published in other venues, including in the GLQ special issue on `̀ Queer tourism: geographies of globalization''(Puar, 2002). Guest editorial Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 2003, volume 21, pages 383 ^ 387