Gender and the Construction of Place in Everyday Practices of the Refuge

  • Kristine Peta Jerome Queensland University of Technology
Keywords: Gender, Place, Habitus, Language, Domestic Violence, Women's Refuges, Social Capital

Abstract

This paper demonstrates how staff from a particular kind of institution, use gender' as a way to manage daily practices and maintain a commonsense world. It does this by exploring conversational data from a woman's refuge, and utilizing Bourdieu's notions of habitus and social capital. This provides an opportunity to describe the mechanisms that prevent some staff from achieving competency in this social institution. Findings from this paper illustrate how everyday practices are underpinned by 'gender' in order to discipline and regulate refuge members. The information presented here is from a more comprehensive study that uses a case of the refuge to explore the way social and spatial relations construct social order.

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Published
2016-02-21