Pointing fingers: Implicating space in gendered political praxis

Few would deny that politics and space are interconnected. Yet political science neglects to theorize adequately the production of space. Many political researchers continue to thingify space, treating it as a physical object to be conquered, controlled, and labeled or as a commodity to be bought and sold. This static view of space hinders an understanding of politics as a deeply rooted, socio-spatial practice.;This dissertation explores the difference space makes to politics from the perspective both of the strategy of the state/capital nexus and the tactics of everyday resistance. It investigates how gendered time-space practices shape and are shaped by political practices in urban Japan. The work begins with an historical examination of the Japanese government's use of laws and policies to promote gender ideologies and create gendered spaces and it continues with a discussion of how certain Japanese women are using time-space practices to tactically fight the dominant gender ideologies.;Time-geography is used to investigate the connections between gender, space and politics in urban Japan. This conceptual and empirical model views the movement of bodies in and through spaces as strategic and tactical and takes the perspectives of women and men on their own movements through domestic and public spaces as the starting point from which to study politics as a socio-spatial practice. I apply time-geography as a political methodology to understand the meaning of men's and women's movements and the kinds of political opportunities that are thereby created or curtailed. Time-geographic activity logs, questionnaires, interviews and citizen narratives were used to gather information about men's and women's time-space practices and involvement in politics in Kanagawa and the greater metropolitan Tokyo area.;The time-geographic approach articulates the effects of time-space constraints on political participation and the practice of politics at a multiplicity of interlocking social scales. Used as a political methodology, time-geography bridges the gap between understandings of the state offered by formal political analyses and the everyday reality of citizens' lives. Moreover, it embodies political actors, institutions and events with a physical or spatial presence.