Ayona Datta

Architecture of low-income widow housing: 'spatial opportunities' in Madipur, West Delhi

This article is based on a study of Madipur widow colony in west Delhi, built as part of the UN International Year of Shelter for the Homeless in 1987. Designed to accommodate widows from squatter settlements in Delhi, very few of the original houses now survive and very few of the original owners remain. The spatial stories of the participants suggest how and why and under what circumstances a State's visions of empowerment as translated into utopian architectural projects are transformed by the people who inhabit them. They illustrate how a particular set of 'spatial opportunities' built into the widow colony are manipulated and seized upon by the participants to produce an uneven geography of architecture and empowerment. This article thus extends the important work on critical geographies of architecture to the architecture of low-income housing in the global South. architecture • development • empowerment • gender • housing Widow Colony was conceived as a demonstration project for low-income widow housing in Delhi. Claimed as a success of public-private collaboration and innovative financing, 1 this was given the National Shelter Award for that year. Twenty years on, very few of the original houses survive and very few of the original owners remain. Those who live here now have demolished and rebuilt the original houses; they have appropriated available land; and they have transformed the architecture in ways that have enabled new forms of empowerment.

This article illustrates how, why, and under what contexts development initiatives of the State that are translated into utopian architecture/planning projects undergo transformations in the hands of the users. Central to this article are the particular set of familial, social, and architectural potentials for change -what I will call 'spatial opportunities' -that are seized upon and manipulated by women to remake their spaces and themselves. I focus on women's empowerment not simply because Madipur widow colony was built for women, but to firmly situate their experiences within the dominant discourses in global and national development

Introduction

1 987 was an important year. The United Nations Centre for Human Settlements (UNCHS) declared this as the International Year of Shelter for the Homeless. This was the year when the first ever Indian National Housing Policy was drafted. This was also the year when Madipur produced by architects, to examine the processes through which architecture becomes an embodied performance of both architects and users. This is evident in the work of Llewellyn 17 who suggests that we need to engage with the wide range of individuals who are 'implicated in the process of designing and inhabiting the built forms produced'. [START_REF] Llewellyn | Polyvocalism and the public[END_REF] Llewellyn calls this the 'thick description of home', 19 where architecture is understood as a productive activity. Jacobs [START_REF] Jacobs | A geography of big things[END_REF] suggests that this approach should also 'effectively broach the question of how a building comes to have a "presence", how it is stitched into place by fragmented, multi-scaled, and multi-sited networks of association'. This is effectively summed up by Massey 21 in her theory of 'power-geometry', which suggests that particular places are constructed through the multiple and overlapping relations of power at different spatial scales, and that different individuals are placed in very distinct ways within these relations. These discussions provide the conceptual field from where I wish to extend the work on critical geographies of architecture onto agency and empowerment.

While this recent interest in architecture among geographers has provided analyses of public buildings, high-rises, and social housing in the North, domestic architectural geographies of the poor in the South remain largely unexplored. A critical geography of architecture has not yet reached the spaces of the urban poor in the South, although it can be argued that the user transformations in Madipur widow colony are forms of 'vernacular' architecture that are indigenous to time and place, and adapted to local needs and resources. By studying Madipur widow housing, I extend geographical scholarship on architecture to low-income housing in the global South; I extend critical geography's engagement with 'big things' of the global high-rise [START_REF] Jacobs | A geography of big things[END_REF] to the 'small things' of poor widow houses; and I extend its realm to an architecture that is produced in a global developmental context. I suggest that it is important to examine low-income housing for the opportunities it presents for politicized practices, to examine its architecture for the ways that it is produced by multi-scalar actors, for the ways its architecture becomes the terrain of interrogation and re-inscription, and to chart out the processes through which the everyday 'tactics' [START_REF] Decerteau | The practice of everyday life[END_REF] of creating liveable places are tied to particular forms of empowerment.

These connections between agency and architecture have been under-researched in feminist geography. Feminist geographers have illustrated that social action is deeply embedded in particular places, [START_REF] See | Beyond public spaces and private spheres: gender, family and working-class politics in India[END_REF] and that agency should be understood not just as resistance to dominant forms of power but also as everyday practices of embodied political action, that produce particular kinds of places. [START_REF] Datta | Samudayik Shakti: working class feminism and social organisation in Subhash Camp, New Delhi[END_REF] Massey suggests that it is this aspect of agency that make places and spaces part of the 'practice of interrelation' [START_REF] Massey | Entanglements of power: reflections[END_REF] which are continuously shifting and multiplying. If architecture is the site of active and embodied spatial practice, then like space, architecture too is tied up with the 'entanglements of power' [START_REF] Sharp | [END_REF] that shape and are shaped by productive acts of agency. I suggest therefore, that the transformation of Madipur widow housing by its residents illustrates how architecture can become a dynamic terrain of agency, the medium through which social relationships are practised and transformed.

These discussions lead me to the key idea in this article, that of 'spatial opportunities' -a particular set of social, cultural, political, familial, and material possibilities of change that are embedded in and made possible through architecture. I use the word 'spatial' to suggest that these possibilities of change include both material and social realities that are transformed through architecture. I use the word 'opportunities' to suggest that spatial contingencies are available to different users on account of their specific locations within different power structures. Hence transformations of the self and of architecture are only possible through subjects' respective relationships with power; which indicates why 'empowerment' is not evenly distributed among the residents of Madipur widow colony. It is this unevenness of empowerment experienced through spatial opportunities, which I examine through the 'spatial stories' of five women.

Methodology

In 1994, I visited Madipur widow colony as part of a college project. At that time, most houses lay vacant, and the appearance of the colony generally reflected that of the original plan. In 2002, as part of a research project examining the connections between gender, space, and power, I approached the widow housing again. This time, I found it difficult to locate since it had completely changed in appearance, integrating with the neighbouring resettlement colonies through commercial and retail streets. My observation that not all houses had changed or expanded in the same way, while some of the residents had become much better off than others, was the inspiration for this article, which is based on the detailed research in 2002.

In this study, I have used a mixed method of architectural mapping and semi-structured interviewing. Architectural mapping was used to record physical changes in the houses. This involved walking around the colony with the architects' drawings, and recording on them current building use (domestic, work, or mixed), demolitions, new constructions, heights, encroachments, and so on. This was supplemented with photographic evidence. Since it is clear that the changes are a continuous process, and building activity within the colony a permanent feature, the architectural mapping in 2002 is intended to provide a snapshot of transformations at a particular time in a particular social context.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted in Hindi with 18 residents (of which four were men) to understand the reasons why many beneficiaries did not move into the colony while others moved in, changes they made to the units and why, perceptions of their colony, and so on. The interviews were later translated and transcribed to English by the author. Only two of the participants were original allottees. The rest were mainly from lower middle-class families working as government employees in clerical grades, or engaged in small businesses and retail activities in the city.

The combination of interviewing and architectural mapping was intended to understand and locate participants' accounts within actual physical evidence of change, as well as to understand physical changes in their units through participants' familial and social contexts. The main objective was to understand how and why and under what circumstances changes had occurred in the houses, and how participants understood these changes. It has to be kept in mind though, that there is a dearth of information on this project in official documents. Often it is only mentioned in passing, and always as a 'success' story. Therefore, a lot of the information has been pieced together from various informal accounts by residents and architects.

Background information and drawings in this study were provided by HUDCO who designed this project. The architects who had been in charge of this project, however, had left the organization; hence no one could answer my questions about the design concept.

The analysis of the design therefore reflects the UN description, residents' critiques of the design, as well as my own readings. The housing cooperative refused to participate (and threatened me with physical harm when I approached them) since they were going through litigation with the residents.

In the next section, I provide a brief contextualization of Madipur widow colony within the geography of squatter settlements and resettlement colonies in Delhi. After this, through the spatial stories of five women, I discuss how particular spatial opportunities enabled them to empower themselves in different ways.

Geography of squatter settlements and resettlement colonies in Delhi

At the time of independence in 1947, with the launching of a national planning process in India, the public sector was visualized as having a crucial role as the provider of low-income housing. [START_REF] Sivam | Role of state and market in housing delivery for low-income groups in India[END_REF] This was delivered through national Five-Year Plans, which regulated most urban development in Delhi till 1957, when the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) was constituted. Soon, experts from DDA and Ford Foundation worked to produce the first ever Masterplan for Delhi (1962-1981) -their aim was to remove 'surplus population' to a series of 'satellite towns' around Delhi. DDA and Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) also shared the responsibility of slum clearance, and the DDA became the single planning authority responsible for the development and disposal of land in the capital.

Along with the Slum Areas (Clearance and Improvement) Act in 1956, the first Masterplan had made provisions for the resettlement and upgrading of squatter settlements. During 1961-1977, the DDA developed 47 resettlement colonies of 200,000 plots accommodating about 240,000 households on the fringes of the city. The plot sizes allocated to resettled households were 80 sqm, with provision for attached toilets. In 1962, the plot sizes decreased to 40 sqm. During 1975-1977, this came further down to 21 sqm. 29 In the 1980s the larger resettlement colonies were concentrated in the north-western fringes of the city and east of the river Yamuna -areas which were primarily industrial (see Figure 1). These were also far from the city centre, and the high-income neighbourhoods in South Delhi, from where the squatters were relocated. 31 It is in this north-western part of the city in Madipur, that a number of resettlement colonies were established and later, the widow colony was located. In total, this area accommodated 21,610 persons within 22.5 hectares in 4322 plots varying in sizes between 21 and 31 sqm. Although constituting a large portion of resettled households, women were not explicitly mentioned as target beneficiaries of these schemes.

It has been argued that one of the reasons behind the rapid growth of squatter settlements in Delhi since the 1970s is due to the Masterplan. [START_REF] Nigam | Dislocating Delhi: a city in the 1990s[END_REF] During this period, DDA built only 50 per cent of planned low-income housing units, which increased pressures on affordable housing. [START_REF] Banerji | Provision of basic services to slums and squatter settlements[END_REF] By 1982, more than 62 per cent of Delhi's population were living in various forms of informal housing [START_REF] Royston | Holding their ground: secure land tenure for the urban poor in developing countries[END_REF] across the city -along roads, river banks, railway tracks, parks, and other public or private land. In 1983, the taskforce on Housing and Urban Development published by the Central Government [START_REF]Delhi City Development plan under JNNURM[END_REF] was critical of the resettlement schemes not to have considered other equally important aspects of housing -tenure and landuse. The second Masterplan (1982-2001) therefore promised resettlement to around 49,000 squatter households, with provisions of income earning opportunities within or in proximity of resettlement colonies. Madipur widow colony was part of this phase of Delhi's urban development.

Around that time, the UN General Assembly expressed serious concern that, 'despite the efforts of governments at the national and local levels and of international organizations, the living conditions of the majority of people in the slums and squatter areas and rural settlements, especially in developing countries continue to deteriorate in both relative and absolute terms'. [START_REF]UN General Assembly resolution[END_REF] Thus, 1987 was proclaimed as the International Year of Shelter for the Homeless. Its specific focus was on those living in slums in 'developing countries'. Following this, the 'United Nations Global Strategy for Shelter to the Year 2000' (GSS) called for the crucial role of women and women's organizations in solving the crisis of adequate housing to be fully recognized. In line with the inclusion of women in other development programmes, it argued that women should have equal participation in all aspects of the housing initiative, which should utilise the resources of all governmental and non-governmental actors in the field of human settlements [START_REF]Global strategy for shelter to the year 2000 adopted; poor and homeless are its main focus[END_REF] to their full potential.

In 1988, the first National Housing Policy 38 (NHP) of India aimed to provide a 'prescription in tune with global concerns', describing itself as a 'war against human indignity', and laid down legal and regulatory reforms to speed up the process of housing construction. The State's role in the NHP, however, was to be an enabler which meant that housing for the poor was [START_REF]Map prepared by author with information from DDA Slum Wing[END_REF] to be delivered through 'public-private partnerships'. The Seventh Five-Year Plan (1985-1990) therefore earmarked an amount of Rs 20 million for a project entitled 'International Year of Shelter for the Homeless and International Cooperation'. [START_REF]Seventh Five-year Plan[END_REF] In 1985, a special housing scheme was launched for squatters where a group housing society comprising of widow registrants were allocated land at Madipur. [START_REF]Annual Report[END_REF] Although the Indian State had made concerted efforts in the past to legitimize women's entry into the economic, legal, and political spheres, [START_REF] Raju | State's provision of 'equality of opportunities' to all, including women's access to credit and employment, land or property, political equality, and protection against male violence[END_REF] and the DDA had made 1-2 per cent reservation for War-Widows in some of its low-income housing schemes, 42 this was the first time that widows were mentioned as beneficiaries in a housing policy, and a colony was conceived exclusively for them.

In 1988, the Ministry of Urban Development advertised in the local newspapers about Madipur widow housing. Officers from the Slum Wing contacted potential beneficiaries in Sadar Bazaar, a designated slum area close to Old Delhi which was being resettled at the time. 43 The units were then allocated through lottery. Each beneficiary was given a 20 years subsidised mortgage to pay back the costs, which were transferred to a private cooperative society. [START_REF]Ministry of Urban Development[END_REF] The Society was responsible for collecting the mortgage payments. In 2001, Madipur Widow Colony was described by UN Habitat as an 'International Year of Shelter for the Homeless initiative to demonstrate a new approach to human settlement problems, one appropriate to the life-style of the people'. [START_REF]Success stories iPn Shelter[END_REF] It received the National Shelter Award in India soon afterwards.

Design and planning

This is how the UN described the design concept: Within Indian culture, communities had to live closely together in viable clusters with common social and cultural identities and similar economic goals. This tradition was borne in mind during the design phase of the project, so it was decided to develop clusters of condominium units built around a private area for community use. 46 Madipur widow colony was designed by in-house architects at HUDCO (instead of DDA as is common for resettlement schemes). In its site planning, the architects used lower densities (161 units/hectare) to provide courtyards, a feature uncommon in resettlement colonies (with densities of around 200 units/hectare). The size of the site itself at 1.63 hectares, was also smaller than other resettlement colonies (which were usually around 5 hectares) in order to generate a smaller close-knit community. The overall planning was based on a system of courtyards with rear pedestrian lanes, different from the intersecting linear streets common in Delhi's other resettlement colonies. The amount of space (20sqm) in each plot was in keeping with other colonies. Each unit consisted of a multipurpose room, bathroom, and toilet on the ground floor 47 and a provision for expansion on the first floor, reflecting an 'incremental housing' 48 concept. The houses were built with 'low-cost' technologies -low grade cement, wooden planks for doors, and brick latticework for windows. On the site, there was also land allocated for a community hall and a market, where shops were to be made available to the widows for purchase later. The site planning relied on a strict separation between working and living spaces and a uniformity of dwelling sizes, designs, and courtyards. Since the site itself was not orthogonal, the orthogonal shape of the courtyards meant that there were triangular areas left out along the edges of the site.

The conceptualization and design of this community were based on the notion of an alternative domesticity that gave precedence to women occupying particular gender and class positions. The presence of courtyards and a community hall reflected the fusion of public and private realms into a community realm; something that might be expected of elderly widows who could provide support to each other. The visual transparency of the brick latticework (instead of shuttered windows) and the one-room dwelling was based on a resident who was single, and did not desire privacy. The external access to the toilet reflected a confidence both in the secure boundaries of this colony and in the lack of threat that the residents in this colony might pose to one another. The 'incremental housing' reflected an expectation of a subject who would be able to generate enough economic capital to add another floor over time. These approaches can be read as attempts to produce a gendered subject; an urban citizen who posed no threat to urbanity (as single 'destitute' widows). These can also be read as part of the politics of humanitarian endeavours of the State in assuring international development agencies of India's alignment with global housing concerns.

Madipur widow housing was described as a project where 'The communities … were involved in the schemes right from the beginning in all important decision-making during planning, designing and implementation. Post-occupancy management … is vested with the women. The success … has led to considerable interest in its replication in other parts of the country.' [START_REF] Bhatnagar | Women's role in shelter planning[END_REF] However, as the houses were allocated many widows did not move in. Others sold their houses. In the years after allotment, the units changed hands rapidly in the open market.

There were various reasons which contributed to this. First, in 1987, the location of the widow colony on the fringes of West Delhi made it difficult for the widows to imagine its future potential. However, as the city expanded, Madipur's location near the national highway meant that over time it became incorporated within the city. House prices increased and the widows found it easier to sell their units and make a profit. As Simi (a tenant in the colony) explained:

There used to be buffaloes here; and there was a small pond where they used to laze about in. So there used to be nothing in this colony. Really! And that time the rate [cost] was 34,000 rupees and I asked my aunt [who was a widow] to take a plot here. And she said I am not taking it because this place is not developed. And now look at this.

Second, the location of the widow colony made it difficult to access basic facilities such as grocery stores and public transport at that time. Third, community services such as the hall and market had not been built. These issues were clear in Kanta's narrative: FIGURE 3 Original plan of the courtyard. 50 The numbers denote units. Note how the location of units 8 and 9 allow possibilities of expansion onto the gap. (Source: HUDCO, 1995.)

The bus-stand should have been close; the milk-booth should have been close, the vegetable market should have been close. She [chairperson of the cooperative society] said they will have a market here but they didn't build it. They said they would build a hall for weddings but that land is lying empty. No proper latrine, no proper bathroom. The bathroom doesn't even have a door. There is no facility for widows over here.

While the widow colony had been built for single widows, it was clear that they were also part of extended households -many had relatives, young children, or even married sons living with them, which meant that the single multipurpose room was inadequate for their needs. The widows needed a substantial amount of money to make these essential changes before moving in, as Kanta said:

We didn't know what they were making us sign to. I am illiterate. I just signed on what they asked us to sign on. I saw the plan and I thought very good, we have got it in a very nice place. Then when we came here, I saw this place and started crying. That's why I kept this locked for three years. I kept thinking, where would we get so much money from.

Finally, those who did move in found that their lease had various clauses -prohibition on renting out or working from units, allowing relatives to stay, and prohibition on children inheriting the unit. Within a few years, many widows sold their units to 'outsiders' who came because of its location close to major roads, because of its changing demographic profile, but also because of its design. The new owners were from nearby resettlement colonies in Madipur, Mangolpuri, and Nangloi, who had become socially mobile, and desired 'nicer' places to live in. As Wajid, a 'new' resident explained: I like it because it's not congested. The neighbourhood is alright because there are middle-class people living here. There is no fear, because there are no robberies, or crime, or anything. Because the houses have been made in the form of a square, there is only one way to enter. The best thing is that in summers we can open both doors. 51 We had looked at many other [resettlement] colonies, but we liked this best.

The cooperative society, concerned at the rapid change of hands, tried to control this by asking that the widows come in person for the payment of instalments. In 2000, the society resorted to the cutting-off of water and electric supply to the Colony. Although these were later reinstated, the residents started legal proceedings against the Society. Among other things, they demanded the removal of the 'unfair' clauses on the lease and the acceptance of the new owners as 'legal' residents, who were ready to pay the remainder of the mortgage to the society. The case has been continuing since then.

Transformations

The transformation of the low-income widow colony occurred over the years through erasures and inscriptions. The erasures of the gendered subject were evident in the demolition of most of the old houses. The inscriptions on the other hand were multiple and varied. By demolishing the old house the new owners were not consciously erasing a 'low-income widow colony'. Rather they were making an uncoordinated effort at creating places suited to their needs.

As evident from Figure 5, the houses along the main roads expanded over the years to fill in the 'gaps' on the triangular edges of the site. Many also changed use into grocery stores, restaurants, furniture stores, tailoring, beauty parlours, and so on, transforming the boundary into a zone of retail and commercial activities. Towards the rear, the owners built rooms to rent out. For those houses without adjacent open space, the owners covered the front and back porches, and expanded vertically. Despite the erasure of the widow houses and the inscription of new kinds of family houses in its place, the courtyards and the central open space did not undergo any encroachment. As the houses became more private, the courtyard became part of the community realm; a place of socialization and entrepreneurship.

In redesigning the houses, the residents were manipulating the spatial opportunities available to them. They were choosing which aspects of the design of units were valid, which changes were suitable for their families, and how much economic capital they could invest. While the old houses translated communitarianism into a 'porous' dwelling, the new owners began the process of asserting the importance of privacy and security by inserting shuttered windows, grilles, and steel doors. While the old houses had relied upon single occupancy, the new owners added areas that established the importance of a patriarchal family through separate living room and bedrooms, separate kitchen, and internal bathrooms. In contrast to the 'low-technology' construction of the original houses, the new houses were built of stronger materials -concrete floor slabs, and solid wooden doors with steel grills. Unlike the singlestorey structures of the old houses, the new houses were two-or three-storeys high and sometimes combined two or three adjacent houses. Hence, some houses were now larger and more elaborate than those intended in the original design. For example, the chairperson of the residents' association (identified in Figure 5) who had bought two houses next to each other also encroached on the triangular empty land next to them. His house became the largest in the colony; the only one to be gated, with a 'private' garden. In appropriating, demolishing, and transforming the physical landscape of the colony, the residents produced their own architecture, one that was very different from the architects', State's, and UN's vision of low-income widow housing.

Spatial stories

In this section, I will discuss the 'spatial stories' of a few women living in the widow colony to illustrate how their spatial opportunities allowed them to exercise their agency in making architectural transformations, and how the new architecture then became the site and medium through which they empowered themselves.

Sharda

Sharda, a widow in her 50s, was one of the original allottees of the colony. Since her husband died, Sharda had worked as a sweeper in a government office.

The slum officers made us fill up the form because we were without support. They said that we were not members, we were owners. 52 Then they made us fill up the forms for the superbazaar [market] so we get that. But we didn't get that. Why not? My children were young and I am illiterate, what do I understand? Sharda had come to live in the colony only one and half years before this study. Till then her elder son had lived there. Once he started making enough money, he made essential improvements for Sharda to move in with her daughters. Sharda's house, however, was in the middle of the courtyard layout. This meant that unlike other residents who had built on the adjacent empty land, Sharda was limited in the ways that she could increase the size of her house.

See how much park he [chairperson] has. Now tell me, does he have an advantage or do I have an advantage? Why is it like this? Now where do I go and build? They have all covered their spaces 53 outside. See how much space they had. Now they have built shops there. Now tell me what do I have here? I want to ask them [DDA] what are you doing for widows? How are you helping them? If they had given me some more space, I could have started my corner shop and made a living here. I am from UP 54 so I am very honest. Many people tell me to sell this off. I say, why should I sell this? This is my house, and I got it from the government. This land was sponsored by international organizations to help those without support, but now they are making money out of it. Sharda's narratives can be interpreted as a form of gendered consciousness of her ethnicity, family circumstances, social capital (education), and architectural possibilities of change that produced a particular set of 'spatial opportunities'. Her understanding of the differences between herself and some of the other residents were based on their increased spatial opportunities. For example, the chairperson of the resident's association was a clerical grade government employee, his house occupied a strategic place in the colony, was made of expensive materials, and he was able to manipulate law enforcement agencies despite his 'illegal' encroachments. Being from a conservative Hindu family in UP, Sharda's daughters were not allowed to work outside, but a larger house would have allowed them to work from home.

Sharda, however, expanded her house vertically. She had built two small rooms on the upper floor -one for her son, and the other, she rented out to another family. Downstairs, there was a larger multipurpose room with a kitchen where Sharda and her two daughters lived. Sharda's house made with modest materials. Her rooms were whitewashed and she did not have much furniture. Visitors sat on her bed. Outside, she had plastered and painted the brick walls and installed steel doors and windows for privacy and security. The modest architecture -the size, external appearance, and layout of the house -presented her as a person of modest means. Sharda was not able to change the location of her house within the colony; she did not have the money to demolish and rebuild it; but, she did what was possible -extend it vertically and generate rental income from that extra space. Sharda's 'empowerment' was shaped by a number of factors. First, her gendered position as a working-class widow was able to ensure her participation in a State-sponsored housing project aimed at women's empowerment. Sharda's access to empowerment was limited in that the location of her house was not near empty land, an issue that created tremendous spatial inequalities within the widow colony. Yet, much of her 'empowerment' also depended on her having an earning son, who was able to invest in the house, and make it liveable. Thus, Sharda's claims to spatial opportunities were not only contingent upon her having access to architectural possibilities of change but also her position within a variety of other power relationships -with the State, family, class, ethnicity, and social capital. This is elaborated further in Anita's story.

Anita

Anita lived on the boundary of the colony along the main road. Anita, her husband, her two children, her mother-in-law, and brother-in-law had moved there from Sadar Bazaar when the unit was allotted to her widowed mother-in-law. This is how Anita described the changes:

The house has changed. The bricks were very yellow and weak. So we had to break it all and make it again. And everyone built this together so there was a change [in the colony]. The houses are more solid, so we don't have problems with that. Otherwise the roofs used to be leaking before, and the floors had termites through them. Then we had to put solid flooring so that the insects don't come through. It took about four, five years total to get it done.

It was significant then that this house was adjacent to the triangular land near the road. Both her husband and his brother had pooled in their earnings, and like other owners along the edge, they had extended their house till the main road. This doubled the size of the original unit. The house now had four rooms on two floors with wide balconies facing the road. As Anita said:

There was no benefit for the widows in here. This was only one room without a kitchen or anything. Although there was a latrine bathroom, there was not enough space. There were three feet on either side and so we all covered that and made two small rooms out of that. 55 That's why we got two rooms made so that one room will be for our mother-in-law and one for us. Because you can't sleep in the same room with your children.

When she had arrived in the colony Anita had sat at home 'not doing anything' until her husband encouraged her to start a shop. Initially, she sold small items but the location of her house on the main road allowed her to expand her business. The front room facing the road was made larger and turned into a grocery store where Anita employed a young man to help her. During the study, Anita was regularly supplying groceries to many families within and outside the colony. The store expanded and announced itself with bold signage. Anita said that since she had started the shop, she and her husband had stopped fighting, because 'now I am independent and doing my own work, I am proud of it. I don't have to listen to anyone'.

Anita's peculiar relationship with the State through her extended family allowed her access to material and social possibilities of change. Her 'empowerment' could not have been realized had she not been part of her mother-in-law's household, or their house had not been on the boundary of the site. The State sponsored widow colony had, however, reproduced the relations of gendered power within families by making Anita's transformation subject to her husband's contribution on economic and moral terrains. Nevertheless, her narrative suggests that although a larger house or economic productivity are not markers of empowerment in themselves, the independence and higher status within her family and wider society that it represents, can become the route to empowerment. [START_REF] Wolf | Daughters, decisions, and domination: critique of household strategies[END_REF] Her transformation was an embodied practice of material and social changes to the house and household relationships, through which her spaces of social empowerment and economic productivity had fused. Thus, the differences in the nature of empowerment between Sharda and Anita reflect their locations within the intersections of architectural, familial, and economic opportunities, and which set of spatial opportunities they were able to take up at any given time.

Shanta

Shanta was another original allottee of the colony. At the time of allocation she had been a widow with a young daughter and son and did not have the money to invest in the house. Shanta had worked as a seamstress till her son started earning and made improvements to the house. 'I used to do sewing and brought him [son] up. Then when he started earning then I gave it up. Now I don't do anything. My son has kept me very happy', she said. It was clear that while Shanta was the symbolic head of the household, she also considered her well-being as the responsibility a patriarchal family. Shanta perceived her empowerment through legal markers, which provided her access to power within her household. The house stood for Shanta's higher social position within her family. 'I told my son that as long as I am alive I won't let you sell this house, because it's in my name', she explained. Like Sharda's house, Shanta's house too was located in the middle of the courtyard module; hence there was no scope for horizontal expansion. Nevertheless, her son had demolished and completely rebuilt the house, covered the front and back porches, and built balconies on either side. Unlike Sharda's house, Shanta's house was neatly divided into private and public zones. The ground floor now had a separate kitchen, bathroom, and a living room. There were two bedrooms on the first floor, one for herself and the other for her son's family. Visitors were made to sit on the sofas in the living room, while her daughter-in-law prepared tea for them in the new kitchen. Shanta also was the only one in the courtyard to have a telephone, a precious commodity in the colony. This meant that she could decide which of her neighbours she would grant 'favours' to by letting them use her phone.

The rear of Shanta's house was adjacent to the main park, which she used for different social occasions. When her daughter got married, she put up the wedding tent in the park. The proximity and access to the large open area meant that she could divide her guests between her house [for family members], the courtyard [for informal guests], and the wedding tent in the main park [for guests from the bridegroom's side]. In the absence of private open space, Shanta clearly viewed the courtyard and the park as extensions of her house and of her domestic realm. She therefore connected the physical and social environments more intimately than Sharda or Anita. 'We are Punjabis so we want nice people to stay here. We want it clean. See my little hut' 57 she said.

Shanta's pride in her house extended to the courtyard where, like many other women residents in the colony, she spent a large part of her day. She had planted trees on her side of the FIGURE 8 Shanta's house with the wedding tent and the make-shift 'kitchen' in the park to prepare food for guests. (Photo: Author, 2002.) courtyard to create a 'pleasing 'I put these plants so that we can have some fruits. I used to eat my lunch here [courtyard] before. Then as people started coming in and building they dumped building materials in here and all the grass died. So I do what I can do on my own' she explained. It was while socializing with her neighbours in the courtyard that Shanta 'requested' them to make decorative boxes to help her son's box-business. Although this business was highly seasonal, Shanta's use of the neighbours' goodwill and 'respect' of her generation meant that she was able to help her son deliver large orders for boxes on time to make a handsome profit each festival season. She was also lucky in that she could use her sister's unoccupied house next door as a store for the boxes till they were ready to be sold. Shanta's position as the only original allottee in her courtyard, combined with the architectural transformation of her house, its material commodities, and her role as 'employer', meant that she occupied a position of power both within her household as well as among her neighbours in the courtyard.

Shanta's spatial opportunities were produced from her gender relationships both with her son and with the Indian State, which contributed to her taking or not taking up these opportunities. The State's utopian vision of women's empowerment as translated into the architecture of widow housing had not produced Shanta as a single self-sufficient widow. Rather, it had made her more dependent on her earning son to allow her access to a liveable house and to spaces of economic productivity. Yet, in the presence of a supportive male family member, Shanta was able to mobilize the architecture of her house, and her social relationships, to empower herself. The State's vision of empowerment, however, was never completely irrelevant for Shanta or Sharda -both felt empowered on account of their relationship with the State and with international organizations. Their legal ownership of the house became meaningful in providing them access to power within the family and the neighbourhood, although the architecture of the house itself reinforced gender power relations within the family. As they engaged with this architecture as a meaningful and embodied practice of everyday life, transformation both in the houses and in their lives became possible.

Simi and Mimi

Simi and Mimi sisters who lived with their two younger brothers and parents as tenants in Shanta's courtyard. As a Muslim woman, Simi preferred to work from home, and making the decorative boxes for Shanta provided her with this opportunity. Simi's narrative, however, indicates her perceived disempowerment.

It's a time pass and also a bit of earnings. So kill two birds with one stone. I make about 150 to 200 [boxes] a day. There are about five of us in this square who make it. But she [Shanta] makes a lot of profit on these. One day she was telling us that for one box she makes a profit of 25 rupees; and what does she give us? Only one rupee. What can we say? What if she doesn't give us even that? So we think let it continue that way. I just do it thinking that I make a bit of money staying at home. Simi's family were the only tenants in the courtyard. Their house was the only one in the courtyard that had not been rebuilt and was still the original design. When they had first arrived, their landlord had not given them access to the terrace. Their house was adjacent to the triangular land facing the road, but they could not appropriate this since they were tenants. Although their landlord had recently installed secure doors and windows, and allowed them access to the terrace, their house still retained much of the character of the original house.

It used to be very difficult to live here before. And have you seen the room downstairs? No kitchen, nothing. And we got this bathroom and latrine made here [terrace]. And we didn't use to have the terrace upstairs; he [landlord] took it out of the rent.

While their house represented a temporary status, their tenure as tenants deterred opportunities of social or architectural transformation. In contrast, Mimi was only member of the family to be educated in university. She wanted to start a master's degree but due to her family's economic condition was compelled to work full time. During the day, Mimi went from house to house in the neighbourhood, taking private tuitions; but since the landlord gave them access to the terrace upstairs, every evening Mimi also tutored the neighbours' children there. Their parents, however, were continuously reminded by their extended family that they had not married off their daughters. For their father with failing eyesight, who could not work as a tailor anymore, this was a double shame. He was taunted by relatives for being unable to provide for his family and 'living off ' his daughters' earnings. Indeed, in their family, the women were the sole earners -their mother was a childminder in a nursery, while their older brother was unemployed, and the younger brother was still in school.

For Simi and Mimi, the architectural quality of their house and their status as tenants increased their sense of marginality. Nevertheless, both used the courtyard and the terrace for different politicized practices. The possibilities of architectural transformation were limited, but they both seized their spatial opportunities in different ways -Simi by box-making in the courtyard and terrace, and Mimi by taking tuitions in the neighbourhood and on the terrace. The differences in their empowerment were shaped by their uneven access to social capital, as well as their personal transformations made possible through this access. As Mimi explained, It [opportunity] depends on oneself too. These people [gesturing towards Simi] are just lazy. They don't want to go outside. You know, there was such a nasty place in Madipur in C-block. They said that if a decent girl goes in that neighbourhood, she can't return with her honour intact. And I taught in that lousy area for three years. Nothing ever happened to me. No one ever said anything to me.

Simi's and Mimi's spatial stories emphasize the continued (albeit limited) relevance of the State in shaping forms of women's empowerment. As tenants, their family had never squatted on public land, which denied them access to various State resettlement schemes. Instead, they were reliant on a different set of spatial opportunities to transform their lives. Unlike Sharda, Anita, or Shanta, their economic participation was induced in the absence of any earning male family member. Yet, they did not occupy positions of power within their families similar to Sharda, Anita, or Shanta. Further, Mimi's rejection of Simi's desire to remain within the house as 'laziness', suggests that despite being located within similar contexts of architecture, family, religion, and tenure, Mimi's access to social capital had transformed her in ways that she was able to redefine her relations with gender, religion, and place. Thus, their relationships with the State, society, family, and material places of the house and neighbourhood provided access to another set of spatial opportunities, whose take-up depended on their personal choices, which subsequently shaped their unequal geographies of empowerment.

Concluding thoughts

This article's focus on women's stories situated within the architecture of widow housing, illustrates the limits of development discourses that envision women's empowerment through housing and tenure as disconnected from their families. 'Empowerment', when architecturally translated by the Indian State into a low-income widow colony in Delhi, was transformed by the users as they sought to remake themselves and their spaces. The spatial stories of the women in Madipur widow colony indicate the ways in which architecture can become the pre-condition, medium, and outcome of women's social agency and the terrain of their politicized practices, but this agency is always embedded in familial ties. Their stories show how a particular set of political, social, economic, family, and architectural contexts contribute to a set of 'spatial opportunities' which are selectively taken up by women to empower themselves in different ways.

These spatial opportunities exist under a particular set of conditions. These include the State's vision of women's empowerment as translated into the architecture of low-income widow housing, gender relationships within the family and the State, and individual subjective agencies of the women who seized upon some of these 'spatial opportunities' to transform themselves. From the spatial stories, it is clear that the role of the State as the provider of tenure to women is a critical one, since this gives them access to forms of power within their family and neighbourhood. Yet, the visions of empowerment that were espoused by the State and were translated into architecture ignored women's gender relationships within the family and wider society, while at the same time allowing the possibilities of physical transformations. The spatial stories further illustrate the centrality of gendered relationships within the family in producing women's empowerment -the presence of a supportive male family member able to provide women (such as Shanta, Sharda, and Anita) access to spatial opportunities that would transform their lives. Further, in the absence of these supportive gender relations (as in the case of Mimi and Simi), women's cultural capital becomes crucial in shaping personal decisions to take up certain spatial opportunities while rejecting others. These 'power-geometries' of space and place produced by multi-sited and multi-scalar networks of gender relationships, practiced and realized through architecture, provided opportunities of transformation in women's lives. Their gender relationships with the family, State, and architecture shaped their spatial opportunities and contributed to an 'uneven geography of architecture and empowerment' in Madipur widow colony.

This article thus indicates the wider contribution of architecture to a critical geography of architecture in the global South. It suggests that in order to truly engage with architecture as a multi-sited, embodied and embedded, political, and productive practice, critical geography has to extend beyond the North to the 'messiness' of squatter settlements and resettlement colonies in the South. It suggests that it is important to recognize architecture as a heterogeneous political practice within particular social, familial, and material contexts. Finally, it suggests that it is important to examine architecture within the developmental context of the global South -particularly in circumstances when it is being transformed through the politicized practices of its users -in order to fully understand its role in civil society.

Biographical note

Ayona Datta Lecturer in the Cities Programme in London School of Economics. She is co-convenor of the MSc Culture and Society Degree in the Department of Sociology. Her research interests include gender and intersectionality in the production and consumption of place, cultural identity in architecture, and spatiality of social agency. She is currently working on a British Academy Research Grant entitled 'Mapping the Architecture of Control and Resistance' which is a qualitative work examining the intersections between gender, social agency, and place. She can be contacted at: Cities Programme, Department of Sociology, London School of Economics and Political Science, Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE, UK; email: a.datta2@lse.ac.uk

Notes

FIGURE 1

 1 FIGURE 1 Map of Delhi showing the geography of resettlement colonies in the 1980s.[START_REF]Map prepared by author with information from DDA Slum Wing[END_REF]

FIGURE 2

 2 FIGURE 2 Original site plan of the widow colony. (Source: HUDCO, 1995.)

FIGURE 4

 4 FIGURE 4 Some of the old houses lying unoccupied. (Photo: Author, 2002.)

FIGURE 5

 5 FIGURE 5 Changes in use and heights of houses. (Recorded by Author, October 2002.)

FIGURE 6

 6 FIGURE 6 Sharda's two-storied house with steel-framed windows and doors. (Photo: Author, 2002.)

FIGURE 7

 7 FIGURE 7 Anita's house with the grocery store on the ground floor. (Photo: Author, 2002.)

FIGURE 9

 9 FIGURE 9 Boxes ready to go in the festive season. (Photo: Author, 2002.)

  FIGURE 10 Private tuitions on the rooftop terrace. (Photo: Author, 2002.)

Acknowledgements

I wish to express my heartfelt gratitude to the residents in Madipur widow colony who gave their time to this research. My gratitude also extends to officials in HUDCO who provided me with all the drawings and background information. Finally, I wish to thank Mona Domosh and the two anonymous referees without whose insightful comments I could not have finished this article.


Jan Estep

Showing the way out of the fly bottle: searching for Wittgenstein in Norway

Philosophical Investigations that one of his goals in philosophy was 'to shew the fly the way out of the flybottle.' 1 The comment is a direct attack on the myopic ways philosophers can trap themselves in their own gnarly problems. Wittgenstein hoped to remedy the basic confusion at the heart of most philosophical investigations, by clarifying the navigable landscape of human knowledge, in other words, by showing what we can and cannot do within philosophy.

Wittgenstein was primarily concerned with language: the way it relates to the world and the ways we use it to communicate with each other. Although his thinking on the subject displays a radical change between early and late in his career he always assumed that language was central to human experience. With its discursive and text-centric nature, philosophy in particular depends on a person's ability to express meaningful statements, that is, to build convincing arguments within clearly framed contexts. However,

language can also be put to much more speculative ends. Philosophers ask all sorts of impossible questions, things that cannot be answered definitively or with any kind of sense. There is a strange oddness to most philosophers' language use; driven by skepticism and the infamous 'Why?', philosophers are reluctant to take things at face value, and tend to over-worry the connection between words, intent, and meaning. Where in many situations the skewed perspective unearths implicit contradictions and can help us get to the root of our disagreements with one another, often it introduces more epistemological drama than is necessary or even relevant. Wittgenstein believed that if we understood the nature of our confusionthat it was the oddness of our methods rather than anything inherent in the things themselves that led to puzzlement -then many of our problems would go away.

For Wittgenstein metaphysics was the prime suspect, that branch of philosophy that sought to articulate and discern the underlying principles of all being. Any attempt to stand outside the whole, therefore outside language, is doomed to failure. Unfortunately, our language allows us to conceive of such a transcendental stance. We can ask what is behind our language to assure us of its reference. We can create circular arguments that appear logical but nonetheless lead nowhere. And we can posit an objectivity to our situation that belies the essential subjectivity of all knowing. Hence the fly trapped in a fly bottle of its own making.

I remembered Wittgenstein's plea about flies and fly bottles as I tromped along the banks of Lake Eidsvatnet in Skjolden, Norway. I had come to Norway searching for the remains of a small hut Wittgenstein built here and was deep in the thick brash edging the lake, trying to follow a faint trail that supposedly led up to the site. As I neared the water, swarms of black flies billowed up from the ground and engulfed me. Immediately Wittgenstein's words danced in my head and I knew I was on the right track. My motives for coming to Norway were still unclear to me; I had a vague hope that I would somehow understand Wittgenstein better, but I did not know what to expect or what I would find. I was looking for signs and the flies provided that.

Wittgenstein first visited Skjolden on a short holiday in 1913. He traveled with a friend from Cambridge, England, where he lectured in philosophy. Finding the small town to his liking, he returned alone a few months later for an extended stay. It was at this point that he decided to commission the hut. In stark contrast to the social circles of Cambridge and Vienna he appreciated the simplicity and seriousness of the place. He interacted with a small group of local residents and occasional colleagues, but overall he lived a relatively hermetic existence in Norway. He valued the seclusion so he could attend to his work and his days were spent writing and going for long walks. Wittgenstein lived here off and on for various periods of time until 1950. While in Norway he wrote notes that formed the basis of his most seminal books: the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Notes on Logic, Philosophical Investigations, Remarks on the Foundation of Mathematics, and Culture and Value.

Skjolden sits on the end of the Lustrafjord in the heart of the Sogn fjord district, roughly 250 km northeast of Bergen. It is surrounded on all sides by mountains that rise quickly up from the water. The hut site is perched on a high narrow ledge, overlooking Lake Eidsvatnet, which runs into the fjord. There is no detailed map of the hut's location and it is no longer visible from the lake or the main road. Only a rudimentary sketch exists, drawn by Wittgenstein in 1936 for G.E. Moore, a fellow philosopher who was visiting from England.

The sketch pictures the town, the lake, and the major features of the surrounding topography (mountains, rivers, fjord). It provides a general orientation to Wittgenstein's hut, but the level of abstraction means that reaching the hut still requires basic route-finding skills. When I realized the paucity of Wittgenstein's drawing -the fact that it can only get you in the general area -it both did and did not make sense to me. Here was a man so meticulous in his analytical pursuits, yet his directions to the hut were sketchy and vague. But here also was a man who trusted our ordinary abilities to communicate, to speak within the same language games as he called them, so obviously he felt the map was good enough to accomplish its goal. The fact that there was more to the picture than pictured or more precisely more to the world than represented by his map or his words fits perfectly with Wittgenstein's love-hate relationship with reference. Nevertheless, while on site I decided a more definitive document was needed, something that could help others find Wittgenstein with more confidence.

Despite the lack of explicit directions, there is an informal trail that leads to the site, forged by others who have come looking for the building. The signed trailhead lies just to the left of Vassbakken Kro Camping, a typical Norwegian campground outside of town. The trail initially follows a dirt road, lined to the right with brilliant red-twigged dogwood and to the left with a grassy plot of open land. It continues over a stream feeding Lake Eidsvatnet to a 'Y' at the bottom of the mountains. Going up at this point takes you to Mount Hjerseggi, but the way to the hut follows left. Hugging the mountainside then veering slightly away, the trail moves through a series of muddy fields that take you closer and closer to the lake. Before reaching the water the trail peters out into a sinewy tangle of criss-crossing tractor paths. Farmers still use this front land for planting. In fact, the day I arrived, a farmer had just applied a fresh layer of cow manure. I had to struggle through the muck to reach the edge of the woods, where the trail picks up again, though much fainter and narrower.

Two hand-made wood placards mark the entry point into the woods, one stating 'Wittgenstein,' the other stating 'W.' The trail passes between these two signs and then leads just to the left of a dilapidated wood shed. Once you enter the woods the trail is tagged with large red W and TW letters. They are spray painted onto rocks, trees, and other immovable objects along the way. In Norway, trails that are officially maintained by the Norwegian Mountain Touring Association (DNT) are marked with bright red Ts. On an ad hoc basis someone has borrowed this familiar marking system and marked the Wittgenstein trail in a similar manner.

After the freeform tracking through the mud and manure the signs are reassuring. A person can't really get lost here: the lake and the mountains keep you oriented. But uncharacteristically for a nature hike I welcomed the evidence that others had been here before me. It suggested a community of Wittgenstein devotees, each of us on our own but heading in a similar direction. As the trail picks its way through the woods, it bounds the lake and finally heads up into the mountainside. A series of short, steep switchbacks later and the final turn abruptly ends at the site of the hut. Wittgenstein used to row across the lake and dock just below, avoiding the walk through the muddy fields. Or when the lake was frozen, he would walk across it instead. However, he climbed the same switchbacks that any visitor must take to reach his home.

I was of two minds when I got to the top of the trail. The site itself is nothing special. There are no markings or commemorative plaques. The wood structure is gone, leaving only the stone foundation and a root cellar, which the natural environment is gradually overtaking. Even the scenery is generically nice, not spectacular. If I didn't know who Wittgenstein was, the place would not stand out, just another abandoned relic left to fade away in the pretty Norwegian countryside. But given my knowledge of Wittgenstein, it had all the charge of any pilgrimage site. A unique individual had sought solace here, and I was now in close proximity to where the crux of his thinking occurred. Yet it was an intangible bit of myth and history that convinced me of the significance of this place, not anything I could see for myself on site. This dual response, by which events experienced in body simultaneously took on additional interpretive meaning, occurred throughout the search for the hut. It happened when I moved gingerly through the mud and cow manure: how appropriate that one should have to wade through shit prior to reaching any higher state of philosophical understanding. It happened when I first spotted the crude signposts along the trail: chagrined at the overly obvious signage but welcoming the friendly gesture. And it happened during the onslaught of flies by the water. Part of me relished the attack: The perfect storm of insects was the world showing me viscerally what Wittgenstein meant. The flies were being released from their bottles en masse, flooding the air with a great energy that could now be put to better use. But alongside this interpretation I was frantic that I might inhale the swarm and choke or suffocate. They buzzed my face and torso like an apocalyptic cloud. I might respect the irony of awakening the flies from their slumber in Wittgensteinian terms, but in body they were sudden, thick, and distressing.

Even the mix of joy and disappointment at trail's end resonated on multiple levels. The anticlimactic feeling -the recognition that there is no there, there after all -worked with Wittgenstein's notion of a failed metaphysics. Philosophy simply couldn't deliver on that promise. Nonetheless, although an epiphany was not to be had so easily, the hiking was good.

This double consciousness made my search for Wittgenstein's hut much more complex than a simple walk in the woods. Phenomena were always experienced on two levels: that of 259 an embodied subject making its way through an empirical world of overwhelming sensations (confrontation with the physical landscape) and that of an analytical subject narrating the meaning of events in extra-sensorial ways (confrontation with Wittgenstein's texts). I don't mean to imply that one of these responses is more authentic or purer than the other: I believe the sense data are every bit as mediated and processed as the extra-sensory data. Nor was metaphor ever strong enough to subsume what was happening to me physically. They both remained tense and active, and greatly enhanced my experience of this place.

What does a rich life of the mind look like? Can it be found in the wilds of Norway or located on a map? Wittgenstein's choice to live such a Spartan existence shows that it is not external trappings that enable intense thinking and creativity. Rather it is a cultivated ability to make the world to be more than it appears. To Wittgenstein's credit, this is as much the real benefit of philosophy -or the language deployed therein -as it is its primary flaw.

Acknowledgement

Map drawings and photographs courtesy Jan Estep, 2007.

Biographical note

Jan Estep is an artist, writer, and trained philosopher. Her art writing has appeared in Frieze, Modern Painters, Bomb, Afterall, and New art examiner. Her artist books Ad Infinitum and Desert Maps, and Hot Air Sincerely are available at Printed Matter, Inc., along with a fully illustrated, folded sheet map titled Searching for Ludwig Wittgenstein, Lake Eidsvatnet, Skjolden, Sogn, Norway. For more information visit www.janestep.com. She can be contacted at: Department of Art, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455, USA; email: jestep@umn.edu Note 1 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (3rd Edition), trans. G.E.M. Anscombe (New York, Macmillan Publishing Co., 1953/1968), Proposition #309, p. 103.


est destinée au dépôt

Collaborative research between artists and academic geographers has grown considerably over the last decade and Chat Moss, as both artwork and publication, makes a fascinating contribution to this burgeoning field. Developed by visual artist Derek Hampson and geographical information science (GISc) specialist Gary Priestnall, the project takes an area of non-descript peat-land between Liverpool and Manchester, which famously threatened the building of the world's first passenger railway in 1830, as a case study site from which to investigate the challenges of representing landscapes that are complex both in terms of their history and in how they are experienced by different people in different ways. This publication documents the major output of their research, the creation of a 40-metre-square ceiling painting by Hampson (made up of more than 100 specially designed ceiling tiles) depicting the contemporary and historical nature of Chat Moss. It includes full-colour images of the artwork and an evocative series of black-and-white photographs of the area; these divide five short essays, which explore issues of representation in the context of both painting and GISc. Derek Hampson's account of the multiplicity of encounters, experiences and processes through which his depiction of Chat Moss evolved, offers rich insight into the 'conduct' of representation and the role of embodiment in the creation and interpretation of visual art. These ideas are also explored by art critic Peter Suchin who interconnects Hampson's experiential knowledge of the site, the representational strategies employed in the work and the physicality involved in viewing the painting. Moving away from discussion of the painting itself, David Matless uses the image as a point of departure from which to engage with various activities historically associated with Chat Moss. In doing so, Matless presents this area not as a landscape of emptiness, but as a place of cultural complexity, where the human and the natural are entwined through a diversity of practices. This chapter also makes for a thoughtful route into the main section of images detailing the work which directly follows. Texts by Gary Priestnall and Glen Hart present a more scientific perspective on the project and provide insightful consideration of the phenomenological idea of embodied representation in relation to the practices and methodologies of GISc. Through contemplating GISc in the context of painterly practices, both Priestnall and Hart look towards further research into how people interact with, and gain understanding from, different types of geographical data.

Read as a whole, Chat Moss not only provides a truly multifaceted exploration of a particular place, but also richly extends Hampson and Priestnall's desire to explore the representation of landscape as both a place of history and a place of experience, where looking emerges as very much an engaged activity -for both artist/image-maker and viewer. As such, this book will be of particular relevance to those interested in the 'performance' of visual art (and other forms of representation), and, more broadly, to anyone interested in landscape as practiced environment and the possibilities of collaborative research.

Queen Mary, University of London

HOLLY MCLAREN

  Holly Mclaren. Book review: Chat moss. By Derek Hampson and Gary Priestnall. Nottingham: CMG. 2005. 70 pp. £6.00 paper. ISBN 1 870 522 42 7. cultural geographies, 2008, 15 (1), pp.152-152. 10.1177/14744740080150010802. hal-00572023 Chat moss. By Derek Hampson and Gary Priestnall. Nottingham: CMG. 2005. 70 pp. £6.00 paper. ISBN 1 870 522 42 7


est destinée au dépôt

Domestic Mandala, part of a series linking anthropological theory, cultural history and religious studies, focuses on the cosmological significance of houses (traditional and modern) in the Kholagaun hamlet in the village of Banaspati, Kathmandu. The concept of homology is central to the discussion: the human body relates to the house as the house relates to the cosmos.

The different spatial modalities of the house demonstrate this: the mandalic (concentric spaces around a centre) and yantric (cardinal directions and auspicious rituals) are underpinned by the foundational myth of Purusha, the cosmic being integral to sacred geometry.

Does Gray show that this system or philosophy is a conscious way of being for people, rather than an external construct imposed by the anthropologist? Utilizing excerpts and producing vignettes from fieldnotes, Gray reveals that the householders self-identify as having a lifestyle defined by dharma (which itself articulates the relation between an individual's stage of life and worldly duty). Particularly interesting is the analysis of marriage rites which, it is argued, are ritual as performance.

Indeed the notion of an embodied way of knowing is crucial to the argument that truth is made manifest through paradoxical attachment and detachment. That is, the process of building, the configuration of the built form, and everyday domestic activities are revelatory.

Gray highlights the importance of boundaries to Nepalese thinking, and ideas of purity and impurity are key here. Disembodied ghosts haunt liminal spaces, while women external to the family might be perceived as a potential threat to the house. Moreover, conceptions of pure and impure affect everyday rituals such as the preparation of rice, in terms of physical location and participants.

Ultimately, Gray is concerned with how to express, in an analytic ethnography, what he terms the 'lifeworld', the unspoken dimension of social life.

Faculty of Arts

INGA BRYDEN

University of Winchester

A war of images. By Stephen M. Norris. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press. 2006. 291 pp. $40.00. cloth. ISBN: 0-87580-363-6. This interesting monograph explores what the author calls 'Russian visual nationhood.' Specifically, it is a study of how lubok illustrations (cheap and colorful bastwood prints long popular among Russia's lower classes) depicted -and propagandized for -Russian military campaigns, from the Napoleonic invasion of 1812 down to the Second World War. Challenging arguments of Geoffrey Hosking and others that a sense of nationhood in Russia was traditionally only weakly developed, or indeed absent altogether, Norris insists that the articulation of identity was a constant and pervasive process. His point is well taken and certainly well demonstrated, although given the intensely patriotic nature of the evidence he considers one could hardly have expected differently. He traces how the iconography of

  Inga Bryden. Book review: Domestic mandala: architecture of lifeworlds in Nepal. By J. Gray. Aldershot: Ashgate. 2006. xvi + 163 pp. £45.00 hardback. ISBN 0 754 645 38 X. cultural geographies, 2008, 15 (2), pp.282-282. 10.1177/14744740080150020802. hal-00572024 Domestic mandala: architecture of lifeworlds in Nepal. By J. Gray. Aldershot: Ashgate. 2006. xvi ϩ163 pp. £45.00 hardback. ISBN 0 754 645 38 X


Fatherland representation shifted over the 19th century, with the image of the tsar-batioshka or tsar-father becoming less important while the image of the sturdy and diligent peasant remained ever stable. The discussion of how lubok illustrations survived the revolution of 1917 to prosper as an effective means of political propaganda and popular mobilization in the USSR is particularly fascinating. As part of this, we gain a glimpse into the little-known aspects of the oeuvre of cultural giants such as Vladimir Mayakovsky and Kazimir Malevich, namely their careers as humble lubok illustrators. Overall, the book provides fascinating insight into how national identity was represented and perceived on the lowest levels of society, among a population that was for the most part illiterate. At the same time, however, the imagery it discusses is striking for the absence of a concern with landscape as a defining parameter for national identification. As Chris Ely's recent This meager nature demonstrates, landscape was a vital element in the elaboration of Russianness for the 'high' culture of Russian art and poetry. Perhaps a follow-up study, examining lubki pictures that are not related to war themes, would reveal a similar engagement with the geography of nationhood. This book follows on conceptually and in subject matter from Buttimer's Geography and the human spirit (1993) and Geographers of Norden (1988) co-edited with Torsten Hagerstrand. The volume explores the making of Swedish geography, emphasizing geography as socially constructed knowledges. Although principally an analysis of the historical development of Geography in Sweden, By northern Lights draws on the interviews of the International Dialogue Project 1978-88, notably in the interview with Hagerstrand constituting Chapter Six. This interview, in the spirit of the Dialogue Project brings the (albeit still mediated) personalprofessional voice of the geographer rather than their authorial or pedagogic voice to the history of geography. Buttimer brought oral history to the history of geography, long before it was fashionable, and this tradition is continued here. Many will find insight to Hagerstrand's work through this interview and it provides a useful resource in teaching the development of geographical thought -as does the whole book. The exploration of personal life-careers through biography (such as those of Edgar Kant, W. William-Olsson and Gerd Enquist) is a rich vein running throughout the text, linked in turn to wider intellectual, social and political milieu within and beyond geography.

University of Birmingham

Conceptually, changes in the history of Swedish geography are explained using Buttimer's threefold conceptual frameworks of meaning, metaphor and milieu and phoenix, faust and narcissus. Although explained here, a reader unfamiliar with these ideas may find it helpful to read Buttimer's earlier work first. However, once grasped, these analytical frameworks are applied to effect in this volume in the nuanced exploration of institutional and individual accounts of geography (although the poor text quality on some of the tables mapping these different elements is unfortunate). Buttimer and Mels provide the historian of geographical ideas and practices with a rich source of contextual studies at an institutional and national level, all of which combines to shed light on particular matrices of influence that produced a specifically Swedish expression of geography and Empire, home and regional studies, geography and social concern, applied geography and the separation of physical and human geography. This then provides the international reader with an opportunity to place famous Swedish developments such as the quantitative group at Lund within the broader context of Swedish geography, as well as an opportunity to learn about other geographical events and trends less well known to the Anglo-American reader at least. One novel and fascinating element is the inclusion of all Swedish doctoral dissertations 1884-2000 in Appendix A, providing an accessible data set that can be analysed in many ways, not least in showing the trends in themes and methodologies in Swedish geography as well as the strong applied route for geographical knowledge. Overall, By northern Lights provides a detailed account of the history of Swedish geography, which has been long-overdue and should long stand as a reference not only on geography in Sweden but the practice of the historiography of geography. Emerging 'from the two interrelated processes of technical identification, creating meanings for technology and perceiving self in relationship to technology' (p. 161), Haring explores the technical culture of the hobbyist and argues for a closer examination of the social and personal aspects of technical communities. Enthusiasts are largely ignored by scholarship on technical culture, this volume, however, is a welcome addition to recent work on computer enthusiasts and hackers. Moreover she offers 'a reminder that there exist alternative ways of using and relating to technology' (p. 18).

Oxford Brookes University

Radio technology and its associated practices are inherently spatial, operating on a variety of scales and across a range of spaces; something explored to great effect by Haring, with the book's chapters travelling between the amateur club, the equipment manufacturer, the Federal Communications Commission and the domestic radio shack. The chapter entitled 'Ham Radio at Home' is particularly noteworthy. Haring discusses here how 'men's ham radio activity gained domestic acceptance' (p. 133) after being regarded for many years as a threat to social relationships and 'incompatible with romantic interests' (p. 122). She examines the location of the 'shack' within the home; arguing that the shacks 'grounded the ethereal hobby experience and situated hobbyists in the domestic context ' (p. 145). Haring provides useful insights on questions of gendered architecture, hobby space, masculine sociability and changing technological values.

  MARK BASSINBy northern lights: on the making of geography in Sweden. By Anne Buttimer and Tom Mels. Basingstoke: Ashgate. 2006. 214pp. £xx cloth. ISBN: 0-7546-4814-1 cloth.

  AVRIL MADDRELL Ham radio's technical culture. By K. Haring. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. 2007. xvii ϩ220 pp. £18.95. cloth. ISBN: 0262083558. 'G4PDH, G4PDH, this is 2M1QQQ calling you. How do you copy?' Music to the amateur radio enthusiast's ears. Radio hams are the subject of Kristen Haring's enjoyable and important book, which traces ham radio culture in the USA between 1930 and 1970. Drawing on archive material, Haring composes an account as interesting to the historian of technology as to the cultural geographer with interests in concepts of home, leisure, masculinity and technology.


level, all of which combines to shed light on particular matrices of influence that produced a specifically Swedish expression of geography and Empire, home and regional studies, geography and social concern, applied geography and the separation of physical and human geography. This then provides the international reader with an opportunity to place famous Swedish developments such as the quantitative group at Lund within the broader context of Swedish geography, as well as an opportunity to learn about other geographical events and trends less well known to the Anglo-American reader at least. One novel and fascinating element is the inclusion of all Swedish doctoral dissertations 1884-2000 in Appendix A, providing an accessible data set that can be analysed in many ways, not least in showing the trends in themes and methodologies in Swedish geography as well as the strong applied route for geographical knowledge. Overall, By northern Lights provides a detailed account of the history of Swedish geography, which has been long-overdue and should long stand as a reference not only on geography in Sweden but the practice of the historiography of geography. Emerging 'from the two interrelated processes of technical identification, creating meanings for technology and perceiving self in relationship to technology' (p. 161), Haring explores the technical culture of the hobbyist and argues for a closer examination of the social and personal aspects of technical communities. Enthusiasts are largely ignored by scholarship on technical culture, this volume, however, is a welcome addition to recent work on computer enthusiasts and hackers. Moreover she offers 'a reminder that there exist alternative ways of using and relating to technology' (p. 18).

Oxford Brookes University

Radio technology and its associated practices are inherently spatial, operating on a variety of scales and across a range of spaces; something explored to great effect by Haring, with the book's chapters travelling between the amateur club, the equipment manufacturer, the Federal Communications Commission and the domestic radio shack. The chapter entitled 'Ham Radio at Home' is particularly noteworthy. Haring discusses here how 'men's ham radio activity gained domestic acceptance' (p. 133) after being regarded for many years as a threat to social relationships and 'incompatible with romantic interests' (p. 122). She examines the location of the 'shack' within the home; arguing that the shacks 'grounded the ethereal hobby experience and situated hobbyists in the domestic context ' (p. 145). Haring provides useful insights on questions of gendered architecture, hobby space, masculine sociability and changing technological values.

  AVRIL MADDRELL Ham radio's technical culture. By K. Haring. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. 2007. xvii ϩ220 pp. £18.95. cloth. ISBN: 0262083558. 'G4PDH, G4PDH, this is 2M1QQQ calling you. How do you copy?' Music to the amateur radio enthusiast's ears. Radio hams are the subject of Kristen Haring's enjoyable and important book, which traces ham radio culture in the USA between 1930 and 1970. Drawing on archive material, Haring composes an account as interesting to the historian of technology as to the cultural geographer with interests in concepts of home, leisure, masculinity and technology.

Ham radio's technical culture has a wide-ranging audience; finding a place on the bookshelves of telecommunications enthusiasts and academics alike. Haring succinctly captures the hidden world of the radio ham, adding a charming dimension to cultural geography's current fascination with more advanced scientific and technical cultures. 'di-dah-di-dah-dit' (for the uninitiated that was Morse code for 'end of transmission').

Department of Geography Royal Holloway,

HILARY GEOGHEGAN

University of London

Geographies of Muslim women: gender, religion and space. Edited by Ghazi-Walid Falah and Caroline Nagel. New York: Guildford Press. 2005. 337 pp. $55.00. cloth. ISBN: 1593851839.

Following the September 11 attacks in the US in 2001 there has been a proliferation of work exploring the lives of Muslim populations. Much of this interest has focused on the growing visibility of Muslim women, and on the veiling practices of Muslim women in public spaces. Geographies of Muslim women: gender, religion, and space, by G-W. Falah and C. Nagel offer a diverse collection of chapters dealing with how Muslim women negotiate and perform their identities in everyday spaces in diverse geopolitical contexts such as Morocco, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. These geopolitical tales tell us considerable amounts about the inter-play between gender, religion, and place in Islamic societies in both Muslim majority and non-Muslim countries. This book is partly motivated by the debates surrounding the headscarf controversy in France. Its editors, anticipating how this debate will play out in other European contexts, found it important to situate the collections within a moral political economy fuelling interest in the spatiality of Muslim women. The results are startling and interesting. The contributions draw on the inter-play between representations of Muslim women across the developing world, and upon specific relations between space, gender and Islam. This collection provides a salutary reminder that critical feminist conversations must not be abandoned at a time when it is most needed. The individual chapters are taken from wide variations of geography and women's daily lives and, illustrating in my mind, G. Pratt's much cited assertion that it is only meaningful to consider identity and [Muslim/Arab] difference, with reference to particular places and at particular times (Pratt, 1992). The contributions reflect an important attempt by feminist researchers on cultural politics to situate women's lives in historical and geopolitical contexts, rather than through the monolithic lens of religion.

Many of the authors make a political plea for distancing the situation of 'Muslim women' from the discourses on women's rights used by the US administration to justify its foreign policy goals. The collections manage to straddle a fine balance between drawing out 'Muslim woman' as a political category and the attendant risk of essentializing the diversity of women in Muslim societies, while at the same time presenting rich and contextualized accounts of the women's lives.

The first part is focused on the intersections on gender, development and religion. The authors highlight the limitations of mainstream development discourses, calling for increased engagement with the negotiated nature of space, girlhood, and notions of Islam within the context of shifting labour production and markets. For example, focusing on Afghanistan,


Ham radio's technical culture has a wide-ranging audience; finding a place on the bookshelves of telecommunications enthusiasts and academics alike. Haring succinctly captures the hidden world of the radio ham, adding a charming dimension to cultural geography's current fascination with more advanced scientific and technical cultures. 'di-dah-di-dah-dit' (for the uninitiated that was Morse code for 'end of transmission').

Department of Geography Royal Holloway,

HILARY GEOGHEGAN

University of London

Geographies of Muslim women: gender, religion and space. Edited by Ghazi-Walid Falah and Caroline Nagel. New York: Guildford Press. 2005. 337 pp. $55.00. cloth. ISBN: 1593851839.

Following the September 11 attacks in the US in 2001 there has been a proliferation of work exploring the lives of Muslim populations. Much of this interest has focused on the growing visibility of Muslim women, and on the veiling practices of Muslim women in public spaces. Geographies of Muslim women: gender, religion, and space, by G-W. Falah and C. Nagel offer a diverse collection of chapters dealing with how Muslim women negotiate and perform their identities in everyday spaces in diverse geopolitical contexts such as Morocco, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. These geopolitical tales tell us considerable amounts about the inter-play between gender, religion, and place in Islamic societies in both Muslim majority and non-Muslim countries. This book is partly motivated by the debates surrounding the headscarf controversy in France. Its editors, anticipating how this debate will play out in other European contexts, found it important to situate the collections within a moral political economy fuelling interest in the spatiality of Muslim women. The results are startling and interesting. The contributions draw on the inter-play between representations of Muslim women across the developing world, and upon specific relations between space, gender and Islam. This collection provides a salutary reminder that critical feminist conversations must not be abandoned at a time when it is most needed. The individual chapters are taken from wide variations of geography and women's daily lives and, illustrating in my mind, G. Pratt's much cited assertion that it is only meaningful to consider identity and [Muslim/Arab] difference, with reference to particular places and at particular times [START_REF] Pratt | Commentary: spatial metaphors and speaking positions[END_REF]. The contributions reflect an important attempt by feminist researchers on cultural politics to situate women's lives in historical and geopolitical contexts, rather than through the monolithic lens of religion.

Many of the authors make a political plea for distancing the situation of 'Muslim women' from the discourses on women's rights used by the US administration to justify its foreign policy goals. The collections manage to straddle a fine balance between drawing out 'Muslim woman' as a political category and the attendant risk of essentializing the diversity of women in Muslim societies, while at the same time presenting rich and contextualized accounts of the women's lives.

The first part is focused on the intersections on gender, development and religion. The authors highlight the limitations of mainstream development discourses, calling for increased engagement with the negotiated nature of space, girlhood, and notions of Islam within the context of shifting labour production and markets. For example, focusing on Afghanistan, N.G. Aaftaab presents a historical and contextual account of the girls' education in Afghani society in three pivotal phases, 1930, late 1970s and early 1990s, and firmly grounds women inside the political spectrum and practices in Afghanistan. The picture to emerge is one where women's development and education at local level are formed within an understanding of history and power relations locally and at a larger scale-and this, argues Aaftaab, is missed by human development models imposed by many donors and the NGOs. Similarly, S.H. Steinmann's chapter presents a shifting economic and political landscape against which the pastoral communities in eastern Morocco operate, where similarly gender divisions of labour and spaces are constantly negotiated.

The second section, shorter in length, deals with issues of mobility and migration through the use of women's personal narratives. The chapters throw light on the way in which everyday decision-making takes place at the intersections between gender, culture, and politicaleconomic processes. The case studies range from women's migration from rural Indonesia into Saudi Arabia, to Morocco, through to the migration of Pakistani-origin women in the UK. R. Silvey's account of Indonesian women seeking work as domestic servants shows the way in which Saudi is sold as a destination site for migrants using religion as a major pull to ward off competition from other Gulf countries.

The third and final section deals with discourse and portrayal of Muslim women in written and narrated forms in policy, literary and academic landscapes of representation. The issue of representation for Muslim women has never been more important as growing number of studies, articles, books and novels, surface to depict the Muslim woman. The authors use geographical perspectives to contest dominant representations of Muslim women as the Other and illustrate how images and discourse on Islam and the repression of women are increasingly utilised in spatial conflicts. A. Secor's chapter discusses the restrictions the Turkish state has placed on the wearing of the veil in public spaces under the name of secularism. Secor's informants frame their right to wear the veil as a basic human right and call into question Turkey's commitment to democracy. The situation is complicated further when we are presented with a prohibitive view of the state where the need to islamicize the public sphere becomes an objective for many who are denied the freedom to wear the veil. A.I. Samatar's chapter moves to Somalia where a different contestation of space is taking place over the formation of a mosque. M. Absisaab similarly presents an analysis on gendered discourse among Lebanese women factory workers as they negotiate equal rights in the workplace. Finally, G.W. Falah's chapter on the visual representation of Muslim/Arab women in US media brings home the full weight of the bias and distortions. Falah's chapter systematically reveals biased representations at work in national imaginaries in support of the War on Terror. A persistent theme in geography has related to the emergence of meaning and practice imbued in texts and visual representations to legitimate ways of seeing for the ideal spectator (cf. Berger, 1972). To some extent this collection, and others like it, point to the emergence and the growing need, for counter-representations.

This volume is an important contribution to debates beyond geography and cultural politics and will no doubt remain a landmark beyond the initial zeal of publications on Muslim women. It will appeal to readers with an interest in Muslims in non-majority Muslim countries where Islam is struggling to emerge as a heterogonous force against both US influenced neo-conservatism and reactionary trends in religion and faith from different parts of the globe.


est destinée au dépôt

In Home (2006), Blunt and Dowling creatively argue that home must be considered as both a spatial imaginary (the relations between feelings, attachment, and dwelling) as well as a political space of negotiation and contestation. The book begins with a contemporary, largely western conceptualization of the home and moves to outline multiple avenues for exploring a critical geography where home is conceptualized as the multi-scalar, material and imaginative site in and through which power and identity intersect with, disrupt, and extend common understandings of home. While comparative cultural geographies of home are limited here, the resulting book is a solid reference piece that persistently requires a flexible reader willing to extend their own imaginations of home along the journey. As such, reading it becomes a series of engaged moments between authors and reader in which a truly critical geography finds expression.

The historical dimensions of home, through which we have come to understand what home does, should, and could mean, is best found in Chapter 2: Representing Home; and Chapter 4: Home, Nation and Empire. Missing, however, is a temporal dimension more closely connected to the everyday lived enactments, experiences, and expressions of home: the time-specific particularities of the meanings of home. While space is critical to appreciating the 'fluidity of home as a concept, metaphor and lived experience' (p. 21), I suggest that political, social, and cultural processes are disrupting the linearity of home as well. That is, the meanings and attachments of home for single couples; young families; families with teens; empty-nesters; and returnees -home across the life course -suggest that home is indeed dynamic, but both flexible and durable. While a sense of time is introduced in a section on ethnographic research, it is not developed more substantially (pp. 43-4). Thinking about the home across the life course is one approach to incorporate social processes and rites of passage that reorient the material and imaginary home. Rethinking home across the course of one day, the differences in social relations and expectations during the week compared to the weekend, or between the everyday and the celebratory moments might further disrupt the normative and static notions of home. In these temporal frameworks, a deeper understanding of parental control, boundaries and territories of 'adult' space versus 'child' spaces, and the constant renegotiation of norms, expectations, and power relations might be more critically analyzed.

That I can pose these questions without undermining the integrity of the book's argument suggests that Blunt and Dowling have succeeded in producing, not only a geography of the home, but also a framework and approach for a sustained critical geography of the home.

Department of Geography

Home.

  By Alison Blunt and Robyn Dowling. London/New York: Routledge. 2006. xvi ϩ 304 pp. $125.00 cloth, $35.95 paper. ISBN 0415332753.

  : literatures, cultures and spaces. Edited by Peter Brooker and Andrew Thacker. London and New York: Routledge. 2005. 181 pp. £19.99 paperback. ISBN 0 415 33116 1.