Everyday Spaces of Difference, Identity and Inequality

This chapter asks you to consider how we all have an identity that is shaped by broader structures in society, in ways that are often out of our control. Drawing on work by Gill Valentine, bell hooks, and Doreen Massey, we unpick how our identity and spaces of encounter are comprised of multiple, intersectional strands, each overlain, performed every day, and changing over time. It examines some of the social identifiers that can shape society, including class, race, gender, sexuality, age, and disability, and considers how recent times have exacerbated some of the pre-existing inequalities. This chapter expands on the first theme of social geography outlined in Chapter 1 : the idea of the social, connecting it to difference and identity. But in the second part of the chapter, we also detail the relationships built into inequality, our second key theme of social geography across the textbook. In so doing, we also use this chapter to unpack the various relationships found with geographies of difference and social identity.