Embodied counter-mapping of gendered urban violence and resistance across body-community–city territories in Rio de Janeiro

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper develops an innovative “embodied counter-mapping” methodological, ontological and conceptual approach to capture how women experience and resist gendered urban violence perpetrated by men and the state across multiple “body-community–city territories”. Embodied counter-mapping incorporates cuerpo-territorio or body-territory mapping in dialogue with participatory territorial mapping to reveal how women experience gendered urban violence across a complex spatial and relational continuum that integrates resistance. Focusing on body-community–city territorial relationships among women “inside” and “outside” the favelas of Maré in Rio de Janeiro, the paper highlights how intimate partner, interpersonal, and police and armed group violence is embodied, intersectional and spatialized. In turn, women’s resistance across these territories is rooted in individual and collective ancestral and transgenerational knowledge, self-care, and deep connections with nature. The paper makes original contributions to ongoing feminist urban geographical and decolonial debates in highlighting the gendered nature of urban violence, asserting the need to focus on body-nature-territorial relationships among women in the urban margins, arguing for spatially sensitive territorial continuum thinking around gendered violence and resistance, all of which can be achieved through mobilizing our embodied counter-mapping approach that foregrounds women’s roles as protagonists rather victims.