In this Progress in Human Geography annual lecture I reflect on geographical contributions to academic and policy debates about how we might forge civic culture out of difference. In doing so I begin by tracing a set of disparate geographical writings — about the micro-publics of everyday life, cosmopolitanism hospitality, and new urban citizenship — that have sought to understand the role of shared space in providing the opportunity for encounter between `strangers'. This literature is considered in the light of an older tradition of work about `the contact hypothesis' from psychology. Then, employing original empirical material, I critically reflect on the notion of `meaningful contact' to explore the paradoxical gap that emerges in geographies of encounter between values and practices. In the conclusion I argue for the need for geographers to pay more attention to sociospatial inequalities and the insecurities they breed, and to unpacking the complex and intersecting ways in which power operates.

This article focuses on the concept of intersectionality, which is being used within the wider social sciences by feminists to theorize the relationship between different social categories: gender, race, sexuality, and so forth. Although research within the field of feminist geography has explored particular interconnections such as those between gender and race, the theoretical concept of intersectionality as debated in the wider social sciences has not been addressed. This article attempts to respond to that omission. It begins by tracing the emergence of debates about the interconnections between gender and other identities. It goes on to reflect on attempts to map geometries of oppressions. The emphasis then moves from theorizing intersectionality to questioning how it can be researched in practice by presenting a case study to illustrate intersectionality as lived experience. The conclusion demonstrates the contribution that feminist geography can make to advance the theorization of intersectionality through its appreciation of the significance of space in processes of subject formation. It calls for feminist geography to pay more attention to questions of power and social inequalities.

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Children's safety is an issue high on the public agenda in both the UK and North America. In particular, the “stranger‐danger” discourse plays an important part in constructing children as “vulnerable” and “at risk” in public space. This paper begins by exploring how adults define whether their children are competent to negotiate public space unsupervised and how they control and manage their children's use of space. It then goes on to consider children's own understandings of their ability to negotiate public space safely, exploring how they subvert restrictions placed on them by parents and how they define their parents' levels of competence to make decisions about their spatial ranges. In doing so the paper demonstrates the instability and contested meanings of the binary concepts —”adult” and “child.”

Heterosexuality is the dominant sexuality in modern Western culture, However, it is not defined merely by sexual acts in private space but is a process of power relations which operates in most everyday environments. In this paper, therefore, the author explores how lesbians perceive and experience everyday spaces. It is argued that lesbians can feel ‘out of place’ in environments such as the workplace or hotels, because these spaces are organised and appropriated by heterosexuals and so express and reproduce asymmetrical sociosexual relations. Consideration is also given to the way heterosexual hegemony is reproduced and expressed in space through antigay discrimination and violence. In the conclusion, the author explores the way in which fear of disclosure and antigay abuse inhibit the expression of lesbian and gay sexualities in everyday spaces and so feed the spatial supremacy of heterosexuality.

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Summary The question of whether household members should be interviewed together or apart is hotly debated in ‘family’ studies. In this paper, I use my own experiences of both methods of interviewing in order to explore some of the practical problems, ethical issues and power dynamics of conducting household research, and to demonstrate how a household focus can contribute to the understanding of gender relations.

In this paper I argue that the boundary between childhood and adulthood is very difficult to define. Notably, it is blurred by the ambiguous period of 'youth'. I therefore draw upon Beck's theoretical work on individualisation and the life-course, which has been influential in youth research in sociology and youth studies, to provide a framework for reviewing some of the processes through which young people make the transition from childhood to adulthood. In the conclusion I reflect on the need to explore the importance of the different spaces implicit in young people's transitions, and the interconnections between them. I also highlight how distinctions between the states of childhood and adulthood are not clear-cut, nor are transitions a one-off or one-way process. Rather I draw attention to the way that changes associated with growing up may or may not be connected, and may occur simultaneously, serially or not at all. Finally, I point out the limitations of normative models of transition given the way that other social differences such as gender, class and sexuality intersect with the categories children and youth.