‘Safe space’ as counter‐space: women, environmental illness and ‘corporeal chaos’

Abstract

Women constitute a disproportionate 80 percent of people diagnosed with environmental illness (EI), a contentious condition in which patients react adversely to everyday chemicals in the environment at levels politically conceived to be ‘safe’. Whilst the diverse range of somatic symptoms constitutes a biomedical anomaly, in this paper I present an alternative means of conceiving environmentally ill bodies. Women (and environmental health practitioners at the Environmental Health Centre, Nova Scotia) have begun to view their bodies as complex systems that have been nudged into a state of ‘corporeal chaos’, in which minute quantities of chemicals trigger disproportionate somatic symptoms. This chaos extends into ‘corporeal space’[Moss and Dyck (1999a)] as the diagnosis of environmental illness is experienced simultaneously through both material and discursive bodies. This diagnosis also carries with it a means to mitigate corporeal chaos through a series of body‐ and environment‐based modifications that replace risky bodies with ‘safe space’. As a discursive construct, safe space is associated with an absence of chemicals, and in order to mitigate chaos, should ideally be stable, predictable, controllable and communicative. I finalise this paper with some examples of body modifications and illustrate how safe space materialises in the home environment.

Alcohol, diabetes and the student body

“…Interestingly, geographers have also shown that the ways in which individuals manage risk is often spatialized. For example, Coyle's (2004) work on environmental illness focused on how women with this condition constructed 'safe spaces' within their homes to protect themselves from the debilitating aspects of their condition. Coyle argued that by regulating space through the detection and removal of environmental pollutants, these women empowered themselves by taking control over their spatial situation and minimizing their risk of losing control over their bodies.…”

“…Testing after going out, at home, provided interviewees with a way to regain control over their bodies, taking control of risk and becoming 'normal' again. Home was a safe space (Coyle 2004) for many respondents, a space to moderate the effects of drinking riskily in more public spaces (though as noted above, there was a risk that respondents could develop hypoglycaemia at home). Students were willing to tolerate high levels of risk from drinking when they were out in the knowledge that these high levels of risk would be spatially and temporally bracketed (the young person would only be drinking in a particular place and only for a little while), and would be controlled for when the young person got home.…”

‘It just doesn't seem to fit’. Environmental illness, corporeal chaos and the body as a complex system

“…Partial recovery was reported to occur in a number of avalanches and could arguably be explained by self‐organized criticality, as patients made abrupt slippages into a more stable, healthy corporeal identity. In particular, the reproduction of safe, therapeutic spaces provided a calm, stable environment from which to gently nudge some of the stalling points in people's lives and the reactivity of the body into a more healthy state [21]. Nevertheless, this orderly space was redundant, unless a calm inner environment was also promoted by working with the nervous system.…”

The geography of loyalist paramilitary feuding in Belfast

“…Others examine how groups resist by breaking normative rules in spaces controlled by dominant groups (Geltmaker, 1992;Valentine, 1995). Still others focus on the ways in which resistance groups create safe spaces in which to nurture resistance identities (Coyle, 2004).…”