Ambiguity and the Archive: Feminist Historical Geographies of North East (UK) Mining Communities (1926-1931)

Abstract

This thesis explores the ways in which ambiguity can provide space for the facilitation of understanding previously un- or under-acknowledged expressions of female agency for working-class women in mining communities, 1926-1931.

In this light, this research considers ambiguity as 2-fold: through the production of ambiguous spaces, which provide a space where social expectations and norms can be challenged and/or subverted and methodologically, through the impossibility of absolute knowledge production and the construction of historical material. This is particularly important when considering the histories of marginalised groups such as working-class women, who’s voice - and therefore contribution - often has the potential to be under-represented within historical geography research (McDonagh, 2018).

By considering these concepts in relation to the lives of women in mining communities, using three sources from 1926-1931, new light is shed on the ways in which these women engaged with the presence of ambiguous spaces as a means of socio-political resistance to social expectations and norms in a variety of spaces. Namely, these are leisure spaces, newly emerging political spaces (and the interaction of these within the context of the domestic sphere) and the body. In doing so, a greater depth of the true extent and complexity of working-class female agency and autonomy is understood.

This thesis also offers suggestions regarding how feminist historical geography can employ ‘ambiguity’ as a methodological tool. Here, it argued that while some methodological challenges admittedly do arise from engagement with ambiguity, it also potentially offers alternative avenues to uncover otherwise hidden or overlooked histories which exist within the archive.