Manufacturing space: Gendered cityscapes and industrial images in Dundee

Abstract

Recent interest in the material and discursive construction of built environments has largely focused on the iconic skyscraper as a symbol of ‘modern’ global and corporate power. Within this theoretical frame, industrial landscapes are given short shrift. This paper seeks to redress this by taking the example of Victorian and Edwardian Dundee and exploring the construction of a specific manufacturing space by the city’s industrial elite. Moreover, this paper moves beyond traditional analyses to take a specifically gendered look at this process. I argue that while women numerically dominated Dundee’s jute industry, it was men as jute company directors that laid claim to place through their role in image making. The paper starts by looking at the processes of building and elaborating industrial space and power through an investigation of the fabric of the city. It then explores how such materiality was accompanied by and represented in a range of industrial imagery. Unpacking this landscape – pointing to the construction and subversion of gendered binaries and the recursive relationship between the material and immaterial – helps us see how industrial elites fashioned and reaffirmed their identity and power through the mobilisation of a set of representational tactics, creating a particularly gendered manufacturing (of) space.