Place as a Social Determinant of Health: Narratives of Trauma and Homeland among Palestinian Women

Abstract

Despite calls for greater social work attention to the centrality of place in human life, the profession has yet to hone frameworks that fully capture the role of place in individual–collective identity and well-being. To move this agenda forward, this article draws on data from a series of focus groups to explore the placed experiences of women in Palestine. Analytically, it is informed by critical place inquiry, which emphasises the deeply interactional relationships between people and places, views place-centred practice and research as catalysts for active responses to the spatialised nature of power and injustice, and focuses centrally on the geographic and spatial dynamics of colonisation, and particularly settler colonialism, as key determinants of individual and collective well-being. Women’s spatial narratives revolved around individual–collective identity and sovereignty, focusing in particular on three interdependent factors: freedom of movement; possession and dispossession; and continuity of place. Findings also illuminated spatial practices of resistance by which women defend and promote identity and sovereignty. We conclude with recommendations for more explicit, critically informed attention to place in social work practice, education and research.

“The utmost strength I can bear”: Strategies and psychological costs of mothering within political violence

“…The ongoing political violence in the Palestinian context must be understood through a larger settler-colonial framework, characterized by Israel imposing systems of dispossession and control (Salamanca, 2012). This is done by the spatial constraint of Palestinian people and places via land takeovers, home invasions, and a series of Israelionly roads and checkpoints that take up upwards of 40% of Palestinian land in the West Bank (Hammami, 2015; United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs [UN-OCHA], 2007;Weizman, 2007); arbitrary and politically motivated arrests, detainments, and imprisonment (Giacaman & Johnson, 2013;McNeely et al, 2015); ongoing economic, educational, and social de-development (Barber et al, 2014;Roy, 2016); and humiliation and control (Giacaman, 2018;Sousa, Kemp, & El-Zuhairi, 2019).…”

On Mental Health Amid Covid-19

“…46 Settler colonialism also has direct psychological implications as a distinct form of historical trauma characterized by intentional, ongoing assaults on collective well-being, identity, and survival. 47 Using a lens of collective, historical trauma tied to settler colonialism inspires particular attention to resistance and the ways this resistance feeds collective resilience. 48 Elsewhere, scholars have called for an understanding of resilience that situates the concept within deep political, social, and economic contexts.…”

Community life on demand in ground-floor shop spaces: A tactical place-making initiative in Hong Kong

“…Given the limitation of distinguishing 'community' from the spatially orientated conception of locality (Smith, 1999), Rothman's approach of locality-based community development has been unable to respond to the ever-increasing need to work with people who come into contact with each other by virtue of intent, not proximity. This outmoded interpretation of community development in the 1970s has also not helped social workers and community workers to keep pace with the rural-urban cyber transition of place communities (Bradshaw, 2008;Gibson and Kaplan, 2017) determined by interactional relationships between people and place (Akesson et al, 2017;Sousa et al, 2019;Stanley et al, 2016) and offer socio-spatial response to segregation and vulnerability (Turunen, 2017). Williams (2016Williams ( , 2019 argues that critical social work has to be repositioned so as to address the connection of place with social justice and wellbeing.…”