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

Copyright

2019

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. The article concludes with recommendations for more explicit, critically informed attention to place in social work practice, education and research.