Narratives of 'other spaces': reconfiguring culture and identity boundaries : re-shaping a culture of boundaries 30th International Congress of Psychology

in Cape Town, South Africa 22 27 July 2012 Women scientists are living at a critical time in South Africa as the socio-political landscape is changing rapidly, effecting changes in many dimensions of identification, particularly, race, gender and class. Drawing on preliminary data from in-depth interviews with a cohort of Black women graduates in science, this paper illustrates how narrative methods could be used to investigate the ways in which discursive, embodied and symbolic practices in and through time with space articulate in their intersectional identities. The focus will be on conceptualising how these women traverse spatially embodied boundaries within white and male dominated spaces into other spaces by reconfiguring culture and identity boundaries. The significance of this research lies in its contribution to understanding personal and social change (?the transformation of collective boundaries), particularly for marginalised groups who come to occupy positions of power in both the production of knowledge and the functioning of society.