Hangouts and the Social Production of Space: A Phenomenological Study of Everyday Life in Isfahan Women's Hangouts

The presence of women in the city and attending informal gatherings is part of their daily lives. The main purpose of this study is to describe women's lived experience of the relationships they produce and reproduce as social actors in feminine urban hangouts. Influenced by Henri Lefebvre's theory of space production, the premise of this study is that space and place were not merely a material product but a product of social relations. The main purpose of the present study is to understand women's lived experiences and spatial perceptions of feminine hangouts and their role in reproducing social structure. In order to achieve these goals, relying on phenomenology, interviews and observation were considered as data collection techniques. In this regard, four types of women's hangouts were selected and through targeted sampling, 27 women from Isfahan were interviewed. The present study shows how hangouts such as alleyways and women's religious meetings act as two spaces through which women reproduce the traditional relations of society. In fact, these two spaces have the "reproduction and continuity of traditional spatial practice" that leads to the "ideological reproduction of collective space". In contrast, the two venues, the café and the poetry and music circles, serve as hangouts in which a new form of everyday life is produced that is not based on the reproduction of patriarchal values or the continuation of traditional community values. Such hangouts can be termed the "semiotic production of modern social space", which in some cases, such as literary and artistic circles, leads to "intellectual space production and cultural resistance" and, in combination with other factors, it provides a context for wider cultural and social change.