This article speaks of a debate in contemporary India: that surrounding the validity of enacting a civil code that applies uniformly to all communities and religions in the state. In certain feminist arguments, such a code is seen as possibly providing a sphere of rights to Indian women that is alternative to the rights – or wrongs – given to them by the plural religious laws, which form the basis of the civil law in India. India, however, is a heterogeneous (...) polity, encompassing a diversity of cultures and religions, some dominant and others forming minorities. Given these differences, some critics see the feminist call for a Uniform Civil Code as an essentialist move that prioritises gender over other agendas and politics. They argue that the site of the ‚universal’ in this feminist move is a liberal site that inherently excludes marginalised Others and benefits the dominant subjects in India. In my article, I contest this critique and question whether the site of the universal and its authorial subject in postcolonial India is, in fact, an exclusionary liberal ruse of power. I draw insights from the history of the formation of the postcolonial nation-state in India to posit an experience of the state and the universal within it, which is alternative to the Western liberal model. The aim of this article is, therefore, not so much to debate the in/validity of a Uniform Civil Code, as to address certain contemporary post-structuralist critiques of the site of the universal in postcolonial India and posit a departure from them, based on perspectives drawn from history. (shrink)

My project here is to argue for situating moral judgments about Indian surrogacy in the context of Reproductive Justice. I begin by crafting the best picture of Indian surrogacy available to me while marking some worries I have about discursive colonialism and epistemic honesty. Western feminists' responses to contract pregnancy fall loosely into two interrelated moments: post-Baby M discussions that focus on the morality of surrogacy work in Western contexts, and feminist biomedical ethnographies that focus on the lived dimensions of (...) reproductive technologies and how they are embodied and negotiated in specific cultural contexts. Both approaches have their shortcomings. Uncritically extending Western moral frameworks (for example, liberal feminist political values) to Indian surrogacy work raises the specter of discursive colonialism; with it, worries arise about how Western normative traditions can distort, erase, or misread non-Western subjects' lived experiences. Feminist biomedical ethnographic approaches correct this, but raise the specter of a weak moral absenteeism; with it, concerns arise about under-theorizing the structural harms and injustices shaping surrogacy worker's lives. I suggest that we might reduce these shortcomings by framing normative and ethnographic engagement with global surrogacy as questions of reproductive justice. (shrink)

L’historiographie concernant les voyageuses fait fréquemment référence à la « poussière », la « négligence » et l’oubli. Ironiquement, en employant le langage qu’utilisaient ces dames souvent oubliées pour dépeindre des pays et des paysages inconnus, ces références font écho aux affirmations de certains chercheurs pour qui la littérature de voyage féminine est encore une terra incognita à découvrir. D’où l’appel répété, depuis environ une dizaine d’années, de lexicographes et d’historiens de...

This article considers the issue of racial difference in the Goddess movement, using the mythological figure of Arachne, a skilful weaver whom the goddess Athena transformed into a spider, to explore the unequal relational dynamics between white Goddess feminists and women of colour. Bringing Goddess spirituality and thealogical metaphors of webs and weaving into dialogue with postcolonial and black feminist perspectives on the politics of voice, marginality and representation, the article points to some of the ways in which colonial narratives (...) weave through Goddess feminism, including practices of silencing and the romanticization of racial difference. Ultimately, I argue that feminist spirituality must recognize and address structural inequality between white women and women of colour, or in other words, listen to Arachne’s voice. (shrink)

This article examines the use of silent protests to resist state denial and appropriation of activist narratives. Drawing from feminist literary studies, I conceptualize silence as a pluralistic, multifaceted, and multi-sited force. Through an analysis of several modalities of silence employed during Iran's 2009 election protests, I explore tensions between acts of silencing and silence as an act of dissent. I argue that silent protest is both an effect of—and resistance against—geopolitical conditions that subject Iranian citizens to state silencing. In (...) this article, I examine: the geopolitical conditions that enabled the silencing of Iranian citizens; meanings and interpretations of silent protests within Iran and internationally; the relationship among embodiment, scale, and visibility of Iranian protesters. I conclude with thoughts on reading silences across borders, while questioning the efficacy of silent protests in places considered geostrategically insignificant to the international community. (shrink)

This article examines the discourses of the Indian state and of community élites during battles for the custody of a young Muslim girl, Ameena, who was ‘rescued’ from a marriage with an elderly Arab. The battles for Ameena's custody were fought as much in news reports, opinion columns, and letters to the editor of metropolitan and vernacular newspapers, as in courts. Questions were raised about Ameena's age, the viability of her marriage, the applicability of secular laws to Muslim communities, and (...) the political economy of the sexuality of girl-children. In these representations, Ameena became a symbol of minority identity, and was transformed into an unwilling and unwitting object of protection. Why did Ameena's story attract so much attention? What were the different positions underlying the arguments made for Ameena's ‘protection’? Without dismissing the protection of children and the advocacy of their rights, this article analyses the agendas shaping the discourses of the Indian state and national and community élites during the battles for Ameena's custody. The article situates the controversies surrounding Ameena in the wider context of the increasing polarization between Hindu and Muslim communities in India in the early 1990s, and focuses on the relationship between notions of childhood and discourses of community, gender and nation. The article argues that there was a synecdochic relationship between the purity of girl-children and the purity of the Indian nation: far from being ‘pre-cultural’ or apolitical, discourses of childhood were profoundly implicated in the politics of gender, sexuality, community and nation. What are the implications of Ameena's predicament for feminist epistemology and praxis? In pointing to the ways in which feminist critiques of modernist regimes of power and knowledge can enable us to understand the multiple positionalities of children in the contemporary world, the article explores the spaces available for feminist theorists and activists to engage in a politics of vigilance and intervention with regard to the state's positions towards children. (shrink)

In this article, I raise a question and acknowledge a ‘feminist debt’. The ‘feminist debt’ is to the politics of location, and the question asks: what particular stipulations and enablements does a critical reflexive feminist politics of location put in place for knowledge production and for doing feminist theory? I suggest that there are at least three stipulations/enablements that a critical reflexive politics of location puts in place for knowledge production. Firstly, it demands/enables scholarly accounts to reveal their location within (...) the prevailing entanglements of power relations and to highlight the politics of struggle that underpin these. Secondly, it demands/enables conceptual work from different geographical spaces – and in particular, it facilitates the production of conceptual work in non-standard background contexts and conditions. And finally, a critical reflexive politics of location demands/enables a methodological response to capture the different conceptual and analytical and empirical knowledges produced in different locations. (shrink)

Recent years have seen an increased interest in black feminism. Whether thinking of the explosion of activism, the reprinting of classics such as Heart of the Race (Bryan, Dadzie and Scafe, 2018 [1985]) and Finding a Voice (Wilson, 1978) or the numerous journalistic or scholarly inquiries into black feminist formations in Britain in the 1970s–1990s, black feminism is a topic of interest once again. Sometimes it goes under other names: POC feminism, Womanism, Fugitive Feminism—each of which offers a specific inflection (...) of this thing I am calling black feminism. Given this context, my aim in this article is to consider how black feminism might be conceived—what kind of an object it is, but more importantly how it might be ‘used’ and utilised as a vibrant and well-honed tool in the armory with which we attempt to craft a politics of ethical freedom. I attempt to draw together work from the theoretical archive of black women’s writing with that of psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott and his theorisation of ‘object use’ and ‘play’, as foundation stones in the development of a capacity for ethical relating based on the detoxification of racism’s effects on ‘self’, ‘other’ and the intersubjective field that the space between these constitutes. In my mind, the piece is a ‘call’ hoping for a ‘response’, the chorus is ‘black feminism’. (shrink)

In what Arjun Appadurai has dubbed the ‘colonial imaginary’ issues of femininity, and who possessed it, were of prime importance. An orientalizing sociology sought to distinguish, and indeed to fix, differences between metropolitan and indigenous women as a rhetoric of hierarchy which secured proper and western femininity to white women. One critical route which colonial commentators and authorities took to produce that knowledge was to measure women's proximity to the practice of prostitution, a means which permitted discussion and judgement of (...) racialized sexualities as well as of proper models of feminine behaviour. This article will explore the ways in which the new sociology of the Victorian period, wielded in a colonial context, served to separate women through race-based ideas of sexual behaviour and sexual order. It will deal with British India in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. (shrink)

What could a social-justice oriented, feminist data studies look like? The current datalogical turn foregrounds the digital datafication of everyday life, increasing algorithmic processing and data as an emergent regime of power/knowledge. Scholars celebrate the politics of big data knowledge production for its omnipotent objectivity or dismiss it outright as data fundamentalism that may lead to methodological genocide. In this feminist and postcolonial intervention into gender-, race- and geography-blind ‘big data’ ideologies, I call for ethical, anti-oppressive digital data-driven research in (...) the social sciences and humanities. I argue that a reflexive data scholarship can emerge from the reintegration of feminist and postcolonial science studies and ethics of care ideals. Although it is not a panacea for all ails of data mining, I offer a road map for an alternative data-analysis practice that is more power-sensitive and accountable. By incorporating a people-centric and context-aware perspective that acknowledges relationships of dependency, reflects on temptations, and scrutinises benefits and harm, an ‘asymmetrically reciprocal’ (Young, 1997) research encounter may be achieved. I bring this perspective to bear on experiences of a two-year research project with eighty-four young Londoners on digital identities and living in a highly diverse city. I align awareness of uneven relations of power and knowledge with the messy relation of dependency between human and non-human actors in data analysis. This framework productively recognises that digital data cannot be expected to speak for itself, that data do not emerge from a vacuum, and that isolated data patterns cannot be the end-goal of a situated and reflexive research endeavor. Data-driven research, in turn, shows the urgency for renewed feminist ethical reflection on how digital mediation impacts upon responsibility, intersectional power relations, human subjectivity and the autonomy of research participants over their own data. (shrink)

Ratna Kapur’s recent book entitled Erotic Justice proposes a new politics of postcolonialism whereby the sexual subaltern disrupts the normative principles of the universal, liberal, legal domain. Kapur traces legal strategies regarding censorship, sex-work, homosexuality, sexual harassment, trafficking and migration which travel a treacherous path, countering allegations of ‘unIndian’ and Western practice with cultural histories of ‘authentic’ sexual legitimacies, towards a new politics of desire. Kapur frames her analysis through postcolonial feminist theory as providing a tool for feminist struggle, yet (...) distinct from and disruptive of a liberal project of global sisterhood. This review deeply values the role of the sexual subaltern which disrupts the tenets of a linear, progressive liberalism. Drawing upon Indian feminist and Western feminist perspectives, the review considers how the distinct position of the postcolonial sexual subaltern subject informs the generic role of law as a tool constructing relations of domination regarding gender, sexuality, caste, property and religion. Kapur observes that both the West and the Hindu Right have engaged with liberal legal principles. This engagement, I argue, exposes and informs law as a historical and contemporary tool of gendered legal colonialism, for sisters to disrupt across the Western and Eastern terrains. (shrink)

The origins of marginalization in nursing and the health sector in Ghana can be traced to colonialism and how a colonial era laid a solid foundation for inequities and entrenched disparities, as well as the subsequent normalization of marginalizing acts, in the health sector, particularly for women. Drawing upon varied literature over a 60‐year period and perspectives from feminist theory, this paper considers the lasting impact of Ghanaian women's historical position during the colonial era and within the patriarchal system that (...) ensued. Through this process, it becomes possible to shed light on the crucial role that colonialism has played in women's experiences, perspectives, and health‐seeking behaviors, and the manner in which it has created a healthcare sector that marginalizes women's health. Although women possess valuable knowledge which should be an asset to consider when providing healthcare services, marginalization of that knowledge has become normalized across society and the healthcare system. There is an urgent need to disrupt and challenge this normalization, and to advocate empowerment and recognition of women's valuable knowledge and experiences, providing women a voice in health decision‐making discourses and in the research processes by which we understand and develop healthcare. Through this, healthcare in Ghana could become more empowering, inclusive, and responsive to the unique experiences and needs of Ghanaian women. By understanding something of the historical origins of women's health marginalization within colonialism, nurses can begin to appreciate women's knowledge and integrate it into healthcare strategies that are more gender‐sensitive and equitable. (shrink)

This article examines the role of rights in both governing and shaping women’s relationship with the reconstruction process and their position in the reconstructed society. Through four years of empirical research in the post-earthquake reconstruction process in Maharashtra, India, this article focuses upon how women’s rights in social reconstruction are contingent upon processes of recognition. From the United Nations to local women’s organising, the article considers how women’s rights to “determine the pattern of their lives and the future of society” (...) (United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (C.E.D.A.W.). General Recommendation No. 23 (1997), Article 7, para. 9.) are dependent upon processes of recognition. Through a critique of cultural, material and spatial acts and frameworks of recognition within the U.N., World Bank, State Government, public interest litigation, personal and nonformal law, rights are seen to actively and hierarchically construct either a modern, liberal subject or a religious, communitarian subject, which both either deny or prescribe agency. The experience of women’s organising reveals the possibility of reconstructing a feminist rights strategy of reflection. (shrink)

ABSTRACT I discuss the issues raised by Alcoff, Arya, and Táíwò in their responses to Decolonizing Universalism: A Transnational Feminist Ethic. I pay special attention to a fact I think all nonideal theorists, particularly ones who care about reducing oppression, must take seriously: the fact that oppression characteristically faces its victims with tradeoffs such that attempts to advance their interests usually come with significant costs. I discuss how this fact bears on the situations of poor women and those oppressed by (...) sexism and imperialism simultaneously. I also discuss how the nonideal universalist perspective I develop in Decolonizing Universalism supports criticism of neoliberalism, how it takes seriously concerns about the locus of enunciation in Latin American decolonial theory, how it supports transnational solidarities, and its upshots for thinking the relationships between feminism, culture, and modernity. (shrink)

In this article the author argues that indigenous Bemba women of Zambia used their culture of symbolic communication for marital sex agency. African women are often portrayed as not having agency and negotiating power when it comes to sex whether in marital or casual relationships. However, through imbusa teachings, Bemba women of Zambia had the negotiating power and agency over their sexual desires using indigenous beads as a marital communication tool before Christianity, interaction with various cultures, and colonial activity infiltrated (...) the institution of imbusa. Missionaries were consistently and insistently invading the space of imbusa claiming the need to be made aware of what was being taught. Missionaries claimed that they wanted to prepare a manual for new arriving priests so that they would include Christianity to the teachings in order to teach the Bemba women Christian ways of marriage. As a result, much of the indigenous imbusa teaching was portrayed as demonic and Bemba women needed to disregard them in order to be Christian married women. Using symbolic interactionism, this article will demonstrate the teachings of imbusa that gave Bemba women agency to express and negotiate their sexual desires in marriage. Bemba women had a ritual of hanging beads on the wall or placing them on the bed at certain times in their marriage. For instance, when they were menstruating, they hung red beads which was to communicate that they were not available for sexual relations.Contribution: This article contributes to the African indigenous cultural understandings and positions held by indigenous women prior to their interactions with diverse cultures and religious views. Contemporary indigenous women can leverage some positive feminist approaches from within the culture. (shrink)

The SlutWalk campaigns around the world have triggered a furious debate on whether they advance or limit feminist legal politics. This article examines the location of campaigns such as the SlutWalk marches in the context of feminist legal advocacy in postcolonial India, and discusses whether their emergence signifies the demise of feminism or its incarnation in a different guise. The author argues that the SlutWalks, much like the Pink Chaddi (panty) campaign in India, provide an important normative and discursive challenge (...) to a specific strand of feminism based on male domination and female subordination in the area of sexuality and also speaks to the emergence of consumer agency in the very heart of pleasure in the neo-liberal moment. It serves as a space clearing gesture, a form of feminism ‘lite’, rather than offering a transformative or revolutionary politics, and thus enables the possibility of feminist theoretical positions in a postcolonial context that have hitherto been marginalised or ignored in feminist legal advocacy in India to emerge. (shrink)

The article addresses the tempting questions around feminist cross-mainstreaming, keeping in mind that the feminist movement and feminist critical studies are deeply challenged by globalized marketing, boundary changes and displacements, and ‘over-genderization’. Taking feminist cross-mainstreaming into consideration not only as a concept and/or ‘act of normality’ at the threshold of the 21st century but also as a provocative stand for claiming authority across diverse worlds and boundaries, the author explores this through the problem of the globality of feminism in its (...) contextualization and complexity; the status of feminism from a postsocialist perspective; and implications and potential obstacles of gender mainstreaming. (shrink)

Maternal health has become a top global priority. In contrast to the decline of the maternal subject (Stephens, 2011), and despite previous evidence that maternal health has struggled to find a place on the global policy agenda (Shiffman and Smith, 2007), it is now clear that the promotion of health for mothers and children is a staple of both government and private donor commitments. On humanitarian grounds, it makes sense to focus on maternal health and survival in the Global South. (...) Death related to pregnancy or childbirth is a disheartening example of needless suffering. But beyond the initial impulse to reduce suffering, what motivates and/or requires action for addressing injustice in the form of distributional inequities for maternal and reproductive health? In this article, I make a case for the necessity and validity of transnational cooperation to address maternal mortality and morbidity in the Global South. The first component of my argument addresses the transnational elements of both global interconnectedness and responsibility to act. These elements are drawn from Iris Marion Young’s philosophical justification for North-South responsibility-taking. The second component of my argument adds the concept of affective solidarity to that of transnational responsibility. My argument in this section draws from Iris Marion Young’s earlier work on identity (Young, 1990) and embodiment (Young, 1984) and expands the analysis of affective solidarity as a form of both embodiment and political commitment in order to explain the mechanism for transnational connection and understanding. And the final component of my argument explains how both of these elements – transnational responsibility and affective solidarity – support a theory of transnational maternal feminism. (shrink)

Rich and sophisticated analyses of gender have been produced around the postcolonial world. But the theory in this work gets little recognition in the current global economy of knowledge. Feminist theory needs an understanding of the coloniality of gender, seeing the gender dynamic in imperialism and the significance of global processes for the meaning of gender itself. The agendas of feminist theory are being re-shaped on issues that include violence, power and the state, identity, methodology, and the land. An alternative (...) structure of knowledge is emerging that can re-shape the global terrain of feminist theory and its connections with practice. (shrink)

This paper speaks across the divide between feminist theorists and praxis-oriented gender experts to argue for a more enabling reading of postcolonial feminist critiques of gender and development. Drawing on the activism of Afro-Colombian women in the Pacific Lowlands of Colombia – most especially Matamba y Guasá, a network of black women's organizations from the state of Cauca – it brings attention to the independent ability of women in these locations to reflect and act on their own realities and claims.

This article examines religious and gendered identities through an ethnographic study of unmarried evangelical Christian women in London. Moving away from an approach that shows that women feel empowered through their conservative, male-dominated religious environment, or else they find it constraining and leave the church, this article investigates the experiences of women who feel limited by their church, and still remain embedded in their Christian environment. The article begins by exploring the normative figure of the ideal Christian woman operative in (...) this context. It then describes the experiences of women who do not fit the norm, outlining the affective toll they suffer through marginality. Finally, the article examines how some women rely on hope in order to change the normative framework within their church. This article argues that leaving and staying are not static categories; instead evangelical women, frustrated with their marginal positions, revealed a continuum of investment underlain by resilience and hope. (shrink)

Alias Grace is just one of the many recent TV shows that was labelled ‘feminist’ so quickly and with such ease that one is left to wonder how much of a genre ‘feminism’ has already become. This article interrogates what is at stake for ‘feminist’ critique in labelling cultural phenomena as ‘feminist’. I argue that certain ways of reading Alias Grace as a ‘feminist’ show preclude an alternative reading in which Alias Grace emerges as a critique of ‘feminism’ itself. What (...) is at stake in the debate on ‘feminism’ in popular culture is thus not only whether or not we can recognise the potential for ‘feminist’ critique that resides within popular culture, but also whether or not we can allow socio-cultural phenomena, like TV shows, to take ‘feminism’ as an object of critique: to generate the kind of critical movement that renders futile any attempt to stabilise, or reify, the signifier ‘feminism’ as an ahistorical object with fixed meanings – as a genre even. In so doing, I take it that there is no privileged site from which to engender such movement; and I do not take popular culture as a self-contained domain that could qualify for being such a site. The point, then, is not to treat Alias Grace as a representative case study in popular ‘feminism’; but rather, to demonstrate, by way of Alias Grace, the complex and contradictory readings that socio-cultural phenomena are amenable to, and which in turn give rise to critical possibilities that unfold from within these phenomena. Reading Alias Grace critically, as I understand it in this article, means allowing it to be, at one and the same time, a reflection on itself and a reflection on the world in which it so quickly comes to be labelled ‘feminist’. (shrink)

Scholars have long debated the relationship between morality and the market. Some argue that morality tempers market interests, while others argue that the market has its own moral order. Meanwhile, feminist scholars have argued that a false binary between altruism, family, and intimacy on the one hand, and the cold calculus of the market on the other, is based in gender ideologies. Norms around motherhood, in particular, emphasize self-sacrifice, love, and altruism in opposition to self-interested market logics. Commercial surrogacy blurs (...) the line between family and commerce and is therefore an ideal setting for studying tensions between altruism and profit. Drawing on ethnographic research and interviews with 114 actors in the Mexican surrogacy industry, I demonstrate that treating altruism and commercialism as dichotomous can further market interests by preserving the moral palatability and profitability of the industry while perpetuating power asymmetries rooted in gender, race, class, and nationality between surrogate mothers and intended parents. (shrink)

The project Gender Perspective on Embedded Intelligent Systems – Application in Healthcare Technology financed by Vinnova is integrated into the research environment Embedded Intelligent Systems at Halmstad University. EIS is contributing to the regional Triple Helix innovation system Healthcare Technology by developing new technology for application within the health and care sector, and there is an outspoken need for a more articulated gender perspective within the research environment. The project is inspired by the Technoscientific gender research. It has a qualitative (...) and action research approach and is oriented toward development. In the project process the difference between epistemological cultures has been obvious. In the interaction between the researchers we realize that engineering and other technological sciences not only consider aspects of science to be separate from reality, but also seek positivistic proof in research, something not always possible in the more qualitative research of the social sciences. In the paper we discuss how to bridge and create understanding between sciences and different epistemological cultures. (shrink)

This article discusses the emergence of the concept of ‘transnational feminisms’ as a differentiated notion from ‘global sisterhood’ within feminist postcolonial criticism. This is done in order to examine its usefulness for interrogating the globalization of reproductive technologies and women’s right to selfdetermination over their own bodies by using these technologies. In particular, women’s use of technologies for assisted conception, and the local and global transactions in reproductive body parts form a testing ground for transnational feminisms. Does the construction of (...) individual reproductive rights still leave some ground for women’s collective struggles? It is proposed that, if at all, transnational solidarity on this issue is possible, it will have to be built on the concept of universal ethical norms regarding human dignity. (shrink)

This paper examines the problematisation of sex-selective abortion (SSA) in UK parliamentary debates on Fiona Bruce's Abortion (Sex-Selection) Bill 2014–15 and on the subsequent proposed amendment to the Serious Crime Bill 2014–15. On the basis of close textual analysis, we argue that a discursive framing of SSA as a form of cultural oppression of minority women in need of protection underpinned Bruce's Bill; in contrast, by highlighting issues more commonly articulated in defence of women's reproductive rights, the second set of (...) debates displaced this framing in favour of a broader understanding, drawing on postcolonial feminist critiques, of how socio-economic factors constrain all women in this regard. We argue that the problematisation of SSA explains the original cross-party support for, and subsequent defeat of, the policies proposed to restrict SSA. Our analysis also highlights the central role of ideology in the policy process, thus making politics visible in policymaking. (shrink)

This thesis argues that Western feminist theoretical models of identity can be productively complicated by the insights of postcolonial feminisms. In particular, it explores ways that Western feminist theory might more adequately sustain a focus on 'women' while keeping open a space for differences such as race and nation. Part One identifies a number of themes that emerge from recent Indian feminist scholarship on the intersections of sex, gender, race, nation and community identities. Part Two uses these insights to look (...) critically at the work of four Western theorists, Rosi Braidotti, Judith Butler, Donna Haraway and Luce Irigaray. I argue that strategies which privilege sexual difference as primary cannot deal adequately with differences such as race and nation. But I also argue that strategies which privilege destabilizing identity can be equally constrained by the logic of dualisms which has made it so difficult for feminists to sustain a focus on women and their differences. Part Three discusses how the insights to be drawn from Indian ferninisms might be taken on board by Western ferninisms in order to develop more complex models of power, identity and the self. Throughout the thesis I draw on a Foucauldian understanding of power as productive, and on Foucault's insight that subjects and identities emerge, not through the imperatives of a single symbolic system, but through the intersection of multiple networks of discourses, material practices and institutions. I argue that, by attending to women's complex location within intersecting landscapes of gender, nation, race and other community identities, feminist models of identity can dispense with a logic of dualisms in order to redefine, and not only destabilize 'women' as the subject of/for feminism. This requires working against purity on three levels. First, it requires a model of power that gives up on the search for pure, power-free zones and works instead with the instabilities power produces as it both enables and constrains women. Second, it requires seeing 'women' as a complex, impure category that bleeds across the apparently coherent borders of identity categories such as gender, race and nation, and contesting discursive constructs of 'Woman' as the pure space of origin upon which these apparently discrete categories stand. Third, it requires the development of alternative models of the self that take these complex, impure spaces as a valid and valorised position from which to act and to speak. (shrink)

What makes a multimillion-dollar, transnational intimate industry possible when most people see it as exploitative? Using the newly emergent case of commercial surrogacy in India, this article extends the literature on stratified reproduction and intimate industries by examining how surrogacy persists and thrives despite its common portrayal as the “rent-a-womb industry” and “baby factory.” Using interview data with eight infertility specialists, 20 intended parents, and 70 Indian surrogate mothers, as well as blogs and media stories, we demonstrate how market actors (...) justify their pursuits through narrating moral frames of compassion and altruism that are not incidental but systematic to and constitutive of transnational surrogacy. We observed two predominant moral frames: surrogacy liberates and empowers Indian women from patriarchal control; and surrogacy furthers reproductive rights. Within these frames, the market exchange of money for babies is cast as compassion, which allows commissioning clients to sidestep accusations of racism, classism, and sexism. Yet, we reveal that the ability to navigate around these threats relies on racist, classist, and sexist tropes about Third World working-class women. Further, we find that surrogate mothers did not experience significant changes in economic status after surrogacy. (shrink)

Despite a growing focus on processes to promote gender equity, women remain significantly underrepresented in leadership positions in the Global South. In the present study we focus on the role of familial experiences in shaping and contesting gender ideologies of Pakistani women in the workplace. We specifically examine the reciprocal ways in which women leaders and their family members shape each other’s gender ideologies regarding the workplace. Data collected and analyzed for this study were semi-structured interviews with eight women in (...) positions of leadership in Lahore, Pakistan, and interviews with one family members of each of the women leaders. Using thematic narrative analysis, we identified three thematic phases: learning gender expectations, resistance, and familial transformation. These phases reflect the progression of developing, resisting, and influencing individual and familial gender ideologies. We document the manifestation of these phases in three specific domains: education, marriage and motherhood, and the workplace. We then discuss how these findings contribute to understanding the experiences of women leaders and perceptions of their family members regarding women’s role in the workplace. Findings from our research provide novel insights into the ways globalization and capitalism continue to shape the socio-cultural context for women leaders in the Global South. (shrink)

This article traces not only some of the borrowings but also the differences between feminist and gay politics in the context of the post-1989 ‘multicultural debate’ and the hegemony of civilizational politics. This investigation is empirically grounded in one national context, that is, the Dutch case, which is exemplary when it comes to bringing politics of gender and sexuality to bear on national and cultural identity politics. The article recapitulates some insights on how feminist politics can get entangled with colonial (...) and imperialist politics and traces these connections in a Dutch context. It goes on to review some of the forms homonationalism and homonostalgia take in the Netherlands. And it concludes with a discussion of the resemblances and differences between the ‘saving women’ and ‘saving gays’ narratives that inform civilizational modes of feminist and gay politics. (shrink)

this article is based on a paper that I presented during the annual meeting of the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy, as a keynote speaker in the Coss Dialogue sessions. I was pleasantly surprised to hear that most participants of SAAP use the term "American" in its continental, rather than in the US-centric sense. I am glad that many of the philosophers of this community of knowledge have opened their dialogues to the voices and experiences south of the (...) Río Bravo. We are living during very difficult times in which cultures and practices of violence, as well as aggressive exclusion and intolerance, are affecting our communities on both sides of the border. In this context of multiple... (shrink)

The debate on feminism and ‘religion’ has rarely been suggested as a critique of modernity that has silenced other possible cultural, epistemological and spiritual options. Efforts have been made to ascertain whether ‘religion’ is ‘good’ or ‘bad’ for – or indeed an ally or threat to – women’s liberation. More specifically, in a European context, contemporary discussions of ‘religion’ and the rights of women have been very much centred on Islam. Yet, none of these narratives have resolved the intrinsic colonial (...) character of modernity. This article explores the debate on both Islamic and Western feminism from a decolonial perspective. It argues that today, feminist theory faces the tremendous challenge of how to encounter the colonial and not only redefine, but also review the concepts and categories upon which Western feminism bases its arguments. Drawing on the work of the Spanish-Syrian Islamic decolonial thinker, Sirin Adlbi Sibai, this article develops a critical, self-reflexive approach that questions secular assumptions regarding feminist analyses of ‘religion’. In doing so, I present the decolonising of feminism as an invitation to (re)imagine our feminist encounters. (shrink)

This thesis examines the local waterscapes of two smallholder irrigation farming systems in the dry lands of East African in a context of socio-ecological changes. It focuses on three aspects: institutional arrangements, gender relations and landscape investments. This thesis is based on a reflexive analysis of cross-cultural, cross-language research, particularly focusing on the role of field assistants and interpreters, and on member checking as a method to ensure validity. Flexible irrigation infrastructure in Sibou, Kenya, and Engaruka, Tanzania, allow farmers to (...) shift the course of water and to extend or reduce the area cultivated depending on seasonal rainfall patterns. Water conflicts are avoided through a decentralized common property management system. Water rights are continuously renegotiated depending on water supply. Water is seen as a common good the management of which is guided by mutual understanding to prevent conflicts through participation and shared information about water rights. However, participation in water management is a privilege that is endowed mostly to men. Strict patriarchal norms regulate control over water and practically exclude women from irrigation management. The control over water usage for productive means is a manifestation of masculinity. The same gender bias has emerged in recent decades as men have increased their engagement in agriculture by cultivating crops for sale. Women, because of their subordinated position, cannot take advantage of the recent livelihood diversification. Rather, the cultivation of horticultural products for sale has increased the workload for women who already farm most food crops for family consumption. In addition, they now have to weed and harvest the commercial crops that their husbands sell for profit. This agricultural gender divide is mirrored in men´s and women´s response to increased climate variability. Women intercrop as a risk adverting strategy, while men sow more rounds of crops for sale when the rain allows for it. Additionally, while discursively underestimated by men, women´s assistance is materially fundamental to maintaining of the irrigation infrastructure and to ensuring the soil fertility that makes the cultivation of crops for sale possible. In sum, this thesis highlights the adaptation potentials of contemporary smallholder irrigation systems through local common property regimes that, while not inclusive towards women, avoid conflicts generated by shifting water supply and increased climate variability. To be able to assess the success and viability of irrigation systems, research must be carried out at a local level. By studying how local water management works, how conflicts are adverted through common property regimes and how these systems adapt to socio-ecological changes, this thesis provides insights that are important both for the planning of current irrigation schemes and the rehabilitation or the extension of older systems. By investigating the factors behind the consistent marginalization of women from water management and their subordinated role in agricultural production, this study also cautions against the reproduction of these discriminatory norms in the planning of irrigation projects. (shrink)