Between idealism and reality: the unknown chapter of the Thessalonikian dockworkers in their struggle in the port of Haifa, 1933–1935

In the struggle of Jewish labor in the port of Haifa during the British Mandate, the Thessalonikian dockers played a major role. Until recently the story of their absorption was analyzed ‘from above’ with a functionalist-nationalist explanation. The Thessalonikians arrived equipped with professional skills, enthusiasm, and Zionist solidarity, which ostensibly was to be sufficient for their successful occupational integration at the waterfront. This article looks again on (1) the push–pull factors of migration, and (2) the professional and economic absorption in the waterfront of Haifa, but according to social history approach and ‘from below’, from which emerges a much more complex story. We note failures and successes to gain a foothold in the maritime labor market, the persistence involved, and the partial withdrawal from the struggle. The deepening chasm between national idealism and social reality brought an ongoing polemic between the Thessalonikian dockers and the Zionist elites of the interwar Yishuv, with both sides failing to bridge the gaps.     

Wage labor in historical perspective: a study of the de-proletarianization of the African working class in Zimbabwe, 1960–2010

Abstract

This paper traces the rise and fall of wage labor in Zimbabwe between c.1960 and 2010. Building on Giovanni Arrighi’s seminal study, ‘Labour supplies in historical perspective: a study of the proletarianization of the African peasantry in Rhodesia’, we argue that the 1950s were the highpoint of African wage labor participation in the Southern Rhodesian/Zimbabwean economy. From that point, the percentage of wage labor as part of the economically active population fell consistently until the collapse of the Zimbabwean economy from the late 1990s onward, when it shrunk emphatically. This process is observable elsewhere in southern Africa over the second half of the twentieth century. Writing in the 1960s when the Southern Rhodesian economy was diversifying and absorbing large numbers of African workers from within and beyond the country’s borders, Arrighi overstated the stability and longevity of the proletariat. From that point, though, combined internal and external forces resulted initially in the stagnation of secondary and primary industry and commerce, and latterly in their contraction. The ensuing processes of de-proletarianization, falling wages, and heightened livelihood precarity have been the norm for an ever-increasing proportion of the African working class up to the present.     

Some Personal Reflections on the Foundation of the International Federation for Research in Women’s History in 1987: a message sent to the participants of the twentieth anniversary conference,held in Bulgaria, 2007

This article is a greeting sent to the participants in the International Federation for Research in Women’s History (IFRWH) Conference in Sofia, Bulgaria, 8–12 August 2007. The author looks back to the establishment of the IFRWH in 1987, of which she was Co‐founder, tracing the contacts, correspondence and meetings that led to that moment. Attention is also drawn to the first conferences in Bellagio, Madrid, Bielefeld and Montreal, as well as to the Newsletter activities that served to connect all the national committees that make up the Federation. The story told is one of friendships and inspiring moments. It ends with hope for the continued importance of the IFRWH to global women’s and gender history.     

‘Vials,ampoules and a bucketful of syringes’: the experience of the self-administration of hormonal drugs in IVF

During the process of in vitro fertilization (IVF), hormonal drugs are used to stimulate the woman's ovaries to produce multiple eggs. The injecting of the drugs is often performed by the women themselves outside of the clinical context, constituting a gendered burden of work that is rendered invisible by the dominant representations of treatment as undergone by couples and performed by doctors. Based on a series of interviews with women and couples who have undergone IVF unsuccessfully and who have ended treatment at least two years previously, this paper focuses on two aspects of the self-injection of hormonal drugs that emerged from the participants accounts: firstly, the gendered ways in which the drug regimen was experienced as compromising privacy and secondly, the strategic use of images of both illicit and medical drug use in the accounts. The paper argues that in spite of the dominant representation of IVF as a couples' technology, the IVF process is profoundly gendered, both in terms of bodily intervention and in the distribution of labour in the implementation of treatment; that the invisibility of the drug regimens from dominant representations of IVF can leave those undergoing treatment unprepared for some of the problems that the self-administration of the drugs can raise, particularly in terms of maintaining privacy; and finally, that images of the drug injection are mobilized strategically in the accounts to locate themselves within normative social reproductive standards. This highlights the extent to which the enduring ideological construction of proper womanhood as defined by motherhood continues to pose a dilemma for those who are involuntarily childless.     

Change and Continuation: Masculinity,Driving, and Disability in the Lives of “Young Problem Drivers” in the Aftermath of Severe Road Traffic Accidents

ABSTRACT

In research on traffic injury prevention, young male drivers willing to take risks are known as “young problem drivers” and have been identified as the greatest road safety challenge. This intersectional study draws on interviews and participant observation, and employs a masculinity perspective to explore how 12 young, male drivers who were injured in severe accidents assess driving after their accidents and ways in which they construct their identities as disabled men. While the participants cited their accidents as a turning point that prompted a change in their attitudes and practices regarding driving, they often continued to engage in deviant driving practices, especially speeding. In addition, the men tended to distance themselves from the social category of disability. We propose that the field of traffic injury prevention would benefit from supplementing the biological approach in the research literature with cultural perspectives on the internal logics and prevailing masculinity discourses that guide the choices of young, male drivers. Also, we argue that the men’s negotiation of disability illustrates the stigma still attached to the social category of disability.     

The development of capitalism in the Atlantic world: England,the Americas,and West Africa, 1450–1900

Abstract

The paper traces the development of capitalism in England, the Americas, and West Africa over a long time period, 1450–1900. The developments in these major regions of the Atlantic Basin during the period were strongly interconnected and ultimately gave rise to the nineteenth-century Atlantic economy which integrated the major economies of the Atlantic world. The development of capitalism in the three specified geographical areas is analyzed in the context of the interconnected developments. Central to the historical analysis is a discussion of the contending conceptions of capitalism as a socioeconomic system. The paper shows that the original conception by Karl Marx, which identified free wage earners separated from their means of production and entrepreneurs who own those means of production as the defining elements, was generally accepted by supporters and critics for several decades; attempts to redefine began in the 1960s. The paper contends that, unlike the original Marxian conception, the new conceptions fail to capture precisely and accurately the dynamic elements which distinguish capitalism unambiguously from other forms of socioeconomic organization and do not facilitate a sharply focused historical investigation of its development over time. The employment of enslaved Africans in large-scale commodity production in the Americas was critical to the development of capitalism in England and in the Americas, but the adverse effects on West Africa’s economies held back the development of markets and the market economy and, ultimately, the development of capitalism in the region.     

Double Lives, Double Narratives: Tracing the Story of the Family in Rousseau, the Swiss Civil Code and the Fathers’ Rights Debates

A recent parliamentary postulate in Switzerland calling for joint custody as the legal norm argues that fathers are discriminated against in Swiss divorce law. This postulate has incited a debate which circles around issues of equality, the role of fathers and mothers, and the good of the child. Our article, uniting approaches from literature, cultural studies, and science and technology studies, examines the arguments sparked by the debate with a view to different takes on gender and family. In doing so, it traces the roots of contemporary Swiss family law in the Rousseauian narrative of family life in Emile ou de l’education; it explores the manner in which scientific knowledge is marshaled to lend political legitimacy to current debate; and it asks finally how narrative bridges the gap between public discourse and lived experience.

How much insecurity does security need? The discrepancy in assessing the sense of security of children,adolescents, and caregivers in institutions

When developing concepts for protecting children and youth who live in institutions, the perspective of the addressees has so far been insufficiently taken into account. This study aims to compare the assessment of children, youth, and caregivers in institutions with regard to group atmosphere, participation, and sense of safety. A combined quantitative and qualitative approach compares the assessment of children or youth and caregivers in child and youth welfare institutions, boarding schools, and clinics through the use of an online questionnaire and group discussions that address the topics safety, group atmosphere, and participation. The quantitative questionnaire included 233 youth age 14 years and up and 490 caregivers; 87 children or youth between the ages of 11 and 18 years and 73 caregivers were part of the qualitative group discussion. The questionnaire showed that youth and caregivers assessed the sense of security in principle as positive. With regard to group atmosphere and participation, youth tended to see these aspects in a positive light, but almost all youth-aged participants viewed these specific categories more critically than did the adult caregivers. The results from the group discussions make clear that children, adolescents, and caregivers often underestimate the real dangers. The existing sense of security in institutions may be the result of underestimating real dangers. Implications for the implementation of protection concepts are drawn.     

The appearance of women's politics in the correspondence pages of Aberdeen newspapers, 1900–14

A newspaper's ‘Letters to the Editor’ column represents its readership in a unique way and can provide a useful ‘thermometer’ with which to measure the extent of critical debate and discussion a particular issue generated in a locality. In this article, the letters of women to the editor of the Aberdeen Daily Journal, 1900 to 1914, are analysed to discover the type of political issues with which these women concerned themselves. It is argued that the women must have felt particularly strongly about such issues since they were prepared to take their arguments outside their social circle and to identify themselves as politically active in the pages of their daily newspaper. Political issues dealt with include local government, the suffrage question and government legislation. While much of the evidence used comes from the letters of active suffragists who were usually members of national suffrage associations, it is argued that the period showed an expansion in the type of woman interested in politics, and the corresponding urge to write to the newspapers. This is evidenced in the number of women who firmly stated that they were not suffragists, but became politicised enough to write to the newspaper complaining about the Insurance Act in 1912.     

“It's here,it's that time:” Race,queer futurity,and the temporality of violence in Born in Flames

This paper uses the film Born in Flames to engage questions around hope and the future that have been central to queer studies in the last decade. As the author understands it, the film's critique of the time of reform and progress holds profound implications for how we think about the future. By demonstrating the repetitions of racialized and gendered violence over time, the film produces a theory of the future where the continuation of the present as it is means the future will not come. If the state organizes populations, institutions, and forms of knowledge through a regulatory imagination and disciplined vision, it also determines the future in the same manner. The state ensures that the future can be extrapolated from the present by managing, contorting, and eradicating the future before it arrives. It uses preemptive action (war, assassination, incarceration, policing, administrative violence, and surveillance) to make its “imagined future come to pass.” The author argues that by showing the continuity between the racialized and gendered violence of the past, present, and future, the film constructs an anticipatory queer politics of urgency and presentism.     

Seeing land deals through the lens of the ‘land–water nexus’: the case of biofuel production in Piura,Peru

ABSTRACT

This contribution examines two large-scale land acquisitions on Peru’s northern coast, using a ‘land–water nexus’ approach. The establishment of large sugarcane monocultures resulted in a massive transfer of land and water rights from smallholders to biofuel companies. Using Ribot and Peluso’s theory of access, we demonstrate that this transfer of rights was enabled by the convergence of neoliberal land and water reforms and the presence of the two investors. This constellation (1) altered smallholders’ bundles of rights; and (2) created sharp imbalances that radically changed access to land and water, not only through changing bundles of rights, but also, and maybe more significantly, through widening the gaps between smallholders’ and biofuel companies’ bundles of powers. Using Hall et al.’s powers of exclusion approach, we identify the processes both underpinning and resulting out of the changing access relations analyzed in this study. Changes to Peru’s water governance may accentuate power asymmetries between investors and smallholders, constraining locals’ access to increasingly scarce water.     

‘It is caused of the womans part or of the mans part’: the role of gender in the diagnosis and treatment of sexual dysfunction in early modern England

Philip Barrough wrote in 1590 that barrenness ‘is caused of the womans part or of the mans part’. By the eighteenth century, however, barrenness was perceived as a female disorder distinguished from male impotence. Few historians have addressed the uncertainty surrounding early modern definitions of infertility, choosing instead to adopt set terms that fit comfortably with modern ideas. This article will highlight the difficulties surrounding the gender distinction of the terms ‘barrenness’ and ‘impotence’ during this period. Moreover, the discussion will examine the role of gender in diagnosing these disorders to sufferers. The article will argue that ideas of gender were more central to diagnosis of poor sexual health than to effectual treatment. Although it appears that barrenness and impotence were treated with separate remedies, many treatments were described as effectual for both sexes. Additionally, the ingredients used in such recipes were often sexual stimulants explained without reference to gender.     

The Representation of ‘Baby-Farmers’ in the Scottish City, 1867–1908

This article explores the manner in which women who provided paid childcare in Scotland were represented and collectively labelled with the pejorative term ‘baby-farmer’ across a forty-year period. It seeks to link the figure of the ‘baby-farmer’ to a wider sphere of discourses and moral frameworks than previously attempted, drawing parallels with other women engaged in processes of semi-public exchange. In so doing the article suggests a more complex articulation of gendered and spatial identity. In particular it asserts that the portrayal of these women was inextricably linked to wider conceptions of the Scottish city and that these pre-existing notions of urban space were integral to the representation of gender.     

coloniality,political subjectivation and the gendered politics of protest in a ‘state of exception’

In this paper, I shall make the following propositions: in order to conceptually capture and represent the acts of political protest in a state of exception, we will need to reorient and supplement our representational apparatuses and also our theoretical frameworks for thinking about the gendered modes of protest under emergency laws and political abandonment. Through an analysis of the ‘naked protest’ of the Meira Peibis in Manipur, a ‘state of exception’ in democratic India, I shall argue that a series of supplementations to our current thinking on intersectionality, bare life and political subjectivation are required if we are to make sense of political acts of resistance, refusal and disavowal of the law of exception.     

‘Stepping back and moving in’: the role of the state in the contemporary food regime

In recent years, a number of middle-income countries and influential multilateral institutions have instigated actions that frame food system governance around social protection and rights. These state-centered mobilizations raise fundamental questions about how to portray the global politics of food. Since the late 1980s, analysts have largely concurred that US hegemony in the global politics of food has given way to diverse and volatile neo-liberalist and corporate-led food system governance. However, what should we make of a situation where state and supra-state actors are flexing their powers to reshape food systems in line with rights-based models? Should this be understood as reflexes which aim to preserve national order, at a time of intensified food and nutrition insecurities? Or, does it lay the foundations of a re-governed system which curbs and molds a corporate-led politics of food within frameworks of justice? This contribution responds to these questions by tracing the evolution of social protection and rights-based approaches to the politics of food at the multilateral level and in two influential jurisdictions (India and South Africa). We argue that these initiatives underline a robust and continuing role of state power in global food politics, albeit in a novel fashion compared to previous entanglements.     

Young women’s negotiations of gender,the body and the labour market in a post-feminist context

This article explores the ways the body and femininity is understood and negotiated in relation to employment. This article draws on interview data from an Australian study which aimed to explore what it meant to be a ‘young woman’ in neoliberal late modernity, and in relation to the paradoxes of post-feminism. Though there has been an unprecedented rise in youth post-secondary school participation in Australia and elsewhere, girls’ and young women’s increased investment and participation in education has not provided the same gains as for their male counterparts. All interview participants described being aware of gender inequalities and gender discrimination in the workplace, including the glass ceiling, the gender pay gap, and demands and pressures on women to balance career and motherhood, however many did not associate these issues with ‘feminism’. We explore the dynamics of notions of equality, difference and the body in participants’ discussions of work and their anticipation of motherhood and the logics by which gender inequalities are sustained.     

Predictors of receiving counseling in a national sample of youth: the relative influence of symptoms,victimization exposure,parent–child conflict,and delinquency

This paper identifies factors that predict children’s use of counseling services within a 2-year period. Using two waves of data from a national survey of 1009 youth age 6–17, we describe differences in utilization by demographic characteristics and compare receipt of counseling between children who scored high versus lower on: (1) levels of mental health symptoms, (2) multiple victimization exposure; (3) levels of delinquency; and (4) parent–child conflict. Multivariate logistic regressions were also performed to examine the relative and independent effects of a these factors on receiving counseling. Results indicate that counseling was received by only one- quarter or less of the 10–17 year olds and one-third or less of the 6–9 year olds with the highest levels of symptoms, victimization or delinquency. For the 10–17 year olds, delinquency and parent–child conflict were better predictors of treatment than were mental health symptoms or victimization exposure. In contrast, younger children (age 6–9) were most likely to receive counseling if they lived in a single parent or stepfamily household. The findings suggest that more counseling should be made available to distressed and victimized children, particularly those who do not engage in high delinquency and conflict which tend to promote referral.

The end of alternatives? Capitalist transformation,rural activism and the politics of possibility in China†

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the politics of possibility for rural activism in reform era China. By periodizing rural reforms from 1990, we explore the political-economic changes that have coalesced in the reform era, and how these changes condition forms and possibilities of activism. We argue that the current modernization–urbanization drive that emerged around 2008 is foreclosing opportunities for the pro-peasant cooperative forms that New Rural Reconstruction activists imagined earlier in the decade. Instead, as the process of capitalist agrarian change deepens in the countryside, food- and farming-related activism now resembles the state’s focus on markets and consumption, to the detriment of addressing social relations of production. Without a focus on distributional politics and power, this shift has the potential to further entrench existing inequalities within and across rural and urban spaces. The contextual work undertaken in this paper is currently absent from the emerging literature on China’s agrifood transformations.