“Per la conservació de la raça catalana”: The Catalan Eugenics Society (1935–1937)

This article expands on existing work done on the Catalan Eugenics Society and its focus on Josep Vandellós, a demographer and organiser of the Society. It places the Catalan Eugenics Society within the growing volume of work on the international, particularly “Latin” eugenics movement. In doing so, it explores discourse on questions of “race,” immigration and “national” identity as refracted through the nascent eugenics movement and the political concerns of the time in Catalonia. In particular, the article assesses the question of “racial mixing” between Catalans and Spaniards from other regions and argues that, rather than rejecting miscegenation outright, Vandellós valued certain mixes as part of a eugenic project to fortify and maintain the Catalan “race” in the face of population loss and the dissolution of Catalan identity.     

Measuring Skulls: Race and Science in Vicente Riva Palacio's México a través de los siglos

This article discusses the use of the term 'race' as a corpus of racial theories sustained by scientific knowledge of biological human evolution in late nineteenth-century Mexico. It also explores how scientific and political discourses have constructed equivalent notions of race and national subjects, and how racial thought is imbedded in nation-building processes within the context of knowledge and social differentials in Mexico's national history. This is carried out through an examination of the second chapter of the second volume of Mexico a través de los siglos (Mexico Throughout the Centuries), by Mexican historian Vicente Riva Palacio (1832–1896), seen through the perspective of cultural history.     

Race,Nature and History in Ensayo sobre las revoluciones políticas and El Español de Ambos Mundos

This article revisits the Ensayo sobre las revoluciones políticas published in Paris by Colombian intellectual José María Samper in 1861. It does so by positioning it in the context of the newspaper in which it was initially published in instalments: El Español de Ambos Mundos. Hitherto both this newspaper and its close conceptual connection to the Ensayo have been overlooked. The simultaneous reading of EAM and the Ensayo also serves to signal similarities and differences in racial thinking on both sides of the Atlantic, while contributing to the increasing interest among scholars in studying how miscegenation was endowed with different meanings according to the context in which it was considered.     

From Araucanian warriors to Mapuche terrorists: contesting discourses of gender,race, and nation in modern Chile (1810–2010)

This article explores the complex, shifting intersections between gender, racial, and national identities in modern Chile. Focusing on the figure of the Araucanian warrior who famously defeated the Spanish conquistadors in the sixteenth century, it draws readers' attention to four transformative periods between the first declaration of Chilean independence and the bicentennial celebrations of that independence, and examines the contesting notions of masculinity that emerged in such contexts. Firstly, it analyses the late nineteenth-century liberal State's “civilising” discourse, which was imbued with imperial racist concepts of masculinity; secondly, a protest mestizo masculinity that emerged through the writings of Nicolás Palacios in the early twentieth century; thirdly, a revolutionary masculinity that was exalted by various actors during the Popular Unity government (1970–3); and finally, multicultural, neo-liberal configurations of masculinity in post-dictatorship Chile. It shows how the masculine ideals of physique (strength, impressive build, virility) and behaviour (independence, intelligence, bravery, spirit of adventure) projected onto the noble warrior of old have existed in tension with disparaging attitudes towards contemporary Mapuche demanding respect for their rights. It also underscores the multiple, creative ways in which Mapuche intellectuals and political leaders have engaged with dominant discourses of gender, race and nation in republican Chile.     

Changing Narratives of Race and Environment in the Nineteenth‐Century and Early‐Twentieth‐Century Brazilian Amazon

The Amazon has been the object of numerous reflections upon the relationship between the natural environment and the categories of human society. This article analyses Brazilian writers who considered the relations between space and race over the course of the nineteenth century and early twentieth century. It focuses on João Henrique de Mattos, José Veríssimo and Euclides da Cunha, placing them in relation to each other and within local, national and international discourses on race, nature and development. Its aim is to examine how a racialised geographical understanding of the Amazon changed over the course of the nineteenth century and was tied to Brazilian nation‐building.     

The Role of Local Government in the Prevention of Violence against Women and Girls during the COVID-19 Pandemic

This article discusses aspects of the emerging evidence around the impact of COVID-19 on violence against women as well as local government interventions relating to the prevention of domestic violence in Latin American countries. I show how, during the coronavirus outbreak, local governments are vital in the prevention of violence against women and girls, and I present examples of some local actions that seek to guarantee access to the appropriate support and services during the pandemic.     

Whose Development? How Women Living Near the Yanacocha Mine,Peru, Envision Potential Futures

Among women opposing expansion of mining operations in Cajamarca, Peru, narratives of preferred alternatives diverge: from sustainable mining to alternative economic development, to more radical alternatives to ‘development’. In these accounts, both the women's relative powerlessness and agency become apparent. This article critically explores women's views of development and their imaginings of their region with or without mining. I argue that those who opposed mining show a continuing engagement with questions of development in the aftermath of conflict over natural resource extraction, highlighting a common thread of desires for bottom-up initiatives embracing local knowledge, practice and history.     

Uruguay’s long transitional decade and a new era of gendered activism

This article examines the nature and type of women’s activism before, during, and after Uruguay’s dictatorship, arguing that advocacy during the latter part of the country’s military rule paved the way for an increased role for women in society after democracy was restored. Focusing on the female-led movement to place the 1986 Ley de Caducidad (Law of Expiry or amnesty law) before a national referendum, it analyzes how women marshaled a gendered identity that had been effective in campaigning against the military. Through examining connections between earlier women’s movements and the 1980s, the article explores how challenging a key piece of legislation in the recently restored democratic environment ultimately forged a new era of activism for women in post-authoritarian Uruguay. The article ultimately rethinks the process of Uruguay’s transition, the continual negotiations over what is included in human rights discourse, and the importance of gendered activism in transitional societies.     

Europeans of the Peruvian Andes: A Family History, 1860s–1940s

Liberal elites in nineteenth-century Peru were eager to attract European immigrants to help modernise their country. The majority arrived independently bringing commercial skills, while a minority, contracted as colonists, settled in the tropical lowlands. This article focuses on two European communities established in the central Andean region, where immigrants from northern Italy excelled as merchants and families from the Austrian Tyrol became smallholders. Through a reconstruction of one family's history, which draws on personal letters and a photograph, the article explores the experiences, character and socio-economic transformation of these communities and the significance given to European-ness and whiteness.     

Imagined Races: From Environmental Determinism to Geographical Authenticity in Twentieth‐Century Argentina

This article explores how Argentine intellectuals incorporated the natural environment into their accounts of the racial, cultural and political features of the nation. In the late nineteenth century environmental determinism, based on the assumption of a cause–effect relationship between geographical and racial factors, entered Argentina through three main routes: Lamarckism, Darwinism and Spencerianism. By the mid twentieth century, however, anti‐positivist philosophies had been fully incorporated into a body of work that analysed Argentina's socio‐historical foundations. This article examines the shift that occurred during the first half of the twentieth century in how those seeking to define race incorporated the environment into their arguments. The raza was commonly taken to be synonymous with nation. Selected works by sociologist and legal scholar Carlos Octavio Bunge (1875‐1918) and by writer and ensayista Bernardo Canal Feijóo (1897‐1982) will be analysed as influential yet overlooked examples of how ‘the problem of Argentine culture’ could not be separated from the question of nature understood in terms of both physical and human geography. The goal will be to reveal, firstly, the extent to which the notion of the interior as geographical and anthropological desert deeply informed the political vision of the early national period in relation to race and nation and, secondly, how later interpretations of the nation recast American nature as a foundational element of cultural authenticity based on a sentiment of geographical belonging.     

COVID-19 and the Limitations of Official Responses to Gender-Based Violence in Latin America: Evidence from Ecuador

As the COVID-19 lockdowns were implemented, Latin American countries raced to announce plans to address gender-based violence in response to the increase in reports of intrafamily abuse. However, states' interventions had limited results. This article explores the Ecuadorian case. The Andean country's emergency strategy was based on reporting violence via the 911 emergency number, a plan that failed to consider that women quarantined with their aggressors would not have the opportunity to make the call. This article lays bare the extent of the gap between policy and practice in gender mainstreaming and the acute consequences of this during the pandemic.     

Kopano Matlwa’s Coconut and the Dialectics of Race in South Africa: Interrogating Images of Whiteness and Blackness in Black Literature and Culture

The public outcry against President Jacob Zuma’s labeling of black ownership of pet dogs as fundamentally “unAfrican” in 2012 and the academic debates around Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s proposal in 2011 for a 1% reparative wealth tax on whites is further evidence of the continued necessity of whiteness studies today, despite South Africa’s independence from a racist Afrikaner regime and its movement towards a nonracist society. Yet, the authority, agency, and normative value of whiteness continue to work covertly within an intellectual critique embedded in standardized interrogations of images and imaginations of race and culture. Kopano Matlwa’s popular debut novel, Coconut, is a necessary, self-reflexive commentary on the interdependent nature of racial inquiry. While critics typically read the novel as resoundingly critical of contemporary blackness, they fail to see its simultaneous evocation of the necessarily porous, performative, and continuously evolving character of race and culture generally. This paper acknowledges Matlwa’s concern with a superficial postapartheid blackness, but also argues that Coconut’s complex invocation of black culture exposes the impossibility of imaging and imagining blackness without imaging and imagining whiteness. In the continued satirical fetishization of whiteness, racial essentialism is destabilized and whiteness is positioned as an inevitable mirror on and of blackness. As such, the paper simultaneously questions the efficacy of “whiteness” studies that suggest the possibility of establishing separate and exclusive studies on race and culture.     

日本对外文化输出战略探析——多元实施主体与国家建构路径

"酷日本"并不是一个客观的存在,而是被建构起来的。日本这个国家通过"酷日本"战略相关的国家政策性文件、经贸活动、对外宣讲活动、媒体表述等各种文化实践被不断想象、发明、质疑和改变。以"酷日本"为代表的日本对外文化输出战略已经发展成为一个由日本政府各部门诠释和定义、民间人士参与、外国从业者深耕、媒体的外宣保障等多方积极配合、相得益彰的系统性工程。其实施路径、机制及其经验教训对中国的文化走出去策略具有重要借鉴意义。     

Collecting on their investments,one woman at a time: Economic partnerships among Caribbean immigrant women in the United States

ABSTRACT

This article treats rotating savings and credit associations (ROSCAs) from a constructive cultural perspective. The female-based African-Jamaican tradition of paadna (partnership) is examined within the theoretical scope of womanist (Black feminist) thought, a seminal discourse intersecting both the African diaspora and women's studies. Across the multiple scholarly approaches within women's and African diaspora studies, academic theory acquires cogency through legitimate correspondences with tangible liberating practices and traditions that can be documented and interrogated for conceptual insights. The practice of economic partnering is one such tradition that substantiates the ethical directives and imperatives of womanist theory and practice. A womanist reading of paadnas is proposed, not because the participants have any self-conscious commitment to feminism/womanism, but because of the institution's efficacy in enhancing the socioeconomic standing of Black families through a relatively small-scale capital enterprise. Through paadna networks, Jamaican women have transplanted a flexible self-help tradition to America that is arguably one of the most reliable sources of social and economic mobility among groups of African descent in the United States.     

“El pájaro de cuatro notas”: the reception of Argentine women writers and artists’ work in avant-garde magazines (1920–1930)

This article assesses the reception of Argentine women writers and artists’ work within vanguard magazines. Taking as case studies the work of Norah Lange and Norah Borges, I identify four key tropes that emerge in reviews of their creative output published between 1920 and 1930. This article brings to light original archival material in order to expose how women’s peripheral position in the artistic sphere of early twentieth-century Latin America was enacted at a discursive level. In so doing, I propose that the gendered dynamics evident within avant-garde magazines represent a microcosm of women’s experiences within the vanguard more broadly. This article aims to contribute to a thorough investigation into how marginalisation is enacted and enforced, exposing the extra-literary processes which construct an artistic sphere that is inhospitable to women practitioners.