Power and Rights in the Community: Paralegals as Leaders in Women’s Legal Empowerment in Tanzania

What can an analysis of power in local communities contribute to debates on women’s legal empowerment and the role of paralegals in Africa? Drawing upon theories of power and rights, and research on legal empowerment in African plural legal systems, this article explores the challenges for paralegals in facilitating women’s access to justice in Tanzania, which gave statutory recognition to paralegals in the Legal Aid Act 2017. Land conflicts represent the single-biggest source of local legal disputes in Tanzania and are often embedded in gendered land tenure relations. This article argues that paralegals can be effective actors in women’s legal empowerment where they are able to work as leaders, negotiating power relations and resisting the forms of violence that women encounter as obstacles to justice. Paralegals’ authority will be realised when their role is situated within community leadership structures, confirming their authority while preserving their independence.     

Gender and Transnationality among Welsh Tinplate Workers in Pittsburgh: The Hattie Williams Affair, 1895

Before 1890, Wales was the world's leading producer of tinplate, and the United States was its primary customer. With passage of the McKinley tariff on tinplate that year, however, the industry entered a vigorous expansion in the US but went into a steep decline in Wales. Underemployed tinplate workers in Wales migrated to the US, where their skills were now in high demand, and in the process created extensive occupational networks and a transnational niche community. Grounded in the nineteenth-century ideological ideals of female domesticity, the male breadwinner, and the family wage, Welsh tinplate men hoped to achieve these middle-class gender aspirations by completely removing women from the mills in America. That goal was challenged in 1895 when the Monongahela Tin Plate Works in Pittsburgh employed Hattie Williams, an immigrant woman with experience in the Welsh tin mills, to train American women for the work. Almost instantaneously a storm of protest arose from Welsh tinplate workers on both sides of the Atlantic. An analysis of the polemical discourse generated by this episode sheds light on the gendered migration experience of a small, highly skilled transatlantic niche community, and the lines of internal fragmentation which undermined its continuity.     

Women's access to power in self-government municipalities of Oaxaca,Mexico: Describing their career tracks

The Usos y Costumbres system of Oaxaca, Mexico, is a form of indigenous self-government dating back to colonial times. In 1995, the constitution and electoral code of Oaxaca were amended so as to recognize such system as a legitimate form of municipal government. Since then, less than 2% of all mayors per triennium have been women. By drawing on in-depth interviews with all the 18 women who have become mayors since the CAP system was legalized, this paper describes women's paths to the mayor´s office. The methodological strategy involves a non-predefined typology consisting of four distinctly gendered career tracks. The typology allows to capture the main factors that shape women's access to the mayoralty (marital status, political party affiliation, community leadership and educational level), as well as the combination among them in specific social contexts.     

‘An Adamless Eden’: counterpublics and women writers' sociability at the fin de siècle through the experiences of Flora Annie Steel

This article focuses on the ‘outsider’ status of late-nineteenth-century women writers by exploring the experiences of Anglo-Indian novelist Flora Annie Steel and her responses to authorial sociability in fin-de-siècle London. Androcentric literary societies are viewed as influential sites which marginalised women writers, containing their incursion into masculine clubland and denying them access to some of the symbolic and practical benefits of professional authorship. Through the lens of Steel's experience, the discussion considers how women writers attempted to transcend exclusion through the establishment of female, literary counterpublics. Such counterpublics fostered a gendered literary consciousness that empowered women and matured in Steel's case into a political prospectus in the service of women's suffrage.     

Power to make land dispossession acceptable: a policy discourse analysis of the Merauke Integrated Food and Energy Estate (MIFEE), Papua,Indonesia

The Merauke Integrated Food and Energy Estate (MIFEE) in Papua, Indonesia, is a state-led mega-project to transform local agriculture through large-scale corporate investment in food crops and biofuels for foreign markets. The project has led to extensive land dispossession, accompanied by devastating social and ecological impacts. This contribution analyzes how discourse regarding food and energy crises has been employed to release land from customary tenure to a coalition of state, corporate and local elite actors. The interests of these actors have converged on the state-led mega-project to transform local agriculture through large-scale corporate investment in food crops and biofuels in the name of national food security.     

The Republic is a Feminist Issue

The growth during the 1990s of a republican movement in Australia has stimulated among other things a feminist examination of both the gendered nature of republicanism and the under-representation of women in senior positions in republican organizations. Feminists have adopted several critical perspectives on Australian republicanism: one involves the claim for the redesign of Australian political institutions in order to maximize the representation of women and women's interests; another suggests that the neglected history of women's involvement in constitutional politics during the last century needs to be understood to throw light on ways in which republicanism can be made more meaningful for women now, while a third argues that republicanism is not essentially a feminist issue and should not be pursued as such. The article challenges this conclusion.     

‘Sable venus’, ‘she devil’ or ‘drudge’? British slavery and the ‘fabulous fiction’ of black women's identities,c. 1650–1838

Abstract

In this article, the author addresses the problem of how much historians can understand about the identities of individuals living in a different epoch in time, in relation to what has been termed the ‘fabulous fiction’ of black women's identities in slavery and freedom. A central argument is that stereotypes of black women were highly gendered and clustered around contradictory representations, particularly the ‘Sable Venus’, ‘She Devil’ and passive ‘drudge’. Thus, the persistence of an African-centred ‘woman's culture’ and strategies of resistance, collaboration and survival are vital to understanding black women's self-defined (as opposed to white attributed) identities. The first section examines the relationship between gender, race and culture in the mediation of African and slave women's identities. This is followed by a critical deconstruction of the ‘Sable Venus’ and interrelated black and white gendered identities in colonial slave society. The final section analyses the importance of the ‘She Devil’ in representing the resistant slave woman who defied the ‘fabulous fiction’ of white stereotyping of black women. A wide time span is adopted in order to analyse how black women's relationship to the gendered power structures underpinning colonial slavery shifted over time, as did ‘white visions’ of their identities. Unifying themes are the central location black women had in the development of colonial relations between black and white and the implications of contact at the harsh interface of African and European cultures for black women's gendered identities.     

Tree plantations,politics of possession and the absence of land grabs in Vietnam

Viewed from the lens of ‘land grabs’, Vietnam's fast-growing tree plantations look like an anomaly; many of them are tiny, owned and operated by rural households. In contrast, private companies and transnational corporations have not been able to get much of a foot into Vietnam's plantation sector. This paper identifies the practices and processes underlying the apparent anomaly. On the basis of fieldwork in four villages, it points to the concrete mechanisms by which households have gained access to land, finance, and wood markets. Government policy emerges as a critical factor enabling household access, not in the sense of a coherent policy package but understood as sedimented outcomes of everyday processes of state formation over the past three decades. A central element in contestations over the state is what I call ‘politics of possession’: possession, referring to entitlement and control, has been closely tied to ideas about the state. The paper uses these empirical observations to contribute towards theoretical understandings of land grabs and exclusion. Land grabs may have to say as much about dynamics of state formation as processes of commodification and market expansion.     

‘Daughters of injur’d Africk’: 1 African women and the transatlantic slave trade

There is now a substantial literature on slavery yet few studies directly address the gendered nature of the slave trade. In this article, the author demonstrates how women’s experiences of the trade were contingent on conflicting European stereotypes of African women, their fertility and sexual vulnerability but, also, their gendered roles in African cultures. These gender differences influenced women’s resistance and survival strategies. The middle passage represented irreversible changes in slave women’s lives but important threads of continuity also existed across the Atlantic world. On the slave ship the ‘Daughters of injur’d Africk’ forged new bonds with fellow slaves and their cultural knowledge travelled with them. Women were seminal in reworking African culture on the slave plantation and actively resisted enslavement from the moment of capture to their harsh new lives in the Americas.     

The Public Voice of Women

This article, first published in the London Review of Books on 20 March 2013, takes the long view on the subject of women's public voice. From antiquity to the present day there are countless examples of women either excluded from speaking out in public life or ridiculed for doing so. This essay examines the nature and experience of oratory in Western culture and the ways in which public speaking has become gendered and how issues of voice and gender continue to span the public spheres from traditional politics to modern forms of social media.     

Agrarian reform and South Africa's agro-food system

The dominant corporate structure of South Africa's agro-food system has led many to suggest there is limited value in redistributing land as a scarce economic resource, or in providing support to black small-scale farmers when large agribusinesses are capable of meeting food needs. Agrarian reform (land reform plus black small-scale farmer support) is not a necessary component of the existing economic system in South Africa. Yet it has tremendous political importance, especially in the context of a stagnant or declining job market. After considering the development of the corporate agro-food system in South Africa, and its impact on agrarian reform, this paper concludes that agrarian reform as a political project and a vision retains the potential to contribute not only to a more just society, but also to progressive economic transformation.     

“He would know,but i just have a feeling”: gender and oral history1

Abstract

While feminist historians have long used oral history, and continue to revise the ways oral sources can be employed, historians of masculinities have been slow to embrace new approaches to oral history. Using interviews conducted with women and men for a community study, this article suggests that a gendered, relational reading of oral history is instructive, not just in showing how different men and women's experiences have been, but also how their memories have been shaped by prevailing ideas of gender-appropriate behaviour and values. This raises the issue of the form as well as the content of oral history being gendered.     

Power and dispossession in the neoliberal food regime: oil palm expansion in Guatemala

ABSTRACT

Guatemala’s palm oil production has surged in line with the global demand for biodiesel and vegetable oil production. While corporate land grabs have been a popular concept in agrarian studies, we emphasize the integral roles of the state and racially-charged political power relations, enhanced by the neoliberal food regime. These power relations, with racism at their core, foster land control grabs occurring alongside the rise of the palm oil industry. Their effects extend beyond merely the dispossession of land. The oil palm expansion and related dispossessions mostly benefit the international markets and the wealthy ruling class comprised of creole descendants and affluent ladinos. The soaring industry has given rise to human rights violations and a lack of access to or control of various resources, such as food and water. Based on fieldwork, we show that dispossessed Guatemalans, especially the indigenous, experience rising poverty, domestic food shortages and an influx of foreign foodstuffs as the meagrely paid work in the oil palm sector is only available for the few.     

Controlling land they call their own: access and women's empowerment in Northern Tanzania

Formal rights to land are often promoted as an essential part of empowering women, particularly in the Global South. We look at two grassroots non-governmental organizations (NGOs) working on land rights and empowerment with Maasai communities in Northern Tanzania. Women involved with both NGOS attest to the power of land ownership for personal empowerment and transformations in gender relations. Yet very few have obtained land ownership titles. Drawing from Ribot and Peluso's theory of access, we argue that more than ownership rights to land, access – to land, knowledge, social relations and political processes – is leading to empowerment for these women, as well as helping to keep land within communities. We illustrate how the following are key to both empowerment processes and protecting community and women's land: (1) access to knowledge about legal rights, such as the right to own land; (2) access to customary forms of authority; and (3) access to a joint social identity – as women, as ‘indigenous people’ and as ‘Maasai'. Through this shared identity and access to knowledge and authority, women are strengthening their access to social relations (amongst themselves, with powerful political players and NGOs), and gaining strength through collective action to protect land rights.     

Contesting the boundaries of gender,race and sexuality in Barbadian plantation society

After decades of scholarly neglect, the pivotal roles played by enslaved African women in the sociocultural and economic development of New World plantation societies is finally receiving critical attention as historians embark on gendered reappraisals of Caribbean history. Understanding how African women experienced slavery has considerably enriched our knowledge of the complexity of gender, race and sexuality in structuring colonial social relations. However, considerably less attention has focused on the experiences of white women within these societies. Dismissed, at best, as the languid and leisured wives of male planters, and at worst, as a socially and economically unproductive parasitical category, white Caribbean women arguably constitute the most marginalised of social actors within Caribbean history. This article seeks to disrupt the uncritical representations that frame our epistemological understanding of the experiences of white colonial women. Taking the plantation society of Barbados as a case study, the author argues that white women were crucial actors in the reproduction and social stability of successful slave economies. In Barbadian plantation society, ideologies of white supremacy legitimised African slavery, and race became the principal mode of social stratification.     

Land tenure legislation in a pluri-cultural and multi-ethnic Society: The case of Bolivia

After considering notions of social justice as they are related to concepts of ‘development’, this article seeks to provide a regionally differentiated overview of the evolution of land tenure in Bolivia and the way arrangements for land tenure legalization have been contested and negotiated over time. It will show how the colonial ‘reciprocity pact’, which entailed recognition of indigenous tenure systems came under attack from liberalizing policies during the second half of the nineteenth century. The 1953 agrarian reform brought new arrangements and new agrarian policies that formally aimed at modernization. Yet another reform, in 1996, under the aegis of neoliberalism, brought a formal recognition of indigenous tenure systems which, however, has not yielded very satisfactory outcomes. This is due to a one-sided emphasis on tenure that disregards broader community organization and a slow and biased implementation favouring the traditionally dominant sectors.     

Laughing Medusa: Feminist Intellectuals at the Millennium

The role of the intellectual is traditionally gendered masculine, and women are excluded from consideration. Contemporary discussions of the 'death of the intellectual' noticeably make no reference to feminist intellectuals. On the other hand, women in academia have been reluctant to adopt the role of public intellectual as conventionally defined. There is an anxiety about the contemporary place of the intellectual, and about the necessity for the distinction made by some feminists between theory and practice, the intellectual and the activist, and where this might lead. In exploring the role of feminist intellectuals over the last two centuries, three paradigms of the feminist intellectual are proposed for consideration: Cassandra (the prophetess cursed with disbelief), for example Florence Nightingale; the feminist Messiah (the exceptional female saviour who would sacrifice herself to change women's lives), for whom the exemplar is Margaret Fuller; and the Dark Lady (the token woman in a community of men), such as de Beauvoir, Mary McCarthy and Susan Sontag. Indeed, Camille Paglia's rivalry with Sontag lends itself to being interpreted as evidence of her current desire to occupy this 'dark lady' role. In conclusion, after discussing contemporary, late twentieth-century feminism (Natasha Walter, Elizabeth Wurtzel, gurrl power, 'women behaving badly'), the role of Margaret Thatcher in changing perceptions of women's capacity for political power is proposed for celebration. Finally, there is Cixous's image of the feminist intellectual as the laughing Medusa, who turns men to stone, but turns laughter on herself.