Conserving the Principle of Identity: Identity,Representation and Equivalence

Howie recognizes as a starting position that there is a significant and political problem with judgements that presume an easy and unrestrained identification of a thing or a person, but she is sceptical that all judgements of identity are necessarily implicated in the same politics. She investigates how 'identity' functions in logic, judgement and epistemology, and argues that a dialectical understanding of identity provides the grounds both for a realist appreciation of the world that includes a subjective element and for a recognition that a subject both is and is not how she is and has been identified.     

Telling the past – doing the truth: Toni Morrison's beloved

Abstract

This essay challenges the concept of historical truth by arguing that history is only true within its own parameters.One of the main interests of history is to organize (evaluate) events that were important in shaping the world as it presents itself today. What history neglects to describe are the forces and interests that structure that hierarchical system that history applies when writing its text, i.e.history. Taking Toni Morrison's Beloved as an example of writing the past that sets itself apart from writing history, the essays follows a narrative that is doing the truth by giving voice to the repressed fears of a white and black world that do(es) not dare investigate the parameters of existence.     

The trivialisation of Mary Wollstonecraft a personal and professional career re-vindicated

This paper primarily addresses three points in relation to the distortion of the image of Mary Wollstonecraft and the distortion of her ideas: firstly there is the argument that there has been a sustained and systematic marginalisation and devaluation of Mary Wollstonecraft with the result that her work is neutralised, secondly that this originated with her husband, William Godwin and thirdly that Godwin's distortion have since been perpetuated by all biographers despite the fact that contrary testimony is available.     

David L. Behncke,The Airline Pilots,and the New Deal: The Struggle for Federal Labor Legislation

In the first half of the twentieth century, South Africa's two main coal-producing provinces, Natal and the Transvaal, were regarded as having separate industries. Comparing the two, the article shows that their geology, markets, ownership and organization were distinctive. In contrast, the patterns of labour struggles were alike, reflecting labour processes, racial divisions, and legal and ideological frameworks that were similar. The historiography of South African mining labour has emphasized the role of black migrants, who ‘oscillated’ between the mines and the rural areas from where they originated and to which they retired. While structuralist analyses argued that migrancy was the bedrock of a cheap-labour system that underpinned white power, leading social historians stressed that migrants were primarily rural men. The account presented here rejects the thrust of both positions, showing that a high proportion of coal miners settled around the mines. More of them would have done so had this been permitted, and the same applies to Africans working on the gold mines. Given that cheap-labour theory strengthens the exceptionalism that runs through much South African history, rejecting it can open up new possibilities for comparative study. In passing, the article reveals that black workers participated in the militant 1913 strike by the Witwatersrand's white mine workers.     

The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008: Tinkering at the Margins

This note suggests that, viewed from a feminist perspective, the reforms contained in the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008 represent a missed opportunity to re-think the appropriate model of regulation to govern fertility treatment and embryology research in the UK. It argues that reform of the legislation was driven largely by the government’s desire to avoid re-igniting controversies over the legal status of the embryo and abortion and to maintain Britain’s position at the forefront of embryo research and related biotechnologies. It also highlights the importance of media debates, which were highly selective, to the reform process, and suggests that in order to inject feminist values into the process of legislative reform, feminists need to become more media savvy. In the short term, it suggests that there is little prospect of a radical re-thinking of the appropriate ethico-legal response to the wide variety of family forms that reproductive technologies potentially enable, much less of considering our ethical obligations to the new forms of embryos that are now permitted by the 2008 Act. In the meantime, however, it argues that these issues provide productive opportunities for feminist legal theorists to address questions that have been erased or obscured in the course of the 2008 reforms.     

Differentiation: old controversies,new insights

There is a long-standing debate about the nature, impact and significance of processes of differentiation in driving agricultural development. This contribution discusses three ways in which such processes have been conceptualized: modernization theories that put markets centre stage, Marxist theories that focus on class, and Chayanovian approaches that highlight the dynamics within farming families. The empirical evidence for testing these concepts is normally derived from agricultural censuses. This paper uses a different database that covers all Dutch farms between 1980 and 2006 and enables us to follow the changes on individual farms. Examination of this data reveals that the actual processes of differentiation that have occurred in this 25-year period differ greatly from the classic conceptualizations. It also challenges the conventional wisdom that agricultural development is mostly driven by larger farms.     

Linkages of oil and politics: oil strikes and dual power in the Iranian revolution

ABSTRACT

Looking at the oil strikes during the Iranian revolution (1978–79), this article challenges dominant narratives of the relationship between oil and politics and the processes that shaped the outcome of the revolution. The main arguments of the article are developed in a critical dialogue with Timothy Mitchell’s Carbon Democracy. Firstly, the article argues that the scale of the oil strikes and their central role in the creation of organs of revolutionary power call into question the generalization about the material characteristics of oil that supposedly prevented mobilization. Secondly, the article argues that the fact that oil workers were able to organize mass strikes, but failed to create an independent organization, calls for an explanatory approach that combines material factors with the role of consciousness, ideology and organization. This leads to a rereading of the Iranian revolution that highlights the essential role of the oil strikes in the emergence of dual power in early 1979, and the contingency of their outcome.     

Museums and Feminist Matters: Considerations of a Feminist Museology

This article speaks to a post-human feminist museology. It argues that considerations of a feminist museology would benefit from engaging with post-human feminist dialogues currently unfolding within academia. Dynamic political landscapes and global circumstances challenge dualist paradigms. Theorizations of museums are not exempt from these challenges. Critiques of androcentricity indicate that feminist theorizations have never fully centred on “the human”, but always already contextualized how we affect the world, and how the world affects us. Discussions in this article follow Barad’s agential-realist theorization of the material-discursive practices that shape our understandings in and of the world, and Haraway’s notion of diffraction that engages the material and re-tools recordings of object histories as entangled human and non-human processes that can be taken apart and reassembled, making different possibilities possible. The article demonstrates that museological alternatives that emerge from conversations about entanglements not only aim to move beyond the paradigms they have been circling within for so long, but towards a re-thinking of museology and cultural heritage museums. Thus, considerations of a feminist post-human museology re-imagine museums as entangled becomings that make different possibilities possible.     

Calling a Spade a Spade: Tackling the ‘Women and Peace’ Orthodoxy

In her lecture, ‘Are women peaceful?’, Professor Hilary Charlesworth outlines what she perceives to be the current orthodoxies of the international women and conflict discourse. These include assumptions that women are natural peace-builders, suffer more from conflict, have a right to participate in peace processes, and that gender should be mainstreamed. Based on Charlesworth’s analysis, the authors argue that wars and peace processes are inherently gendered affairs and as a consequence a focus on equality or mainstreaming of gender remains challenging. The authors also note that although equality is a useful platform for ensuring women’s participation in peace processes, feminists should not expect equality arguments to do more than they were designed to do, that is, to ensure seats for women at decision-making tables. Ensuring that women can put forth their concerns and that they are listened to demands a different set of tools.     

'Dat Var Negressen Walaida Snow'

This essay is about the jazz musician and black variety stage artist Valaida Snow and the years she spent caught in Nazi occcupied Denmark. Despite rumors that she was held in a concentration camp, this essay argues that she may in fact have been shielded from the occupiers by the Danes. This essay argues that a masculinist bias in popular cultural/jazz studies obscures the histories of black women expressive artists and limits theoretical possibilities in the study of performance. It argues that the study of black women performers demands the development of more supple analytical models that attend to the heterogeneity of black expressive forms.     

Soviet Peasants and Collectivization, 1930-39: Resistance and Adaptation

This article re-evaluates the widely held view that Soviet peasants responded only or predominantly with resistance to collectivization and work in Soviet collective farms. It analyses key examples of the evidence for this 'resistance interpretation' to show that the evidence is not representative of most peasants' actions. It presents new evidence and analysis to show that peasant responses cannot be reduced to resistance, that more often they adapted to the new system, and that they worked hard within the system to overcome famines.     

劳模精神、劳动精神和工匠精神探析

党的十八大以来,在习近平总书记关于工人阶级和工会工作的系列重要讲话中,多次强调要坚 持弘扬劳模精神、劳动精神、工匠精神。认真领会劳模精神、劳动精神、工匠精神的科学内涵以及它们之间的 逻辑关系,对于实现中华民族伟大复兴的中国梦、增强文化自信和全面提升我国产业工人队伍整体素质有着重 大的理论价值和现实意义。劳模精神和劳动精神是整体和部分的关系,劳模精神和工匠精神是外力和内力的关系, 劳动精神和工匠精神是共性和个性的关系。总之,劳动精神,工匠精神,劳模精神存在逐步递进的逻辑。劳动 精神是成为人的精神,工匠精神是成为更加优秀的人的精神,劳模精神则是成为影响别人的人的精神。     

For lust or gain: perceptions of prostitutes in eighteenth-century London

This paper examines perceptions of lower-class female prostitutes in eighteenth-century London. This study challenges the prevailing argument that these perceptions fundamentally changed from ‘lusty whores’ to victims of poverty. An examination of Bridewell records, sermons, pamphlets, and the newspaper press, reveals that commentators believed that lust, poverty, and greed collectively explained what drove women to prostitution. Commentators recognized that, unable to make ends meet, many women turned to prostitution to survive, while also suggesting that others turned to prostitution because they believed they could gain considerable wealth by doing so. These same commentators asserted that some women were unusually lustful and that only prostitution would satisfy their insatiable desires. The simultaneous depiction of prostitutes in contradictory ways suggests that prostitution was not offensive to Georgian Britons solely because it involved women exchanging sexual favours for money, but because prostitution transgressed Britons’ deepest sensibilities about morality.     

is there really a second shift,and if so,who does it? a time-diary investigation

This paper draws on data from the most recent Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) Time Use Survey (TUS) (over 4,000 randomly selected households) to tease out the dimensions of the ‘second shift’. Predictions that as women entered the paid workforce men would contribute more to household labour have largely failed to eventuate. This underpins the view that women are working a second shift because they are shouldering a dual burden of paid and unpaid work. However, time use research seems to show that when both paid and unpaid work is counted, male and female workloads are in total very similar. This has led to suggestions that a literal second shift is a myth; that it exists in the sense that women do more domestic work than men, but not in the sense that they work longer hours in total. Using a more accurate and telling measure of workload than previous research (paid and unpaid labour including multitasked activities), this paper explores the second shift and how it relates to family configuration, ethnicity and indicators of class and socioeconomic standing. It finds a clear disparity between the total workloads of mothers and fathers, much of which consists of simultaneous (secondary) activity, and some demographic differences in female (but not male) total workloads. It concludes that the view that the second shift is a myth is only sustainable by averaging social groups very broadly and by excluding multitasking from the measurement of total work activity.     

The hazards of localism: a reply to John K. Walton

This article takes the position that national leaders and national events have a local impact and therefore that social phenomena are more than the products of local conditions. It maintains that a national working-class culture existed a century ago and that a national consensus about appropriate gender roles did as well. It contends that historical evidence must be evaluated in accordance with the perspectives of the people of the past in order to achieve an imaginative understanding of the past. In the case of the Co-operative movement, a failure to attend to the voice of its women's Guild results in historians dismissing the importance of the campaigns for open membership and for bringing Co-operation within reach of the poor. In particular, it minimizes the gender prejudice women in the movement confronted, even in the weaving districts where some historians have argued that gender roles were flexible.     

Shopping for Men: The Single Woman Narrative

Philips adresses a relatively new genre of fiction for women readers- including works by Jane Green, Freya North, Jane Gordon, Marian Keyes and the journalist Kathryn Flett- namely, that of the working woman romance narrative. These are novels that are addressed to a generation of young women who have independent incomes, are in work and are skilled consumers. The title, 'Shopping for Men', refers both to the consumption of men as objects of romance, and to the deployment of consumer skills in order to create a man worthy of the heroine's desire. In these novels, romance and sexual desire are contingent upon the reader and heroine appreciating and valuing consumer items. Using Bourdieu's argument that distinctions of taste are integrally related to class relations, the paper suggests that 'Mr Right' in these novels is required to display an awareness of consumer labels, and an ability to purchase them that surpasses that of the heroine. Philips will suggest that, while the heroines of these narratives assume all the gains of feminism, the romantic expectations are those of traditional gender relations, and that, while the female protagonist is assumed to be a working woman with a successful career, the romantic denouement depends on a hero whose work and social status are superior to hers.     

gendered politics of alienation and power restoration: Arab revolutions and women’s sentiments of loss and despair

From the start of the Arab revolutions in late 2010, a connection between the law, state, political economy, gender norms and orientalist ideology has formed the foundation of women’s systematic exclusion from politics. By unmasking processes in Egypt that have created the ideological and material conditions of externalising women’s revolutionary acts, estranging their political involvement, and exposing them to various forms of violence, this article offers a gendered political reading of the concept of alienation. The article suggests that gender-normative ideology’s characterisation of women’s images, roles and acts during and after revolutions, corresponds to the most profound form of alienation. The article identifies the externalisation and subjugation of women, and objectification of their revolutionary acts as modes of alienation. Moreover, it proposes that the implementing of these modes of alienation are necessary for creating conditions that allow for the reconfiguration of power dynamics that restore the authoritarian power of the state. This discussion suggests that the sphere of politics not only relates to political activism and conflict between revolutions and counter-revolutions, but that it is also a battlefield for the (re)production of gender-normative knowledge.     

Understanding Women in Scotland

This article explores obstacles to understanding the history and contemporary experiences of women in Scotland, and to the development of feminist research in Scotland. It is argued that explanations which invoke Scottish male chauvinism and misogyny alone are insufficient, and that the marginalization of women in Scotland is produced both by male domination within Scotland, and by English cultural and political hegemony within the UK. The article comments on the relationship of the concept of ‘Britishness’ to that of ‘Scottishness’ (and other identities within the UK) and illustrates how the frequent confusion of ‘British’ with ‘English’ serves to obscure Scottish experience. It is also argued that the place of Scotland within the British state has led to the creation of an institutional framework that disadvantages women, and a system of government that excludes women. This implies that feminist debates on the state in Britain require a specific focus on the form of the British state, and in the context of constitutional change in particular this is important for the development of future strategies. It is argued that the double marginalization of women in Scotland is not just a problem in relation to the development of feminist research, but is also a political problem in that it contributes to a degree of alienation from feminism in England. The article concludes by arguing for the necessity of recognition of difference, but also for dialogue, as the basis for feminist alliances in different parts of the UK.     

Feminist Reflections on the Scope of Labour Law: Domestic Work,Social Reproduction,and Jurisdiction

Drawing on feminist labour law and political economy literature, I argue that it is crucial to interrogate the personal and territorial scope of labour. After discussing the “commodification” of care, global care chains, and body work, I claim that the territorial scope of labour law must be expanded beyond that nation state to include transnational processes. I use the idea of social reproduction both to illustrate and to examine some of the recurring regulatory dilemmas that plague labour markets. I argue that unpaid care and domestic work performed in the household, typically by women, troubles the personal scope of labour law. I use the example of this specific type of personal service relation to illustrate my claim that the jurisdiction of labour law is historical and contingent, rather than conceptual and universal. I conclude by identifying some of the implications of redrawing the territorial and personal scope of labour law in light of feminist understandings of social reproduction.     

Relative Responsibilities

Although the feminist debate regarding to the supposed problem of relativism has moved on, there is still a nagging anxiety that the embrace of relativism undermines the feminist project. From an initial fear that questioning the notion of a singular truth would paralyse political action, more recent concerns centre on the ethical and, in particular, on responsibility. But for all that contemporary feminism celebrates fluid differences against the singular and fixed, there remains an acceptability gap between, on the one hand, the interpretative approach and, on the other, what can be broadly referred to as deconstruction. For the former, the concession that both material socio-cultural and historical differences, and ideological constructs, affect the way in which individuals understand and reason about the world is not taken to undermine the primacy and truth-value of a supposedly underlying model of reality. The claim is that preceding such differential constructions, there is a stable and ideally recoverable reality that is the guarantor of true knowledge. In contrast to such a hermeneutic reading of appearance as inherently contingent, Shildrick suggests that the metaconcepts of reality, truth and knowledge are in themselves contingent. It is neither relativism nor pluralism that offers escape from the damaging singularities and exclusions of modernity, but rather the move to a post­modernist concept of undecidability.