women,theatre and Calypso in the English-speaking Caribbean

The present essay discusses how women calypsonians in the English-speaking Caribbean use Calypso performances as a theatrical platform to offer a gendered critique of the nation and engage in a dialogue, which despite exhibiting pride in the nation, questions its various exclusions in ways that seek to redefine dominant constructions of the nation as ‘we’. Not only do they offer a vision of the nation and its cultural aspects that is more inclusive, they also speak out against cultural and political oppression. I analyse specific performances by Singing Sandra (Trinidad) and Queen Ivena (Antigua) from my position as an ‘indigenous-outsider’ and ‘outsider within’ in order to demonstrate that Calypso performance is a post-colonial form of theatre in the English-speaking Caribbean that is being used by women as a site for feminist action and agency.     

The figure of woman and the fantasy of the modern Australian nation: travelling to the ‘Empty Centre’

How does a political entity such as nation so seduce and beguile that it appears to its subjects to constitute the very grounding of identity, the very grounding even of meaning itself? One of the ways it does this, for both male and female national subjects, is through the image of Woman, a phenomenon most evident in the cultural productions of a nation—its novels and films, its poetry and painting. It is in these ‘texts’ that the reach of the image of Woman in reproducing the particular fantasies that sustain the belief in our national identity, our ‘unique way of life’ can be seen. In his novel The Plains, Gerald Murnane satirises the Australian fantasy of nation that elevates Woman to such a status that she becomes both the sublime image of the very essence of nation and an always unattainable object of desire. As Lacanian theory tells us, this fantasy of Woman as the impossible sublime object is a form that is most often found on the male side of sexuation. The image of Woman that sustains such fantasies is an empty container, a pure image that contains only its own constitutive no-thing, but an image that nevertheless is compelling, that captures the gaze, appearing to offer all. That is, it has a fascinatory effect. Given that masculinist fantasies of nation continue to appear in all Australian cultural forms, reproducing predominant national meanings, it remains a vital part of the Australian feminist project to analyse these contemporary expressions of the place of Woman in national reproduction and how the masculine fantasy of Woman sustains a particular form of nation. Gerald Murnane's recently republished literary novel The Plains remains as relevant to these questions as it was when it was first published in 1982. This article offers a Lacanian analysis of the function of Woman in Murnane's The Plains, a novel which is itself preoccupied with the use made of the image of Woman in the reproduction of prevailing national fantasies.     

feminist-nation building in Afghanistan: an examination of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA)

Women-led political organizations that employ feminist and nationalist ideologies and operate as separate from, rather than associated with, male-dominated or patriarchal nationalist groups are both significant and under-explored areas of gender, feminist, and nationalism studies. This article investigates the feminist and nationalist vision of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA). RAWA exemplifies an effective political movement that intersects feminist and nationalist politics, where women are active, rather than symbolic, participants within the organization, and help to shape an ideological construction of the Afghan nation. RAWA subsequently links its struggle for women's rights (through feminism) with its nationalist goals for democracy and secularism. This article also analyses RAWA's use of conservative nationalist methods to reproduce the future of the organization and to develop ‘citizens’ for its idealized nation, while countering existing patriarchal social and familial structures through a re-configuration of women's roles in the family, community, and nation. This inquiry is based on geographic and feminist examinations of RAWA's organizational structure, literature, and political goals obtained through content analyses of RAWA's political literature and through interviews with RAWA members and supporters living as refugees in Pakistan in the summer of 2003 and winter of 2004/05. RAWA is an instructive example of counter-patriarchal and nationalist feminist politics that questions patriarchal definitions of the nation and its citizenry by reconfiguring gender norms and redefining gender relations in the family as a mirror of the nation.     

White Women. White Nation. White Cosmopolitanism: Swedish Migration between the National and the Global

Emerging from the concepts of white cosmopolitanism and white cosmopolitan femininity, this article analyses “cosmopolitan narratives” of Swedish migrant women who lived abroad for an extended period and eventually returned to Sweden. Based on eight months’ ethnographic work, including 46 in-depth interviews with migrants who had returned in Sweden, the article explores how national boundaries are both maintained and traversed in the construction of a “world citizen”. It is argued that the women’s self-identification with a cosmopolitan ethos is structured by whiteness, nationality, and class that grants uninterrupted mobility and “worldliness”. As symbolic bearers of the Swedish nation, national ideals act on the white women’s bodies internationally, in ways that both uphold and re-inscribe the nation into the global. Thus, apart from obscuring global inequalities, white cosmopolitan femininity is imbricated in both national and global politics as a place where global structures reconnect with the white nation, thereby enabling Swedish migrants to re-install themselves into contemporary global settings as self-defined cosmopolitan subjects     

National Identity of High-School Adolescents in an Era of Socio-Economic Change: Russia and Ukraine in the Post-Perestroika Period

This study focuses on the national identity of high-school adolescents in Russia and Ukraine in the post-perestroika period. Adolescents studying in public high schools in 12 medium-size and large cities completed questionnaires in 1999 (n = 468) and 2007 (n = 646). Russian adolescents consistently reported a more positive attitude towards their country and a stronger identification with the nation than did Ukrainian adolescents. The effect of socio-economic changes on the two components of national identity differed: the adolescents reported a more positive attitude towards their country in 2007 than in 1999, while their identification with the nations did not change significantly. Social support received from peers was associated with a more positive attitude towards the country and a stronger identification with the nation, while social support received from parents and teachers was not related to the national identity of adolescents. Adolescents’ better psychological adjustment was associated with a more positive attitude towards the country but was not related to their identification with the nation. Adolescents who belonged to the ethnic majority reported a more positive attitude towards the country and a stronger identification with the nation as compared to adolescents who belonged to ethnic minorities.     

Imagining (the) Difference: Gender,Ethnicity and Metaphors of Nation

This article critiques the way in which three feminist authors reinscribe traditional liberal values when seeking new ways of thinking about the nation. It suggests that in rejecting affective or embodied metaphors, such as community or kinship, the authors fall into the trap of reinscribing values which have historically excluded women and ethnic or racial minorities from full participation in the polity. The article argues for a rejection of the affect/rationality model which underpins these arguments and suggests that new metaphors for the nation will emerge as those who have been excluded claim a place in the polity.     

Emotional Deviants and the Politics of Love: ‘spiritual friendships’ in late nineteenth-century Christchurch

William Smith, also known as ‘the man with two wives’, and Mary Colborne-Veel's ‘spiritual friendships’ are part of a significant window into the emotional politics of late nineteenth-century New Zealand. This research explores the relationship between the apparently ‘deviant’ emotions expressed by respectable middle-class political reformers like Smith and his second wife Kate Sheppard, and the political nation-state which they sought to reform. It is the contention of this article that emotional ‘deviancy’ was a reflection of the wider contemporary political situation which saw the nation in flux; the early women's movement politicised love and affection, while the fractured nation that that movement unsettled enabled emotional deviance the privilege of social sanctioning.     

Women's Publics and the Search for New Democracies

The article examines the intersections between gender, racism, global capitalism and corporate multiculturalism. The notion of nation and nationalism for the twenty-first century is explored. Women's voices from Beijing provide a possible imaginary for transnation discourse.     

劳动争议基层调解制度质疑

劳动争议基层调解是由设在用人单位内部的劳动争议调解委员会主持下进行的调解。这种调解制度自身存在一系列缺陷,影响了劳动争议处理的效率,所以应该废除,并可以通过一系列制度设计来避免由此带来的震荡。     

Citizens on the Shop Floor: Negotiating Class,Citizenship and National Identity in a Turkish State Factory

ABSTRACT

This paper examines discourses on citizenship and nation at shop floor level through Bak?rköy Cloth Factory – a state-owned factory in Istanbul, Turkey. Founded as a private enterprise in 1850, Bak?rköy became the State Industrial Office’s property in 1932 and of Sümerbank, the young Turkish state’s bank and industrial holding company in charge of textile production in 1933. Having survived such a drastic regime change, the factory’s first two decades under Sümerbank were shaped by the ruling classes’ zealous and simultaneous efforts of nation-building and industrialization. In the ruling classes’ popular projection, the alleged conversion of an unproductive industrial relic of the imperial past into an example of Republican hard work and patriotism provided opportunities for workers to repay their debt to the nation and its forefathers. In the context of the displacement and mediation of class conflict via nationalist discourses, this study explores how this industrial national space became the site of discursive struggles on national belonging and citizenship. Material from parliamentary debates and media coverage is linked with workers’ files to offer a micro-historical perspective on the interactions between class and nation.     

浅议证券市场的信息不对称

信息不对称是证券市场普通存在的一个现象,它的存在严重地扰乱了市场秩序,并阻碍其健康发展,损害国家和广大中小股东的利益,证券市场的信息不对称问题,是值得广泛关注的一个问题。     

知识经济时代国民素质论要

国民素质作为一国国民所具有的整体内在本质力量 ,是新经济时代的实力要素 ,它在综合国力中的地位越来越重要。本文试图从文化素质、精神素质和身体素质三个方面构建国民素质的目标体系     

从劳动派遣三方关系看雇主的责任分配

劳动派遣制度自在我国出现以后迅速发展,与此相对应的是法律理论和立法的空白,随着《劳动合同法》和《侵权责任法》的出台,使劳动派遣在我国有法可依,但由于发展时间短,许多地方有待完善。只要理清劳动派遣中用人单位、用工单位和劳动者三方关系,相关的责任分配则一目了然。     

Touring a once pious nation: gender,medievalism, tourism,and Catholic nation-building in early twentieth-century France

ABSTRACT

In 1900, the first of the Guide national et catholique du voyageur en France appeared. Published by the Assumptionist Order alongside the Exposition Universelle, the guidebook suggested sites for Catholic travellers visiting Paris that year. Additional volumes on other regions of France soon followed. Known for their national pilgrimages to Lourdes, the Assumptionists departed here from their usual publications by presenting a religious travel experience based on curiosity more than faith, yet motivated by nostalgia for a medieval, pious France; a nation anchored in its regional traditions. Central to the guidebooks were female religious personalities—saint, visionaries, and miracle workers—who reflected this idealized vision of the nation. Using the lens of gender, this article explores the Guide's use of female religious figures and Marian apparitions in the construction of a Catholic nation to be explored, reaffirmed, and travelled at the beginning of the twentieth century.     

关于工会开展经济技术创新活动的调查与思考

创新是社会进步的灵魂,是推进经济社会发展的不竭动力.尤其在加快转变经济发展方式的攻坚时期,开展职工经济技术创新活动,更能充分挖掘职工潜力,调动职工积极性,实现技术创新、服务创新,提高企业经济效益、增加职工收入、增强企业的生存能力和核心竞争力.工会理应在推动职工科技创新活动中发挥其独特的作用.     

The production of a woman in Andrei Tarkovsky's the sacrifice

In this essay, I explore the semiotics of the terno, the Philippine national dress, creatively interpreted by diasporic artists as a dense metaphor for the proper and improper Filipina. These artistic deployments of the terno lay bare unquestioned notions of Filipina femininity and nationalism to be fabrications of colonialism, militarization and globalization. The reconfigurations of the infamous “butterfly dress” by multimedia artist groups Barrionics and Mail Order Brides (M.O.B.) take center stage in my discussion. The genealogy of the terno I focus on in this article emphasizes alteration and transformation, to resist facile binaries of the nation as traditional and the diaspora as the site of modern and innovative modifications. My historicization of the terno underscores it as an emergent form in which to situate the uses of the terno in Filipino American performance projects within the history of the terno itself. Specifically, the essay focuses on the defamiliarization of feminine constructs that operate both in the nation and the diaspora, as well as to foreground the imbrications of colonial histories and our neocolonial present in the current global circulation of Filipina bodies. I highlight how these artists in the Filipino diaspora spectacularize the inchoateness of categories of gender, race and sexuality. Their performance works delink the dressee from the dress, the terno from the Filipina, the dress from the girl and the boy, the dress from the straight and from the queer, the dress from the diasporic and from the national. Within such figurations, the terno emerges as an overprivileged icon – of ideal womanhood and of the mother nation – whose iconicity is re-routed through bodies that do not belong.     

the politics of conflict and difference or the difference of conflict in politics: the women's movement in Nepal

This article argues that an adequately historicized and politicized understanding of the women's movement in Nepal (or elsewhere) requires a detailed examination of the construction of the gendered subject herself in the complex geo-political space of the emergent (Nepali) nation state. In turn, this unravelling of the gendered subject in Nepal serves to reinforce the premise that the representation of ‘the Nepali Woman’ as a single over-arching category is a contemporary construction, which has been achieved at the expense of consistently effacing the historically prior multiple and contested ethnic/caste identities taken by thrust upon women in what is now the new Nepal. The ‘natural’ goal of the women's movement since post-1990 Nepal to achieve a (single) feminist agenda has become part of the problem, as it can only be achieved at the expense of respecting the radical diversity and difference that is covered over by the ‘theoretical fiction’ of the unified nation of Nepal. The main important players, whether it be the women from mainstream political parties, or the women of the NGO world or the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoists), have all contributed to excluding and silencing radical diversity in the name of expediency and elite power brokering. Moreover, it is argued that the contours of this composite discourse continue to be shaped by the international aid industry in Nepal, where ‘development’ is not merely the epistemic link between Nepal and the ‘West’, it is also the locus classicus of generic apolitical consciousness-less Nepali woman whose cause is taken up by scholar and activist alike.     

加强高校师德建设势在必行

教育兴民族兴,教育兴的关键是教师;教师的素质如何,关键在师德。师德建设决定我国教师队伍建设的成效,决定我国教育事业改革发展的成效。加强师德建设要抓规范、抓载体、抓制度、抓创新。     

文化视域下的职工文化建设

职工文化作为一种客观存在,具有原生性、草根性的特点。职工文化建设,就是要对原生、草根的职工文化进行关注、引导,培植与转化,弘扬职工文化中的正能量,使它成为社会先进文化的组成部分,并在实现中华民族伟大复兴的"中国梦"、全面建成小康社会、构建和谐社会、发挥工人阶级主力军作用的进程中担负起精神支柱作用。     

Linking the old world with the new: recent studies of labor migration,race, and political protest in America and the British empire

Labor historians of the Anglophone world can enrich their field by extending the idea of ‘Atlantic community’ to include Britain's former colonies in Canada, Africa, and Australasia. Only in this way can they fully understand the world's first large-scale migration of labor, both voluntary and involuntary, and the cross-fertilization that occurred in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries between social movements such as labor republicanism, the Knights of Labor, the Industrial Workers of the World, and women's labor struggles which may have originated in the UK or the US but which are misperceived if viewed solely in the context of the nation state.