the narrative reproduction of white feminist racism

White women’s racism has been the topic of many critiques, discussions and conflicts within British feminist theory and politics over the last fifty years, driven by women of colour’s insistence that white feminists must take on board the significance of race in order to stop perpetuating racism. Yet still today, feminist academia and activism in Britain continues to be white-dominated and to participate in the reproduction of racism and whiteness. This article examines the role of dominant historical narratives of feminism in enabling this reproduction, arguing that there is a direct correlation between how the feminist past is constructed in relation to race and racism and how feminist theory and politics are articulated in the present. Focussing on three contemporary feminist texts that address feminism itself as a subject, it highlights three techniques used in these texts that, it is argued, are commonly employed in the narrative reproduction of white feminist racism. These are: (1) the erasure of the work of British feminists of colour; (2) white feminist co-option of work by feminists of colour; and (3) the narration of feminist theory and politics as having ‘moved on’ from racism. These techniques lead to evasion of the topic of white feminist racism, both historically and in the present. They also reinforce the construction of British feminism as a story that belongs to white women. The article argues that in order to work towards ending white supremacy, white feminists must relinquish control of the feminist narrative and stop moving on from the topic of white feminist racism.     

It's Just a Little Too Human: Questions of Vocation

SUMMARY

Among youth workers who experience moments of not-knowing what to do, many often describe their thoughts and reactions to the phenomenon in vocational and existential terms. They ask what right they have to work in the helping professions if they find themselves simply unable to be helpful. In many cases, the vocational crises following experiences of not-knowing contribute to burnout and youth workers' decisions to leave the field altogether. This chapter describes the fourth of five themes associated with youth workers' experiences of not knowing what to do: questions of vocation. In addition to presenting the dominant theme, this chapter discusses the three variations on it, as described by youth worker participants: (a) What am I supposed to do? (b) Who am I to deal with this? and (c) Maybe the problem is me.     

Gender, citizenship and human reproduction in contemporary Italy

This article examines how the recently introduced law on assisted reproduction in Italy, which gives symbolic legal recognition to the embryo, came about, and how a referendum, which would have repealed large sections of it, failed. The occupation of the legal space by the embryo is the outcome of a crusade by a well-organised alliance of theo-conservatives. These groups see in reproductive medicine an uncontrolled interference with their notion of the natural order of things. Such a worldview requires a total ban on stem cell research, limitation of access to reproductive technologies and repressive laws to govern the area. This conservative dream scenario has come closer to being realised by the introduction of a law doing all of these things in the name of the protection of “Life”. In the case of this law, the “life” to be protected is the embryo. In the name of “Life”, scientific advances and individual liberty have been curbed. The politics of embryo citizenship is a politics which values the yet to come over the here and now, purgation over pleasure, and the transcendent over the material.     

Little Swans with Luxette and Loved Boy Pudding: Changing Fashions in Cookery Books

Cookery books are far from simple things: alongside the recipes we may find narrative, memoir, science, history, politics, travelogue and anthropology. The cookery book also reveals in a profoundly naked form the anxieties and paranoias of its precise historical moment. So the glamorous cookery books of the years between the wars try to persuade the newly servantless middle-class woman that the cooking she must now do herself is a creative and fashionable activity. And the postwar British, sick of the limited stodge of their still-rationed diet, clutched Elizabeth David to their collective bosom, unable to taste her pungent dishes, but in thrall to the sun-strewn fantasy of the good life her books offered. From Mrs Beeton, offering the mid-Victorian mistress of the house the instructions and routines she needed to hide the mechanisms of the domestic machine, to the potent contemporary fantasy of the Mediterranean peasant and his fabulously healthy lifestyle, Humble interrogates the cookery books of the last 150 years, asking what they can tell us about how changing attitudes to class, gender and domesticity intersect with the culture of food.     

The economic bases of demographic reproduction: from the domestic mode of production to wage-earning

This paper explores the economic basis of demographic reproduction through an analysis of the shift from self-sustaining agricultural production to wage earning in the industrial sector. In subsistence societies, the upper limits of demographic reproduction are set more by agricultural capacities than by women's natural fecundity. An increase in the productivity of agriculture is a necessary precondition for demographic growth. Such societies are based on intergenerational circulation of surplus product, i.e., the community contains preproductive members who are fed and bred until they reach a productive age, producers whose surplus product exceeds their individual consumption, and postproducers who depend on the younger generation for their subsistence. The domestic mode of collective labor becomes weakened, however, when producer members become wage earners as a result of temporary or permanent rural exodus. Under such conditions, the investment of the older generation in the next may be lost to the benefit of the industrial sector employing the rural migrants. The shift has 2 major implications. 1st, population growth is no longer tied to domestic agricultural productivity or the storage capcity of the community; rather, it is related to access to cash, wage levels, employment duration, and food prices. These circumstances foster a higher probability of demographic growth. 2nd, disruption of the circulation of subsistence produces depopulation of the rural areas and severe deterioration of the living conditions in these areas.     

birth,belonging and migrant mothers: narratives of reproduction in feminist migration studies

This article seeks to interrogate the category of the ‘political’ through an exploration of the present trajectory of feminist peace activism in Sri Lanka. It provides a critical appraisal of current strategies adopted by the majority of feminist organizations that seem to suggest a shift from ‘refusal’ to ‘request’. This results in the resort to more ‘feel safe’ campaigns, rather than the placement of oneself in an antagonistic and oppositional relationship with the state, which continuously calls the political into question. It concludes by considering two other kinds of political trajectories and the disparate conceptual challenges each offers.     

Subsistence production and extended reproduction. A contribution to the discussion about modes of production

The present paper deals with what is considered to be the basic contradiction within the capitalist mode of production: the separation of subsistence production from social production. In the following some theses concerning how this separation works for accumulation and the way it is reproduced together with capital are presented. The central argument is that the separation is fundamentally necessary for accumulation. Within our present capitalist world economy housewives on the one hand and peasants (both men and women) on the other are the main subsistence producers. In different concrete forms both reproduce labour power for capital but are not compensated by capital. The way in which these two groups are integrated into the capitalist mode of production is through their marginalization, i.e. they form the consolidated mass of the industrial reserve army. As such they are continuously reproduced together with the process of extended reproduction of capital. They are two basic forms of capitalist relations of production.     

<Emphasis Type="Italic">Hanging On</Emphasis>: Reflections on visual reproduction and the UK Abortion Act 1967

This is a reflection on the visual installation piece, Hanging On, produced collaboratively for the Feminist Legal Studies ‘At the Kitchen Table’ zine in 2016. The author and co-artist considers the research that informed and helped conceptually drive the aesthetics of the piece, including academic research on abortion within literary aesthetics. How these concepts ‘translated’ into hands-on artistic practice and physical materials is discussed, including the difficulties and knowledge gained from the process. The author finally considers the benefits of such interdisciplinary, aesthetic encounters within contemporary feminist knowledge production.     

论工会组织在企业人力资本运作中的作用

调动和发挥职工群众的积极性、主动性、创造性,是落实“第一要务”的工作。在社会主义市场经济条件下,人力资本运作是现代企业管理的重要特征。工会组织的性质、基本职责、工作内容和活动方式,决定了工会在调动、发挥和保护职工群众的积极性、主动性和创造性方面具有不可或缺的作用。因此,必须高度重视和发挥工会组织的重要作用。     

油田集体企业改制过程中建立健全职工董事、监事制度的探索

中国石化集团油田多种经营集体企业改制为股份有限公司 ,企业的性质发生了根本性变化。在这种特殊的新经济组织中 ,建立健全职工董事、监事制度 ,是在基层加强和深化民主管理、实现工会最基本的职能———维护职能的重要渠道。     

高校工会活动中工作—家庭支持开发研究

调节教师工作-家庭关系是高校工会的一项重要工作。工作-家庭支持能够提高工作效率,促进家庭和社会和谐。依据当前我国高校工会工作实际情况,可以开发工作-家庭支持模式的一系列工会活动,主要有建设教师工作-家庭档案、建设教师工作-家庭社交平台、教师中心活动、家庭中心活动和社区公益活动五种基本类型。     

关于职工董事、职工监事的身份问题

职工董事、职工监事的身份应当是劳动力产权的代表 ,劳动力产权问题是工会理论与实践的出发点 ,职工以劳动力产权代表的身份进入董事会、监事会 ,有利于确定职工的主体地位和独特的权益。明确和实现职工的主体地位和独特的权益 ,也是我国社会主义本质的要求。因此 ,“国有独资和国有控股公司的董事会、监事会都要有职工代表参加 ,这不是一般的方法问题 ,而是建立有中国特色的现代企业制度的根本原则问题。”