Researching women's movements: An introduction to FEMCIT and Sisterhood and After

This article offers an overview of two research projects that are concerned with investigating the histories, social organisation and impacts of women's movements. It introduces FEMCIT (Gendered Citizenship in Multicultural Europe: the impact of contemporary women's movements), a transdisciplinary, cross-national European research project, and Sisterhood and After, a UK-based oral history project, outlining their specific research questions, foci and research designs. The article raises a number of key issues that arise in researching women's movements that are then taken up in the eight paired papers that follow: method and research design; difference and diversity; place, space and nation; and understanding impact.     

Emancipatory rural politics: confronting authoritarian populism

A new political moment is underway. Although there are significant differences in how this is constituted in different places, one manifestation of the new moment is the rise of distinct forms of authoritarian populism. In this opening paper of the JPS Forum series on ‘Authoritarian Populism and the Rural World’, we explore the relationship between these new forms of politics and rural areas around the world. We ask how rural transformations have contributed to deepening regressive national politics, and how rural areas shape and are shaped by these politics. We propose a global agenda for research, debate and action, which we call the Emancipatory Rural Politics Initiative (ERPI, www.iss.nl/erpi). This centres on understanding the contemporary conjuncture, working to confront authoritarian populism through the analysis of and support for alternatives.     

drones,swarms and becoming-insect: feminist utopias and posthuman politics

Insects and ‘the swarm’ as metaphors and objects of research have inspired works in the genres of science fiction and horror; social and political theorists; and the development of war-fighting technologies such as ‘drone swarms’, which function as robot/insect hybrids. Contemporary developments suggest that the future of warfare will not be ‘robots’ as technological, individualised substitutions for idealised (masculine) warfighters, but warfighters understood as swarms: insect metaphors for non-centrally organised problem-solvers that will become technologies of racialisation. As such, contemporary feminist analysis requires an analysis of the politics of life and death in the insect and the swarm, which, following Braidotti (2002), cannot be assumed to be a mere metaphor or representation of political life, but an animating materialist logic. The swarm is not only a metaphor but also a central mode of biopolitical and necropolitical war, with the ‘terrorist’ enemy represented as swarm-like as well. In analysing the relations of assemblage and antagonism in the war ontologies of the drone swarm, I seek inspiration from what Hayles (1999, p. 47) describes as a double vision that ‘looks simultaneously at the power of simulation and at the materialities that produce it’. I discuss various representations and manifestations of swarms and insect life in science/speculative fiction, from various presentations of the ‘Borg’ in Star Trek (1987–1994, 1995–2001, 1996), Alien (1979) and The Fly (1958, 1986) to more positive representations of the ‘becoming-insect’ as possible feminist utopia in Gilman’s Herland (2015 [1915]) and Tiptree’s Houston, Houston, Do You Read? (1989 [1976]). Posthuman warfare also contains the possibilities of both appropriating and rewriting antagonisms of masculine and feminine in the embodiment of the subject of war in the swarm. This piece seeks to analyse new ways of feminist theorising of the relations of power and violence in the embodiment of war as the swarm.     

The party organizer: An introduction and appraisal

A Behavioral Approach to Historical Analysis. By Robert F. Berkhofer, Jr. New York: The Free Press. 1969. 321 pp. $7.95.

The Cross of Culture: A Social Analysis of Midwestern Politics, 1850–1900. By Paul Kleppner. New York: The Free Press. 1970. 375 pp.     

The industrial union bulletin: An introduction and appraisal

Power and Powerlessness: Quiescence and Rebellion in an Appalachian Valley. By John Gaventa. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1980. xi, 267 pp. $25.00.

History of the Labor Movement in the United States, Volume V: “The AFL In The Progressive Era, 1910–1915.”; By Philip S. Foner. New York: International Publishers, 1980. 293 pp. $4.95 paper.

Steelmasters and Labor Reform, 1886–1923. By Gerald G. Eggert. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1981. xvii, 212 pp. $17.95.

Life, Work, and Rebellion in the Coal Fields: the Southern West Virginia Miners, 1880–1922. By David Alan Corbin. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1981. 294 pp. $24.95 cloth; $12.50 paper.

The Response of Social Work to the Depression. By Jacob Fisher. Boston: G.K. Hall &; Co., 1980. xxii, 266 pp. $23.95.

The Communist Party and the Auto Workers Unions. By Roger Keeran. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980. 340 pp. $22.50.

Facing Mechanization: The West Coast Longshore Plan. By Lincoln Fairley. Los Angeles: Institute of Industrial Relations, University of California, 1979. xiv, 447 pp. $8.50 paper.

Radical Heritage: Labor, Socialism, and Reform in Washington and British Columbia, 1885–1917. By Carlos A. Schwantes. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1979. ix, 288 pp. $25.00.

Fit Work for Women. Edited by Sandra Burman. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1979. 201 pp. $18.00.

Poverty and Piety in an English Village, Terling: 1525–1700. By Keith Wrightson and David Levine. New York, San Francisco, London: Academic Press, 1979. 254 pp. $21.00.     

Iranian women's pathways to imprisonment

Using official data and interviews with 101 women in Evin prison, Tehran, this article explores prisoners' pathways to incarceration. The concept of “intersection” is used to help understand how traversing and diverging networks of power position women in ways that encourage their criminal actions, criminalization, and contribute toward their imprisonment. The term also highlights points of overlap and distinction between Iranian and Western women's experiences. Importantly, it encourages us to consider the global context of criminal justice.