“I’m Not a Vet!” Marginalisation and Practices of Resistance to Ageing by Women Hockey Players

ABSTRACT

Participation in team sports constitutes both a site for perpetuating discriminatory cultural perceptions of ageing women as well as a means of resisting and challenging such perceptions. Using Markula’s framework of Foucauldian feminism, we examine the marginalisation of women who play hockey in Australia and their acts of resistance against discriminatory processes related to ageing. This analysis draws on an ethnographic study of an Australian women’s field hockey club. Fifteen women took part in two one-on-one in-depth interviews focused on their experiences of mental health and emotional well-being in relation to playing hockey. Although participating in a team sport offers a means of resisting negative stereotypes of ageing women, the quasi-professionalisation that occurred at this particular club across the data collection period constrained these women’s acts of resistance. These findings illuminate the impact of a club’s structure and culture on women’s experiences of social inclusion in the context of Australian team sport.     

Religiosity,Integration and Sport: Muslim Women Playing Australian Rules Football

ABSTRACT

This article explores the phenomenon of practising Muslim women playing Australian Rules football (Aussie Rules). While Western liberal-democratic governments have considered Islamic religiosity to be contrary to Western liberal-democratic values and therefore detrimental to integration, scholars and governments alike have regarded sport as a major tool for enhancing social cohesion and increasing social capital for ethnic minorities and marginalised groups. In-depth interviews with thirteen members of the Auburn Giants women’s football team demonstrate the limits of conceptualising sport participation in binarised terms of “integration” or “exclusion”, with findings providing nuanced insights into how Muslim women perceive the relationship between religion and playing competitive sport. The women interviewed saw no compromise between their religious adherence and their sporting commitments and ambitions to play competitive Aussie Rules. While religion was found to guide participants’ morals and behaviour, it did not feature as a significant factor in their decision-making to play Aussie Rules. Through discussions about playing the game, sports uniforms and family perceptions, participant responses show that Islamic religiosity comes in different shapes and forms. This research advances the interdisciplinary study of sport, religion and culture by deepening understandings of the relationship between gender, Islamic religiosity and sport participation.     

The Trouble with Newcomers: Women,Localism and the Politics of Surfing

ABSTRACT

In Australian surfing, localism is a practice through which surfers claim authority to protect their surf breaks and access to waves from newcomers and outsiders. While localism has been shown to be a central component of the cultural identities of men who surf, the relationships to and experiences of localism of women who surf have rarely been the subject of critical analysis. In this discussion, I build on Krista Comer’s use of “girl localism” to understand how effects of globalisation are experienced as place-specific by surfers. In this case, thinking about localism helps shift an analysis of how women surf from a sole focus on sex and gender, and away from cisgendered white women, to adopt a more intersectional approach that considers multiple aspects of women’s surfing subjectivities, and the ways these impact their surfing lives. Examining the politicised nature of localism in surfing reveals how women are affected by and complicit in surfing hierarchies, highlights how surfing is enmeshed in the settler politics of place in Australia and, suggests means by which surfers might make more ethical approaches to entering surfing places as newcomers.     

Between Maternalism and Feminism: Women in Nicaragua's Counter‐Revolutionary Forces

To date very little scholarship has focused on the experiences of women who fought or collaborated with Nicaragua's counter‐revolutionary forces (known as the Contra) in the 1980s. Based on qualitative research conducted in Waslala, this paper examines the circumstances which led a group of women to become positioned as Contra supporters. It then explores how these women constructed their gender identities in the light of their collaboration with the Contra. It argues that despite their participation in a right‐wing political organisation and despite their tendency to draw upon understandings of themselves as mothers, widows and victims of war, these women should not be seen as inherently conservative and reactionary, given that they have also been inspired by forms of political organisation that are indicative of an emergent feminist identity.     

Articulating Body,Territory, and the Defence of Life: The Politics of Strategic Equivalencing between Women in Anti-Mining Movements and the Feminist Movement in Peru

In Latin America, rural and indigenous women have mobilised in defence of their territories and built strategic alliances with urban and mestiza feminist movements. This paper focuses on how these processes have played out in Peru, tracing the development of the discourse on ‘body as territory’, which articulates sexual and reproductive rights with territorial autonomy. It discusses the ‘cosmopolitics’ of translating the distinct concerns and worldviews of the women involved, arguing that this discourse has enabled partial recognition and strategic equivalencing but that it has failed to fundamentally transform the underlying asymmetric relations of power and privilege.     

It’s Boom Time! (Again): Progress Narratives and Women’s Sport in Australia

ABSTRACT

Over the last three years (2015–2017), various media articles have pointed to an apparent “boom time” for women’s sport in Australia. Evidence for this boom is drawn from examples such as the introduction of the Women’s Australian Rules Football League, the television success of the Women’s Big Bash League (cricket), and the rise in interest in soccer due to the international achievement of the Matildas. Such media reports reflect and reinforce a narrative of progress that assumes that gender equality is becoming closer with every decade. This paper employs a critical historical method inspired by the work of Joan W. Scott to analyse articles that have declared or commented on a contemporary boom in women’s sport in Australia. The 120 contemporary articles are analysed alongside 400 historical articles that present similar arguments and themes. In identifying similarities between the historical and contemporary articles, this paper raises questions about the reality of the so-called moment of progress we are currently experiencing, and discusses the possible consequences for feminism and social change in sport.     

Cast in stone: art,race, and the body at South African universities

ABSTRACT

I started my fine art training in the 1990s at the university currently known as Rhodes.* The foundation of art training was drawing. First year focused on two subjects: the European plaster cast and the nude black model. This practice situated my learning of art in the European past as well as the South African present. Drawing on black feminist thought I show that framed by colonial norms the black body was a humiliated and abject subject. She was a racial stereotype rather than an object of beauty. Recent protests at universities specifically targeting art, confirms a deep dissatisfaction amongst students with colonial epistemic knowledge and value systems. By rejecting the colonial and apartheid legacy of universities younger generations use protest action as a means to demand urgent change.     

Emerging Infectious Disease Surveillance in Southeast Asia: Cambodia,Indonesia, and the US Naval Area Medical Research Unit 2

Abstract

Emerging infectious diseases (EIDs) pose international security threats. What cultural, political, and economic challenges stand in the way of setting up EID Surveillance infrastructure? Are there general principles that might guide engagement with developing countries and support such infrastructure? Using the US Naval Area Medical Research Unit 2 as a common denominator, this study compares barriers to EID surveillance in Cambodia and Indonesia and presents key factors that constrain disease surveillance systems. As extensive interviews revealed, low levels of development in general are the main impediments to building EID surveillance infrastructure and are perhaps beyond the scope of health and scientific agencies at this point. Ultimately, political economy matters and promoting greater understanding of these issues is a critical first step in mitigating negative outcomes.     

Gender,Work and Resistance: South Korean Textile Industry in the 1970s

This paper examines the forces behind South Korean women workers' labour activism in the 1970s, an era of rapid export-orientated industrialisation. Most of the labour strikes initiated by women occurred in the labour-intensive manufacturing sector, and they were in sharp contrast to the overall labour quiescence of male workers during the same period. The actions of South Korean women refute widely held assumptions about the docility of Asian women workers. This case study suggests that women rebel when their lives undergo drastic changes under a set of macro and micro circumstances. Women dialectically interact with the capitalist-patriarchal structure as conscious human agents, and the result of such interaction is their gender- and class-based collective resistance.     

Australia,New Zealand and the Pacific Islands Forum: a critical review

The relationship between the Pacific islands and the region’s ‘bigger brothers’ – Australia and New Zealand – is often seen in two-dimensional terms with the latter appearing to act in concert and in terms characterised by underlying neo-colonial attitudes and a determination to dominate the regional agenda. Given that both are former colonial powers with considerable political and economic resources and are the major aid donors in the region as well as being members of the powerful geopolitical entity known as ‘the West’, it is not difficult to sustain an image of neo-colonial dominance. But to do so also requires casting Pacific island countries in a certain role, not only lacking agency but also cohering around a common identity and set of interests. This article examines key aspects of regional relations as played out through the region’s premier organisation, the Pacific Islands Forum, and assesses the extent to which a simple political divide between Australia and New Zealand on the one hand, and the island states on the other, can be maintained.     

Gender Quotas and Political Representation in Spain and Portugal: Electoral Competition,Learning and Emulation

Contagion theory, one of the most appealing explanations of women’s representation, posits that when small parties start actively promoting women candidates, larger parties will be incentivised to follow suit and contagion will eventually spread throughout the party system. In examining the diffusion of gender quotas in Spain and Portugal, this article revisits contagion theory and adopts a more comprehensive approach. The results suggest that diffusion is better captured when one takes into account that political parties not only react to electoral competition but also adapt to policy innovation through learning and emulation, whose effects are often shaped by intra-party factors.     

Restraining Women: Gender, Sexuality and Modernity in Salvador da Bahia

Abstract — The paper explores constructions of masculinity and feminity in the speech and practice of residents of a low-income settlement in Salvador, Bahia. In local talk about sexual mores and parenting, the dominant theme is the 'liberal' and 'decadent' character of the modern age. Modernity is equated with a loss of social control over female sexuality and reproduction. Embedded in this vision is a powerful gender ideology that conditions the construction of gender identities. Analysis reveals that the negotiation of identity is a complex and contested field. But against the postmodernist trend in contemporary gender studies, the paper argues that it is necessary to locate multiple and contested gender identities in the overarching gender system. This is rooted in gender ideology, in sexual practice and in the systematic features of social and economic life. Far from signalling transformation in the gender system, talk about women's loss of restraint and respectability functions as a brake upon pressure for change.     

The Welfare Agenda of the Populist Radical Right in Western Europe: Combining Welfare Chauvinism,Producerism and Populism*

Recent scholarship on the populist radical right tends to imprecisely describe the welfare agenda of this party family with reference to its key ideological characteristics of nativism, authoritarianism, and populism. We propose an alternative analytical framework that considers the multidimensionality of welfare state positions and the “deservingness criteria” that underlie ideas about welfare entitlement. Applying this framework to a sample of four European populist radical right parties, we conclude that three interrelated frames inform their welfare agenda. These parties, we argue, advocate social closure not only on the basis of the deservingness criterion of identity (welfare chauvinism), but also on criteria of control, attitude, and reciprocity (welfare producerism) and on an antagonism between the people and the establishment (welfare populism). Understanding the welfare agenda of the populist radical right requires us to move beyond welfare chauvinism and to reconsider the concept of welfare producerism and its interaction with welfare chauvinism.     

Women of protest,men of applause: political activism,gender and tradition in Kyrgyzstan

ABSTRACT

Tradition has come to play an important role throughout Central Asia in a number of new ways since independence, but has been predominantly investigated regarding nation building. In this article, we show how tradition is being used operationally in the context of activism and political conflict. We expose the various motivations and tactics pursued by aksakals (lit., whitebeards) and by a movement of mature women called OBON (lit., Women Units for Special Purposes) as they participate in politics, and the role tradition plays in these activities. We argue that aksakals actively draw on tradition even in the political realm to avoid being derogatorily labelled ‘elders on duty’, whereas OBON women position themselves as economic and political actors but are subjected to discourses and practices of tradition by others. While both aksakals and OBON women have been central to political action in Kyrgyzstan in the last two decades, this article is the first to compare and contrast these two categories of unusual activists. The comparison reveals a perpetuation of culturally recognized gender roles even when these actors go beyond their ‘traditional’ realms of competence.     

Representing Women in Chinese Village Self-Government: A New Perspective on Gender,Representation, and Democracy

ABSTRACT

Recent feminist debate about how to achieve the substantive representation of women in government has been conducted largely in relation to national parliaments in democratic states. This article brings a new perspective by examining grassroots rural government in contemporary China – an authoritarian state, which, however, began implementing village “self-government,” including elections, in 1987. The article draws on qualitative fieldwork in the Chinese provinces of Zhejiang and Yunnan. The authors went into this fieldwork with an understanding that women's substantive representation, democracy, and gender equality are mutually constituted and with an expectation that village self-government might make a much-needed contribution to the achievement of all three. However, we ran into trouble with this analytical framework. First, there were marked variations in villagers’ practices and understandings of “representation.” Second, we found that democracy was not a prerequisite for substantive representation. Third, most villagers we talked with claimed that “men and women are equal” and there was little conception of villagers’ interests diverging by gender. This article explores our analytical “trouble,” with a view to advancing scholarship on constraints to democracy in authoritarian states and suggesting fruitful directions for feminist theorists interested in the relationship between gender, representation and democracy.     

形成中的中亚地区格局:尚存的单极残余、不稳定多极和其他选择

作者认为中亚地区格局不能使用"大博弈"的模式予以解读,复合的权力结构模式可能更具有解释力.具有传统影响力的俄罗斯、崛起的中国、强大的美国以及区内大国哈萨克斯坦和乌兹别克斯坦等一起构建了中亚地区复杂的地缘政治网络.中亚国家从国际政治行为客体到日益具备行为主体特征的身份转变,是形成这种地区格局的重要原因.就中国而言,以一种合作性的多边主义为原则,推动各方以中亚地区的和平、稳定、可持续发展为共同目标实行开放型的合作,营造和谐的中亚地区,是一个较好的战略选择.     

Rethinking Race, Gender and Citizenship: Black West Indian Women in Costa Rica, c. 1920–1940

This article brings Afro‐Caribbean women to the fore of a discussion of Costa Rican citizenship. It explores the relationship between ideologies of gender, imageries of black womanhood, and the dialectic of citizenship and exclusion. It examines how the efforts of the black elite to achieve citizenship through assimilation generated inter‐class tension which centred on ideas of female morality. It explores the absence of political platforms for poor black women excluded by such strategies and argues that while Costa Rican feminists succeeded in challenging the ideological system of gender they failed to challenge issues of race and class.     

Peacekeeping from Oceania: Perspectives from Australia,New Zealand and Fiji

Abstract

This article gives an overview of the involvement of Australia, New Zealand and Fiji in peacekeeping operations with attention to motives, experience and ‘lessons learnt’. Australia and New Zealand have been strongly influenced by regional considerations and an understanding of good international citizenship. Fiji’s contribution has been determined less by regional considerations and more by its position as a small developing country whose peacekeeping activities bring economic benefits, although it could be argued that by providing a basis for extending military forces they have contributed indirectly to political instability. Police contributions have been increasingly important to Australia and New Zealand and they have advocated a stronger role for police in other situations around the world.     

建构新自由制度主义的研究纲领--关于《权力与相互依赖》的一种解读

《权力与相互依赖》由美国著名学者罗伯特·基欧汉、约瑟夫·奈合著.1977年,该书第一版出版,标志着美国自由主义国际关系学派挑战(新)现实主义理论主导地位的开始,构成新自由制度主义兴起的理论基石;1989年,该书重版并增加了对批评的回应;2001年该书第三版出版,两位学者将全球化、国际机制与相互依赖概念相整合,指点国际局势,激扬文字,对21世纪初的世界政治(World Politics)进行严肃的理论分析,成为代表新自由制度主义发展的颠峰之作.《权力与相互依赖》既有理论上的深度建构,也有实践上的指导价值,自1977年以来,该书一直是国际关系研究引用频率最高的著作之一,其真知灼见力透纸背,堪称洛阳纸贵之作.