Gender and the State in Rural Chile

Abstract — This paper focuses on SERNAM, the state institution responsible for the incorporation of gender into public policy in Chile, and the actions taken by the state to benefit women employed in the modern agricultural sector. It charts the emergence of the demands for such an institution by the women's movement, and the creation of SERNAM as an integral part of the transition to democracy. In particular, the paper analyses the Programme for the Children of the Temporeras , which is a unique state-led initiative to provide childcare facilities to enable women to enter the seasonal labour market during the summer months. The paper explores the complex relations between gender, the state, capitalist agriculture and patriarchal structures, with the aim of highlighting the sometimes unexpected convergence of interests, and the points of conflict.     

Francesco Crispi and Italy's Pursuit of War against France, 1887–9

This paper will examine the problems of nation-building in Italy in later nineteenth century Italy, focusing principally on the ideas and policies of the man who dominated the country in the 1880s and 1890s, Francesco Crispi. It will be my contention that Crispi and many of his political contemporaries on both the left and the right were strongly conscious of the mobilising and nationalising potential of "the other", and to an extent manipulated and deliberately exaggerated threats posed both by internal enemies — principally the Catholics and the socialists — and external enemies — above all France. Crispi's attitude to France and the French was complex and highly ambivalent, and I will suggest — using as evidence his speeches, writings, and political actions, above all when prime minister in 1887–91 — that there was an element of disingenuousness in his repeated claims that France was bent on destroying Italy. What Crispi was trying to do was to create a climate of tension that would not only bring the population together, but might also lead on to a war, in alliance with Germany — a war that would finally cement the country's "moral unity".     

Memory and Migration in the Shadow of War: Australia's Greek Immigrants after World War II and the Greek Civil War

Memory and Migration in the Shadow of War: Australia's Greek Immigrants after World War II and the Greek Civil War. By Joy Damousi (Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 2015), pp.274. AU$145.00 (cloth).     

Defending "The Purity of Home Life" Against Socialism: The Founding Years of the Australian Women's National League

The paradigm of maternal citizenship has been variously understood by historians as enabling and restrictive of women's action in the public sphere. This paper considers the use to which the maternal paradigm was put by the founders of the Australian Women's National League, focussing in particular upon their campaign to link the Labor party with socialism and "free love". It observes the ease with which the ideal of the maternal citizen — central to the liberal feminism of the day — could be turned to the conservative class interests of elite women.     

A Grass Roots View of Religious Change Amongst Women in an Indigenous Community in Chiapas, Mexico

Abstract — This paper discusses the changing position of women in an indigenous community in Chiapas, Mexico. It argues that women are gaining new agency and an increased pride in their ethnicity as they become members of the various sects that are taking root in the community. Affiliation to a sect provides them with an institution that they can call their own thus satisfying their felt need to be part of the longer-term economic and political changes that are occurring while still being shielded from them.     

Domesticating Ivoirité: Equating xenophobic nationalism and women’s marginalisation in Tanella Boni’s Matins de couvre-feu (2005)

Abstract

Tanella Boni, an author engaged with African women’s emancipation, has written cautionary essays since the 1990s decrying the xenophobic nature of government-sanctioned ivoirité in the Ivory Coast. Forced into exile owing to the subsequent strife (2000-2010), she wrote Matins de couvre-feu (2005), an allegorical novel in which the woman’s status as a second-class citizen is equated with that of a foreigner in a xenophobic state. This representation plays on the domestic / public space dichotomy, considered by feminist discourse to be a social barrier to women’s equal citizenship. Drawing on Boni’s own ‘feminist’ monograph, Que vivent les femmes d’Afrique? (2008), this article explores the internalisation of national politics (the public sphere) through the ‘domestication’ of an anonymous female narrator who is placed under house arrest. Thereafter an analysis of Kanga Ba, a character who is a victim of xenophobic nationalism, is used to substantiate the equation of the woman’s social and political marginalisation as being that of the foreigner. The argument concludes that Boni’s representational framework ultimately subverts the very notion of a public / domestic dichotomy through narrative strategies that illustrate the porous nature of both spaces, thus eliding the separation between private and national experiences.     

Kapitalismus und Gender. Eine Auseinandersetzung mit der kapitalismuskritischen Intersektionalitätsforschung

In intersectionality research capitalism is often analyzed as a social order that systematically produces social inequalities. Particularly the feminist literature describes capitalism as a set of gendered institutions that enforces patriarchal control structures. This paper does not engage in a critique of capitalism. Instead, it follows a strictly analytical perspective in order to discuss the basic structure, the culture and the institutions of modern capitalism with respect to gender equality. The paper argues that modern capitalism in general is neutral in respect of gender issues. Discriminations against women are caused by traditional gender stereotypes and concrete institutional settings that can be changed without tearing at the very fabric of modern capitalism.     

The gender-apartheid analogy in the transnational feminist imaginary: Ms. Magazine and the Feminist Majority Foundation, 1972-2002

Abstract

This article considers the rhetorical implications of transnational exchange between feminist activists in the late twentieth century. It uses Gloria Steinem’s Ms. Magazine (est. 1972) and the Feminist Majority Foundation (FMF) as a lens through which to understand the emergence of the gender-apartheid analogy in the 1990s. During the 1970s and 1980s, Ms. demonstrated knowledge of and commitment to the anti-apartheid movement. However, when the FMF and Ms. began using apartheid as an analogy for gender-based oppression in the Middle East after the fall of the apartheid regime, the limitations of transnational understanding became fundamentally apparent. This article traces the historical and rhetorical foundations for the use of race-based analogies in women’s rights activism. It then examines the journalistic and foreign policy perspectives espoused toward the South African apartheid regime and women’s rights abuses under fundamentalist Islamic regimes. At the turn of the twenty-first century, this article argues, the transnational feminist imaginary was shaped by a process of inspiration and appropriation which delimited solidarity and understanding across transnational networks of feminist activists.     

Sultanism and Civil War in Libya

The 2011 Libyan uprising transformed into a civil war in a matter of days—and it has lasted more than a decade. What made this uprising different from others? This article argues that the type of system determined the outcome of the revolt. It posits a relationship between Muammar Qadhafi's sultanistic regime and the fragile political institutions that have allowed the chaos and rivalry to persist without resolution. To demonstrate this, Libyan citizens were surveyed about their perceptions of how Qadhafi shaped the political order responsible for today's institutional vacuum. While the revolution revealed the Qadhafi regime's lack of popular and foreign support, as well as the inadequacies of state institutions, it could not use institutional channels to mobilize the public and organize authority, as in Tunisia and Egypt. The civil war, coupled with the interventions of regional and international powers in support of local actors and militias, has made the Libyan case different. The article also explains how the passive stances of the League of Arab States and the United Nations paved the way for external rivalries.     

Temporeras and Household Relations: Seasonal Employment in Chile's Agro-Export Sector

Abstract — This paper considers how the growth in non-traditional fruit and vegetable exports has affected female employment patterns and the consequences this may have for household and gender relations. Within export agriculture, there has emerged a demand for specifically female labour, providing rural women with employment opportunities that had not previously existed. The majority of the female workers have only seasonal work and this has led to their designation as temporeras. Through a variety of interview material drawn from the experiences of women living and working in Region IV and VI, the paper seeks to reveal the complexities involved in attempting to conceptualise women's involvement in this emergent labour market. The composition of the household and the level of household income are important factors in determining women's labour force participation. The case studies appear to show that in spite of the hard work and unprotected conditions, working as a temporera is a desirable employment for women. The paper argues that the sweeping changes in the agricultural sector, in which women had previously been marginalised as'unpaid family labour', have created opportunities for them to rework household relations.     

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.     

The rise of Femi‐Nazis? Female participation in right‐extremist movements in unified Germany

German feminist scholars have recently come to argue that female involvement in right‐extremist causes is grounded in gender‐specific motives. They have also begun to uncover a troubling link between new patterns of female political engagement (ranging from electoral mobilisation to violent streetfighting) and their own efforts to promote an independent women's consciousness since the 1960s. This article develops a typology of New Right women, characterised here as Femi‐Nazis, evincing different levels of sympathy for, identification with, and participation in radical and extremist movements. It then explores five issue orientations distinguishing New Right women of the 1990s from the Old and New Right men of the 1940s and 1990s, suggesting that these women have developed an independent, self‐assertive political consciousness without internalising feminism's broader aims of diversity and inclusion. The article concludes with reflections on the interplay of ‘feminist’ consciousness and ultra‐nationalist qua xenophobic attitudes, and on the dilemmas Femi‐Nazi thinking poses for feminist identity in united Germany.     

Redefining the Nation: Shifting Boundaries of the ‘Other’ in Greece and Turkey

While Greek and Turkish nationalisms have followed diverse historical paths, they share several features. Following the model of Zimmer, this study explores how inclusive and exclusive boundary mechanisms have shaped Greek and Turkish national identity and which symbolic resources were utilized in these processes. It is argued that a shift from the use of voluntaristic to that of organic boundary mechanisms has characterized both Greek and Turkish nationalisms and influenced the definition of national ‘self’ and ‘other’. This study aims to track a pattern of historic-political conditions which favour a shift from voluntaristic towards organic models of defining the nation and discuss possible future trends.     

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.     

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.     

The Double Delegitimatisation of Julia Gillard: Gender,the Media,and Australian Political Culture

This article explores Australian media coverage of Julia Gillard's leadership. It employs a comparative discourse analysis of the gendered nature of media reporting on her sexism and misogyny speech and eventual demise. The article places these gendered framings within two contexts: that of the more general gendered expectations of the double bind facing all women leaders; and the more specific challenge to Australia's women leaders, posed by exclusivist national identity narratives. These narratives — of mateship, the ANZAC myth, and various apparently ideal‐type masculinities — serve to further disassociate Australian women from positions of national leadership. Together, we argue that the twin constraints of gender expectations and exclusivist national identity narratives amounted to a double delegitimisation of Julia Gillard's leadership, on the basis of her being a woman leader, generally, and an Australian woman leader, specifically.     

The modern ordinary: changing culture of urban living in Egypt's traditional quarters at the turn of the twentieth century

Having experienced social and political structures of the nineteenth century Europe, western-educated Egyptian elite used public institutions to force new legislative structures and procedures that ruled out traditional housing forms and spatial systems. This essay detects direct and indirect impact of these changes that informed the spatial change of modern living in Egypt in the first quarter of the twentieth century. It offers analysis of socio-spatial practices and change in ordinary Cairenes’ modes of everyday living, using social routine and interaction to explain spatial systems and changing house forms during the first quarter of the twentieth century. In doing so, the essay utilized archival documents, accounts, formal decrees and novels of the time as well as conducting survey of house forms and spatial organizations in Old Cairo.     

Competitive Global Fruit Export Markets: Marketing Intermediaries and Impacts on Small-Scale Growers in Chile

Abstract — This paper explores the implications of increased competition in global fruit markets for the Chilean small-grower sector. Stagnation in the growth trajectory of such exports has precipitated significant changes in the structure and strategy of the private fruit export company sector. It is proposed that this restructuring discriminates against small growers, whose position within the market has become increasingly vulnerable. To support this idea, evidence obtained from a field study of small-scale grape growers operating in the locality of El Palqui, Region IV is presented. It is argued that increased vulnerability is not simply a function of the inefficiency of diminutive scale per se. Rather, the nature of economic power relations, which tilt heavily in the favour of export companies, form an important explanatory factor in the increasing rate of failure among the fruit growing parceleros. It is argued that the implications of the failure among small growers who have already 'reconverted' is of particular importance. It is proposed that steps re-dress structural imbalances in the market could precipitate productive gains, increase the potential success of small growers attempting to 'reconvert' to fruit production and improve rural equity. If applied to the small scale fruit sector as a whole such moves could help sustain Chile's fruit export sector — an objective which can be seen as crucial to Chile's economic well-being. In this way the argument of free-market purists — that rural economic differentiation which has taken place to date is inevitable and desirable — is challenged.     

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.     

What Indians say about Mestizos: A critical view of a cultural archetype of Mexican nationalism

Abstract — This article seeks to analyse the views held by indigenous people of one of the main symbols of national identity in Mexico: the mestizo. While great importance has been attached to the archetype of the mestizo , the opinions of indian peoples with regard to its appropriateness as a formula for integration have not been explored. The views collected and analysed in this article were provided by members of ethnic groups who have received a modern education. The article seeks to explore these responses in the context of the different theoretical approaches of modernisation and ethnicity as components in the contruction of nationhood.