Untitled and Outdoors: Thinking with Saidiya Hartman

In some ways, critical conversations on black performance studies focus the first part of Scenes in its particular engagement with black fungibility. Arguably, the first half is black performance studies’ founding text. Even still, the authors argue that black performance studies is never not a question of ecological possibility, of being black outside in the wake of self-possession’s overdetermined white particularity. Such questions foreground Scenes’ second half. Just as Hartman elucidates how the “nonevent of emancipation insinuated by the perpetuation of the plantation system” bespeaks the state’s anti-black insistence on keeping blackness outside and in the field, the authors argue for the field’s persistence and just as well as for the question of what’s out from the field. It is in that spirit that the authors argue for the centrality of Scenes’ second half for black performance studies.     

‘Stepping back and moving in’: the role of the state in the contemporary food regime

In recent years, a number of middle-income countries and influential multilateral institutions have instigated actions that frame food system governance around social protection and rights. These state-centered mobilizations raise fundamental questions about how to portray the global politics of food. Since the late 1980s, analysts have largely concurred that US hegemony in the global politics of food has given way to diverse and volatile neo-liberalist and corporate-led food system governance. However, what should we make of a situation where state and supra-state actors are flexing their powers to reshape food systems in line with rights-based models? Should this be understood as reflexes which aim to preserve national order, at a time of intensified food and nutrition insecurities? Or, does it lay the foundations of a re-governed system which curbs and molds a corporate-led politics of food within frameworks of justice? This contribution responds to these questions by tracing the evolution of social protection and rights-based approaches to the politics of food at the multilateral level and in two influential jurisdictions (India and South Africa). We argue that these initiatives underline a robust and continuing role of state power in global food politics, albeit in a novel fashion compared to previous entanglements.     

Finding postcolonial figures: rediscovering Elvira Banotti and her role in the Italian feminist movement

In the late 1960s, many western countries witnessed rising social movements that challenged traditional ideas of gender and race. Italy presents a particular case where divided post-war politics, rapid economic growth and strong Catholic tradition created conditions in which intersecting phenomena of feminism and migration challenged conventional order. Elvira Banotti, a feminist writer from Italy’s former colonies, offers one striking example of this new configuration hiding certain women’s narratives from the public debate. Although historians have already looked at the history of Italian feminisms through a transnational lens, a postcolonial perspective is lacking from these discussions. This article seeks to offer a new perspective, employing a postcolonial lens and a focus on Banotti’s narratives to assess how both voices of women engaged in public debate and of women less heard, particularly of migrants, could provide a new postcolonial view of Italian feminisms.     

The ‘intrusion of women painters’: Ethel Anderson,modern art and gendered modernities in interwar Sydney,Australia

In the interwar period in Sydney, Australia, male art gallery trustees, directors, and art schoolteachers objected to female advocacy and practice of artistic responsiveness to the modern. The dialogue between these two parties has often been interpreted in terms of a margin/centre dichotomy. Closer examination of the case of Ethel Anderson suggests that this model is inadequate. She demonstrated the transnationally apparent predilection of women to infusing civic cultures with the fleeting and everyday, thus inverting the spatial cues to cultural authority and presenting a gendered challenge to institutionalised, masculine notions of cultural authority.     

No Longer Curiously Rare but Only Just within Bounds: women in Scottish history

This article examines the development of women's history in Scotland since the first conference of the International Federation for Research in Women's History (1989). The title is taken from a 1997 article in Scottish Affairs (issue 18), in which Esther Breitenbach asked whether the ‘curiously rare’ women in Scottish history was a case of the ‘suppression of the female in the construction of national identity’. Thus, this study focuses on key themes in the modern period of that history, notably education, the military, politics, labour, religion and literature. It concludes that while the place of women in Scottish history has indeed been asserted since 1989, and different questions are now being asked of the source material, women are still only slowly being integrated into mainstream studies.     

The impact of the family and medical leave act

This article uses data from employer surveys and the March Current Population Survey to investigate the impact of the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) on coverage, leave‐taking, employment, and earnings. The variation in state laws prior to the FMLA and the variation in coverage under the FMLA provides a “natural experiment” in which the effect of the law can be compared for treatment and con‐trol groups. Although the FMLA covers less than half of workers in the private sector (many of whom already had coverage pre‐FMLA), this article finds that leave cover‐age and usage did increase post‐FMLA. The other surprising finding is that this mandated benefit had no significant negative effects on women's employment or wages. ©1999 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

‘The Synthesis is in the Machine’: An Interview with Silvia Federici

ABSTRACT

In this interview Marxist feminist theorist Silvia Federici discusses the following: the relationships between accumulation and reproduction; biotechnology; the recent resurgence of social reproduction theory as exemplified by work in Endnotes and Lies; the mystification of gendered labour; the disciplining of productive bodies; the sites and technologies of primitive accumulation in the present; and the reproduction of feminism and other social movements in the twenty-first century.     

Criminalising Academia: The Protection of State Information Bill and Academic Freedom

This article assesses the implications of the controversial Protection of State Information Bill for academic freedom in South Africa, specifically for communications, media and journalism studies. The Bill requires the security cluster to classify sensitive documents on national security grounds. Academic teaching and research can help citizens to understand whether the security cluster is acting in the universal interest, rather than the interest of a political elite; it can also be used to assess media performance in reporting on national security matters. Using a critical approach to the concept of national security, I argue that the Bill favours secrecy over openness, and South Africa’s embrace of the human security definition of national security has contributed to the problem. This overemphasis on secrecy is likely to reduce the few spaces that exist in academia for critical, emancipatory work on security issues, which could hobble the sector’s attempts to understand the deeper processes at work in the security cluster. If such enquiry is marginalised, then the higher education system risks becoming an instrument for continuity rather than change in South Africa’s existing, highly unequal power relations: relations that are being maintained increasingly by force.     

a migrant ethic of care? negotiating care and caring among migrant workers in London's low-pay economy

A care deficit is clearly evident in global cities such as London and is attributable to an ageing population, the increased employment of native-born women, prevalent gender ideologies that continue to exempt men from much reproductive work, as well as the failure of the state to provide viable alternatives. However, while it is now acknowledged that migrant women, and to a lesser extent, migrant men, step in to provide care in cities such as London, there is less research on how this shapes the nature, politics and ethics of care. Drawing upon empirical research with low-paid migrant workers employed as domiciliary care providers in London, this paper explores the emergence of a distinct migrant ethic of care that is critically shaped by the caring work that migrant women and men perform.     

Linkages and Connections: A Framework for Research in Information and Communication Technologies, Regional Integration, and Development

This article examines the relationship between information and communication technologies (ICTs) and regional integration as a pathway to socioeconomic development in Africa and South America. Both regions share a colonial legacy often characterized by stronger economic ties to the developed world than within the regions. In recent decades, regional organizations have been involved in efforts to strengthen the infrastructure for ICTs, as well as the enhancement of economic and political integration as strategies to achieve development. However, the literature continues to show distinct research agendas that unwittingly overlook the connections between these areas. This article proposes a theoretical framework combining research on integration, ICTs, and development. It provides a brief analysis of each region and its ICT initiatives, the potential impact on regional integration, and how this relates to development. We suggest possible applications of the framework to identify and research the processes of integration and expected outcomes of development.