‘these things not marked on paper’: creolisation,affect and tomboyism in Joan Anim-Addo's <Emphasis Type="Italic">Janie,Cricketing Lady</Emphasis> and Margaret Cezair-Thompson's <Emphasis Type="Italic">The Pirate's Daughter</Emphasis>

This article will look closely at the performance of tomboy identity in Joan Anim-Addo's collection of poetry Janie, Cricketing Lady, written as a tribute to her mother Jane Joseph, and Margaret Cezair-Thompson's novel The Pirate's Daughter, a fiction about Errol Flynn's ‘outside’ Jamaican daughter, May. It will argue that the ongoing affects of colonialism and patriarchy in the islands of Grenada and Jamaica, respectively, shape the life narratives of Janie and May who express their anger, shame, fear, frustration and desire through their ambiguous gender identity and through their determination to intervene in masculinist traditions, such as cricket, piracy and adventure, traditions that underpin Caribbean his/tories. To understand the way in which affect can be expressed through tomboyism in Caribbean societies, it is necessary to look at colour and class alongside gender in the context of Caribbean creolisation.     

War of textbooks: History education in Russia and Ukraine

Many scholars stress that teaching about the shared past plays a major role in the formation of national, ethnic, religious, and regional identities, in addition to influencing intergroup perceptions and relations. Through the analysis of historic narratives in history textbooks this paper shows how the governments of the Russian Federation and Ukraine uses state-controlled history education to define their national identity and to present themselves in relations to each other. For example, history education in Ukraine portrays Russia as oppressive and aggressive enemy and emphasizes the idea of own victimhood as a core of national identity. History education in the Russian Federation condemns Ukrainian nationalism and proclaims commonality and unity of history and culture with Russian dominance over “younger brother, Ukraine”. An exploration of the mechanisms that state-controlled history education employs to define social identities in secondary school textbooks can provide an early warning of potential problems being created between the two states.     

‘Just Surviving’: domestic work as a form of structural violence in Sistren Theatre Collective's Domestick

This article discusses Sistren Theatre Collective's play Domestick, performed at the Barn Theatre, Kingston, Jamaica in 1981 for local audiences and then in Canada for groups of domestic workers from the Caribbean, the Philippines, Europe and the UK. The play was also performed in Grenada and St Vincent when Sistren toured those islands in 1982. It is argued that Sistren's play is still relevant to contemporary debates on domestic work and the contemporary struggles of Jamaican domestic workers as it demonstrates that paid ‘housekeeping’ is a form of structural violence against women.     

Gender Differences in Assessments of Party Leaders

Is there a relationship between party leader gender and voters' assessments? The answer is ‘yes’ according to theses on gender identity and stereotyping. A voter survey during the 2011 Danish general election allows for a comprehensive analysis of a less likely case with four male and four female party leaders. Female party leaders are assessed more positively by female voters than male voters both in regard to general party leader sympathy and assessment of specific characteristics, whereas it is not the case that male party leaders are assessed more positively by male voters than female voters. The impact of gender does not increase with age; in fact, the opposite is the case among men since younger male voters have less sympathy for female party leaders. Furthermore, there is no support for the expectation that voters with more education or with higher levels of political interest and knowledge are more positive towards party leaders of their own gender than voters with less education. Also, the relationship between gender and voter assessment is not stronger prior to an election campaign than immediately after an election. Hence, in sum, gender identity does not seem to require a higher level of political sophistication, nor does it decrease with higher levels of information.     

Effects and side effects of European Union assistance on the former Soviet republics

Since the early 1990s the European Union (EU) has been the largest donor to the post-Soviet states. In the last decade it more than doubled development assistance to the region. One of the major purposes of assistance is human rights promotion. At the same time, it is still an open question whether, and under what conditions, assistance can improve human rights in recipient countries. This study applies time-series cross-section (TSCS) analysis to identify effects of external assistance. Using data from 12 post-Soviet states over 20 years, I show that conditions under which states are more likely to display a positive effect are high state capacity and political conditionality attached to economic cooperation agreements. Whereas, when state capacity is lower, assistance might cause a slight deterioration of the human rights situation. In hybrid regimes, assistance is associated with negative effects, indicating that external assistance might induce deterioration of human rights in such regimes.     

‘Sugar,Sugar’: questioning the sexual division of labour on Jamaica's sugar plantations in Sistren's The Case of Miss Iris Armstrong and Sweet Sugar Rage

Through an analysis of Sistren Theatre Collective's play The Case of Miss Iris Armstrong and the Collective's documentary film Sweet Sugar Rage, this article looks at the way the sexual division of labour on Jamaica's sugar plantations during the 1980s was based on the following gendered myths: women's labour capacity is lower than their male counterparts; and men are the breadwinners for their families. The article also critiques the sexism in the Jamaican union movement which did not support female workers and actively kept women's wages lower than men's on the plantations.