Feminist

The article charts my trajectories as a feminist activist/academic seeking to research, write and talk about gender-based violence in relation to the Middle East. More specifically, I am drawing on research and activism in relation to Iraq, Turkey and Lebanon to map the discursive, political and empirical challenges and complexities linked to scholarship and activism that is grounded in both feminist and anti-racist/anti-Islamophobic politics. While reflecting on my positionality, the article aims to challenge the binary of activism and academia as well as Western and Middle Eastern contexts in terms of knowledge production.

Joanne Kathleen Rowling's series of novels about Harry Potter has attracted the attention of numerous literary critics. This paper questions the problems of multiple readings from the viewpoint of feminist literary theory. We can observe considerable differences in the approach of various literary critics to Rowling's series and the opinions of these critics are equally varied. They claim that these are sexist novels, feminist novels, novels for boys, novels in which girls can find role-models and novels in which the author seeks to assert herself through the discourse of fictional text. It is concluded that the novels analyzed can be read from multiple perspectives and that Rowling succeeds in making the reader aware of the problems of male-female relations by positioning the characters on opposite sides with regard to emotional relations, relations towards different people and the family and towards society in general, as well as through convincing and impressionable characterization.

In this paper we draw on data from in-depth interviews with men who have used violence and abuse within intimate partner relationships to provide a new lens through which to view the conceptual debates on naming, defining and understanding ‘domestic violence’, as well as the policy and practice implications that flow from them. We argue that the reduction of domestic violence to discrete ‘incidents’ supports and maintains how men themselves talk about their use of violence, and that this in turn overlaps with contentions about the appropriate interventions and responses to domestic violence perpetrators. We revisit Hearn's 1998 work The Violences of Men, connecting it to Stark's later concept of coercive control, in order to develop and extend understandings of violence through analysis of the words of those who use it. We conclude by exploring the implications of these findings for recent legal reform in England and Wales and for policies on how we deal with perpetrators.

Studies in Migration and Diaspora Series Editor: Anne J. Kershen, Queen Mary College, University of London, UK Studies in Migration and Diaspora is a series designed to showcase the interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary nature of research in this important field. Volumes in the series cover ...

The present paper aims at examining the extent to which Moroccan cinema could establish a diasporic visual discourse that cements national identity and contests the impact of westernization on migrants. Moreover, through the analysis the way in which independent identities are constructed in the host land, the article tries to incorporate a feminist discourse to highlight the role of the female subject in retrieving its own agency by challenging patriarchal oppression. Therefore, we argue that Mohammed Ismail"s feature-length film Ici et là (Here and There) has partially succeeded in creating a space for its diasporic subjects to build up their own independent identities beyond the scope of westernization and patriarchy.

Good books often do the eye-opening work of debunking popular stereotypes. The Hidden Life of Girls is that kind of book, offering welcome relief from widely available yet flawed accounts of gendered speech. It accomplishes other goals set out by Goodwin, but its achievement extends beyond her stated aims. Discussion of the book might be contextualized in any number of ways, but only a few are considered here. I am most impressed by how Goodwin questions gender stereotypes, engages with an appropriate methodology, and looks at how class status is enacted.

This collectively written article aims to offer a bird's eye view of the Italian debates about precarity in employment and life, as captured in discussions among participants in a focus group held in Milan in 2006. The chief topics that emerged from this discussion include the feminization of labour, feminist practices and methodologies, representation/participation, and guaranteed income. Here, we give as much space as possible to the diverse voices of participants and their strategies for transformation.

As a growing and wide-spanning field of research, teaching, and collaboration, feminist materialisms are taking up increasing space in our pedagogical settings, especially in queer and feminist classrooms. Whether as a theoretical topic, as a methodological strategy for conducting research, or in developing learning tools, feminist materialisms work to foreground the complex forms of relation and accountability that mark processes of inquiry, and to re-imagine the already innovative feminist classroom experience. A strong part of this contribution of feminist materialisms is the turn to the very materialities at play in knowledge production, and as these take into account the intrinsically entangled human and more than human actors that operate in and alongside the classroom, and the bodies, spaces, practices and knowledges co-produced there. This volume of the Teaching With series assembles a collection that works to map European Feminist Materialisms across a diversity of classroo...

Woman's Theology - Black Women's Awakening is a chapter in the book Perspectives on Black Theology. Black Women have long been disenfranchised in our American society. Realizing the program format of Feminist nor the objectives of Black Theology adequately address the needs of Black women, Black women scholars created a organizational format that better served the needs of Black women in American Society. The contributions and value of Black women have long been ignored. Defining the roles of black women in American society was done by white society without giving consideration to the value of Black Women. This chapter of the book "Perspectives on Black Theology" gives insight into the foundation of Womanist Theology, Black women's interest to self-define and recommends strategies for Womanist to achieve the goals they seek to accomplish.

us to understand how the pageant can simultaneously identify and disidentify with nationalist ideologies of America? Banet-Weiser's discussion of the talent show and question-and-answer session provides one way of rethinking the equation between Miss America and national narratives of whiteness. Far from being a rote dialogue between pageant organizers and contestants, the question-and-answer session is in fact critical to providing 'the architecture for the construction of the contemporary ideal female subject y she is intelligent, goal-oriented, independent, feisty, and committed to individualism' (p. 88). Enunciated within a patriarchal (and paternal) liberal discourse of individual subjectivity, the contestant who participates in the question-and-answer session is both encouraged to speak, at the same time that her speech is regulated by what Banet-Weiser calls 'rehearsed spontaneity'. The pedagogical inculcation of contestants into dominant discourses of taste (and therefore class) illustrates the manner in which Miss America attempts to consolidate middle-class narratives of American selfhood. At the same time, the contestants' insistence on their capacity for choice in these two segments of the pageant implies that contestants actively negotiate their own desires and pleasures vis-à-vis the demands of pageant organizers, thus embodying contestatory notions of agency. In this reading of Miss America, the pageant does not hegemonically reproduce, or succeed in disciplining, representations of gender, race, and sexuality. Rather, the contestants re-inflect these narrative structures in order to realize new forms of embodied agency. As contestants actively re-make themselves and the meaning of the pageant, Miss America proves to be an ambivalent site on which the 'national dilemma' (p. 9) of American multiculturalism and femininity remains unresolved.

Introduction. Nancy Lombard and Lesley McMillan, Glasgow Caledonian University, UK. 1. Coercive Control. Evan Stark, Rutgers University, New Jersey, USA. 2. The 'Three Planet Model': Towards an Understanding of Contradictions in Approaches to Women and Children's Safety in Contexts of Domestic Violence. Marianne Hester, University of Bristol, UK. 3. Domestic Violence, Safety and Child Contact in England: Hiding Violent Men in the Shadows of Parenting. Lorraine Radford, independent violence prevention researcher, UK. 4. Sexual Victimisation: Disclosure, Responses and Impact. Lesley McMillan. 5. Violence Against Sex Workers in the UK. Alison Phipps, University of Sussex, UK. 6. Love, Power and Control: Girls' Experiences of Relationship Exploitation and Violence. Christine Barter and Melanie McCarry, University of Bristol, UK. 7. Older Women and Domestic Abuse: Where Sexism and Ageism Intersect. Nancy Lombard and Marsha Scott, Engender, UK. 8. Intersecting Inequalities...

This article uses the debates surrounding the age of consent as a broad umbrella to question the continued usefulness of Queer Theory. The debates surrounding the age of consent illustrate that Queer Theory has not fulfilled its original promise and that it is not (and possibly never been), "fit for purpose". Towards the end of 2013, the topic of lowering the age of consent in England and Wales was once again much in the news. This article suggests that much of that debate focused expressly or impliedly on the age of which men and boys have sexual intercourse (whether gay or straight), rather than when people have sexual intercourse. Queer Theory (originating from feminism), was intended to be a liberating phenomenon, but contrary to these hopes and intentions, Queer Theory evolved to become synonymous with white gay men, thus denying its origins and becoming distinctly anti-feminist. Those who argue for a reduction in the age of consent have used (whether knowingly or not) an approach which is consistent with this evolved version of Queer Theory. Consequently, the debate on the age of consent has ignored, or given insufficient attention to, the effect(s) a lowering of the age of consent will have on girls and women. This article, therefore, seeks to question, disrupt and unsettle, what Queer Theory has become, suggesting that, in several significant aspects, it fails to fully acknowledge patriarchy; render (lesbian) women visible; acknowledge and accommodate the lived experiences of women.

Preface to Second Edition PART I: THE NEW EQUALITY AGENDA New Challenges to an Unequal World Dimensions of Equality: A Framework for Theory and Action The Centrality of Equality: Equality and Other Values Contexts of Egalitarian Change: Social Systems and Social Groups PART II: PUTTING EQUALITY INTO PRACTICE Towards Economic Equality The Challenge of Participatory Democracy Equality, the Legal System and Employment Law Equality and Education Emancipatory Research as a Tool of Change PART III: STRATEGIES FOR CHANGE Class, Gender and the Equality Movement Ideology and Resistance Strategic Issues for the Equality Movement Notes Bibliography

® have sprung up, some of them openly declaring themselves feminist, a new turn in revolutionary Third World struggles. Perhaps it is from the organizational and theoretical work bound to evolve from these that we can more reasonably expect enlightenment on the woman question. Given the complex dynamics of revolutionary praxis in the Philippines, we are witnessing the emergence of families as 'cultures of resistance' shaped in the ordeals of struggle, not in the wishful thinking of academicians, despite their good liberal intentions.

Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature AN IRONIC DREAM OF A COMMON LANGUAGE FOR WOMEN IN THE INTEGRATED CIRCUIT This chapter is an effort to build an ironic political myth faithful to feminism, socialism, and materialism. Perhaps more faithful as blasphemy is faithful, than as reverent worship and identification. Blasphemy has always seemed to require taking things very seriously. I know no better stance to adopt from within the secular-religious, evangelical traditions of United States politics, including the politics of socialist feminism. Blasphemy protects one from the moral majority within, while still insisting on the need for community. Blasphemy is not apostasy. Irony is about contradictions that do not resolve into larger wholes, even dialectically, about the tension of holding incompatible things together because both or all are necessary and true. Irony is about humour and serious play. It is also a rhetorical strategy and a political method, one I would like to see more honoured within socialist-feminism. At the centre of my ironic faith, my blasphemy, is the image of the cyborg.

... Afiya Shehrbano Zia's contribution outlines how the women's movement in Pakistan reformulated its ... translation (2008) Women in Concert: An Anthology of Bengali Muslim Women's Writing, Kolkata: Stree). Agrawal, A. (2006) editor, Migrant Women and Work, New Delhi: Sage. ...

This paper represents a collective contribution to an ongoing debate on the benefits and disadvantages of export-based, industrial jobs for women as well as on the implications of global labor standards on these types of jobs. On the basis of extensive research on women in Mexico's and Central America's maquiladoras (assembly plants that produce export goods), this paper aims to problematize the viewpoints that present export-based, industrial jobs as dignified alternatives for women in the South and to question the skepticism about global labor standards as a possible alternative for improving work conditions in all sectors producing for export. In so doing, the paper stresses three interrelated issues: a) the relevance of local and regional contexts that inform diverse industrialization paths over time, b) the agency the women workers represent, and c) the legal instruments already existent in our common efforts to improve working conditions.

When love is unrequited, lost or betrayed, it hurts, and this pain can strike anyone at any time. Yet, granted that the misery of love is as old as love itself, has the suffering always been experienced in the same way? Does it affect women and men equally? And are the coping strategies used today the same as those used in the past? This book aims to provide answers to these and other questions about the misery of love in late modernity. As the title indicates, the answers are sociological in form and opposed to rival explanations coming from the 'psy' sciences, which, the author suggests, are symptoms of the contemporary malaise, particularly as propounded by the pop psychology industry.

While there is nothing particularly special about Genesis 2:18-25 as affects language usage and variants that could significantly impact upon its translation, it has become one of the most contentious biblical passages for feminist interpretations of the biblical text. This article investigates Genesis 2:18-25 primarily from the perspective of Jungian individuation theory. It then merges the results of this analysis with the gains made by feminist interpretations of this passage in order further to deconstruct its androcentric application.

Inspired by Kate Kenny’s work on Aesthetics and Emotion in Organisational
Ethnography, this paper responds to her plea for the emotional process of the PhD undertaking to be made more visible.  I begin with a theoretical analysis which seeks to link gender and power issues to the way in which the emotional world is both neglected and undervalued within academia. I continue with an auto-ethnographic section as I attempt to negotiate “the ongoing interplay between yearning for individual freedom of self-creation and the equally strong desire for security that only the stamp of social approval, countersigned by a community...of reference, can offer”  (Bauman 2008; p.1).