Religion

Encountering Hindutva, Interrogating Religious Nationalism and (En)gendering a Hindu Patriarchy in India's Nuclear Policies

Citation:

Das, Runa. 2006. “Encountering Hindutva, Interrogating Religious Nationalism and (En)gendering a Hindu Patriarchy in India’s Nuclear Policies.” International Feminist Journal of Politics 8 (3): 370-93.

Author: Runa Das

Abstract:

This article explores the consequences of a gendered nationalism under India's recent Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government that has relied on the discourses of Hindu women's violence and protection as elements of its discursive arsenal to pursue nuclearization as an aggressive policy of the Indian state. To this extent, the article interrogates a discursive relationship between a cultural patriarchy, its quest for Hindu nationalism and gender and the ways in which this patriarchy has both used and (ab)used the images of Hindu women to establish Islam/Pakistan as a threat to the supposedly Hindu India, and justify a nuclear policy for India. The article's contribution to international feminist politics lies in its attempts to stitch the localized politics of Hindu nationalism with its broader geo-political aspirations and implications, namely the role of the Indian state, under the BJP, in maintaining a communalized, militarized and a Hindu patriarchal violence at three inter-connected levels – between gender, communities and nations.

Keywords: communalism, Gender, India, nationalism, nuclearization, religion

Topics: Feminisms, Gender, Gendered Power Relations, Patriarchy, Nationalism, Religion, Violence, Weapons /Arms, Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) Regions: Asia, South Asia Countries: India

Year: 2006

Women Miners’ Exclusion and Muslim Masculinities in Tajikistan: A Feminist Political Ecology of Honor and Shame

Citation:

Behzadi, Negar Elodie. 2019. "Women Miners’ Exclusion and Muslim Masculinities in Tajikistan: A Feminist Political Ecology of Honor and Shame." Geoforum 100: 144-52.

Author: Negar Elodie Behzadi

Abstract:

This article explores the gendered process that leads to women informal miners’ restricted access to natural resources, their exclusion and their stigmatization in one village in the Muslim post-Soviet space. Drawing on eight months of ethnographic work in the village of Kante in Northern Tajikistan, this article seeks to understand how and why this process is mediated through notions of honor and shame traditionally seen as anchored in Muslim religion. A focus on changing masculinities and their relationship with women miners’ exclusion in this extractive landscape where informal coal mining developed alongside male migration and the setting up of a Sino-Tajik coal mine after the fall of the Soviet Union, allows us to develop a feminist political ecology of honor and shame. Here, I reveal how these cultural notions are mobilized in the wake of embodied and emotional work and resource struggles and the gendered impacts of broader politico-ecological changes. I particularly link women miners’ exclusion and its mediation through notions of honor and shame to men’s loss of sense of self since the fall of the Soviet Union and the reconfiguration of masculinities with new work and resource struggles. By doing so, this article challenges the idea of Muslim men as fixed into codes of honor and patriarchy anchored in religion. Instead, it develops a re-theorization of Muslim masculinities which highlights instances where men oppress women at the same time as it challenges culturalist readings of gender and Muslimness that overemphasize culture/religion to the detriment of the economic/ecological.

Keywords: muslim masculinities, honor-and-shame, feminist political ecology, emotions, mining, resource extraction, women miners, post-Soviet Central Asia

Topics: Environment, Extractive Industries, Feminisms, Feminist Political Ecology, Gender, Women, Masculinity/ies, Gendered Power Relations, Patriarchy, Religion Regions: Asia, Central Asia Countries: Tajikistan

Year: 2019

Diverting the Flow: Gender Equity and Water in South Asia

Citation:

Zwarteveen, Margreet, Sara Ahmed, and Suman Rimal Gautam, eds. 2012. Diverting the Flow: Gender Equity and Water in South Asia. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Authors: Margreet Zwarteveen, Sara Ahmed, Suman Rimal Guatam

Annotation:

Summary:
South Asia's significant water resources are unevenly distributed, with about a fifth of the population lacking adequate access. Across the region this vital substance determines livelihoods and in some cases even survival. By revealing the extent to which water access depends on power relations and politics, Diverting the Flow offers new perspectives on the relationship between gender equity and water issues in South Asia.
 
Drawing on empirical research and relevant theoretical frameworks, the contributors show how gender intersects with other axes of social difference--such as class, caste, ethnicity, age, and religion--to shape water use and management practices. Each of the volume's six thematic sections begins by introducing key concepts, debates, and theories before moving on to parse such issues as rights, policies, technologies, and intervention strategies. Taken together, they demonstrate that gender issues are the key to understanding and improving water distribution and management practices in the region. Featuring work by leading scholars in the field, this volume will be essential reading for students and scholars of water, gender, and development in South Asia. (Summary from University of Chicago Press
 
Table of Contents
1. Gender and Water in South Asia: Revisiting Perspectives, Policies and Practice
Sara Ahmed and Margreet Zwarteveen
 
2. Understanding Gendered Agency in Water Governance
Frances Cleaver
 
3. Gender, Water Laws and Policies: An Introduction
Margreet Zwarteveen and Sara Ahmed
 
4. Decentralising or Marginalising Women: Gender Relations and Sector Reforms in India
Seema K. Kulkarni and K.J. Joy
 
5. The Right to Water in Different Discourses
Priya Sangameswaran
 
6. Water Rights and Gender Rights: The Sri Lanka Experience
Kusum Athukorala and Ruana Rajepakse
 
7. Gender in Drinking Water and Sanitation: An Introduction
Deepa Joshi and Margreet Zwarteveen
 
8. Sanitation for the Urban Poor: Gender Matters
Deepa Joshi, Ben Fawcett and Fouzia Mannan
 
9. Reducing a Community’s Water and Sanitation Burden: Insights from Maharashtra
Nitish Jha
 
10. Gendered Waters, Poisoned Wells: Political Ecology of the Arsenic Crisis in Bangladesh
Farhana Sultana
 
11. Modern Water for Modern Women: Questioning the Relationship between Gender, Empowerment and Participation
Kathleen O’Reilly
 
12. Gender, Water and Agrarian Change: An Introduction
Margreet Zwarteveen
 
13. Groundwater Vending and Appropriation of Women’s Labour: Gender, Water Scarcity and Agrarian Change in a Gujarati Village, India
Anjal Prakash
 
14. Highlighting the User in Waste Water Irrigation Research: Gender, Class and Caste Dynamics of Livelihoods near Hyderabad, India
Stephanie Buechler and Gayathri Devi Mekala
 
15. Gender and Water Technologies: An Introduction
Margreet Zwarteveen
 
16. Farming Women and Irrigation Technology: Cases from Nepal
Bhawana Upadhyay
 
17. Gender and Water Technologies: Linking the Variables in Arsenic and Fluoride Mitigation
Nandita Singh
 
18. Perspectives on Gender and Large Dams
Lyla Mehta
 
19. Large Water Control Mechanisms: Gender Impact of the Damodar Valley Corporation, India
Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt
 
20. Strategies to Address Gendered Water Concerns: An Introduction
Suman Rimal Gautam and Margreet Zwarteveen
 
21. Improving Processes of Natural Resources Management at the Grassroots: The Case of the Self Employed Women’s Association (SEWA)
Smita Mishra Panda and Ravi Sannabhadti
 
22. Thinking and Acting on Gender Issues: The Interface of Policy, Culture and Identity
Pranita Bhushan Udas
 
23. Adopting a Gender Approach in a Water and Sanitation Project: The Case of the 4WS Project in Coastal Communities in South Asia
Christine Sijbesma, Kochurani Mathew, Rashika Nishshanka, Palitha Jayaweera, Marielle Snel, Helvi Heinonen-Tanski, Avizit Reaz Quazi, M.D. Jakariya

Topics: Caste, Class, Development, Feminisms, Feminist Political Ecology, Gender, Gender Roles, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equity, Infrastructure, Water & Sanitation, Livelihoods, Religion Regions: Asia, South Asia

Year: 2012

Right-Wing Sisterhood: Everyday Politics of Hindu Nationalist Women in India and Zionist Settler Women in Israel-Palestine

Citation:

Mehta, Akanksha. 2017. "Right-Wing Sisterhood: Everyday Politics of Hindu Nationalist Women in India and Zionist Settler Women in Israel-Palestine." PhD diss., SOAS University of London.

Author: Akanksha Mehta

Annotation:

Summary: 
"Right-Wing movements have gained political momentum in the last few decades, drawing within their ranks women who not only embody their exclusionary and violent politics but who also simultaneously contest everyday patriarchies. This thesis examines the everyday politics of women in two right-wing movements, the cultural nationalist Hindu right-wing project in India and the settler-colonial Zionist project in Israel-Palestine. Based on fourteen months of ethnographic, narrative, and visual ‘fieldwork’ conducted with women in both these movements, I argue that through a politics of the everyday, right-wing women bargain and negotiate with patriarchal communities/homes, male-formulated ideologies and discourses, and maledominated right-wing projects and spaces. These mediations replicate and affirm as well as subvert and challenge patriarchal structures and power hierarchies, troubling the binaries of home/world, private/public, personal/political, and victim/agent. I assert that dominant literature on rightwing women focuses on motherhood and family, ignoring various other crucial subject positions that are constituted and occupied by right-wing women and neglecting the agential and empowering potential of right-wing women’s subjectivities.
 
"I use four themes/lenses to examine the everyday politics of right-wing women. These are: pedagogy and education; charity and humanitarian work; intimacy, friendship, sociability and leisure; and political violence. By interrogating the practices that are contained in and enabled by these four locations of Hindu right-wing and Zionist settler women’s everyday politics, this thesis highlights the multiple narratives, contradictions, pluralities, hierarchies, power structures, languages, and discourses that encompass right-wing women’s projects" (Mehta 2017, 3-4). 

Topics: Armed Conflict, Occupation, Coloniality/Post-Coloniality, Gender, Women, Gendered Power Relations, Patriarchy, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Nationalism, Political Participation, Religion, Violence Regions: MENA, Asia, Middle East, Southeast Asia Countries: India, Israel, Palestine / Occupied Palestinian Territories

Year: 2017

Gender Dimensions of (Non)Violence in Communal Conflict: The Case of Jos, Nigeria

Citation:

Krause, Jana. 2019. "Gender Dimensions of (Non)Violence in Communal Conflict: The Case of Jos, Nigeria." Comparative Political Studies: 1-34.

Author: Jana Krause

Abstract:

Peacebuilding is more likely to succeed in countries with higher levels of gender equality, but few studies have examined the link between subnational gender relations and local peace and, more generally, peacebuilding after communal conflict. This article addresses this gap. I examine gender relations and (non)violence in ethno-religious conflict in the city of Jos in central Nigeria. Jos and its rural surroundings have repeatedly suffered communal clashes that have killed thousands, sometimes within only days. Drawing on qualitative data collected during fieldwork, I analyze the gender dimensions of violence, nonviolence, and postviolence prevention. I argue that civilian agency is gendered. Gender relations and distinct notions of masculinity can facilitate or constrain people’s mobilization for fighting. Hence, a nuanced understanding of the gender dimensions of (non)violence has important implications for conflict prevention and local peacebuilding.

Keywords: communal violence, gender relations, nonviolence, peacebuilding, masculinities

Topics: Armed Conflict, Ethnic/Communal Wars, Ethnicity, Gender, Masculinity/ies, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, Conflict, Nonviolence, Peacebuilding, Post-Conflict, Religion, Violence Regions: Africa, West Africa Countries: Nigeria

Year: 2019

Gendered Environmental Security in IDP and Refugee Camps

Citation:

Rosenow-Williams, Kerstin, and Katharina Behmer. 2015. “Gendered Environmental Security in IDP and Refugee Camps.” Peace Review: A Journal of Social Justice 27: 188–95.

Authors: Kerstin Rosenow-Williams, Katharina Behmer

Annotation:

Summary:
"The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and its Executive Committee have long stressed that situations of flight and displacement affect men and women differently and that effective programming must recognize these differences. In the mid-1980s UNHCR, and various other humanitarian actors, began incorporating a gender perspective into their humanitarian activities. Since then a large variety of handbooks, guidelines, and toolkits have been developed. The 2008 UNHCR Handbook for the Protection of Women and Girls, for example, notes that gender mainstreaming has been adopted as a United Nations (UN)–wide policy, recognizing that centralizing the differing needs of women and men into the design of programs, policies, and operations is necessary to fundamentally improve the position of gender equality.
 
"To monitor and advance this policy approach, this essay advocates the use of a gendered human security perspective as an analytical tool to disentangle the gendered dimensions of security for individuals and groups during displacement. It places a special focus on the interrelation between gender categories, their social construction, and the intersectionality of individual characteristics. An intersectional focus on gender-specific dimensions of displacement means taking into account other factors that can cause vulnerability and insecurities (such as age, sexuality, race, religion, class, and ethnicity), thus, also acknowledging the different security situations of individuals within the same gender group. Fusing the concepts of gender mainstreaming and human security proves to be a useful approach to conceptualize and address the multilayered and interrelated security needs of men, women, boys, and girls while providing evidence of the importance of making both sexes the key referents for human security" (Rosenow-Williams and Behmer 2015, 188). 

Topics: Age, Clan, Displacement & Migration, Migration, Refugees, Ethnicity, Gender, Gender Mainstreaming, International Organizations, Race, Religion, Security, Human Security, Sexuality

Year: 2015

Beyond the Spectacular: Contextualizing Gender Relations in the Wake of the Boko Haram Insurgency

Citation:

Pereira, Charmaine. 2018. "Beyond the Spectacular: Contextualizing Gender Relations in the Wake of the Boko Haram Insurgency." Meridians 17 (2): 246-68.

Author: Charmaine Pereira

Abstract:

The aim of this essay is to interrogate gender relations in the wake of the Boko Haram insurgency in a way that recognizes continuities as well as discontinuities across multiple dimensions of social relations. The essay begins by outlining the changing trajectory of the Boko Haram insurgency and scholarly efforts to understand it as a social phenomenon. The second section discusses how research and media recognition of Boko Haram’s violence in relation to women led to a focus on spectacular events, such as mass abductions and suicide bombings. It is critical to recognize the politics of visibility and nonvisibility regarding women in the gendered dynamics set in motion by Boko Haram’s spectacles of violence. Finally, the essay points to ways in which feminist analyses of conflict and militarism throw light on the more suppressed yet critical dimensions of gender relations that surface in the wake of the Boko Haram insurgency.

Keywords: Boko Haram, spectacular, violence, visibility, gender politics

Topics: Armed Conflict, Conflict, Gender, Women, Gender Analysis, Gendered Power Relations, Media, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militarism, Race, Religion

Year: 2018

Contested Encounters: Toward a Twenty-First-Century African Feminist Ethnography

Citation:

Makana, Selina. 2018. "Contested Encounters: Toward a Twenty-First-Century African Feminist Ethnography." Meridians 17 (2): 361-75.

Author: Selina Makana

Abstract:

This essay reflects upon both the predicaments and the promises of feminist ethnography in contemporary Africa from the position of an African feminist researcher. Two key questions guide the analysis: What are productive ways to respond to feminist critiques of representing the African woman “other”? What are the promises, if any, of African feminist ethnography documenting the histories of women on the continent? This essay argues that African feminist ethnography is a productive methodology that helps to highlight knowledge production about women’s lives in their specific sociopolitical, ethnolinguistic, religious, and economic contexts. To highlight the significance and limits of reflexivity and the idiosyncrasies of ethnographic research, this essay calls for a different way of naming the encounters between researchers and their participants. It therefore proposes naming this energy the ebb and flow of fieldwork research because this metaphor helps to destabilize and move beyond the rigid binaries of insider/outsider that have traditionally characterized power relations in fieldwork.

Topics: Ethnicity, Feminisms, Gender, Women, Gender Analysis, Gendered Power Relations, Intersectionality, Race, Religion Regions: Africa

Year: 2018

New Patriotisms: The Beauty Queen and the Bomb

Citation:

Sangari, Kumkum. 2004. “New Patriotisms: The Beauty Queen and the Bomb.” In From Gender to Nation, edited by Rada Ivekovic and Julie Mostov, 153–70. New Delhi: Zubaan.

Author: Kumkum Sangari

Annotation:

Summary:
"The significant literature on gender and nationalism generated in the past decade shows that the emphasis on women as biological reproducers or members of a bounded collectivity, and the centrality of womanhood to the ideological reproduction of the nation are common to a variety of nationalisms. Yet the ideological distinctions between nationalisms remain significant. Given the intertwined legacies of colonialism, the patriarchal assumptions in nationalism, and the particularism of the Hindu right-wing, definitions of Indian culture have always been problematic, especially in the way they cast the "nation" as an entity affected and endangered by the "west". The secular, multireligious or more inclusive nationalisms that emerged in the colonial period were implicated in the specific types of antifeminism and new conservatism that crystallized around anticolonialism; however, they cannot be confused with the obsessive particularisms that attempted to seize nationalism and twist it to their own ends. These particularisms sought the aura of nationalism but pushed for a single majoritarian religious identity, and a tighter patriarchy by polarizing an alien, "selfgenerated" and modem "west". Neither anticolonialism, nor antiwesternism, nor antimodernity could guarantee national authenticity since they were shaped in a two-way cultural traffic marked by recursivity, transformation, resistance and ideological collaboration. They, did however, produce a powerful imaginary India exemplified in its nonmodern or antimodern areas (notably a subsuming religiosity and chaste, self-sacrificing women) to be preserved, an India that was most emphatically (though not exclusively) deployed by the Hindu right" (Sangari 2004, 153).

Topics: Coloniality/Post-Coloniality, Gender, Gendered Discourses, Gendered Power Relations, Patriarchy, Nationalism, Religion, Security, Weapons /Arms Regions: Asia, South Asia Countries: India

Year: 2004

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