Nationalism

Citation:

Mojab, Shahrzad, and Rachel Gorman. 2007. “Dispersed Nationalism: War, Diaspora And Kurdish Women’s Organizing.” Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies 3 (1, Special Issue: Transnational Theory, National Politics, and Gender in the Contemporary Middle East / North Africa): 58–85.

Authors: Shahrzad Mojab, Rachel Gorman

Abstract:

In this paper we provide an analysis of Kurdish women’s organizing in the diaspora, highlighting the tension between “homeland” and  “host-land” nationalisms, patriarchy, and feminism. This is the first feminist-transnational study of the experience of Kurdish women participating in a modern nation-building process in the Kurdish region of northern Iraq in the period of 1991–2003. The study is based on fieldwork among Kurdish women in Canada, Britain, Sweden, and Iraqi Kurdistan. We have analyzed the activities of four women’s organizations in the diaspora and have traced the impact of these organizations on the events and politics unfolding in the region. We have also observed and documented the impact of homeland politics on these diaspora organizations, paying special attention to the gendered influence exerted by Kurdish political parties. The theoretical contributions of this paper are twofold: One, we argue that diaspora should be understood as a historical rather than only a cultural phenomenon. Second, diaspora and transnationalism are both historical and political categories of social organization which involve a complex of national, international, and transnational political-economic relations.

Keywords: nationalism, diaspora

Topics: Armed Conflict, Civil Society, Displacement & Migration, Gender, Women, Gendered Power Relations, Patriarchy, Nationalism, NGOs, Political Participation Regions: MENA, Asia, Middle East Countries: Iraq

Year: 2007

Citation:

Fouron, Georges and Nina Glick Schiller. 2001. “All in the Family: Gender, Transnational Migration, and the Nation-State.” Identities 7 (4): 539-82.

Authors: Georges Fouron, Nina Glick Schiller

Abstract:

Over the years, feminist scholarship has illuminated the ways in which genders are differentiated and gender hierarchies are constituted as part of the way women and men learn to identify with a nation‐state. Much less has been said about the social reproduction of gender in transnational spaces. These spaces are created as people emigrate, settle far from their homelands, and yet develop networks of connection that maintain familial, economic, religious, and political ties to those homelands. The task of this paper is to begin to explore the ways in which gender and nation are mutually constituted within the transnational social fields that link homeland and new land. This paper is exploratory, using a case study of Haitian transnational connections as a catalyst for future investigation.

Keywords: Gender, transnational migration, nationalism, Haiti, United States

Topics: Displacement & Migration, Migration, Economies, Feminisms, Gender, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Hierarchies, Nationalism, Political Participation, Religion Regions: Americas, Caribbean countries, North America Countries: Haiti, United States of America

Year: 2001

Citation:

Lowry, Anna U. 2008. “Saving Private Sychev: Russian Masculinities, Army Hazing, and Social Norms.” Berkeley Journal of Sociology 52: 73-100.

Author: Anna U. Lowry

Abstract:

This paper examines the recent case of Andrei Sychev, a former soldier in the Russian army who lost his legs and genitals as a result of a violent hazing. Reviewing extensive media coverage of and debate over the significance of this incident, the author identifies the debate's main participants, including military officials, politicians, members of the Soldiers' Mothers movement, and medical experts. An analysis of their discourses (nationalist, liberal, medical-scientific) and premises, informed by Foucauldian theory and masculinity studies, is presented, revealing important discrepancies and occasionally surprising overlap among their interpretations of the incident. Ultimately, the paper seeks to understand the Sychev affair as a discursive knot in which conflicting notions of Russian masculinity and norms of citizenship are tied together. It concludes with a reflection on the challenges that the human rights group Soldiers ' Mothers face in their struggle to redefine the dominant norms.

Topics: Citizenship, Gender, Men, Masculinity/ies, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militaries, Nationalism, Violence Regions: Asia, Europe Countries: Russian Federation

Year: 2008

Citation:

Radosh, Polly. 2009. “Colonial Oppression, Gender, and Women in the Irish Diaspora.” Journal of Historical Sociology 22 (2): 269–89.

Author: Polly Radosh

Abstract:

This paper explores the relationship between colonial oppression in pre-famine Ireland and the development of gender patterns that fostered uncommon social and familial roles for women. In post-famine Ireland women's traditional family roles illustrate cultural empowerment that combined with the pull factors of employment opportunities to spawn higher female than male emigration at the same time that patriarchal oppression restricted women's full social participation in Ireland and limited their authority to specific domains of family life. Cultural changes in post-famine Ireland, including increased power for the Catholic Church, mothers' socialization of children to the moral teachings of the Church, delayed marriage, and permanent celibacy among large segments of the population, intersected to produce unique patterns of migration. For women who immigrated to the United States, the cultural background of colonial oppression instilled values that respected independence and employment. In the case of the Irish, colonial oppression initiated gender patterns that pushed women to greater familial power and occupational independence than was typical of other ethnic groups.

Topics: Coloniality/Post-Coloniality, Displacement & Migration, Migration, Ethnicity, Gender, Women, Gender Roles, Gendered Power Relations, Patriarchy, Households, Livelihoods, Nationalism, Religion Regions: Europe, Western Europe Countries: Ireland

Year: 2009

Citation:

Zimelis, Andris. 2009. “Human Rights, the Sex Industry and Foreign Troops: Feminist Analysis of Nationalism in Japan, South Korea and the Philippines.” Cooperation and Conflict 44 (1): 51-71. 

Author: Andris Zimelis

Abstract:

This article explores the relationship between prostitution, nationalism and foreign policies using a feminist analysis framework. Although scholars have dealt with the theoretical role of women in nationalist projects, there is little work factually supporting these theories. There is also a paucity of works demonstrating the role of prostitution in national security policies. This article rectifies these shortcomings and demonstrates that, although prostitution is illegal in Japan, South Korea and the Philippines, these governments have played an active role in supporting and maintaining the prostitution industry geared at servicing US troops. The US troops, in turn, have protected the national security of each of these countries for all of the post-Second World War era. In this context, it seems clear that `national security' does not include the physical, economic, legal and social insecurity of Japanese, Korean and Filipino women despite their contribution to the most quintessential Realist policy — national security.

Topics: Feminisms, Gender, Women, Gender Analysis, Livelihoods, Sexual Livelihoods, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Nationalism, Political Participation, Rights, Human Rights, Security, Trafficking, Sex Trafficking Regions: Asia, East Asia, Southeast Asia Countries: Japan, Philippines, South Korea

Year: 2009

Citation:

Condren, Mary. 1995. “Sacrifice and Political Legitimation: The Production of a Gendered Social Order.” Journal of Women’s History 7 (1): 160-89. doi:10.1353/jowh.2010.0375.

Author: Mary Condren

Topics: Feminisms, Gender, Women, Nationalism, Political Participation, Violence Regions: Europe, Northern Europe, Western Europe Countries: Ireland, United Kingdom

Year: 1995

Citation:

Benton, Sarah. 1995. “Women Disarmed: The Militarization of Politics in Ireland 1913-23.” Feminist Review 50: 148-72.

Author: Sarah Benton

Abstract:

The movement for 'military preparedness' in America and Britain gained tremendous momentum at the turn of the century. It assimilated the cult of manliness - the key public virtue, which allowed a person to claim possession of himself and a nation to reclaim possession of itself. An army was the means of marshalling a mass of people for regeneration. The symbol of a nation's preparedness to take control of its own soul was the readiness to bear arms. Although this movement originated in the middle-class, Protestant cultures of the USA and England, its core ideas were adopted by many political movements. Affected by these ideas, as well as the formation of the Protestant Ulster Volunteers in 1913, a movement to reclaim Irish independence through the mass bearing of arms began in South and West Ireland in autumn 1914. Women were excluded from these Volunteer companies, but set up their own organization, Cumann na mBan, as an auxiliary to the men's. The Easter Rising in 1916 owed as much to older ideas of the coup d'état as new ideas of mass mobilization, but subsequent history recreated that Rising as the 'founding' moment of the Irish republic. It was not until mass conscription was threatened two years later that the mass of people were absorbed into the idea of an armed campaign against British rule. From 1919 to 1923, the reality of guerrilla-style war pressed people into a frame demanding discipline, secrecy, loyalty and a readiness to act as the prime nationalist virtues. The ideal form of relationship in war is the brotherhood, both as actuality and potent myth. The mythology of brotherhood creates its own myths of women (as not being there, and men not needing them) as well as creating the fear and the myth that rape is the inevitable expression of brotherhoods in action. Despite explicit anxiety at the time about the rape of Irish women by British soldiers, no evidence was found of mass rape, and that fear has disappeared into oblivion, throwing up important questions as to when rape is a weapon of war. The decade of war worsened the relationship of women to the political realm. Despite active involvement as 'auxiliaries' women's political status was permanently damaged by their exclusion as warriors and brothers, so much so that they disappear into the status of wives and mothers in the 1937 Irish Constitution.

Topics: Armed Conflict, National Liberation Wars, Gender, Women, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militarization, Nationalism, Sexual Violence, Rape, SV against Women Regions: Europe, Western Europe Countries: Ireland

Year: 1995

Citation:

Ryan, Louise. 2000. “‘Drunken Tans’: Representations of Sex and Violence in the Anglo-Irish War.” Feminist Review 66 (1): 73–94.

Author: Louise Ryan

Abstract:

Keywords: sexual violence, militarism, Ireland, nationalism, masculinity, femininity

Topics: Armed Conflict, National Liberation Wars, Gender, Masculinity/ies, Gender Roles, Femininity/ies, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militarism, Nationalism, Sexual Violence, SV against Women Regions: Europe, Northern Europe, Western Europe Countries: Ireland, United Kingdom

Year: 2000

Citation:

Anand, Dibyesh. 2007. “Anxious Sexualities: Masculinity, Nationalism and Violence.” The British Journal of Politics & International Relations 9 (2): 257–69.

Author: Dibyesh Anand

Abstract:

An ethnographic research among activists subscribing to majoritarian Hindu nationalism in India reveals that anxiety, masculinity and sexuality are crucial ingredients in their identity politics. The inimical figure used to mobilise the Hindu nationalist identity is a stereotyped Muslim masculinity which in turn is imagined as dangerous owing to a mix of negative images of Islam, history, physicality and culture. The specificities of anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat in 2002, and especially the pervasiveness of sexual violence there, can be understood as an assertion of the new Hindu identity which conflates nationalism with masculinity and violence. And yet it was the complicity of the institutions of the state that accounted for the lethality of violence in Gujarat. The article argues that masculinised nationalism and embedded statehood are crucial features of contemporary (inter)national politics.

Topics: Gender, Masculinity/ies, Nationalism, Religion, Sexual Violence, Sexuality, Violence Regions: Asia, South Asia Countries: India

Year: 2007

Citation:

Sehgal, Meera. 2007. “Manufacturing a Feminized Siege Mentality: Hindu Nationalist Paramilitary Camps for Women in India.” Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 36 (2): 165-83. doi:10.1177/0891241606298823.

Author: Meera Sehgal

Abstract:

This article examines the discursive and embodied processes employed at Hindu nationalist paramilitary camps for women that transform traditional, middle-class Hindu women into committed, active participants in the powerful, right-wing Hindu Nationalist Movement in India. Based on ethnographic research on the Rashtra Sevika Samiti (the Samiti), a core women's organization in the movement, I argue that the Samiti effectively manufactures a feminized siege mentality. This mentality is a learned disposition in which female members of a community perceive themselves as potential prey to male members of a community of “outsiders.” The discursive practices include entwined discourses of Hindu women's victimization by Muslim men and empowerment by the Samiti. The embodied practices include a paramilitary physical training program that masquerades as self-defense training but in fact manufactures a fear of sexual attacks by Muslim men in the public sphere, while deflecting from sources of violence within the private sphere.

Topics: Gender, Women, Femininity/ies, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Paramilitaries, Nationalism, Religion, Violence Regions: Asia, South Asia Countries: India

Year: 2007