Political Economies

Eastern Houses, Western Bricks?: (Re)constructing Gender Sensibilities in the European Union’s Eastward Enlargement

Citation:

Weiner, Elaine. 2009. “Eastern Houses, Western Bricks?: (Re)constructing Gender Sensibilities in the European Union’s Eastward Enlargement.” Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State and Society 16 (3): 303-26.

Author: Elaine Weiner

Abstract:

In the European Union's (EU) fifth enlargement, the post-socialist states autocratically adopted a set of internationally derived, EU-mandated gender equality legal norms and institutional mechanisms as part of harmonization. Seeking legitimacy, supranational and national, state and civil society actors (particularly feminist nongovernmental organizations) readily conceded to this assumption, with little regard for the compatibility of gender sensibilities, East and West. While gender equality policy may achieve transnational currency, the motives and interests that enable its crossover can also hinder its functionality and imperil the wider political and economic aims that such policy seeks to promote.

Topics: Economies, Gender, Women, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, International Organizations, NGOs, Political Economies Regions: Europe

Year: 2009

Conceptualizing Gender-Sexuality-State-Nation: An Introduction

Citation:

Kim, Hyun Sook, and Jyoti Puri. 2005. “Conceptualizing Gender-Sexuality-State-Nation: An Introduction.” Gender and Society 19 (2): 137-59.

Authors: Hyun Sook Kim, Jyoti Puri

Topics: Gender, Women, Nationalism, Political Economies, Sexuality

Year: 2005

A Perspective on the History of Health and Human Rights: From the Cold War to the Gold War

Citation:

Tarantola, Daniel. 2008. “A Perspective on the History of Health and Human Rights: From the Cold War to the Gold War.” Journal of Public Health Policy 29 (1): 42-53.

Author: Daniel Tarantola

Abstract:

Through the end of the Cold War, public health policies were predominantly shaped and implemented by governments and these same governments committed themselves to meet their obligations for health under international and national laws. The post-Cold War era has witnessed the entry of new actors in public health and the sharing of power and influences with non-state actors, in particular the private sector and interest groups. This article examines the emergence of human rights and the rise of health on the international development agenda as the Cold War was ending. It highlights the convergence of health and human rights in academic and public discourse since the end of the Cold War in a context of political and economic shifts linked to the ongoing economic globalization. It describes opportunities and challenges for greater synergy between health and rights and proposes a role for health practitioners.

Topics: Development, Economies, Globalization, Health, International Organizations, Political Economies, Rights, Human Rights

Year: 2008

New Directions for Feminist Research and Politics

Citation:

Giles, Wenona, and Jennifer Hyndman. 2004. “New Directions for Feminist Research and Politics.” In Sites of Violence: Gender and Conflict Zones, edited by Wenona Giles and Jennifer Hyndman, 301–15. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Authors: Wenona Giles, Jennifer Hyndman

Abstract:

This chapter presents a reflection on feminist politics in the context of militarized violence. It specifically explores the gender implications of globalization, human security, and human rights. It argues that it is crucial to identify the gendered antecedents and consequences of violence, conflict, and war. Processes of globalization do not occur in a uniform way across nation-states, governments, and corporations in the world today. Accountability for violence associated with resource extraction or production is lacking where economic activities transcend international borders. Furthermore, the chapter examines how states manage the protection and provision of basic rights and entitlements for their nationals. Feminist analyses of conflict elucidate the intimate connections between war, political economy, nationalism, and human displacement and their various impacts across scale.

Keywords: Gender, globalization, human security, human rights, war, nationalism

Topics: Armed Conflict, Displacement & Migration, Feminisms, Gender, Globalization, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militarization, Nationalism, Political Economies, Rights, Human Rights, Security, Human Security, Violence

Year: 2004

Noise Over Camouflaged Polygamy, Colonial Morality Taxation, and a Woman-Naming Crisis in Belgian Africa

Citation:

Hunt, Nancy Rose. 1991. “Noise Over Camouflaged Polygamy, Colonial Morality Taxation, and a Woman-Naming Crisis in Belgian Africa.” The Journal of African History 32 (3): 471-94.

Author: Nancy Rose Hunt

Abstract:

This essay concerns the peculiarities and contradictions of colonial morality taxation and legislation in Belgian Africa, and especially highlights analytical and historical commonalities between anti-polygamy measures and the unusual Belgian practice of taxing urban unmarried women. More generally, it is about colonialism and moral crisis, historical evidence and camouflage, popular memory and silence, colonial name-giving, and name-calling. I cannot be the first to notice that where women most often appear in the colonial record is where moral panic surfaced, settled and festered. Prostitution, polygamy, adultery, concubinage and infertility are the loci of such angst throughout the historical record of Belgian African colonial regimes, and one sometimes feels hard pressed to find women anywhere else. Yet moral crises did not always emerge due to the (perceived) customs and actions of the colonized. They also erupted from colonial policy and law itself, from the insight (or hindsight) that colonial policy was misconcerived or bred dangerous contradictory consequences. I begin in the midst of one kind of colonial noise: an historically shifting crisis in Belgian Africa over plural wives, and loud colonial debates over moral taxation and how best to preserve 'custom' while eradicating polygamy. This will serve as the context for considering another related, though temporally and geographically more confined crisis: the rebellion in the 1950s of Swahili women against the single women's tax in colonial Bujumbura. This local crisis also became noisy. Yet here the noise erupted as volatile African outrage, and its contrast betrays the embarassed silence and muted debates among colonial authorities over the contradictions and failings of moral taxation and policing measues. 

Topics: Coloniality/Post-Coloniality, Gender, Women, Gender Roles, Gendered Power Relations, Governance, Livelihoods, Sexual Livelihoods, Political Economies, Political Participation, Sexual Violence, Sexual Exploitation and Abuse Regions: Africa, Central Africa, East Africa, Europe, Western Europe Countries: Belgium

Year: 1991

Women and Wars

Citation:

Cohn, Carol, ed. 2012. Women and Wars. Malden, MA: Polity Press. 

Author: Carol Cohn

Abstract:

Where are the women? In traditional historical and scholarly accounts of the making and fighting of wars, women are often nowhere to be seen. With few exceptions, war stories are told as if men were the only ones who plan, fight, are injured by, and negotiate ends to wars. As the pages of this book tell, though, those accounts are far from complete. Women can be found at every turn in the gendered phenomena of war. Women have participated in the making, fighting, and concluding of wars throughout history, and their participation is only increasing at the turn of the 21st century. Women experience war in multiple ways: as soldiers, as fighters, as civilians, as caregivers, as sex workers, as sexual slaves, refugees and internally displaced persons, as anti-war activists, as community peace-builders, and more. This book at once provides a glimpse into where women are in war, and gives readers the tools to understand women's (told and untold) war experiences in the greater context of the gendered nature of global social and political life. (Polity Press)

Annotation:

Table of Contents:

Foreword by Cynthia Enloe

1. Women and Wars: Toward a Conceptual Framework
Carol Cohn

2. Women and the Political Economy of War
Angela Raven-Roberts

3. Sexual Violence and Women's Health in War
Pamela DeLargy

4. Women Forced to Flee: Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons
Wenona Giles

5. Women and Political Activism in the Face of War and Militarization
Carol Cohn and Ruth Jacobson

6. Women and State Military Forces
Jennifer G. Mathers

7. Women, Girls, and Non-State Armed Opposition Groups
Dyan Mazurana

8. Women and Peace Processes
Malathi de Alwis, Julie Mertus, and Tazreena Sajjad

9. Women, Girls, and Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration (DDR)
Dyan Mazurana and Linda Eckerbom Cole

10. Women "After" Wars
Ruth Jacobson

 

Reviews of Women and Wars:

By Laura Shepherd: http://www.genderanddevelopment.org/page/women-wars-review

By Christine Sylvester: http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofbooks/2013/04/08/book-review-women-and-wars-carol-cohn/

By Erika Cudworth: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/21693293.2013.768009

By Katherine E. Brown: http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=9012414

By Jean Owen: http://fwsablog.org.uk/2013/05/27/book-review-women-and-wars-ed-carol-cohn/

Topics: Armed Conflict, Combatants, Female Combatants, DDR, Displacement & Migration, IDPs, Refugees, Refugee/IDP Camps, Gender, Women, Girls, Health, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militaries, Militarization, Non-State Armed Groups, Peace Processes, Political Economies, Political Participation, Post-Conflict

Year: 2012

Sites of Violence: Gender and Conflict Zones

Citation:

Giles, Wenona M., and Jennifer Hyndman, eds. 2004. Sites of Violence: Gender and Conflict Zones. Berkeley: University of California Press. 

Authors: Wenona M. Giles, Jennifer Hyndman

Abstract:

In conflict zones from Iraq and Afghanistan to Guatemala and Somalia, the rules of war are changing dramatically. Distinctions between battlefield and home, soldier and civilian, state security and domestic security are breaking down. In this especially timely book, a powerful group of international authors doing feminist research brings the highly gendered and racialized dimensions of these changes into sharp relief. In essays on nationalism, the political economy of conflict, and the politics of asylum, they investigate what happens when the body, household, nation, state, and economy become sites at which violence is invoked against people. In particular, these hard-hitting essays move us forward in our understanding of violence against women--how it is perpetrated, survived, and resisted. They explore the gendered politics of ethno-nationalism in Sri Lanka, the post-Yugoslav states, and Israel and Palestine. They consider "honor killings" in Iraqi Kurdistan, armed conflict in the Sudan, and geographies of violence in Ghana. This volume augments feminist analysis on conflict zones and contributes to transnational coalition-building and feminist organizing. (WorldCat.org)

Keywords: conflict zones, gendered politics, honour-killings, refugee, violence, Gender

Annotation:

Table of Contents:

1. Introduction: Gender and Conflict in a Global Context / Wenona Giles and Jennifer Hyndman --

2. The Continuum of Violence: A Gender Perspective on War and Peace / Cynthia Cockburn --

3. The Sounds of Silence: Feminist Research Across Time in Guatemala / Cathy Blacklock and Alison Crosby --

4. Like Oil and Water, With a Match: Militarized Commerce, Armed Conflict, and Human Security in Sudan / Audrey Macklin --

5. No "Safe Haven": Violence Against Women in Iraqi Kurdistan / Shahrzad Mojab --

6. From Pillars of Yugoslavism to Targets of Violence: Interethnic Marriages in the Former Yugoslavia and Thereafter / Mirjana Morokvasic-Müller --

7. Geographies of Violence: Women and Conflict in Ghana / Valerie Pretson and Madeleine Wong --

8. Gender, the Nationalist Imagination, War, and Peace / Nira Yuval-Davis --

9. Refugee Camps as Conflict Zones: The Politics of Gender / Jennifer Hyndman --

10. The "Purity" of Displacement and the Reterritorialization of Longing: Muslim IDPs in the Northwestern Sri Lanka / Malathi de Alvis --

11. Escaping Conflict: Afghan Women in Transit / Asha Hans --

12. War, Flight, and Exile: Gendered Violence among Refugee Women from Post-Yugoslav States / Maja Korac --

13. The Gendered Impact of Multilateralism in the Post-Yugoslav States: Intervention, Reconstruction, and Globalization / Edith Klein --

14. New Directions for Feminist Research and Politics / Wenona Giles and Jennifer Hyndman --

Topics: Armed Conflict, Class, Displacement & Migration, Refugees, Ethnicity, Feminisms, Gender, Gender Analysis, Gender-Based Violence, Households, Nationalism, Political Economies, Race, Security, Violence

Year: 2004

The Political Economy of the Creeping Militarization of US Foreign Policy

Citation:

Coyne, Christopher. 2011. “The Political Economy of the Creeping Militarization of US Foreign Policy.” Peace Economics, Peace Science, and Public Policy 17 (1): 1-25.

Author: Christopher Coyne

Abstract:

This paper analyzes the political economy of the creeping militarization of U.S. foreign policy. The core argument is that in integrating the "3D" approach‚ (defense, development, and diplomacy) policymakers have assigned responsibilities to military personnel which go beyond their comparative advantage, requiring them to become social engineers tasked with constructing entire societies. Evidence from The U.S. Army Stability Operations Field Manual is presented to illustrate the wide scope of responsibilities assigned to the U.S. military. The tools of political economy are used to analyze some of the implications.

Keywords: 3D approach, US military, foreign policy, U.S. foreign policy, militarization

Topics: Development, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militaries, Militarization, Political Economies Regions: Americas, North America Countries: United States of America

Year: 2011

Sitting at the Table: Securing Benefits for Pastoral Women from Land Tenure Reform in Ethiopia

Citation:

Flintan, Fiona. 2010. “Sitting at the Table: Securing Benefits for Pastoral Women from Land Tenure Reform in Ethiopia.” Journal of Eastern African Studies 4 (1): 153- 78.

Author: Fiona Flintan

Abstract:

The pastoral areas of Ethiopia are witnessing radical change in terms of both increasingly restricted mobility and access to vital resources. A cause and consequence of such constraints has been a move toward sedentarised forms of livestock and agricultural production. This is occurring in a political and socio-economic vacuum, in which the customary institutions responsible for resource allocation and access to land are becoming weaker, and where the Ethiopian government has yet to develop a clear policy or strategy for resource distribution and tenure security in pastoral areas. To date, pastoral women's property rights have been afforded a certain degree of protection by customary institutions; however, the impact on such protection is likely to be negative as these institutions weaken. Appropriate and effective government protection for women's property rights do not yet exist. Land tenure reform in pastoral areas appears imminent, partly due to increasing conflicts over access to resources, and to the existence of such reforms in other parts of the country. This paper discusses the changing nature of pastoral land rights in Ethiopia through a detailed case study of the Boran people in Oromia Regional State. It sets the case within wider national land reform processes and makes recommendations regarding how civil society and other actors can best engage with land policy and law formulation and implementation processes to secure women's land rights. (Flintan 2010)

Keywords: pastoralism, Borana people, women's rights, sedentarisation, land

Topics: Civil Society, Gender, Women, Land Tenure, Political Economies, Rights, Land Rights, Property Rights, Women's Rights Regions: Africa, East Africa Countries: Ethiopia

Year: 2010

Women, Wives and Land Rights in Africa: Situating Gender Beyond the Household in the Debate Over Land Policy and Changing Tenure Systems

Citation:

Yngstrom, Ingrid. 2002. “Women, Wives and Land Rights in Africa: Situating Gender Beyond the Household in the Debate Over Land Policy and Changing Tenure Systems.” Oxford Development Studies 31 (1): 21-40.

Author: Ingrid Yngstrom

Abstract:

The debate over land reform in Africa is embedded in evolutionary models, in which it is assumed landholding systems are evolving into individualized systems of ownership with greater market integration. This process is seen to be occurring even without state protection of private land rights through titling. Gender as an analytical category is excluded in evolutionary models. Women are accommodated only in their dependent position as the wives of landholders in idealized ‘households’. This paper argues that gender relations are central to the organization and transformation of landholding systems. Women have faced different forms of tenure insecurity, both as wives and in their relations with wider kin, as landholding systems have been integrated into wider markets. These cannot be addressed while evolutionary models dominate the policy debate. The paper draws out these arguments from experience of tenure reform in Tanzania and asks how policy-makers might address these issues differently.

Topics: Gender, Women, Land Tenure, Political Economies, Rights, Land Rights Regions: Africa, East Africa Countries: Tanzania

Year: 2002

Pages

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