Maid in the Market: Women's Paid Domestic Labour Wenona Giles and Sedef Arat - Koc, eds. Halifax: Fernwood Publishing, 1994; 138 pp.Reviewed by Taru H. Virkamaki Women's Studies York University North York, OntarioWe all know that women have always worked. What has constituted work of value has varied temporally and spatially, and where women's work was placed on the continuum has been determined by social, cultural, economic and political forces. From the rise of industrial capitalism and its attendant reliance on a "wage system"(f.1) came the ideological separation of social reproduction from production for use, and the commoditization of labour. The gendered division and devaluation of labour has endured into the twentieth century and continues today in advanced capitalist states, and has emerged as the subject of intense feminist discussion and debate. This theme that, according to the editors of Maid in the Market, "died rather prematurely" after a brief tenure in the feminist spotlight of the 1960s and 1970s (p. 4), is reintroduced here to feminist inquiry.The site of investigation in this book is "women's paid reproductive work in the service sector -- cleaning, tidying, feeding, and caring for and serving people" (p. 1). Giles and Arat - Koc maintain that there is a direct link between the devaluation of women's unpaid domestic labour in the home and the low pay and poor working conditions in the paid reproductive labour women do in the public sphere. Consequently, what is needed now is a "new feminist analysis and politics of reproductive work" (p. 7) informed by a gender, race/ethnic, and class critique that would propose new solutions to the existing domestic labour arrangements shouldered disproportionately by women.There is a sense of nostalgia as Giles and Arat - Koc recall early feminist and communitarian socialist efforts to socialize domestic work in contrast to the ill - fated Marxist socialists who placed women's liberation for industrial work ahead of their liberation from domesticity. "Material feminists" in North America came out with practical and innovative solutions to relieve middle - class women of their sole responsibility for home and child care -- "communes, collective kitchens, cooperative housekeeping schemes" (p. 3). However, the failure of these solutions to address class and racial/ethnic disparities or to effect the social transformation that would have eased women's burdens is evident today.This book is intended to spark feminist academic and activist interest in formulating new strategies for altering the existing reproductive labour arrangements. Unfortunately, Giles and Arat - Koc do not intend to participate in the formulation of solutions. Instead, they wish to "leave this to social movements in which [they] hope academics will participate. While sharing the criticisms of the domestic labour debate that it has not provided feminist answers to questions on women's oppression, [they] do not believe it would
《市场中的女佣:妇女的有偿家务劳动》，韦诺娜·贾尔斯和塞德夫·阿拉特-科克主编。哈利法克斯:芬伍德出版社，1994;138页，作者:Taru H. Virkamaki女性研究约克大学，安大略省我们都知道女性一直都在工作。什么是有价值的工作在时间和空间上是不同的，妇女工作在连续体中的位置是由社会、文化、经济和政治力量决定的。工业资本主义的兴起及其对“工资制度”的依赖(f.1)带来了社会再生产与使用生产的意识形态分离，以及劳动的商品化。劳动的性别分工和贬值一直持续到20世纪，并在今天的发达资本主义国家继续存在，并成为女权主义者激烈讨论和辩论的主题。根据《市场上的女仆》的编辑的说法，这个主题在20世纪60年代和70年代女权主义的聚光灯下短暂停留后“过早地消亡了”(第4页)，在这里被重新引入女权主义研究。本书的调查地点是“妇女在服务部门的有偿生殖工作——清洁、整理、喂养、照顾和服务他人”(第1页)。Giles和Arat - Koc认为，妇女在家庭中无偿家务劳动的贬值与妇女在公共领域从事的有偿生殖劳动的低工资和恶劣的工作条件之间存在直接联系。因此，现在需要的是一种“关于生育工作的新的女权主义分析和政治”(第7页)，以性别、种族/民族和阶级批判为依据，提出新的解决办法，解决由妇女不成比例地承担的现有家务劳动安排。Giles和Arat - Koc回忆起早期女权主义者和社群社会主义者将家务劳动社会化的努力，这与不幸的马克思主义社会主义者形成鲜明对比，后者将女性解放到工业劳动中，而不是从家庭生活中解放出来。北美的“物质女权主义者”提出了实用和创新的解决方案，以减轻中产阶级妇女照顾家庭和孩子的唯一责任——“公社、集体厨房、合作家务计划”(第3页)。然而，这些解决方案在解决阶级和种族/民族差异或影响社会变革方面的失败，本可以减轻妇女的负担，今天很明显。这本书的目的是激发女权主义学术和积极分子的兴趣，制定新的战略，改变现有的生殖劳动安排。不幸的是，Giles和Arat - Koc不打算参与制定解决办法。相反，他们希望“把这个问题留给(他们)希望学术界参与的社会运动。”虽然他们也批评国内劳工辩论没有对关于妇女受压迫的问题提供女权主义的答案，但他们认为，如果提供女权主义的答案仅仅意味着关注以普遍用语表达的性别问题，那么提供女权主义的答案是不够的”(第5页)(原文强调)。我对这种说法感到困扰，它似乎暗示女权主义的概念化本身已经充满了种族主义和阶级主义的含义，以至于假设女权主义解决家务劳动问题将是先验的种族主义和阶级主义。就我个人而言，我坚信，任何消除女性压迫的解决方案都必须以女权主义分析为依据，这种分析本身就包括对种族、民族和阶级的关注。然而，从引言中，我们可以假设这本书中的文章不会提供任何克服女性压迫的策略。但我们可以预测的是一些进一步的见解。接下来的文章揭示了在发达资本主义国家中出现的剥削和压迫关系，这些关系在经济上是必不可少的，以及发达资本主义和后殖民地区之间不平衡的经济关系的影响，这些关系产生并允许对劳动力的统治和剥削。…
{"title":"Maid in the Market: Women's Paid Domestic Labour // Review","authors":"W. Giles, Sedef Arat-Koç","doi":"10.2307/25144214","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/25144214","url":null,"abstract":"Maid in the Market: Women's Paid Domestic Labour Wenona Giles and Sedef Arat - Koc, eds. Halifax: Fernwood Publishing, 1994; 138 pp.Reviewed by Taru H. Virkamaki Women's Studies York University North York, OntarioWe all know that women have always worked. What has constituted work of value has varied temporally and spatially, and where women's work was placed on the continuum has been determined by social, cultural, economic and political forces. From the rise of industrial capitalism and its attendant reliance on a \"wage system\"(f.1) came the ideological separation of social reproduction from production for use, and the commoditization of labour. The gendered division and devaluation of labour has endured into the twentieth century and continues today in advanced capitalist states, and has emerged as the subject of intense feminist discussion and debate. This theme that, according to the editors of Maid in the Market, \"died rather prematurely\" after a brief tenure in the feminist spotlight of the 1960s and 1970s (p. 4), is reintroduced here to feminist inquiry.The site of investigation in this book is \"women's paid reproductive work in the service sector -- cleaning, tidying, feeding, and caring for and serving people\" (p. 1). Giles and Arat - Koc maintain that there is a direct link between the devaluation of women's unpaid domestic labour in the home and the low pay and poor working conditions in the paid reproductive labour women do in the public sphere. Consequently, what is needed now is a \"new feminist analysis and politics of reproductive work\" (p. 7) informed by a gender, race/ethnic, and class critique that would propose new solutions to the existing domestic labour arrangements shouldered disproportionately by women.There is a sense of nostalgia as Giles and Arat - Koc recall early feminist and communitarian socialist efforts to socialize domestic work in contrast to the ill - fated Marxist socialists who placed women's liberation for industrial work ahead of their liberation from domesticity. \"Material feminists\" in North America came out with practical and innovative solutions to relieve middle - class women of their sole responsibility for home and child care -- \"communes, collective kitchens, cooperative housekeeping schemes\" (p. 3). However, the failure of these solutions to address class and racial/ethnic disparities or to effect the social transformation that would have eased women's burdens is evident today.This book is intended to spark feminist academic and activist interest in formulating new strategies for altering the existing reproductive labour arrangements. Unfortunately, Giles and Arat - Koc do not intend to participate in the formulation of solutions. Instead, they wish to \"leave this to social movements in which [they] hope academics will participate. While sharing the criticisms of the domestic labour debate that it has not provided feminist answers to questions on women's oppression, [they] do not believe it would ","PeriodicalId":82477,"journal":{"name":"Resources for feminist research : RFR = Documentation sur la recherche feministe : DRF","volume":"24 1","pages":"64"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1995-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.2307/25144214","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"68816287","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Until recently, relatively little has been written about incarcerated females in Canada. Traditionally, criminological theory has evolved through research of male criminal behaviour. Subsequently, when talking about female criminogenic factors, theorists attempted to transfer theory and treatment of male offenders to the female offender population. Prison programming has typically attempted the same extrapolation. In more recent years, both feminist criminologists and others involved with female offenders have highlighted the need to rethink our understanding of the antecedents of female criminality and acknowledge the ways in which female offenders differ from their male counterparts. Recent literature has pointed to the social circumstances of women (such as violence against women, institutionalized sexist practices and poverty) as influential in bringing some women into conflict with the law. This research has been invaluable in informing a more accurate understanding of the unique circumstances of female offenders. However, given the practice of examining a woman's external environment as a significant factor in female criminal behaviour, many theorists have neglected the psychological and emotional factors that influence the lives of women who commit crimes. Similarly, over the past decade and a half, feminist writers and mental health professionals have produced much research on women's psychology. Rarely, though, does this research incorporate the lives of female offenders. Evelyn K. Sommer's book, Voices from Within: Women Who have Broken the Law, brings the two together. Using the work of feminist psychologists at The Stone Center, Sommers interprets interviews of females through a specifically women-centred lens. Sommers interviewed 14 women, most of whom differ in race, age, criminal offence and family history. The discussion of these interviews are informative and innovative as Sommer's approach to the interview analysis is one that begins with the "woman's understanding of what happened to them." In part, Sommer writes, this approach emerged from her work as a counsellor in a women's prison, where she came to see the shortcomings of theoretical explanations of female criminal behaviour. Sommers interprets the content of the interviews against the backdrop of a psychological theory of woman's development, called the "relational theory," developed by feminist psychologists at The Stone Center. A central tenet of this theory is that, contrary to traditional theories of personality development which emphasize individuation and separation as the goal of psychological maturity, for many women "mutually empowering relationships, or relationships that are mutually growth-fostering, are both the medium through which development occurs and the goal of development." Overall, Sommers found that the women she interviewed were denied "mutually empowering relationships" as children and thus did not develop a sense of their own effectiveness or powe
直到最近，关于加拿大被监禁的女性的报道相对较少。传统上，犯罪学理论是通过研究男性犯罪行为而发展起来的。随后，在讨论女性犯罪因素时，理论家们试图将男性罪犯的理论和治疗方法转移到女性罪犯群体中。监狱节目通常也会尝试同样的推断。近年来，女权主义犯罪学家和其他与女性罪犯有关的人都强调，有必要重新思考我们对女性犯罪前因的理解，并承认女性罪犯与男性罪犯的不同之处。最近的文献指出，妇女的社会环境(如对妇女的暴力行为、制度化的性别歧视做法和贫穷)对使一些妇女与法律发生冲突有影响。这项研究对于更准确地了解女性罪犯的特殊情况具有不可估量的价值。然而，鉴于将女性的外部环境作为女性犯罪行为的一个重要因素进行研究的做法，许多理论家忽视了影响犯罪妇女生活的心理和情感因素。同样，在过去15年里，女权主义作家和心理健康专家对女性心理进行了大量研究。然而，这项研究很少将女性罪犯的生活纳入其中。伊芙琳·k·索默的书《内心的声音:违反法律的女性》将两者结合在一起。利用石头中心女权主义心理学家的工作，Sommers通过一个特别以女性为中心的镜头来解释对女性的采访。索默斯采访了14名女性，其中大多数人在种族、年龄、犯罪史和家族史上都有所不同。对这些访谈的讨论内容丰富，具有创新性，因为Sommer对访谈分析的方法是从“女性对发生在她们身上的事情的理解”开始的。Sommer写道，这种方法在一定程度上源于她在女子监狱担任顾问的工作，在那里她看到了对女性犯罪行为的理论解释的缺陷。索默斯对采访内容的解释是基于一种女性发展的心理学理论，即“关系理论”，由斯通中心(the Stone Center)的女权主义心理学家提出。这一理论的核心原则是，与强调个性化和分离是心理成熟目标的传统人格发展理论相反，对许多女性来说，“相互授权的关系，或相互促进成长的关系，既是发展发生的媒介，也是发展的目标。”总的来说，索默斯发现，她采访的女性在儿童时期被剥夺了“相互赋权的关系”，因此没有形成自己在世界上的有效性或权力感。因此，在这项研究中，女性对自己的行为做出决定，根植于试图感受到对自己生活的某种能动性以及与他人的联系。一个最突出的例子是Sommers对吸毒妇女的分析。这一类妇女在很小的时候就开始吸毒，试图摆脱因家庭虐待或忽视而产生的孤立、痛苦和自我憎恨的感觉。…
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Inventing AIDS by Cindy Patton is a tight comprehensive book, that for me, sparked many questions, yet helped me work through many complex notions surrounding the AIDS epidemic. Generally, Patton interrogates how the liberal and scientific discourses of AIDS in social services, education, and research continue to produce further discrimination against gay men, women and people of colour. Specifically, Patton's inquiry focusses on the earlier history of the AIDS epidemic (1980-1988), and offers a complex analysis of a racist/sexist/classist/anti-gay construction of AIDS that has been reproduced and manufactured through these various discourses. Patton examines the interrelationship between systems of discrimination and scrutinizes the dominant role of the West in the construction of AIDS. She challenges essentialist identity-based theories, and points to the necessity of uncoupling identities from practice in order to make safer sex practices and coalition building relevant across communities.The AIDS service industry is organized largely on the basis of identity and community: those with multiple identifications and communities are often fragmented in this system. Attempts to bridge the various services have been unsuccessful. Coalitions of AIDS services have become sites of struggle and resistance, emphasizing divisions among already disenfranchised groups. Patton notes that while the concept of "community" has political potency in the US, it is not reflective of the shifting categories lived by individuals. Also, the investment in community only reinforces the notion that identity rather than practice proliferates the AIDS virus, an idea that is strongly contested by AIDS activists.According to Patton, the AIDS service industry did not take up in their struggle how differences in the social realm produce differences in relation to AIDS, thus marginalizing the experiences of those who are already outside the constructed norm of AIDS. These exclusions became exaggerated when grassroots AIDS activism turned to public funding and formalized the AIDS service industry. For example, the singular focussed AIDS service industry was successful in acquiring private funds that allowed for a higher quality of care, while community health organizations, such as those serving the diverse needs of African-Americans, struggled for financial survival. AIDS services continueto be organized on the basis of these existing inequities and disadvantages within communities, and fail to break down these barriers.Patton outlines the change from grassroots organizing where the roles of activists and people living with AIDS are fluid, to a professionalized industry that uses rigid categories to differentiate between "experts," "victims," and "volunteers." These categories inscribe particular roles that rarely correspond with the lived multiple experiences of the epidemic. In the new AIDS industry, provision of care for people with AIDS replicates the inequities that exist
{"title":"Changing Subjects: The Making of Feminist Literary Criticism // Review","authors":"Gayle Greene, Coppélia Kahn","doi":"10.2307/464255","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/464255","url":null,"abstract":"Inventing AIDS by Cindy Patton is a tight comprehensive book, that for me, sparked many questions, yet helped me work through many complex notions surrounding the AIDS epidemic. Generally, Patton interrogates how the liberal and scientific discourses of AIDS in social services, education, and research continue to produce further discrimination against gay men, women and people of colour. Specifically, Patton's inquiry focusses on the earlier history of the AIDS epidemic (1980-1988), and offers a complex analysis of a racist/sexist/classist/anti-gay construction of AIDS that has been reproduced and manufactured through these various discourses. Patton examines the interrelationship between systems of discrimination and scrutinizes the dominant role of the West in the construction of AIDS. She challenges essentialist identity-based theories, and points to the necessity of uncoupling identities from practice in order to make safer sex practices and coalition building relevant across communities.The AIDS service industry is organized largely on the basis of identity and community: those with multiple identifications and communities are often fragmented in this system. Attempts to bridge the various services have been unsuccessful. Coalitions of AIDS services have become sites of struggle and resistance, emphasizing divisions among already disenfranchised groups. Patton notes that while the concept of \"community\" has political potency in the US, it is not reflective of the shifting categories lived by individuals. Also, the investment in community only reinforces the notion that identity rather than practice proliferates the AIDS virus, an idea that is strongly contested by AIDS activists.According to Patton, the AIDS service industry did not take up in their struggle how differences in the social realm produce differences in relation to AIDS, thus marginalizing the experiences of those who are already outside the constructed norm of AIDS. These exclusions became exaggerated when grassroots AIDS activism turned to public funding and formalized the AIDS service industry. For example, the singular focussed AIDS service industry was successful in acquiring private funds that allowed for a higher quality of care, while community health organizations, such as those serving the diverse needs of African-Americans, struggled for financial survival. AIDS services continueto be organized on the basis of these existing inequities and disadvantages within communities, and fail to break down these barriers.Patton outlines the change from grassroots organizing where the roles of activists and people living with AIDS are fluid, to a professionalized industry that uses rigid categories to differentiate between \"experts,\" \"victims,\" and \"volunteers.\" These categories inscribe particular roles that rarely correspond with the lived multiple experiences of the epidemic. In the new AIDS industry, provision of care for people with AIDS replicates the inequities that exist ","PeriodicalId":82477,"journal":{"name":"Resources for feminist research : RFR = Documentation sur la recherche feministe : DRF","volume":"6 1","pages":"54"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1994-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.2307/464255","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"69149279","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Apart from introductory and concluding chapters by editor Pamela Sparr, this book contains seven country case studies: two from Asia (Sri Lanka and the Philippines), two from subSaharan Africa (Ghana and Nigeria), two from the Middle East (Turkey and Egypt) and one from the Caribbean (Jamaica). All were written by women who grew up in the country they write about and many include original field work? The purpose of these studies is to show how structural adjustment programs (SAPs) imposed by the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund in some five dozen countries has affected women's lives. With the usual holistic approach of women researchers, the studies deal both with the economic activity of women (in the formal market, in the informal market and within the household) and with women, and their children, as consumers of market goods, homegrown produce and public services. Sparr notes three goals of structural adjustment: 1) getting "prices right" which means eliminating price controls and subsidies and often making imports much cheaper to the detriment of local industries producing for the domestic market; 2) minimizing government involvement which implies privatization of government-owned companies, cutbacks in public services, and deregulation in areas such as labour standards but also in areas such as agricultural marketing boards; and 3) creating an "open" economy which generally means developing export-oriented industries and abandoning those seeking to compete with imports; this, in turn, generally requires significant devaluation of the country's currency and therefore a major decline in real wages and living standards. Given the level of development of these countries and therefore the kind of economic activities available to women, four themes dominate the case studies: women in agriculture (whether for home production, local markets or, more rarely, export markets); women in manufacturing, including traditional handicraft or cottage industries, producing for local entrepreneurs or in the free-trade zones dominated by multinational corporations; women entrepreneurs, which generally means small-scale commercial ventures or "higglering" (a term used in both Nigeria and Jamaica, although not with exactly the same meaning); and women, many with professional training, in the public service. One of the important lessons of this book is that "women" are an extremely diverse group and that the impact of structural adjustment policies, or any kind of policy for that matter, differs not only from one country to another, but also between urban and rural women, between social classes, between age groups, and even between the kind of crop produced or the product manufactured. Examples taken from the texts are, therefore, intended to illustrate the richness of the analysis and not to provide generalizations. In agriculture, one of the main thrusts of SAP is to remove subsidies from food crops for local consumption and to promote export produc
{"title":"Mortgaging women's lives : feminist critiques of structural adjustment","authors":"P. Sparr","doi":"10.5860/choice.32-5190","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.32-5190","url":null,"abstract":"Apart from introductory and concluding chapters by editor Pamela Sparr, this book contains seven country case studies: two from Asia (Sri Lanka and the Philippines), two from subSaharan Africa (Ghana and Nigeria), two from the Middle East (Turkey and Egypt) and one from the Caribbean (Jamaica). All were written by women who grew up in the country they write about and many include original field work? The purpose of these studies is to show how structural adjustment programs (SAPs) imposed by the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund in some five dozen countries has affected women's lives. With the usual holistic approach of women researchers, the studies deal both with the economic activity of women (in the formal market, in the informal market and within the household) and with women, and their children, as consumers of market goods, homegrown produce and public services. Sparr notes three goals of structural adjustment: 1) getting \"prices right\" which means eliminating price controls and subsidies and often making imports much cheaper to the detriment of local industries producing for the domestic market; 2) minimizing government involvement which implies privatization of government-owned companies, cutbacks in public services, and deregulation in areas such as labour standards but also in areas such as agricultural marketing boards; and 3) creating an \"open\" economy which generally means developing export-oriented industries and abandoning those seeking to compete with imports; this, in turn, generally requires significant devaluation of the country's currency and therefore a major decline in real wages and living standards. Given the level of development of these countries and therefore the kind of economic activities available to women, four themes dominate the case studies: women in agriculture (whether for home production, local markets or, more rarely, export markets); women in manufacturing, including traditional handicraft or cottage industries, producing for local entrepreneurs or in the free-trade zones dominated by multinational corporations; women entrepreneurs, which generally means small-scale commercial ventures or \"higglering\" (a term used in both Nigeria and Jamaica, although not with exactly the same meaning); and women, many with professional training, in the public service. One of the important lessons of this book is that \"women\" are an extremely diverse group and that the impact of structural adjustment policies, or any kind of policy for that matter, differs not only from one country to another, but also between urban and rural women, between social classes, between age groups, and even between the kind of crop produced or the product manufactured. Examples taken from the texts are, therefore, intended to illustrate the richness of the analysis and not to provide generalizations. In agriculture, one of the main thrusts of SAP is to remove subsidies from food crops for local consumption and to promote export produc","PeriodicalId":82477,"journal":{"name":"Resources for feminist research : RFR = Documentation sur la recherche feministe : DRF","volume":"73 1","pages":"58"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1994-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71048446","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Earth Follies: Coming to Feminist Terms with the Global Environmental CrisisJoni Seager New York: Routledge, 1993; 332 pp.Reviewed by Heather Eaton Toronto School of Theology University of Toronto Toronto, OntarioGiven the severity and complexity of our environmental problems, we can't afford to sit in the dark" - thus concludes Earth Follies by Joni Seager, a superb introduction to a feminist perspective of the ecological crises. In general terms, Seager presents broad - based research on the enmeshed relations between gender, politics, power and ecological issues, giving specific examples followed by illuminating feminist analyses. The book covers much ground, is informative, well - researched, accessible to the newcomer, informal in style, at times hilariously funny and at others desperately sad. Earth Follies is an effective and significant offering to the discourse.Seager is not interested in further statistics of environmental horrors, or generic phrases such as "we are destroying the earth." The notable "we," so prevalent in the eco - establishment literature, obscures agency - i.e., global institutional structures such as the militaries, multinationals and governments, who in reciprocal collusion are responsible for the majority of the severe ecological problems facing human health and survival. This is the claim Seager makes, and with case studies and extensive endnotes, she corroborates her claim. Seager takes her reader through story after eco - disastrous story (many are familiar: the Gulf war, Goose Bay, Exxon Valdez, Bhopal, rainforest destruction), narrating the events through feminist eyes, critiquing the players and their roles in the decision - making processes and power relations, and exposes the silent victims of these "incidents." The point Seager makes throughout, and documents fully, is that these stories are not freak occurrences, but rather business as usual for the global institutions, all of which are exceedingly patriarchal, racist and misogynist.What is unique about this book, in comparison with the many other "eco" publications, is the mixture of environmental thought with illustrations of the complex machinations and politics of the realities of ecological destruction. While Seager indicates that the ecological predicament has origins in the crisis of the dominant cultural ideology, and weaves an ideological evaluation into the many examples, her method and conviction is that "feminist analysis of environmental problems need to be rooted in analyses of the social, cultural and political institutions that are responsible for environmental distress."Seager presents her case well. Readers who neither believe that there is an ecological crisis, nor that it is inextricably related to the very actions, attitudes and powers of the military, multinationals and governments, will be shocked to discover that there are countless examples of environmental disasters perpetrated, with apparent forethought by corporate decision - m
{"title":"Earth Follies: Coming to Feminist Terms with the Global Environmental Crisis // Review","authors":"J. Seager","doi":"10.2307/3685108","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/3685108","url":null,"abstract":"Earth Follies: Coming to Feminist Terms with the Global Environmental CrisisJoni Seager New York: Routledge, 1993; 332 pp.Reviewed by Heather Eaton Toronto School of Theology University of Toronto Toronto, OntarioGiven the severity and complexity of our environmental problems, we can't afford to sit in the dark\" - thus concludes Earth Follies by Joni Seager, a superb introduction to a feminist perspective of the ecological crises. In general terms, Seager presents broad - based research on the enmeshed relations between gender, politics, power and ecological issues, giving specific examples followed by illuminating feminist analyses. The book covers much ground, is informative, well - researched, accessible to the newcomer, informal in style, at times hilariously funny and at others desperately sad. Earth Follies is an effective and significant offering to the discourse.Seager is not interested in further statistics of environmental horrors, or generic phrases such as \"we are destroying the earth.\" The notable \"we,\" so prevalent in the eco - establishment literature, obscures agency - i.e., global institutional structures such as the militaries, multinationals and governments, who in reciprocal collusion are responsible for the majority of the severe ecological problems facing human health and survival. This is the claim Seager makes, and with case studies and extensive endnotes, she corroborates her claim. Seager takes her reader through story after eco - disastrous story (many are familiar: the Gulf war, Goose Bay, Exxon Valdez, Bhopal, rainforest destruction), narrating the events through feminist eyes, critiquing the players and their roles in the decision - making processes and power relations, and exposes the silent victims of these \"incidents.\" The point Seager makes throughout, and documents fully, is that these stories are not freak occurrences, but rather business as usual for the global institutions, all of which are exceedingly patriarchal, racist and misogynist.What is unique about this book, in comparison with the many other \"eco\" publications, is the mixture of environmental thought with illustrations of the complex machinations and politics of the realities of ecological destruction. While Seager indicates that the ecological predicament has origins in the crisis of the dominant cultural ideology, and weaves an ideological evaluation into the many examples, her method and conviction is that \"feminist analysis of environmental problems need to be rooted in analyses of the social, cultural and political institutions that are responsible for environmental distress.\"Seager presents her case well. Readers who neither believe that there is an ecological crisis, nor that it is inextricably related to the very actions, attitudes and powers of the military, multinationals and governments, will be shocked to discover that there are countless examples of environmental disasters perpetrated, with apparent forethought by corporate decision - m","PeriodicalId":82477,"journal":{"name":"Resources for feminist research : RFR = Documentation sur la recherche feministe : DRF","volume":"24 1","pages":"50"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1993-04-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.2307/3685108","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"69073617","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Reviewed by Marian Bredin Graduate Program in Communications McGill University Montreal, QuebecMargery Wolf's contribution to recent debates in feminist anthropology and postm odern ethnography is provocative and imaginative, if somewhat limited in scope. The " tale - thrice" told is an account of her field work in the village of Peihotien in Taiwan in 19 60. She presents her readers with three separate textual renderings of the events surrounding the unusual behaviour of a young mother, the debate among the villagers about the meaning of the woman's actions and their ultimate refusal to accept Mrs. Tan in the role of tang - ki o r shaman. Providing readers with a fictional account of these events, with the verbatim fi eld notes from the period and with a related essay published in American Ethnologist thirty yea rs later, Wolf interweaves these texts with her own commentaries on the nature of ethnographic authority and responsibility in relation to other postmodern and feminist positions.In the commentaries, Wolf makes two key criticisms of the postmodern trend in ethnography and of the largely male - dominated wave of "experimental" ethnographic texts. First, she suggests that the conjunctures of power and knowledge and the discursive strateg ies of authority that the postmodernists have so recently discovered in the ethnographic canon, h ave long been the target of feminist critiques in anthropology and other disciplines. Once th ese discoveries are described in postmodern terms they are given much greater credibility and presti ge than is usually granted to comparable feminist work, of which the postmodernists remain largely ignorant. Secondly, she finds the experimental ethnographic mode flawed in the extent to which it further mystifies the production of ethnographies. Despite the stated purpos e of multiplying points of view and introducing other voices, Wolf argues that the resulting "exp erimental" text, with its refusal of realist tropes, is comprehensible only to an initiated few. Feminists who "speak" postmodernism can translate in either direction, but the experimental wo rk itself is inaccessible to the majority of readers, whether feminist or anthropologist.Part of Wolf's stated project in A Thrice - Told Tale is to resist some of the self - reflexive, even self - indulgent, excesses of the postmodern trend in ethnography. She set s out to demystify the processes of ethnographic production, in keeping with a feminist t radition of denaturalizing or de - centring the powerful discursive regimes of patriarchy. Presenting her audience with three different texts and three different forms of ethnographic vo ice and authority, she uses the commentaries to expose her own position within each of the texts, a nd her relation to her informants and her intended audience. In this respect she is employing w hat Janice Boddy has referred to as a "redescriptive tactic,"(f.1) in which the feminist anthropo logist takes up a critical position outsi
{"title":"A Thrice-Told Tale: Feminism, Postmodernism & Ethnographic Responsibility // Review","authors":"M. Wolf","doi":"10.2307/3340742","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/3340742","url":null,"abstract":"Reviewed by Marian Bredin Graduate Program in Communications McGill University Montreal, QuebecMargery Wolf's contribution to recent debates in feminist anthropology and postm odern ethnography is provocative and imaginative, if somewhat limited in scope. The \" tale - thrice\" told is an account of her field work in the village of Peihotien in Taiwan in 19 60. She presents her readers with three separate textual renderings of the events surrounding the unusual behaviour of a young mother, the debate among the villagers about the meaning of the woman's actions and their ultimate refusal to accept Mrs. Tan in the role of tang - ki o r shaman. Providing readers with a fictional account of these events, with the verbatim fi eld notes from the period and with a related essay published in American Ethnologist thirty yea rs later, Wolf interweaves these texts with her own commentaries on the nature of ethnographic authority and responsibility in relation to other postmodern and feminist positions.In the commentaries, Wolf makes two key criticisms of the postmodern trend in ethnography and of the largely male - dominated wave of \"experimental\" ethnographic texts. First, she suggests that the conjunctures of power and knowledge and the discursive strateg ies of authority that the postmodernists have so recently discovered in the ethnographic canon, h ave long been the target of feminist critiques in anthropology and other disciplines. Once th ese discoveries are described in postmodern terms they are given much greater credibility and presti ge than is usually granted to comparable feminist work, of which the postmodernists remain largely ignorant. Secondly, she finds the experimental ethnographic mode flawed in the extent to which it further mystifies the production of ethnographies. Despite the stated purpos e of multiplying points of view and introducing other voices, Wolf argues that the resulting \"exp erimental\" text, with its refusal of realist tropes, is comprehensible only to an initiated few. Feminists who \"speak\" postmodernism can translate in either direction, but the experimental wo rk itself is inaccessible to the majority of readers, whether feminist or anthropologist.Part of Wolf's stated project in A Thrice - Told Tale is to resist some of the self - reflexive, even self - indulgent, excesses of the postmodern trend in ethnography. She set s out to demystify the processes of ethnographic production, in keeping with a feminist t radition of denaturalizing or de - centring the powerful discursive regimes of patriarchy. Presenting her audience with three different texts and three different forms of ethnographic vo ice and authority, she uses the commentaries to expose her own position within each of the texts, a nd her relation to her informants and her intended audience. In this respect she is employing w hat Janice Boddy has referred to as a \"redescriptive tactic,\"(f.1) in which the feminist anthropo logist takes up a critical position outsi","PeriodicalId":82477,"journal":{"name":"Resources for feminist research : RFR = Documentation sur la recherche feministe : DRF","volume":"38 1","pages":"37"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1993-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.2307/3340742","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"69362830","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Women Challenging Unions is a collection of original papers that presents a vision of an invigorated and vibrant labour movement, one that would actively seek the full participation of women and other traditionally excluded groups, and that would willingly incorporate a feminist agenda. This vision challenges union complicity in the gendered segmentation of the labour market; union support for traditionalist ideologies about women's work, breadwinners, and male-headed families; union resistance to broader-based bargaining; and the marginalization of women inside unions. All of the authors share a commitment to workplace militancy and a more democratic union movement, to women's resistance to the devaluation of their work, to their agency in the change-making process. The interconnected web of militancy, democracy, and feminism provides the grounds on which unions can address the challenges of equity and economic restructuring, and on which the re-visioning of the labour movement can take place. The first of the four sections includes case studies of union militancy that highlight the experiences of individual women in three areas of female-dominated work: nursing, banking, and retailing. The second and third sections focus on the two key arenas of struggle where unions and feminism meet: inside unions, where women activists and staff confront the sexism of unions, and in the labour market, where women challenge their employers and their own unions. The fourth section deconstructs the conceptual tools of the discipline of industrial relations and examines its contribution to the continued invisibility of gender.
{"title":"Women challenging unions : feminism, democracy, and militancy","authors":"Linda Briskin, Patricia McDermott","doi":"10.3138/9781442683563","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3138/9781442683563","url":null,"abstract":"Women Challenging Unions is a collection of original papers that presents a vision of an invigorated and vibrant labour movement, one that would actively seek the full participation of women and other traditionally excluded groups, and that would willingly incorporate a feminist agenda. This vision challenges union complicity in the gendered segmentation of the labour market; union support for traditionalist ideologies about women's work, breadwinners, and male-headed families; union resistance to broader-based bargaining; and the marginalization of women inside unions. All of the authors share a commitment to workplace militancy and a more democratic union movement, to women's resistance to the devaluation of their work, to their agency in the change-making process. The interconnected web of militancy, democracy, and feminism provides the grounds on which unions can address the challenges of equity and economic restructuring, and on which the re-visioning of the labour movement can take place. The first of the four sections includes case studies of union militancy that highlight the experiences of individual women in three areas of female-dominated work: nursing, banking, and retailing. The second and third sections focus on the two key arenas of struggle where unions and feminism meet: inside unions, where women activists and staff confront the sexism of unions, and in the labour market, where women challenge their employers and their own unions. The fourth section deconstructs the conceptual tools of the discipline of industrial relations and examines its contribution to the continued invisibility of gender.","PeriodicalId":82477,"journal":{"name":"Resources for feminist research : RFR = Documentation sur la recherche feministe : DRF","volume":"25 1","pages":"54"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1993-01-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"69601659","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Seven Indian women are witness to a lifetime of change, and as grandmothers they share their experiences. Ko@hkominawak Ota@cimowiniwa@wa, Our Grandmothers' Lives as told in their Own Words, edited and translated by Freda Ahenakew and H.C. Wolfart, is a collaboration of family and friends. This book is a valuable teaching guide for those studying their language or gaining insight into the diversity of Indian women's lives.Ahenakew introduces seven fluent Cree speakers, whose autobiographies intersect two eras: Life in the Bush, and Reserve Life. In reading the text there are times it felt as though one were seated in the presence of the narrator. The difference in dialect and experience illustrates the distinct qualities of these women, accentuating their individuality. The reader is greeted in the preface by pictures of eight smiling grandmothers, including the author. The identity of the speaker is usually denoted by lineage or where they were raised; brief background sketches establish the relationship between Ahenakew and each woman as long-time friend and/or family.Concerning her treatment of the spoken performances she has been collecting since 1986, Ahenakew states: "I try to write exactly what you are saying. Even when you say "ah" I will write that down too..." (p. 303). Thus the book captures the unedited, unpolished conversation, ensuring accurate representation of the women's contributions. The audio tapes collected were first transcribed into roman orthography and then translated into English, accompanied by Cree syllabics. Corresponding numbers in the transcribed texts provide quick and easy cross-reference between Cree and English. The advantage of presenting three written forms is that they act as a guide for learning Cree phonology. The book offers the possibility of learning one Cree word at a time and the context in which the word is used.The honesty displayed by these women encourages an aspiring Aboriginal writer such as myself to continue to seek out our truths and givens. Each woman openly shares personal experiences, ranging from the spiritual to the gathering of food. Seldom has a book made me laugh and cry all within the same moment. This book acclaims the intricate social patterns and value systems in which these women conducted their lives. Highlighted are their roles within the division of labour and household chores contrasting their ability to be self-sufficient within their means and environment. Elderly Indian women's lives have rarely been documented from their own perspective or received a just and accurate portrayal. Unfortunately, their voice was marginalized in print and often capitalized on by many non-native writers who professed to speak for the grandmothers.(f.2) Freda Ahenakew gives seven of those grandmothers an opportunity to share their experiences, to tell it in their own words, as the title of the book suggests.The ingenuity displayed by these women is phenomenal. Their reminiscences offer the reade
{"title":"Our Grandmothers' Lives as Told in Their Own Words","authors":"L. Whidden, Freda Ahenakew, H. C. Wolfart","doi":"10.2307/1185550","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/1185550","url":null,"abstract":"Seven Indian women are witness to a lifetime of change, and as grandmothers they share their experiences. Ko@hkominawak Ota@cimowiniwa@wa, Our Grandmothers' Lives as told in their Own Words, edited and translated by Freda Ahenakew and H.C. Wolfart, is a collaboration of family and friends. This book is a valuable teaching guide for those studying their language or gaining insight into the diversity of Indian women's lives.Ahenakew introduces seven fluent Cree speakers, whose autobiographies intersect two eras: Life in the Bush, and Reserve Life. In reading the text there are times it felt as though one were seated in the presence of the narrator. The difference in dialect and experience illustrates the distinct qualities of these women, accentuating their individuality. The reader is greeted in the preface by pictures of eight smiling grandmothers, including the author. The identity of the speaker is usually denoted by lineage or where they were raised; brief background sketches establish the relationship between Ahenakew and each woman as long-time friend and/or family.Concerning her treatment of the spoken performances she has been collecting since 1986, Ahenakew states: \"I try to write exactly what you are saying. Even when you say \"ah\" I will write that down too...\" (p. 303). Thus the book captures the unedited, unpolished conversation, ensuring accurate representation of the women's contributions. The audio tapes collected were first transcribed into roman orthography and then translated into English, accompanied by Cree syllabics. Corresponding numbers in the transcribed texts provide quick and easy cross-reference between Cree and English. The advantage of presenting three written forms is that they act as a guide for learning Cree phonology. The book offers the possibility of learning one Cree word at a time and the context in which the word is used.The honesty displayed by these women encourages an aspiring Aboriginal writer such as myself to continue to seek out our truths and givens. Each woman openly shares personal experiences, ranging from the spiritual to the gathering of food. Seldom has a book made me laugh and cry all within the same moment. This book acclaims the intricate social patterns and value systems in which these women conducted their lives. Highlighted are their roles within the division of labour and household chores contrasting their ability to be self-sufficient within their means and environment. Elderly Indian women's lives have rarely been documented from their own perspective or received a just and accurate portrayal. Unfortunately, their voice was marginalized in print and often capitalized on by many non-native writers who professed to speak for the grandmothers.(f.2) Freda Ahenakew gives seven of those grandmothers an opportunity to share their experiences, to tell it in their own words, as the title of the book suggests.The ingenuity displayed by these women is phenomenal. Their reminiscences offer the reade","PeriodicalId":82477,"journal":{"name":"Resources for feminist research : RFR = Documentation sur la recherche feministe : DRF","volume":"43 1","pages":"284"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1993-01-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.2307/1185550","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"68489744","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The original subject of Full Circles--the geography of women's life courses--makes this text a welcome addition to the growing (and exciting) sub-discipline of Feminist Geography. Geographers need to explore the diversity of women's experiences at all points from infant to the elderly. Feminists will be intrigued by Full Circles: on a theoretical level, the underlying tension throughout the book between essentialist and deconstructionist approaches to analyzing women is a tension also reflected in current debates in feminist theory.In the first chapter, the editors explore women's life courses in both "First World" and "Third World" countries. Some basic demographic statistics are presented as a starting point--such as access to schooling, infant mortality, the nature of women's work, women's access to contraception and abortion, the distribution of older women, and so on. As Janice Monk and Cindi Katz comment:Many of the strategies for confronting these enduring forms [of male control] are local and vary widely from place to place, as the chapters of this book attest, but analytically they represent women's engagements with similar social relations and political-economic structures. Though the strategies vary geographically, historically, by class, cohort, nationality or ethnic group or at the personal level, the different chapters reveal ways in which they are part of a single process."Unfortunately, the readers are left to speculate on the nature of this "single process."Similarly, in another passage, the editors comment on,the diversity in women's experiences across space, time, class and culture...[and] some of the structural similarities on which they pivot. Theorizing across these geographical settings may enable us to identify and examine some of the underlying processes within and against which women construct their lives" (p. 4).Unfortunately, these "structural similarities" and "underlying processes" which all women supposedly experience are never clearly defined. But Full Circles never claims to be a theory text--all of the middle chapters are empirically-based. To play devil's advocate, one could argue that the editors' structuralist conceptualization of theory as space-independent is anti-geographic.Further, the editors discuss how mid-1980s western feminist scholarship focussed on "the intersection of gender with other forms of difference, especially race, ethnicity, and class." By conceptualizing these static, clearly-defined categories as "difference" rather than fluid, discontinuous boundaries, this analysis again falls squarely into the modernist camp of dichotomies.In sharp contrast to the introduction, the following 12 chapters offer an implicit challenge to this essentialist and structuralist analysis of "Women." The essays written by Canadian, British, French and American feminist geographic scholars are tight, empirically-based analyses of particular groups of women in localized places, and make no reference to an all-enco
{"title":"Full Circles: Geographies of Women over the Life Course // Review","authors":"J. Monk, C. Katz","doi":"10.2307/144361","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/144361","url":null,"abstract":"The original subject of Full Circles--the geography of women's life courses--makes this text a welcome addition to the growing (and exciting) sub-discipline of Feminist Geography. Geographers need to explore the diversity of women's experiences at all points from infant to the elderly. Feminists will be intrigued by Full Circles: on a theoretical level, the underlying tension throughout the book between essentialist and deconstructionist approaches to analyzing women is a tension also reflected in current debates in feminist theory.In the first chapter, the editors explore women's life courses in both \"First World\" and \"Third World\" countries. Some basic demographic statistics are presented as a starting point--such as access to schooling, infant mortality, the nature of women's work, women's access to contraception and abortion, the distribution of older women, and so on. As Janice Monk and Cindi Katz comment:Many of the strategies for confronting these enduring forms [of male control] are local and vary widely from place to place, as the chapters of this book attest, but analytically they represent women's engagements with similar social relations and political-economic structures. Though the strategies vary geographically, historically, by class, cohort, nationality or ethnic group or at the personal level, the different chapters reveal ways in which they are part of a single process.\"Unfortunately, the readers are left to speculate on the nature of this \"single process.\"Similarly, in another passage, the editors comment on,the diversity in women's experiences across space, time, class and culture...[and] some of the structural similarities on which they pivot. Theorizing across these geographical settings may enable us to identify and examine some of the underlying processes within and against which women construct their lives\" (p. 4).Unfortunately, these \"structural similarities\" and \"underlying processes\" which all women supposedly experience are never clearly defined. But Full Circles never claims to be a theory text--all of the middle chapters are empirically-based. To play devil's advocate, one could argue that the editors' structuralist conceptualization of theory as space-independent is anti-geographic.Further, the editors discuss how mid-1980s western feminist scholarship focussed on \"the intersection of gender with other forms of difference, especially race, ethnicity, and class.\" By conceptualizing these static, clearly-defined categories as \"difference\" rather than fluid, discontinuous boundaries, this analysis again falls squarely into the modernist camp of dichotomies.In sharp contrast to the introduction, the following 12 chapters offer an implicit challenge to this essentialist and structuralist analysis of \"Women.\" The essays written by Canadian, British, French and American feminist geographic scholars are tight, empirically-based analyses of particular groups of women in localized places, and make no reference to an all-enco","PeriodicalId":82477,"journal":{"name":"Resources for feminist research : RFR = Documentation sur la recherche feministe : DRF","volume":"23 1","pages":"47"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1993-01-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.2307/144361","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"68287133","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Stories of pregnant women's experiences vis-a-vis coercive state practices are almost always shocking examples of gender oppression. The stories in Daniels' book are no exception. Forced medical treatment, workplace exclusion policies, and imprisonment for drug trafficking via the umbilical cord are the usual ways that claims of fetal protectionism have excluded pregnant women from participating in public life with equal rights of citizenship. Cynthia Daniels is a political scientist teaching in the United States whose work deals with so-called "fetal rights" cases in her own country. The book under review begins with a discussion of significant social, medical and legal developments that have altered the socio-political status of the fetus. Daniels' work illustrates how the use of the law to protect the fetus from behaviour of pregnant women deemed harmful and/or criminal is made all the more effective through appeals to a particular ideology of proper motherhood.The conception of the fetus both in law and medicine as a rights bearing individual is further aided by biomedical imaging and sampling technologies used in the governance of pregnancy which effectively establishes the individuality of a fetus as a free-floating entity separate from the pregnant body, According to Daniels, these changes have radically transformed the popular cultural understanding of the fetus in ways that compromise women's autonomy. In particular, Daniels argues that the anti-abortion movement capitalized on these technological developments, seizing the opportunity to wage an effective media war against women's reproductive rights and freedom. Using visual imagery of a fetus to promote their moral agenda, the movement's advocates effectively transformed the fetus into the tiniest, most innocent citizen in dire need of protection from the selfish desires of pregnant women who seek abortions and/or behave in ways that put the fetus -- and by extension, society -- at risk of harm. Rather than viewing pregnant women's and fetal interests as unitary, these cultural narratives reinforce a false perception of fetal personhood.Daniels' book deals with three important cases that address the main issues at stake when agents of the state begin to assert rights claims on behalf of the fetus: the case of Angela Carder, forced to undergo a cesarean section that killed both her and her fetus within days of the operation; Johnson Controls' fetal protection policy which required that women submit to sterilization procedures or prove infertility before being allowed to work in their manufacturing plant; and finally the case of Jennifer Johnson, charged with "delivering" cocaine to her twin fetuses via the umbilical cord. All three cases are illustrative of the emergence of an era of "fetal dominance," and Daniels critically evaluates them in terms of their impact on women's differential claims to the liberal rights of citizenship and self-sovereignty.While in each case reviewed by Dani
{"title":"At women's expense : state power and the politics of fetal rights","authors":"Cynthia R. Daniels","doi":"10.5860/choice.31-2943","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.31-2943","url":null,"abstract":"Stories of pregnant women's experiences vis-a-vis coercive state practices are almost always shocking examples of gender oppression. The stories in Daniels' book are no exception. Forced medical treatment, workplace exclusion policies, and imprisonment for drug trafficking via the umbilical cord are the usual ways that claims of fetal protectionism have excluded pregnant women from participating in public life with equal rights of citizenship. Cynthia Daniels is a political scientist teaching in the United States whose work deals with so-called \"fetal rights\" cases in her own country. The book under review begins with a discussion of significant social, medical and legal developments that have altered the socio-political status of the fetus. Daniels' work illustrates how the use of the law to protect the fetus from behaviour of pregnant women deemed harmful and/or criminal is made all the more effective through appeals to a particular ideology of proper motherhood.The conception of the fetus both in law and medicine as a rights bearing individual is further aided by biomedical imaging and sampling technologies used in the governance of pregnancy which effectively establishes the individuality of a fetus as a free-floating entity separate from the pregnant body, According to Daniels, these changes have radically transformed the popular cultural understanding of the fetus in ways that compromise women's autonomy. In particular, Daniels argues that the anti-abortion movement capitalized on these technological developments, seizing the opportunity to wage an effective media war against women's reproductive rights and freedom. Using visual imagery of a fetus to promote their moral agenda, the movement's advocates effectively transformed the fetus into the tiniest, most innocent citizen in dire need of protection from the selfish desires of pregnant women who seek abortions and/or behave in ways that put the fetus -- and by extension, society -- at risk of harm. Rather than viewing pregnant women's and fetal interests as unitary, these cultural narratives reinforce a false perception of fetal personhood.Daniels' book deals with three important cases that address the main issues at stake when agents of the state begin to assert rights claims on behalf of the fetus: the case of Angela Carder, forced to undergo a cesarean section that killed both her and her fetus within days of the operation; Johnson Controls' fetal protection policy which required that women submit to sterilization procedures or prove infertility before being allowed to work in their manufacturing plant; and finally the case of Jennifer Johnson, charged with \"delivering\" cocaine to her twin fetuses via the umbilical cord. All three cases are illustrative of the emergence of an era of \"fetal dominance,\" and Daniels critically evaluates them in terms of their impact on women's differential claims to the liberal rights of citizenship and self-sovereignty.While in each case reviewed by Dani","PeriodicalId":82477,"journal":{"name":"Resources for feminist research : RFR = Documentation sur la recherche feministe : DRF","volume":"26 1","pages":"247"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1993-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71044908","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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