This book examines how South Asian women’s collective agency is operationalized through civic organizations in the UK. Drawing on black feminist theory and third world feminism, it shows the complexity of political agency and its relationship to identity and subjectivity, and uses empirical research to demonstrate how women are empowered to resist domination. The historically racialized image of the South Asian woman as lacking in political agency is challenged through their long history of activism on the Indian subcontinent. The creation of "critical spaces" by South Asian women in the diaspora places them as active agents who have successfully influenced social policy on important issues such as forced marriage, domestic violence and sexuality. The engagement with the empirical data demonstrates the significance and impact of race, racism, sexism and religion on the lives of the women. The book brings to the fore the pursuit of equality, rights and justice, including multiculturalism and the often debated emancipatory role of religion.
As a field of scholarship, gender and politics has exploded over the last fifty years and is now global, institutionalized, and ever expanding. The Oxford Handbook of Gender and Politics brings to political science an accessible and comprehensive overview of the key contributions of gender scholars to the study of politics and shows how these contributions produce a richer understanding of polities and societies. Like the field it represents, the handbook has a broad understanding of what counts as political and is based on a notion of gender that highlights masculinities as well as femininities, thereby moving feminist debates in politics beyond the focus on women. It engages with some of the key aspects of political science as well as important themes in gender and feminist research (such as sexuality and body politics), thereby forging a dialogue between gender studies in politics and mainstream political science. The handbook is organized in sections that look at sexuality and body politics; political economy; civil society; participation, representation and policymaking; institutions, states and governance as well as nation, citizenship and identity. The Oxford Handbook of Gender and Politics contains and reflects the best scholarship in its field.
Performance and performativity are important terms for a theorization of gender and race/ethnicity as constitutive of identity. This collection reflects the ubiquity, diversity, and (historical) locatedness of ethnicity and gender by presenting contributions by an array of international scholars who focus on the representation of these crucial categories of identity across various media, including literature, film, documentary, and (music) video performance. The first section, "Political Agency," stresses instances where the performance of ethnicity/gender ultimately aims at a liberating effect leading to more autonomy. The second section, "Diasporic Belonging," explores the different kinds of negotiations of ethnic performances in multi-ethnic contexts. The third part, "Performances of Ethnicity and Gender" scrutinizes instances of the combined performance of ethnicity and gender in novels, films, and musical performances. The last section "Cross-Ethnic Traffic" contains a number of contributions that are concerned with attempts at crossing over from "one ethnicity into another" by way of performance.
Winner of the W.J.M. Mackenzie Book Prize 2017 This book provides an account of Muslim women’s political and civic engagement in Britain and France. It examines their interaction with civil society and state institutions to provide an understanding of their development as political actors. The authors argue that Muslim women’s participation is expressed at the intersections of the groups and society to which they belong. In Britain and France, their political attitudes and behaviour are influenced by their national/ethnic origins, religion and specific features of British and French societies. Thus three main spheres of action are identified: the ethnic group, religious group and majority society. Unequal, gendered power relations characterise the interconnection(s) between these spheres of action. Muslim women are positioned within these complex relations and find obstacles and/or facilitators governing their capacity to act politically. The authors suggest that Muslim women’s interest in politics, knowledge of it and participation in both institutional and informal politics is higher than expected. This book will appeal to students and scholars of politics, sociology, gender studies and social anthropology, and will also be of use to policy makers and practitioners in the field of gender and ethno-religious/ethno-cultural policy.
This new volume showcases the latest research into Muslim political participation both in terms of electoral politics and civil society initiatives. Muslims play a prominent role in British political life yet what do we actually know about the involvement of British Muslims beyond the existence of a handful of Muslim MPs? What is unique about political participation in Muslim communities? All the major parties actively seek to court a ‘Muslim electorate’ but does such a phenomenon exist? Despite the impact that Muslims have had on election campaigns and their roles in various political institutions, research on this topic remains scant. Indeed, much of the existing work was couched within the broader areas of the participation of ethnic minorities or the impact of race on electoral politics. The chapters in this volume address this lacuna by highlighting different aspects of Muslim participation in British politics. They investigate voting patterns and election campaigns, civil society and grassroots political movements, the engagement of young people and the participation of Muslims in formal political institutions. Written in an accessible style, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of political participation and religious studies.
Drawing on recent feminist discussions, this collection critically reassesses ideas about agency, exploring the relationship between agency and coercion in greater depth and across a range of disciplinary perspectives and ethical contexts.
Breaking Worlds: Religion, Law and Citizenship in Majoritarian India; The Story of Assam chronicles how prejudicial laws and policies are being utilized with impunity to reconstruct citizenship in Assam in Northeast India. The Government of India's stated objective is to replicate "Assam-like" changes to citizenship across the country. The Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party-led central government's pilot implementation has centered on the state of Assam in Northeast India since 2019, with dire impact on its sizeable Muslim population. Majoritarian nationalists claim that various Muslim communities residing in India are in the country "illegally," and are not Indian. The modalities for safe harbor that apply to other communities exclude Muslims. In particular, Bangla-descent Muslims are fabricated as "foreigners" and "outsiders," are the primary targets. If Bangla-descent Muslims of Assam are not Indians, then who are they? Hindu nationalists claim that various Muslim communities residing in India are in the country "illegally," and are not Indian. Bangla-descent Muslims who fail to meet the government's demands to prove their citizenship are faced with the threat of expulsion, exile, and statelessness.Through applied research and methodical analysis, the report spotlights the illiberal citizenship movement ignited by majoritarian forces focusing on two intersecting chronologies: the exclusionary amendments to the law and the implosive situation on the ground that collectively stands to render swathes of citizens effectively stateless. The report identifies communities that are subject to discriminatory treatment. It chronicles the voices, lives, and torment of numerous targeted individuals, including victimized-survivors who have been declared "foreigners" in Assam, separated from their families and detained, and family members of suicide victims, together with summary analyses of cases before the appellate body. The report brings into focus how the laws and policies reordering Indian citizenship are fortifying legal discrimination based on religion, and the impact on vulnerable communities. The report's emphasis on Assam and Bangla-descent Muslims is prognosticative. The report contends that the "citizenship experiment" signals the advance of inestimable, gendered violence and prospective statelessness that stand to devastate millions of lives.
In the UK the number of people who came from a minority ethnic group grew by 53 per cent between 1991 and 2001, from 3.0 million in 1991 to 4.6 million in 2001. Whilst much has been written about the impact of these demographic changes in relation to policy issues, black and minority women and children remain under-researched. Recent publications have tended to focus on South Asian women, forced marriage and 'honour' related violence. Moving in the Shadows brings together for the first time in a single volume, an examination of violence against women and children within the diverse communities of the UK. Its strength lies in its gendered focus as well as its understanding of the need for an integrated approach to all forms of violence against women, whilst foregrounding the experiences of minority women, the communities they are part of, and the organizations which have advocated for their rights and given them voice. The chapters contained within this volume explore a set of core themes: the forms and contexts of violence minority women experience; the continuum of violence; the role of culture and faith in the control of women and girls; the types of intervention within multi-cultural and social cohesion policies; the impacts of violence on British-born and migrant women and girls; and the intersection of race, class, gender and sexuality highlighting issues of similarity and difference. Taken together, they provide a valuable resource for scholars, students, activists, social workers and policy-makers working in the field.
Critiquing the valorization of democracy as a means of containing violence and stabilizing political contestation, this book draws links between the democratization process and sexual/gendered violence observed against women during electioneering periods in Kenya. The book shows the contradictory relationship between democracy and gendered violence as being largely influenced in the first instance by the capitalist interests vested in the colonial state and its imperative to exploit laboring women; secondly, in the nature of the postcolonial state and politics largely captured by ethnic, bourgeois class interests; and third, influenced by neoliberal political ideology that has remained largely disarticulated from women's structural positions in Kenyan society. It argues that colonial capitalist interests established certain patterns of gender exploitation that extended into the postcolonial period such that the indigenous bourgeoisie took the form of an ethnicized elite. Ethnicity shaped politics and neoliberal political ideology further blocked women’s integration into politics in substantive ways. It concludes that it is not so much the norms and values of liberal democracy that assist in understanding women’s exclusion, but rather the structural dynamics that have shaped women’s experiences of democratic politics. In this way, gender violence in the context of democratization and electoral violence with its gendered manifestation can be fully understood as deeply embedded in the history of the structural dynamics of colonialism, capitalism, and patriarchalism in Kenya.
This breathtakingly broad, interdisciplinary reader demonstrates how widely feminist thinking has spread, how deeply it has shaken settled assumptions in the disciplines and how much new light it throws on contemporary controversies. - Myra Marx Ferree, University of Wisconsin-Madison "A timely intervention and highly engaged, thoughtful and scholarly analysis of the state of gender and women′s studies in the West by three eminent feminist scholars... Highly cognisant of the central issues that have fractured, blocked and enhanced western feminism." - Bev Skeggs, Goldsmiths "The comprehensiveness and the interdisciplinary range of themes are impressive, and they make the Handbook into a wonderful tool for teachers and students of women′s and gender studies." - Nina Lykke, Linkoeping University Gender and women′s studies is one of the most challenging fields within the social sciences - the dynamics of gender relations and the social and cultural implications of gender constructions offer a lively forum of debate. The Handbook of Gender and Women′s Studies presents a comprehensive and engaging review of the most recent developments within the field, including the study of masculinity, the feminist implications of postmodernism, the ′cultural turn′ and globalization. The authors review current research and offer critical analyses of women′s and gender studies in work, the welfare state, family, education, religion, violence and war and feminist global politics. Edited by three leading academics from Europe and the United States, and with 25 chapters written by scholars based throughout the world, the Handbook situates the most important debates in the field within a uniquely international and interdisciplinary context. The Handbook is a useful introduction to gender theory and an exciting starting-point for fresh debates.
