Drawing on long-neglected travel writings by British women in India, this study looks at different aspects that women focus on as opposed to men, particularly in their encounters with Indian women in the zenana. Located at the cross-roads of feminist theory and colonial discourse theory, the book examines the power relations inscribed into the traveller's gaze.
"Considered as a whole, this collection offers a basis for generalisations and specialised inquiry that will support both teaching and further research on the role of women in world history."—Itinerario "The book deserves credit for stimulating such questions, which have broad appeal among scholars of colonialism, including those who do not work on gender. Its broad coverage and accessible language give it access to a wider audience than many academic anthologies, thereby advancing the interests of all those who value the study of colonial history."—Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History Women and the Colonial Gaze is the first collection to present a broad chronological and geographical examination of the ways in which images and stereotypes of women have been used to define relationships between colonial powers and subject peoples. In essays ranging from ancient Rome to twentieth-century Asia and Africa, the contributions suggest that the use of gender as a tool in the imperialist context is much older and more comprehensive than previously suggested. Contributors look particularly at the ways in which colonizers constructed a national identity by creating a contrast with the colonial "other," in contexts ranging from Christian views of Islam women in medieval Spain to French beliefs about Native American women. They also examine the ways in which images of gender as constructed by colonial powers impacted the lives of native women from colonial-era India to Korea to Swaziland. Comparative in its approach, the volume will appeal to students and historians of women's studies, colonialism, and the development of national identity.
In the colonial context of South Asia, there is a glaring asymmetry in the written records of the interaction between the Bengali women and their European counterparts, which is indicative of the larger and the overall asymmetry of discursive power, including the flow and access to information between the colonizers and their subjects. This book explores the idea of gazing through literature in Colonial India. Based on literary and historical analysis, it focuses on four different genres of literary writing where nineteenth-century Bengali women writers look back at the British colonizers. In the process, the European culture becomes a static point of reference, and the chapters in the book show the ideological, social, cultural, political, and deeper, emotional interactions between the colonized and the colonizer. The book also addresses the lack of sufficient primary sources authored by Bengali women on their European counterparts by anthologizing different available genres. Taking into account literary narratives from the colonized and the less represented side of the divide, such as a travelogue, fantasy fiction, missionary text and journal articles, the book represents the varying opinions and perspectives vis-à-vis the European women. Using an interdisciplinary approach charting the fields of Indology, colonial studies, sociology, literature/literary historiography, South-Asian feminism, and cultural studies, this book makes an important contribution to the field of South Asian Studies, studies of empire, and to Indian women’s literary history.
This volume's contributors explore the links among sexuality, ethnography, race, and colonial rule through an examination of ethnopornography—the eroticized observation of the Other for supposedly scientific or academic purposes. With topics that span the sixteenth century to the present in Latin America, the United States, Australia, the Middle East, and West Africa, the contributors show how ethnopornography is fundamental to the creation of race and colonialism as well as archival and ethnographic knowledge. Among other topics, they analyze eighteenth-century European travelogues, photography and the sexualization of African and African American women, representations of sodomy throughout the Ottoman empire, racialized representations in a Brazilian gay pornographic magazine, colonial desire in the 2007 pornographic film Gaytanamo, the relationship between sexual desire and ethnographic fieldwork in Africa and Australia, and Franciscan friars' voyeuristic accounts of indigenous people's “sinful” activities. Outlining how in the ethnopornographic encounter the reader or viewer imagines direct contact with the Other from a distance, the contributors trace ethnopornography's role in creating racial categories and its grounding in the relationship between colonialism and the erotic gaze. In so doing, they theorize ethnography as a form of pornography that is both motivated by the desire to render knowable the Other and invested with institutional power. Contributors. Joseph A. Boone, Pernille Ipsen, Sidra Lawrence, Beatrix McBride, Mireille Miller-Young, Bryan Pitts, Helen Pringle, Pete Sigal, Zeb Tortorici, Neil L. Whitehead
The International Encyclopedia of Anthropology is the most complete reference resource for the field of anthropology and interrelated areas, providing an authoritative and expert overview of the concepts, research, and techniques that together define the discipline. Under the guidance of Editor-in-Chief Hilary Callan - former director of the Royal Anthropological Institute (2000-2010) - and fourteen internationally-respected voices acting as Associate Editors, the Encyclopedia features contributions from a team of over 800 international scholars making this a work of unparalleled depth and breadth of knowledge. Over 1,000 entries, ranging from concise summaries to longer writings, present the reader with in-depth discussions of hundreds of key topics, including: ecology, human evolution, gender, health, language and education, kinship, politics, and power, as well as biographical entries of many of the world’s most influential founding anthropologists. Organized alphabetically and written for both the specialist and the general reader, the Encyclopedia is a landmark reference resource for students and scholars engaged within the broad and dynamic field of anthropology, and those studying and working within the related disciplines of psychology, medicine, religious studies, and sociology. This work is also available as an online resource at www.encyclopediaofanthropology.com.
Imperial Leather chronicles the dangerous liaisons between gender, race and class that shaped British imperialism and its bloody dismantling. Spanning the century between Victorian Britain and the current struggle for power in South Africa, the book takes up the complex relationships between race and sexuality, fetishism and money, gender and violence, domesticity and the imperial market, and the gendering of nationalism within the zones of imperial and anti-imperial power.
In Islam and Gender in Colonial Northeast Africa, Silvia Bruzzi provides an account of Islamic movements and gender dynamics in the context of colonial rule in Northeast Africa. The thread that runs through the book is the life and times of Sittī ‘Alawiyya al-Mīrġanī (1892-1940), a representative of a well-established transnational Sufi order in the Red Sea region. Silvia Bruzzi gives us not only a social history of the colonial encounter in the Eritrean colony, but also a wider historical account of supra-regional dynamics across the Red Sea, the Ethiopian hinterland, and the Mediterranean region, using a wide range of fragmentary historical materials to make an important contribution towards filling the gap that currently exists in women's and gender history in Muslim societies.
"A gem to be consulted by all students of anthropology, history, ethnomusicology, and colonial studies." Hyung Il Pal, author of Constructing "Korean" Origins: A Critical Review of Archaeology, Historiography, and Racial Myth in Korean State Formation Theories --
