This book sheds light on the real experiences of women in different societies, exploring the impact of globalization through the changing nature of the labour of women. A comprehensive survey of women and work is provided by using case studies and empirical data collected from throughout Asia and also includes an analysis of Asian immigrants working in the US. This book is an invaluable resource, accessible to both undergraduate and postgraduate students of women's studies, labour relations, international political economy and Asian studies.
With thirty-two original chapters reflecting cutting edge content throughout developed and developing Asia, Women of Asia: Globalization, Development, and Gender Equity is a comprehensive anthology that contributes significantly to understanding globalization’s transformative process and the resulting detrimental and beneficial consequences for women in the four major geographic regions of Asia—East Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia, and Eurasia/Central Asia—as it gives "voice" to women and provides innovative ways through which salient understudied issues pertaining to Asian women’s situation are brought to the forefront.
Based on fieldwork in ten Asian countries, this book examines cross-national patterns and the impact of globalization, state policies, individual autonomy, and social factors on various women's international migration.
What is globalization? How is it gendered? How does it work in Asia and the Pacific? The authors of the sixteen original and innovative essays presented here take fresh stock of globalization’s complexities. They pursue critical feminist inquiry about women, gender, and sexualities and produce original insights into changing life patterns in Asian and Pacific Island societies. Each essay puts the lives and struggles of women at the center of its examination while weaving examples of global circuits in Asian and Pacific societies into a world frame of analysis. The work is generated from within Asian and Pacific spaces, bringing to the fore local voices and claims to knowledge. The geographic emphasis on Asia/Pacific highlights the complexity of globalizing practices among specific people whose dilemmas come alive on these pages. Although the book focuses on global, gendered flows, it expands its investigation to include the media and the arts, intellectual resources, activist agendas, and individual life stories. First-rate ethnographies and interviews reach beyond generalizations and bring Pacific and Asian women and men alive in their struggles against globalization. Globalization cannot be summed up in a neat political agenda but must be actively contested and creatively negotiated. Taking feminist political thinking beyond simple oppositions, the authors ask specific questions about how global practices work, how they come to be, who benefits, and what is at stake. Contributors: Nancie Caraway, Steve Derné, Cynthia Enloe, Kathy Ferguson, Maria Ibarra, Gwyn Kirk, Sally Merry, Virginia Metaxas, Min Dongchao, Monique Mironesco, Rhacel Parrenas, Lucinda Peach, Vivian Price, Jyoti Puri, Judith Raiskin, Nancy Riley, Saskia Sassen, Teresia Teaiwa, Chris Yano, Yau Ching.
Through detailed studies, this collection of writings by academics and activists explores the emergence of contemporary lesbian and butch/femme relationships and communities throughout Asia and their location within the context of nationalist struggles, religious fundamentalism, state gender regimes and global queer movements.
A Thai foodseller on the streets of Bangkok, a cyclo driver in a Vietnamese village, a Pahari migrant laborer in the Himalayas, a Parsi-Christian professional social worker shuttling back and forth between London and Calcutta—Trans-Status Subjects examines how these and other South and Southeast Asians affect and are affected by globalization. While much work has focused on the changes wrought by globalization—describing how people maintain foundations or are permanently destabilized—this collection theorizes the complex ways individuals negotiate their identities and create alliances in the midst of both stability and instability, as what the editors call trans-status subjects. Using gender paradigms, historical time, and geographic space as driving analytic concerns, the essays gathered here consider the various ways South and Southeast Asians both perpetuate and resist various hierarchies despite unequal mobilities within economic, social, cultural, and political contexts. The contributors—including literary and film theorists, geographers, historians, sociologists, and anthropologists—show how the dominant colonial powers prefigured the ideologies of gender and sexuality that neocolonial nation-states have later refigured; investigate economic and artistic production; and explore labor, capital, and social change. The essays cover a range of locales—including Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Thailand, Singapore, Borneo, Indonesia, and the United States. In investigating issues of power, mobility, memory, and solidarity in recent eras of globalization, the contributors—scholars and activists from South Asia, Southeast Asia, England, Australia, Canada, and the United States—illuminate various facets of the new concept of trans-status subjects. Trans-Status Subjects carves out a new area of inquiry at the intersection of feminisim and critical geography, as well as globalization, postcolonial, and cultural studies. Contributors. Anannya Bhattacharjee, Esha Niyogi De, Karen Gaul, Ketu Katrak, Karen Leonard, Philippa Levine, Kathryn McMahon, Andrew McRae, Susan Morgan, Nihal Perera, Sonita Sarker, Jael Silliman, Sylvia Tiwon, Gisele Yasmeen
This book explores changing patterns of domestic violence in Asia. Based on extensive original research in the Maldives, it argues that forces of globalisation, consumerism, Islamism and democratisation are changing the nature of domestic relations, with shifting ideas surrounding gender and Islam being particularly significant. The book points out that domestic violence has been relatively low in the Maldives in comparison with other Asian countries, as a result of, the book argues, a history of relatively equal gender relations, an ideology of masculinity that is associated with calmness and rationality where violence is not considered an acceptable means of dealing with problems, and flexible marriage and divorce practices. The book shows how these factors are being undermined by new ideas which emphasise the need for wifely obedience, increasing gender inequality and the right of husbands to be coercive.
Drawing from field research in Cameroon, Ghana, Vietnam, and the Amazon forests of Brazil, Bolivia, and Peru, this book explores the relationship between gender and land, revealing the workings of global capital and of people's responses to it. A central theme is the people's resistance to global forces, frequently through an insistence on the uniqueness of their livelihoods. For instance, in the Amazon, the focus is on the social movements that have emerged in the context of struggles over land rights concerning the extraction of Brazil nuts and babacu kernels in an increasingly globalised market. In Vietnam, the process of 'de-collectivising' rights to land is examined with a view to understand how gender and other social differences are reworked in a market economy. The book addresses a gap in the literature on land tenure and gender in developing countries. It raises new questions about the process of globalisation, particularly about who the actors are (local people, the state, NGOs, multinational companies) and the shifting relations amongst them. The book also challenges the very concepts of gender, land and globalization.
Unpacking Globalization examines the experiences of people living with the forces that are transforming economic systems, culture, gender relationships and governance. The book offers interdisciplinary analysis of the well-being of women and men as they cope with the changes of globalization. Through theory, case studies, and data, several themes emerge indicating that from the household to the continental level, change is leading to new awareness and new survival strategies for both women and men. The contributors to the volume come from Africa, Asia, Europe, and North and South America. They present analysis of global changes and historical background from diverse perspectives and offer case studies on social security, gender, and macroeconomy. They employ feminist theory as well as detail the experiences of current and future women entrepreneurs. An exciting interdisciplinary text, Unpacking Globalization can supplement women's studies, anthropology, sociology, and economic development courses.
