Feminist Principles Research Articles

Advancing the Study of Nonreligion through Feminist Methods

In the United States, nonreligious people face stigma, prejudice, and discrimination because they are viewed as immoral and distrustful. This is partly because of othering, by which nonreligious people are subjugated to a minority status. Othering also occurs in academic research and writing. Applying feminist principles can improve research about nonreligious populations. Grounded in results of a US-based online study, we recommend two feminist principles to facilitate the study of nonreligion: (1) rejecting othering of minority groups, and (2) intersectionality. As a result of applying these principles, the nuanced differences between nonreligious groups can be better understood and the complex identities of nonreligious people can be more accurately represented. Researchers benefit from increased accuracy and understanding of nonreligion via better informed theoretical and methodological decisions and nonreligious people benefit from their more accurate representation in academic research.

Feminist Reflections on Childhood: A History and Call to Action by Penny A. Weiss

Reviewed by: Feminist Reflections on Childhood: A History and Call to Action by Penny A. Weiss Anna Mae Duane Feminist Reflections on Childhood: A History and Call to Action. By Penny A. Weiss. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2021. 310 pp. $110.50 cloth/$34.95 paper and e-book. Penny A. Weiss's new book Feminist Reflections on Childhood: A History and Call to Action is an ambitious text that pulls from thinkers including John Stuart Mill, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Sarah Ahmed, and the author's own friends and family. Weiss cites women writers ranging from novelists to celebrated academics to argue that we need to apply feminist principles to the work of raising, educating and generally engaging children. Her argument leans heavily on feminist traditions that emphasize voice and agency. Extrapolating from feminist critiques of patriarchal exclusion, Weiss argues that children, like women, deserve the capacity to speak up at school and at home and to have their voices respected. Weiss intersperses her scholarly engagement with everyone from Mary Shelley to Paul Bloom with glimpses into her own life, including her childhood, her own work with young people, and her experiences as a mother of three [End Page 117] children. The anonymous interludes that capture conversations with parents and caretakers in Weiss's life provide a sense of conversation between the scholarly world and the everyday concerns of children and caretakers in the twenty-first century. In departing from what might be deemed traditional scholarly writing practices, this text harkens back to some of the modalities of twentieth-century feminism, particularly the investment in agency, voice, and, most strikingly, the argument that "the personal is political." This sense of personal exploration continues throughout the text, as Weiss refers to her own reactions to the texts she reads, letting the reader into her own thinking process. Perhaps the text might best be characterized as a scholarly memoir, tracing Weiss's eclectic reading practices and offering her ruminations on how feminist principles might be applied to childhood. Such eclecticism and warmth offer the sense of an intellectual buffet, with the author inviting us to sample thinkers ranging from Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Emma Goldman to Octavia Butler. The chapters are brief, often moving quickly from one thinker to another, from one discipline to another, and from one century to another. This breadth, however, comes at the expense of deep engagement with both the current conversations taking place in feminist scholarship and, even more strikingly, the rich and vibrant field of childhood studies scholarship, which is largely absent from Weiss's work. For much of the book Weiss paints feminism—and antifeminism—with a broad brush; for example, she begins by suggesting that the general public views feminists as people guilty of "hating men, being lesbians, and equating heterosexual sex with rape" (20). No doubt one could find such reductive and stereotypical portrayals of feminism in the public sphere, but they do not represent approaches to feminism within the academic circles that constitute the audiences for monographs published by university presses. Weiss laments, "Many people, women included, think that feminists hate children because they 'enslave' you" (21). Having established such binary opposition, Weiss seeks to redeem feminism from such criticism by illustrating a long history in which feminist writers do in fact evince care for children and child rearing. By setting up an opposition between "feminists" and misogynistic "nonfeminists," Weiss eludes the complications of twenty-first-century feminism itself, a complex and sometimes contradictory intellectual movement, with internal criticism emerging over questions of trans identity, racial equity, and political advocacy. In short, there is no one voice of feminist thought, as many of the most salient critiques of feminism come from within the movement itself. Throughout the text, feminist approaches to childhood are represented primarily by female authors across a wide range of chronology [End Page 118] and ideology, even when those authors do not explicitly engage childhood as a separate identity category. Weiss deploys another binary contrast between feminist and nonfeminist approaches to studying children in the first chapter by pairing as its epigraphs strikingly similar quotations from the twenty-first-century psychologist Paul Bloom and the nineteenth-century fiction writer...

Dereliction, Due Process, and Decorum: The Crises of Title IX

Title IX is a crucial, and controversial, piece of federal legislation in the United States. Its purpose was to end sex discrimination, that dereliction from ideals of justice, in education. This essay is a history of Title IX from its beginning to today. It shows the necessity of Title IX, how sexual harassment came under the purview of Title IX, how legal interpretations of Title IX changed, and how different presidents administered it. Two thousand sixteen, when Donald Trump was elected president, is a key year. The Trump administration was more indifferent to trans people and more deferential to people accused of discrimination and harassment. This history shows that people opposed to discrimination, like feminists, cannot rely on the law alone. Too often the law is unstable. We need a new code of ethics, rooted in feminist principles, the “New Decorum.”

Ciudad Constituyente: The dispute for the right to habitat beyond the constitutional moment in Chile

In October 2019, Chilean social revolts deployed and conquered a popular ‘constituent power’ that shook the ‘constituted power’ and the institutional structures that sustain it: those that have always been in power, the same old ways of doing things, the status quo that never changes, and those structures and processes that have harmed our society so much and for so long. In other words, the social reproduction that has been co-opted by the market, and a deliberately unequal and unrepresentative political-economic system. The constitutional moment that Chile is experiencing invites us to reflect upon and mobilise what made us recognise ourselves in the revolts of 2019. It is a moment that opens up new doors to redefine life in the territories. During this political moment, new platforms such as Ciudad Constituyente –a collaborative space for organisations of the people of Chile linked to habitat– have been created: a network organised upon democratic, anti-neoliberal, environmental and feminist principles. A collaborative space that seeks to move towards human dignity in neighbourhoods, cities and territories, with a focus on human, social and environmental rights at the centre of the constitutional debate.

A Design Challenge for Transforming Justice

Transforming Justice is a collaborative project that aims to challenge the dominant narratives of policing and segregation in Milwaukee through community workshops, visual arts and storytelling, and experimental mapping. This Practices and Curations contribution describes one of the project’s collaborations, a design challenge, that aimed to create and imagine new ways of visualizing (in)justice and place in Milwaukee. Engaging feminist principles of supporting multiple perspectives, the curation comprises visuals and narratives from four of the groups that participated, using their own voices and emotional tenor to describe their design processes. Working toward abolitionist design, we conclude with reflections on (1) embracing pluralism and enabling multiple design processes, (2) centering authorship and ownership, (3) exposing and contesting dominant narratives, (4) exploring dynamic and relational visual representations, and (5) incorporating tangible materials for inclusive design.

Gender and Sustainability in Ecological Intentional Communities

ABSTRACT Some environmentalists connect their activism to feminism, arguing that mitigating climate change will require transforming gender hierarchies. In this study, I consider two ecological intentional communities that attempt to meld their feminist and environmental ideals in practice. Drawing on participant observation and in-depth interviews conducted at Twin Oaks Intentional Community and Navdanya Bioconservation Farm, I examine how each group implements feminist principles and how members understand the connection between gender equality and environmental sustainability. I find that despite their different gender arrangements, both communities address the unpaid care work of women in modeling visions of environmental sustainability, suggesting an important lesson for wider society.

Translating the Female Body: Margaret Tyler's Mirror of Princely Deeds and Knighthood

Abstract Margaret Tyler's Mirror of Princely Deeds and Knighthood, an English translation of the Spanish romance by Diego Ortúñez de Calahorra, has most often been studied for its preface, which defends the right of women to translate. But does the translation itself share the feminist principles espoused in the preface, and if so, how? This article analyzes the presentation of the female body in Tyler's text, paying particular attention to her addition of medical symptoms and diagnoses to the translation. It argues that Tyler's translation presents interpretation and diagnosis of the female body as a form of control, while also proposing the medical condition of lovesickness as a means for women to regain agency over their bodies.

(Invited) Social Justice & Global Electrification: Diversifying & Distributing Power Through Antiracist Feminist Leadership on Climate and Energy

Trained in environmental science and engineering, I have been working on climate and energy for over 25 years. My professional experiences as a woman in this technical field have taught me that the inadequacy of our efforts to respond to the climate crisis -- our inability to end fossil fuel reliance and transition to a renewable-based society -- is not due to a lack of technological innovation or scientific expertise. Rather, our ineffectiveness results from a lack of investment and attention to social innovation and social justice. To fix that, we need an inclusive and integrative approach to climate and energy policy.Rather than continue to perpetuate the inadequate, narrow, exclusive, male-dominated technocratic approach that I call “climate isolationism,” it is time for a new kind of leadership that embraces antiracist and feminist principles and prioritizes transformation toward an equitable and just future that strives for inclusive prosperity for all.At this critical time of interconnected crises of health, climate, housing, growing economic inequities, racial disparities, and structural racism, I believe we will not be effective until social justice, racial justice, and economic justice are at the core of all climate and energy policies. This realization led me to write my new book – Diversifying Power: Why We Need Antiracist, Feminist Leadership on Climate and Energy (Island Press, 2020) A New Kind of Leadership Despite our nation’s ideals of freedom and equality, the political culture in the United States continues to embrace patriarchal leadership (based on domination, exclusion and control) and reinforce white supremacy (systemic and historical privileges for white Americans). This means that wealth and power is concentrated among white Americans, mostly men. The culture of science and scientists is part of this exclusive culture, and those advocating for technocratic climate and energy policies are all-too-often white men. Until power is redistributed, and until we have more diverse leadership on climate and energy, we can expect to continue the legacy of narrow, ineffective climate policies.When women, people of color and indigenous leaders join leadership spaces where they have been historically excluded, they bring different life experiences, different priorities, different perceptions of risk and a different capacity to center social justice. Research on risk perceptions shows that white American men see all kinds of threats — from climate change to automobile accidents to cancer — as less risky than non-white American men and women. Diversifying leadership is essential to effectively balance risk perceptions and center social justice in our policies. Distributing Power to the People As the world electrifies, we need to pay more attention to social justice and seize the opportunity to redistribute power back to people. Antiracist, feminist leadership is focused on resisting and restructuring so that power is distributed rather than concentrated. This kind of leadership requires constant resistance to practices, processes and policies that perpetuate economic inequities and racial disparities. We need leaders who acknowledge who currently has power, and who understand the priorities of those who want to concentrate their own wealth and power. Importantly, we need leaders who understand who has been -- and continues to be -- excluded from positions of power.As the power and influence of the polluter elite continues to grow even during the pandemic, we need more leaders, including scientific leaders, who can stand up for structural and transformative change. We need scientists to recognize the constraints of “climate isolationism” and expand their advocacy to integrate all the opportunities for advancing social justice while transforming to a renewable-based society. I am optimistic for this shift in leadership, mostly because of the power of youth – I have two daughters who are 20 and 21. Through them I see both the passionate concern about the future, and also their deeper understanding of the problematic power dynamics and the interconnectedness of the world’s biggest problems. Young leaders, including those involved in Sunrise and the Movement for Black Lives, offer us all inspiration and hope.

“It ain’t a compliment”: Feminist data visualisation and digital street harassment advocacy

In an era of datafication, data visualisation is playing an increasing role in civic meaning-making processes. However, the conventions of data visualisation have been criticised for their reductiveness and rhetoric of neutrality and there have been recent efforts to develop feminist principles for designing data visualisations that are compatible with feminist epistemologies. In this article, we aim to examine how data visualisation is used in feminist activism and by feminist activists. Drawing on the example of digital street harassment activism, we analyse how street harassment is visualised in and through a selection of prominent activist social media accounts. We consider the platform affordances utilised by activists, and how these are harnessed in making street harassment ‘knowable'. Moreover, we critically interrogate which and whose experiences are ‘knowable’ via digital techniques, and what remains obscured and silenced. In analysing digital feminist activists’ practices, we argue that what constitutes ‘data visualisation’ itself must be situated within feminist epistemologies and praxis that centre lived experience as the starting point for knowledge production. Such an approach challenges and disrupts normative constructions of what constitutes data visualisation. Our findings demonstrate how feminist activists are adopting ‘traditional’ practices of speaking out and consciousness-raising to the digital sphere in the creation of a range of visualisations that represent the issue of street harassment. We consider the efficacy of these visualisations for achieving their intended purpose and how they might translate to policy and government responses, if this is indeed their goal. Further, we document a tension between feminist epistemologies and the prevailing logic of datafication or dataism and note how in an attempt to unite the two, some digital feminist activism has contributed to reproducing existing power structures, raising concerning implications at the policy level.

New tools, new house: building a black feminist social (justice) media platform

ABSTRACT Danielle “StrugglingToBeHeard” Cole is a Black nonbinary femme who was launched from the relative safety of their Tumblr famous social justice online community into infamy via a viral video reposted to the notoriously unjust, WorldStarHipHop gossip blog. In this excerpt from my book, Misogynoir Transformed: Black Women’s Digital Resistance (NYU Press May 2021), I asked Cole about her vision for a social media platform built on Black feminist principles. What would it look and feel like when #BlackLivesMatter was a central tenet of the platform, with queer, trans, nonbinary, agender and gender variant Black folks to the front?

Susanne Langer, Marshall McLuhan and media ecology: Feminist principles in humanist projects

In current scholarship, Susanne Langer and her theories of art, perception and connectivity are less well known than McLuhan’s. Comparison brings to the fore that both were concerned with the dulling effects of heavy-handed science and technology unregulated by human hand and heart, and both understood the expressive and liberatory possibilities of language as media and metaphor. By reading ‘diffractively’ – finding new connections and honouring patterns over polemics – this article brings Langer back into the scholarly conversation and reinvigorates our understanding of McLuhan. Langer did not consider her thought as principled by feminism. Yet according to recent critical biographer Adrienne Dengerink Chaplin, her work was rooted in feminist ontology for espousing principles of relationality and embodiment. My article argues that McLuhan, too, eschewed dichotomies and linearities of traditional thought for the principle of relationality. Extending this claim further, my article also submits that media ecology – with its emphasis on interconnectivities, on feeling and thinking, on non-linearity – has features in common with feminist thinking.

Feminist revolution: a fight for recognition, redistribution and a more just world

ABSTRACT The contribution of feminism, as a critique of social inequalities and as a complex way to challenge neoliberalism and patriarchy, has been crucial in Chile – especially in the last few years. Various events have been particularly relevant: the plight of those seeking free, safe abortion; the feminist revolution of May 2018; and the performance by ‘Las Tesis’, as well as the expressions of other feminist organisations during the Chilean revolt in October 2019 (18-O). These events have been part of a key step in Chile: the process of changing Pinochet's Constitution. This process of change will have a commission with gender parity: for the first time in the world, the Constitution will be written equally by men and women. How feminist principles are incorporated in the new Magna Carta will be very important. By ‘feminist principles’ we mean, among other things, the recognition of different identities and rights – such as reproductive rights or reproductive work – that have remained historically hidden, and this denial has contributed to deepened inequalities. We will analyse this process using feminist perspectives and tools such as redistribution, which defends and favours a more just distribution of resources and wealth; recognition of different groups; and intersectionality, incorporating interconnected systems of discrimination and oppression. Another contribution in this revolutionary process is, following Butler, the invitation to consider vulnerability, not as a purely passive position that yields the site of agency to different forms of paternalism, but rather as the condition of possibility of resistance.

Exploring gendered change: concepts and trends in gender equality assessments

More than a quarter century after the Beijing Platform for Action solidified the importance of gender equality in international development, it is timely to review the conceptual approaches used to assess the gendered impacts of interventions. This paper presents a systematic review of recent investigations of gender equality from development-related academic literature (2009–2019) using two analytical approaches. First, we visualise trends based on bibliographic, methodological, contextual and conceptual aspects (n = 150). Second, we explore the theoretical approaches used to conceptualise gendered change through co-citation analysis (n = 61). Our trend analysis shows a breadth of relevant disciplinary perspectives but limited geographic and content foci. Additionally, very few studies explore gender equality dynamics that involve men and boys. Our exploration of theoretical foundations identifies four conceptualisations of gendered change, each reflecting the divergent disciplines, actors and interests that operate in the gender and development space. These conceptualisations each rely on and expand the concept of empowerment. By critically reflecting on feminist principles, future studies can transcend narrower empowerment framings and contribute more meaningfully to the aim of gender transformative development. Supplemental data for this article is available online at https://doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2021.1911636 .

Applying feminist principles to social work teaching: Pandemic times and beyond.

It took a global pandemic for me to recognize how my social work teaching was an act of feminist praxis. I have long identified as a feminist and regularly engage efforts to advance equity for women, primarily centered on the abolition of prisons which disproportionately incarcerate Indigenous and Black women in Canada. Surprisingly, I have never considered how my feminism shows up in my teaching. The following reflexive essay explores the ways in which the feminist principles of centring emotions, rejecting patriarchal hierarchy, and challenging white feminism were embedded into the development and delivery of a graduate level social work research course that was rapidly adapted to being taught online during a global public health crisis. It ends with a call to action for social work educators to incorporate feminist principles into their pedagogies, not only in times of crisis, but as standard practice.

“They Did Not Pay Attention or Want to Listen When We Spoke”: Women’s Experiences in a Trafficking-Specific Shelter in Cambodia

Human trafficking is a global challenge that violates fundamental human rights. While the risk factors and health impacts of human trafficking have been well documented, the potential for survivors’ resilience is far less understood. In Southeast Asia, the majority of trafficking-specific services have historically been concentrated in shelters, and yet evidenced-based protocols for shelter services are lacking. This study aligns with the growing literature that emphasizes the importance of feminist and trauma-informed services to support the long-term well-being of survivors of human trafficking. Drawing on qualitative data collected over a 6-year period, the analysis foregrounds the lived experiences and perspectives of 10 women who resided in the same trafficking-specific shelter. Six core themes emerged: being labeled as a victim of human trafficking despite contesting this classification, feeling forced to live in the shelter, a strong desire to leave the shelter environment, disempowering engagement with staff, lack of professionalism among staff, and limitations in vocational services. Collectively, these participant narratives reflect a marked divergence from feminist principles and illustrate the potential for recreating conditions that curtail women’s agency and cause harm within the shelter system. We conclude with a discussion of the implications for a feminist approach to shelter-based service delivery and practice.

Breaking the logic of neoliberal victimhood: Vulnerability, interdependence and memory inCaptain Marvel(Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, 2019)

The contemporary visibility of women’s accomplishments and popular outcry in the face of injustice and/or violence might suggest that women have achieved their aim of putting long-fought feminist principles in the spotlight and have finally earned equality. However, let us not forget that, in the face of violence, the hegemonic matrix of intelligibility has also historically defined women victims by their ‘injurability’, so, intrinsically vulnerable, thus justifying the need of the system to assist them. It is not surprising, then, that, as a response to vulnerability, empowerment is celebrated. In this context, one would think that a blockbuster, such as Captain Marvel (2019), would reproduce the hegemonic economy of recognition where the subjects of violence are either treated as devoid of agency or offered empowerment through a neoliberal individualizing logic. However, the controversy that the film and its female protagonist raised (for adopting explicit feminist language to challenge patriarchy), along with the outcry of white angry men (symptomatized in male film critics) and the Internet nerd-culture (members of which considered themselves aggrieved by the film), provide a fruitful ground to look into the communicative logic of victimhood. Captain Marvel can help us to explore not only the chiaroscuros and phallacy of the victim versus empowered subject script but also the implicit logic that obscures the divisions that this logic perpetuates. In this respect, we are interested in analyzing how the movie stages:1. The assignation and construction of female vulnerability in a hegemonic shared cultural narrative that privileges the construction of the empowered subject obscuring the politics of emotions;2. The possibilities of empowerment before such a narrative and in relation to reclaiming historical and personal memories;3. The sharing of the condition of vulnerability across gender and geographical boundaries and its relation with the criminalization of other vulnerable others such as aliens.

Renewal and Reconstruction in Hannah Ryggen’s Transcultural Tapestries

The tapestries of Hannah Ryggen (1894–1970) offer perhaps one of the most striking bodies of politically charged textile art of the twentieth century. In her work, Ryggen combines a modernist visual language with folk art traditions and contemporaneous images of war and corruptions; she uses the traditional craft of weaving to create a radical response to the chaos and violence of modernity. This article analyses the ways that, in the creation of her formally disruptive tapestries, Ryggen pioneers a modern, avant-grade feminist art practice that challenges society’s capitalist, patriarchal and imperialist frameworks. It will consider tapestries created across her four-decade long career, exploring the development from the anti-fascist pieces she created in the 1930s and 1940s, including Ethiopia and October 6, 1942, to later work in which she imagines a transformation of the world based on her communist and feminist principles. The article argues that, through her use of both natural materials and an ethical approach that is as equally attentive to the nonhuman as to the human, Ryggen’s artwork weaves together the domestic and the political, the local and the global, and nature and culture. Yet despite highlighting the man-made horrors of modern society, Ryggen’s methods and materials offer the hope of renewal and reconstruction through a feminist, ecologically grounded engagement with the world and one another.

Centering Intersectional Feminism Online: Equality Archive as Digital Humanities Praxis

Centering Intersectional Feminism Online: Equality Archive as Digital Humanities Praxis Lindsay Garcia (bio) Equality Archive, www.equalityarchive.com (accessed January 15, 2021). Click, tag, read, like, share, comment, perform a diatribe, read, share, call in/out racism and misogyny in culture and politics, add photo, hide, untag, delete—these are the quotidian actions of the new generation of feminist and social justice–oriented web users, many of whom find their ways into American studies courses at colleges and universities across the country. A few years ago, the majority of young people got their news from the late-night talk shows.1 Now it happens in social media feeds.2 While often proffered as a site of equality and democracy, the internet has been an oft-critiqued site of racism and misogyny by feminist American studies scholars, such as Lisa Nakamura, Safiya Umoja Noble, micha cárdenas, and Roopika Risam, who elucidate how internet search engines and digital technologies reinscribe structural violence but also offer opportunities for resistance.3 Hashtag activism, too, has become a primary meeting ground that both connects people who may be isolated geographically into online communities and helps coordinate in-person actions with deeper impacts, such as #BlackLivesMatter, the #MeToo movement, and the many instances of the #WomensMarch.4 Central to digital humanities scholars working within the discipline of American studies (via the ASA Digital Humanities Caucus or in other interconnected and interdisciplinary ways) is developing feminist and critical race scholarship and praxis that connect online sites of resistance to on-the-ground activism, art, protest, and survival tools for vulnerable individuals. Out of this new wave of justice-oriented projects spawns Equality Archive—a collaborative effort built by a collective of feminists—led by Shelly Eversley, assistant professor of English at Baruch College, CUNY, and Lauren Hurson, educational technologist at CUNY’s Graduate Center. This project, a digital encyclopedia of feminist knowledge, is distinctive for how it was built, deploying [End Page 195] feminist principles from the ground up: through the platform’s infrastructure, the collective arrangement of labor, the curation of intersectional and assemblage feminist topics, and the figuring of praxis as central to the role of knowledge presentation. There have been efforts in the digital humanities to decenter whiteness and promote the work of women and gender-nonconforming folks (#TransformDH, #DHPoco, #GODH, #RaceDH); however, there is still more work to be done. Projects such as Equality Archive are necessary to continue building momentum against racism and misogyny online, in the digital humanities, and in artist, activist, and academic spaces more broadly. To get started, type “equalityarchive.com” into a web browser. You will encounter a cleanly designed organization of white background intermingling with images and black text. The logo offers the words EQUALITY ARCHIVE in all capitals, one word on top of the other—the “Q” has been transformed into the symbol used to signify “woman.” An ever-changing banner of photographs of women and nonbinary folks in various states of resistance frames the landing page. Words appear at the upper right of the screen: History, Issues, People, Participate, The Collective. These words, all clickable options, offer one way that entries are organized. Click on “History,” and you will scroll down to find a long list of important moments in feminist history. Some of these are canonical, such as “Roe vs. Wade,” “Equal Rights Amendment,” and “Sojourner Truth.” Others tell less well-known stories, such as “Georgia Gilmore,” the founder of the Club from Nowhere (a collective of black maids, service workers, and cooks who provided amenities to activists working the front lines of the civil rights movement); “Alice Bag: Hollywood Punk Scene,” a central figure in the Latinx punk scene of the late 1970s; or “Wilma Mankiller,” the first female president of the Cherokee Nation. Click on the “#NotYourSidekick” link to find a multimodal account of the elision of Asian American women and girls in mainstream feminist movements. One photograph shows female college-age students addressing the camera with a protest sign reading “We need FEMINISM b/c we’re NOT your mail order brides, the CURE to your YELLOW fever, your fantasy SEX TOYS, or your subservient housewives. We are STRONG, INDEPENDENT...

“Sociologists in White”: Constructing Professional Position in Medical Field

This article presents research reflections on the fieldwork conducted in a medical organization in Russia. We emphasize how our professional positioning in the field was changing as a result of the ethnographic immersion into the empirical work. Addressing the insider/outsider dilemma and testing some of the feminist principles of interactions with research participants, we find that we neither become “insiders” nor remain “outsiders” in the organization we study but obtain a temporary position of svoi (literally, ”ours”) for its “inhabitants.” We focus on the construction of our own positioning in the field, which is accomplished through the participants’ perception of and interactions with us: they identify, examine, (un)dress, and trust (or do not trust) us. We believe that the “making” of the feminist sociologist is accomplished through the process of research reflection and care happening in the field. We use the metaphor “a sociologist in white” (as an allusion to the classic 1960s book Boys in White: Student Culture in Medical School) to denote this particular kind of positioning of the researcher. The article is written in an experimental format: In the first (analytical) part we discuss the basic principles that help to analyze the experience of being a researcher in the medical field. In the second, “operational” part we reconstruct conditions in which the research and our professional positions have become the subject of our reflections as well as the reflections of other participants of the study. In the article we reconstruct conditions and situations of the actual fieldwork and, drawing on our individual experiences, show different interpretations of our professional positions. Article in Russian

“Keeping an Eye Out for Women”: Implicit Feminism, Political Leadership, and Social Change in the Pacific Islands

Much popular and academic analysis of Pacific politics, especially on issues of gender, juxtaposes foreign “Western” norms and institutions with “traditional” beliefs and customs. Despite considerable scholarship debunking these caricatures, they persist and indeed have (re)gained salience in debates about the absence of women in parliamentary politics. In this article, we critique this framing by describing how senior women politicians practice a form of “quiet” or “implicit” feminism. Drawing on in-depth interviews with three senior politicians, Dr Hilda Heine of the Marshall Islands, Deputy Prime Minister Fiame Naomi Mata’afa of Samoa, and Dame Carol Kidu of Papua New Guinea, as well as with other observers and supporters of their careers, we illustrate how these women position themselves as pragmatists-as neither the champions of liberal feminist principles that some local activists and international donors would like nor as conservative as most of their male colleagues. We further show that both their articulation of and their relationship to feminism are remarkably similar to those of other senior women politicians from elsewhere in the world who eschew the label but pursue substantive representation. In making this claim, we aim to reframe understandings of Pacific feminism by shifting the focus away from the Western/non-Western binary and instead toward a distinction between women who seek change from within established parliamentary systems and those who seek to push an agenda from the outside.