Gender Logic Research Articles

A Biometric Logic of Revelation: Zach Blas’s <em>SANCTUM</em> (2018)

A Biometric Logic of Revelation: Zach Blas’s <em>SANCTUM</em> (2018)

El mito de la cancha neutral: la asignación generizada en las redacciones de la prensa deportiva

El objetivo de este texto es describir la forma en la cual la lógica de género, de la cultura periodística, incide en las posibilidades que tienen las mujeres para ocupar posiciones de mayor jerarquía y reconocimiento en el ejercicio del periodismo deportivo. A través de entrevistas con periodistas se analiza la asignación generizada, entendida como la división sexual del trabajo periodístico, que determina cuáles son los temas y labores propios de las mujeres. Lo anterior dificulta obtener el reconocimiento necesario para publicar una columna y se convierte en una de las barreras invisibles para acceder a puestos de decisión en la estructura de las redacciones.

Tensions between populist and feminist politics: The case of the Spanish left populist party Podemos

This paper analyzes the interplay of left populist and feminist politics through a case study of Podemos (‘we can’), a Spanish left populist party that reproduces a dominant gendered logic of politics despite its feminist interpretation of democratic renewal. I argue that this is the result of fundamental contradictions between the feminist and populist projects of political transformation that coexist in the party. Even if left populism offers a more productive terrain for gender equality than right populism, central tenets of populism disrupt feminist commitments and goals. Chief among these are the oversimplification of the political field based on a limited diagnosis, the exclusionary appeals to the homeland and to a homogenizing collectivity of the people, the dominant masculine and personalistic logics of charismatic leaders, the prioritization of electoral success over other forms of political transformation, and the resulting gendered political culture that marginalizes empowerment, inclusion, and participatory democratic practices.

Gendered Reflections? Extremism in the UK’s Radical Right and al-Muhajiroun Networks

The rise of populism and the radical right alongside ongoing global recruitment by jihadist groups has seen academics and popular discourse alike note parallels between the two. In particular, authors have emphasized gendered similarities between the movements. Based on ‘close-up’ ethnographic research, this article empirically shows how gender produces group members’ activism in two extreme movements: a network linked to the U.K.’s banned Islamist group al-Muhajiroun; and activists for the English Defence League, Britain First and other anti-Islam(ist) groups. Through a gendered analysis, the article problematizes assertions that the two movements mirror one another. In particular, it emphasizes the ways in which gender produces fragmentation across the anti-Islam(ist) movement, contrasted with a more consistent gendered logic in those networked to al-Muhajiroun. Its key contribution is to use ethnographic research to evidence the ways in which group members’ gendered activism ultimately undercuts group ideals.

Canadian imperialism and the politics of microfinance

This article uncovers the political and gendered logics underpinning commercialized microfinance as promoted by the Canadian development sector. Utilizing social reproduction theory, theories of imperialism, and discourse analysis, I posit that, above all else, the primary political logic of microfinance is to financialize the social reproduction of poor women in the Global South. I further posit that the provision of microfinance coheres with Canadian imperialist ambitions, contributing to strategies of capital expansion into communities in the Global South.

Performing femininity: Women at the top (doing and undoing gender)

Abstract Tourism research has primarily treated gender as a male-female dichotomy and has been constrained by a heterosexual matrix for empirical inquires. Such research, however, has failed to acknowledge the fluidity and multiplicity in theorizing gender. To redress this overlook, this study moves away from the conventional binary thinking and views gender as a performativity which is resulted from repetitive social performance. By conducting multiple field observations and interviews with 17 hotel female general managers working in Mainland China and Taiwan, this research presents the ways of doing and undoing gender by tourism female leaders and the extent to which the everlasting gender logic can be questioned.

“You’re still an angry man”: Parole boards and logics of criminalized masculinity

Scholars have theorized “criminalized masculinity” as performances of criminalized men. We refigure the concept to identify narratives that facilitate and legitimize control of criminalized populations. Drawing on 109 California parole hearings, we show how parole commissioners use logics of deserving and dangerous masculinity to assert a boundary between men deemed ready for social reintegration and men relegated to captivity. Commissioners articulate criminalized masculinity along three dimensions: relationship to self; relationship to male peers; and relationship to subordinate others like women and children. These gender logics are materially significant because they justify parole grants and denials. Symbolically, narratives of masculinity legitimize the prison’s work of racialized social exclusion and obscure structural dynamics of punishment under accounts of individual difference.

Meeting myself: race-gender oppression and a genre study of Black men teachers’ interactions with Black boys

ABSTRACTIncreasing the number of Black men teachers and single-sex schooling options have been heralded as necessary to reverse trends in the failure of US education institutions to adequately educate Black boys. Too little research interrogates Black men teachers’ interactions with Black boys for how they might reinforce anti-oppressive conceptions of race, gender and sexuality. A genre study – the multidimensional, intersectional examination of social identity to explain one’s persistent dehumanization – was utilized to investigate how Black men teachers’ interactions with Black boys shape the boys’ understanding of Black manhood and masculinities. Regardless of schooling arrangement, findings suggest Black men teachers must recognize and disavow hegemonic gender logics in interaction efforts aimed at improving Black boys’ lives. Additionally, I argue the potential of Black men teachers’ interactions with Black boys to function as sites for reimagining Black boys’ humanity in ways that counter persistent messages of their inferiority and disposability (i.e. aniblackness).

Power, Privilege, and the (Extrajudicial) Punishment of Rape in Brazil

When suspected rapists are detained in Brazil, they are frequently subject to brutal punishments: sodomy, torture, or summary execution. This article examines the competing logics of gender and justice that intersect in Brazilian prisons as authorities sometimes attempt to protect, and inmates almost always endeavor to punish, men who have been put behind bars in cases involving rape. Drawing on years of fieldwork conducted in multiple courtrooms and prisons in a small state in northeastern Brazil, the article describes the strategies of concealment prison administrators and court officials use—or deliberately fail to use—to shield prisoners from being identified as rapists. At the same time, the essay documents the brutal ways that inmates punish peers who have been revealed as perpetrators of sexual assault. Ultimately, the article argues that power in Brazil’s male prisons, like power in Brazilian society more broadly, cannot be understood without considering who has the authority to define and to punish acts of sexual violence.

(Dis)Owning Exotic: Navigating Race, Intimacy, and Trans Identity

Despite societal shifts making the United States more inclusive, particularly among younger people, transgender people and people of color remain populations that have labels like “exotic” or “taboo” associated with them. This article explores the racialized dating experiences of an immigrant trans woman of color who uses online dating platforms to facilitate her dating life in Texas. Given that the existing literature on trans people tends to focus on identity development, health concerns, or questions of legality and policy in arenas such as the workplace and in education, there is still limited research on the romantic and sexual lives of trans people. In fact, much of the growing research on trans relationships focuses either on couples where one partner transitioned and the couple maintained a relationship or studies lumping trans experiences under an LGBT umbrella. Using an intersectional theoretical approach, this case study unpacks how race, racism, and transphobia, as well as internalized racial and gender logics, work in tandem to shape desirability and date ability.

”In Memory of the Snow Queen” – Hans Christian Andersen Recalled and Retold

Abstract The main focus of the present paper is the so-called “intertextual revision”, explored as one of the most recent and innovative strategies employed while reviving the legacy of the Danish fairy-tale classic Hans Christian Andersen. In order to illustrate this practice, I discuss a short story entitled Travels with the Snow Queen (2001), by an American writer Kelly Link, which is a reworking of Andersen's worldfamous fairy tale The Snow Queen (1844). Link’s take on Andersen’s tale represents one of the leading directions within revisionary fairy-tale fiction, inspired by feminism and gender criticism. The analysis is centered around the narrative strategies employed by the author in order to challenge the gender logic incorporated into Andersen’s account, as well as the broader fairy-tale tradition it belongs to.

The Production of Legitimacy: Race and Gender in Peacebuilding Praxis

Abstract Peace operations have increasingly sought to demonstrate their legitimacy in the face of critiques that characterize them as top-down impositions with limited impact and which entail a host of unintended consequences. Each book under review explores in depth the institutional consignment and attribution of legitimacy to certain spaces, actors, and bodies, which can serve to confirm and embed hierarchical relations of power. Von Billerbeck delineates the ambivalence with which “local ownership” is deployed in peace operations, closing down knowledge exchange rather than presenting opportunity. Shepherd builds on similar insights and argues that gendered logics and power inform the conceptualization and deployment of “local” and “civil society” and thus the (relative) lack of legitimacy afforded to these spaces. This essay seeks to develop from these insights further, drawing especially on postcolonial and critical race theory to demonstrate how race and racism structure the production and use of such categories, in both peace operation practice and international relations more broadly.

Hypervisibility in Australian punk scenes: Queer experiences of spatial logics of gender and sexuality

In this article, I draw on the knowledge and lived experience of queer people – some of whom also identify as trans, gender diverse and/or non-binary – who actively participate in Australian punk scenes. Using socio-geographical research of intersectionality, critical race theory and spatiality I find queer experiences of and in punk highlight a complication to claims of female and queer invisibility, one that takes into account spacial formations. Attending to queer, trans and gender-diverse people’s experiences, hypervisibility presents a conceptual entanglement where genders, bodies and sexualities attract attention from a dominant, patriarchal group, rather than being rendered invisible by it. This hypervisibility appears steeped in unintelligibility where being visible but unknowable presents a range of issues such as standing out not only in physical punk spaces such as gigs, but on digital platforms and in everyday life. As such, this article builds on a feminist thesis of invisibility politics by aiming to elasticize knowledges of gender, resistance and subcultural participation among marginalized groups.

The gender logic and effects of instrument mixes: implementing eldercare policy in Canada

ABSTRACTAlthough policy instruments are often conceptualized as technical or neutral tools through which ideas and outcomes are connected, this article focuses on the discursive dimensions of policy instruments in Canada’s eldercare policy to explore their gendered and gendering logics and effects. Using frame analysis, we examine government acts, public reports and policy documents to uncover how different policy instruments at the federal and subnational levels frame caregiving and the caregiver. In doing so, we identify three distinct and contradictory frames – caregiver as resource, caregiver as worker and caregiver as autonomy – and illuminate their effects for gender equality outcomes. By looking at the implementation of eldercare policies in different provinces and across different government levels, we advance a better understanding of the gendered meanings and effects of instruments mixes.

When Gendered Logics Collide: Going Public and Restructuring in a High-Tech Organization

Gender scholars argued that gendered organizations theory needs updating as organizational logic has shifted amid neoliberal workplace transformations. This qualitative case study of a high-tech firm reveals how features of the traditional work logic remain resilient. I analyze the gendered implications of a high-tech startup restructuring and going public, finding the flexible organization to bureaucratize, implementing specialized jobs and a hierarchy with standardized career ladders. Going public creates conflicting gendered logics that place women at a structural disadvantage, relegating them to low-status, narrow jobs while simultaneously demanding masculine ideal worker norms of visibility and self-promotion. Despite networking, women experience job insecurity and a glass ceiling, while men are assumed ideal workers and advance. By tracing one high-tech firm’s restructuring from a startup to public company, I demonstrate how the collision of new and traditional workplace logics perpetuates gender inequalities.

The making of gendered ‘migrant workers’ in youth activation: The case of young Russian-speakers in Finland

The article focuses on young Russian-speaking migrants’ day-to-day institutional encounters with labour market activation policies in Finland. The analysis contributes to the discussion on labour activation through analysing the workings of gender, migration and racialisation in welfare encounters through ethnographically grounded research. The argument of the article is two-fold. First, it argues that migrant and racialised minority populations are sustained in a ‘migrant worker’ subject position not only through exclusion from rights and legal status, but also through the targeted inclusion of the ‘undeserving’ poor with formal rights into worker-citizenship through workfare. Second, the article shows racialisation of ‘migrant workers’ as a gendered process with essentialised gendered logics of what skills migrant men and women supposedly possess ‘naturally’. Activation thus maintains and exacerbates the segregation of migrant and racialised youth into gendered and racialised labour markets. The analysis is based on ethnographic fieldwork in youth career counselling in a metropolitan area of Finland in 2015–2016.

Amongst Letters I Am the Vowel A: Spivak, "Draupadi," and Anagogizing the Political

This essay conducts a comparative reading of Gayatri Spivak's discussion of the Hindu epic Mahabharata and Mahasweta Devi's story "Draupadi." While scholars have examined Devi's tribal protagonist Draupadi in conjunction with the high Hindu goddess Draupadi of the epic, I suggest that the former's viswarupadarshana (revelation of form) should be read in contrast to the role of the Mahabharata's Hindu God Krishna. This comparison shows the feminist and postcolonial import of Devi's story, as it demonstrates the continuity of caste-based tribal exploitation from antiquity to globalization. Along with this critique of tribal women's subalternity in the national imaginary, Devi's story stages a terrifying singularity that disrupts the sociopolitical logic of gender. Draupadi occupies the position of the subject of knowledge to invert the Indo-Aryan (mythology based) ontograph. By unraveling the "she" that must be perpetually murdered for (this kind of) historicity to take root, Draupadi pours (back) into an encounter between agent and subaltern the affectivity ideologically excised for an illusion to be seen as truth and, hence, as history.

A Debt of Care: Commercial Bail and the Gendered Logic of Criminal Justice Predation

Among the institutions that link criminal justice and inequality in the United States, commercial bail remains one of the most important yet least understood. Each year, the bail industry extracts millions of dollars from lower-income Americans, disproportionately draining resources from poor communities of color. We draw on ethnographic research to explore how the bail system operates as a predatory social process, arguing that gender interacts with class and race to structure resource extraction in this field. Poor women of color are especially subject to bail predation because they are seen within the larger social organization of care as bearing primary responsibility for defendants. Gendered care work and emotional labor are thus central to the field’s logic of practice and to bail industry profits.

O corpo como uma declaração de guerra: pensando os limites da identidade enquanto categoria de análise

Rasuras e borrões são marcas presentes nos sujeitos da pós-modernidade, dessa forma, fissuras a um pensamento Moderno são realizadas e suas consequências são sentidas na pluralidade das suas ações. Tomando o corpo como um locus central de análise, neste trabalho escavamos uma ordem discursiva que ao identificar o corpo, tão logo encerra um gradiente de possibilidades através da canalização do desejo. Para tal, recorremos a teóricas e teóricos Pós-Coloniais e Queer, por meio de uma abordagem pós-estruturalista. Pensar os limites da identidade enquanto categoria de análise é, pois, ensaiar uma política da diferença que reflita sobre os fluxos sem interrompê-los ou interditá-los e, sobretudo, sem ignorar a dinâmica material da violência distribuída sobre os corpos que operam fora da lógica hegemônica, isto é, corpos racializados, dissidentes sexuais e desobedientes de gênero.

The Shape of Desire

The Shape of Desire