Western Feminist Research Articles

Border thinking and disidentification: Postcolonial and postsocialist feminist dialogues

In the context of the continuing dominance of delocalised Western feminist theoretical models, which allow the non-Western and not quite Western ‘others’ to either be epistemically annihilated or appropriated, it becomes crucial to look for transformative feminist theoretical tools which can eventually help break the so-called mere recognition patterns and move in the direction of transversal dialogues, mutual learning practices and volatile but effective feminist coalitions. Speaking from the position of postcolonial and postsocialist feminist others vis-a-vis the dominant Western/Northern gender studies mainstream, and drawing on examples from a broad range of social contexts (from the Armenian queer social movement to a recent Indian gang rape controversy), the authors of this article address the validity of two such transformative feminist tools: border thinking that operates on a more general theoretical level, and disidentification that offers a more praxial operational realisation of the border principle.

Third-Space Encounters and Unexpected Forms of Resistance in Amy Tan's <i>The Joy Luck Club</i>

This paper sets out to investigate Amy Tan'sThe Joy Luck Club, a liminal work written in-between cultures, in the light of Homi Bhabha’s concept of the third space as a site of transformation and transvaluation. It is argued that Tan’s novel is implicated in unexpected forms of resistance as a result of its placement in the borderland of cultures. Thus, exploring the discursive fissures and ideological ruptures inscribed in the novel, the authors seek to bring to fore how the very mainstream accounts of Chinese culture and orientalist archive of knowledge in which the work is embedded are contested in the third-space enounters between subjects of different cultures. Orientalism, Western feminism, American Dream, and multiculturalism are some of the major discourses whose truthfulness and serenity are shown to be precarious and open to questioning, hence the recuperation of the subaltern’s voice through this contrapuntal reading.

Agency and coping strategies for ethnic and gendered minorities at work

This study examines the comparative workplace experiences of twenty Muslim professional women from the United Kingdom and Australia classified as minorities in terms of their ethnic, religious, gender and migration status. Diversity as exclusion remains highly topical in extant diversity studies. For instance, Muslim migrants have often been stereotyped as sexually constrained, victimized, ignorant, poor, uneducated and tradition-bound. Muslim women may be highly discouraged if Western workplaces are not conducive to their social and cultural needs. By using human agency and coping theory, this study investigates the coping strategies of Muslim professional women, how they adapt, how they react and reflect on stressful workplace events such as discriminatory behaviour. Human agency theory provides a basis by which to explore agent responses to organisational narratives in this study. Overall, this study finds that active coping and planning to deal with stressful events is important for ethnic minorities and that emotion-focused coping is used when less active planning is prevalent. The study lends support to the triple jeopardy effects of race-related ethnicity, work practices and gender. The findings pose challenges for Western feminist theory in terms of the interface between gender and religion and the freedom of expression of individual agents in the workplace.

The National and International in Making a Feminist: the case of Alexandra Gripenberg

ABSTRACTThis article analyzes the interdependence of the national and international in Alexandra Gripenberg's (1859–1913) feminist activism in her native country Finland, as well as in her international work, particularly within the International Council of Women, and in doing so contributes to the research on transfers and networking across borders in the formation of feminist politics. The national and international were seen by Gripenberg as inseparable and both aspects were particularly intertwined in her work to encourage the establishment of national councils of the ICW in various countries. The analysis discloses how the negotiation between the national and transnational was intersected and complicated by class-related politics, exemplified by Gripenberg's ambivalence towards the introduction of universal suffrage in 1906 Finland. The article also sheds light on the difficulties in creating a shared sisterhood across borders and how nation was used as a criterion in classifying more and less advanced nations in terms of gender equality. Influenced by the prevalent manner many Western European and US feminists had of viewing themselves as superior, Gripenberg defined Protestant, Anglo-American and Scandinavian countries as models for other nations. Finally the article addresses how Gripenberg responded to occasions when her national and international loyalties conflicted and shows the importance of internationalism in coping with the distress on home ground. International feminist sisterhood offered an opportunity to enjoy life with social equals.

Women Writing Women: Early Iranian Feminism and the Memoir of Tāj us-Saltanih

The memoir of Tāj us-Saltanih occupies a privileged place in the growing scholarship on Iranian life narratives as both a precursor of Iranian women’s life writing and an early feminist text. This article reads Tāj’s memoir against the historical backdrop of the early twentieth-century nationalist movement in Iran. It argues that Tāj’s alleged feminism is rooted in the nationalist and modernist agendas of Constitutional Iran (1906–1911) as well as the discourses of racial inferiority emerging out of imbalances of power in the East/West relations to which she was exposed in her textual encounter with the West. By bringing the memoir into dialogue with the wider literary and social atmosphere of its time, this article sheds light on the various ideologies and discourses that shaped the Iranian women’s movement of the Constitutional era and informed the early stages of the problematic relationship between Western and Iranian feminisms.

The quieter side of Chinese feminism: The feminist phenomenology of Li Yu's films

An analysis of the 2015 Spring Gala indicates that Chinese feminism needs to assume a softer or quieter voice compared with western feminism. The phenomenological approach is employed as the paper's theoretical framework to understand Chinese feminism. Li Yu's realistic representation in her films not only elicits recognition but also empathy from the audience, stimulating a progressive discourse in women's issues in China. Her two films, Hong Yan and Lost in Beijing, are closely scrutinized. These present issues of teen pregnancy, abortion, patriarchy, rape, domestic violence, sex trade, monogamy, fidelity, er nai (lit. second breast; fig. second wife), xiao san (lit. little three; fig. mistress)1 and escape as a solution. With this examination, we conclude that media representation about women in China is leading to greater discourse on women's rights.

Feminism in the German Democratic Republic: The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeois Literary Tradition

The paper investigates the literary treatment of historical women figures from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century as vehicles for the discussion of feminist issues in the East German literature of the 1970s and 1980s. In contrast to the SED's allegiance to a socialist feminist tradition derived from August Bebel and Clara Zetkin, focussing on social policy to promote women's emancipation, Christa Wolf's work on the women Romantics turns to the critique of patriarchal structures and the strengthening of female subjectivity through group solidarity. The closeness of this position to Western feminism, together with increasing interest within the West German academy in women writers hitherto sidelined within the classical literary canon, ensures Wolf's ascendancy as a feminist figurehead at this time. Other GDR writers, Sigrid Damm, Renate Feyl, and Brigitte Struzyk, also establish themselves in the West German book market by writing on women from the age of Goethe.

Chinese Women’s Cinema: Transnational Contexts ed. by Lingzhen Wang

Reviewed by: Chinese Women’s Cinema: Transnational Contexts ed. by Lingzhen Wang Xiangyang Chen (bio) Lingzhen Wang, editor. Chinese Women’s Cinema: Transnational Contexts. New York: Columbia University Press, 2011. 448 pp. Cloth $90.00, isbn 978-0-231-15674-5. Paperback $29.00, isbn 978-0-231-15675-2. Chinese Women’s Cinema: Transnational Contexts engages with crucial issues in feminist studies: female subjectivity, gender representation, the creation of women’s cinema, and the question of authorship. The study encompasses the changing social, ideological, cultural, and cinematic forces in China and across borders in the host countries of diasporic Chinese communities. Well versed in Western feminist theories and criticism, the contributors test their applicability to Chinese circumstances. They seek as well to reconfigure specificity through “discovering” neglected female directors, reevaluating women’s roles and their involvement in different aspects of the film industry and exploring the cultural and aesthetic identities of Chinese women’s cinema in transnational contexts. The publication’s chapters read against the grain in light of the demands of a collective socialist film industry, or juxtaposed with the study of contemporaneous male directors to stress their different articulations. It provides a timely addition to the scholarship on women’s cinema in the burgeoning field of Chinese film studies and offers a commendable attempt to critically assess women’s misunderstood, neglected, or underappreciated roles and unrealized possibilities. The anthology seeks to contextualize Chinese women’s cinema by focusing on the forces that give rise to or constrain their production, by explicating the formal [End Page 392] and aesthetic identity of a director’s oeuvre, and by applying Western feminist film theories and criticism. To that end, the contributors assess the constraining factors for female directors in socialist and post-socialist Chinese cinema, predisposing it to certain trends or emphases. The book also aims to illuminate the colonial, cross-national, and cross-cultural transactions reorienting the production of women filmmakers in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and diasporic Chinese communities. The collection seeks to reclaim women’s space and articulated perspectives from a male-centered cinema and historiography, scrutinizing their specific concerns, practices, and proclivities, and examining their conformity to or differences from Western feminist theories and practices. Indeed, the volume investigates quite exhaustively the factors that have determined the degree of control Chinese women filmmakers have over their productions. One of the feminist claims made about socialist cinema may be found, for instance, in the film directed by Dong Kena, Small Grass Grows on the Kunlun Mountain (1962), which, Lingzhen Wang argues, incorporates feminist possibilities in opposition to the conformity sought by socialist cinema. Through the use of such devices as a subjective camera, female voice-over and voice-off, flashbacks, and long takes, Lingzhen Wang locates feminist concerns that have escaped the radar of the demands of a socialist cinema. This claim for feminist prospects in socialist cinema contrasts with Xingyang Li’s study of women filmmakers who, he argues, inject into their work the voice of female consciousness among a multiplicity of voices. Films such as Forever Young (1983) and Human, Woman, Demon (1987), he argues, incorporate official ideology and the reigning cultural discourse of consumerism, along with a voice representing female consciousness—for instance, the explicit concern with women’s dilemma trapped between career and family in Human, Woman, Demon. There are also instances where Shuqin Cui finds implied feminist possibilities not consciously articulated by the filmmaker. This, she argues, confounds any presumed correspondence between textual representation and authorial intent, particularly since the filmmaker is engaged with the issue of homosexuality. As the anthology makes clear, Chinese women work under patriarchal values within a state cinema inhibiting their fully fledged development and due recognition. Even though they straddle multiple roles and have delivered brilliant work across generic and transnational frameworks, they have been neglected in a virtually exclusive male-centered filmmaking world, being assessed in a historiography where the parameters have been laid down according to male cinematic values. Therefore, the situation of women in contemporary Chinese cinema is not so optimistic, as Gina Marchetti argues. In contrast to most contributors’ claimed improvement of women’s status and image from socialist to post-socialist cinema is...

United Germany: Debating Processes and Prospects ed. by Konrad H. Jarausch

Reviewed by: United Germany: Debating Processes and Prospects ed. by Konrad H. Jarausch Donna Harsch United Germany: Debating Processes and Prospects. Edited by Konrad H. Jarausch. New York: Berghahn, 2013. Pp. ix + 290. Cloth $ 95.00. ISBN 978-0875459725. This well-conceptualized, informative volume offers an overview of the conflicting assessments of “united Germany” that fuel ongoing debates about reunification. The book addresses five themes: political transition, economic crisis, gender relations and feminism, East German literature, and foreign policy. Jarausch introduces the collection of articles with a masterful and succinct summary of perceptions of German democracy, capitalism, society, culture, and international relations since 1990. Each theme is discussed in three chapters, written, respectively, from a western, an eastern, and an American perspective. As Jarausch notes in his preface, the pattern of academic opinion is typically (but not always) characterized by eastern skepticism, western optimism, and an American balancing act. The process of knitting together the political and social worlds of populations that lived in different systems for four decades has been much more difficult than assumed in 1989–1990. The “Ostalgie” of easterners is well-known. In fact, “Westalgie,” a term coined by Klaus Schroeder, is just as pronounced, the easterner Heinrich Bortfeldt reminds us in his contribution on political processes. The contrast between economic expectations and consequences and the asymmetry of east-west power relations have fostered dissatisfaction. The Federal Republic encompasses, Bortfeldt concludes, two “partial societies” (60). The westerner Gero Neugebauer acknowledges the rocky course of support for democracy among easterners. He finds a sign of convergence, however, in the emergence of a national five-party political system that includes the Left Party. Helga Welsh usefully reminds readers that Germany is not the “singular case” (66) that the discourse surrounding reunification often presents it to be. Other countries too were divided by the Cold War, made the transition from communism to capitalism, and/or incorporate sharp regional differences. The struggles of reunification [End Page 430] are also mirrored in the difficult process of integration occurring in the European Union and NATO. Turning to the disastrous economic transition, Wolfgang Seibel contends that the Treuhandanstalt had to act as an “institutional buffer and absorb the social and political costs of its own privatization policy,” serving as a “political shock absorber” for the federal government (94). In his view, East Germans did not, however, fall victim to an “Anschluss.” As voters and politicians, they “made the key decisions of 1990 that paved the way to reunification” (97) but then lost control of what they had initiated. Jonathan Zatlin places more responsibility for the rush to currency union on Helmut Kohl who hoped that the arrival of the West German mark would stanch East German migration to the west. Assessing the economy today, the American Zatlin sees an “Eastern Mezzogiorno” (126), while the eastern economist Rainer Land is somewhat more sanguine. Land argues that privatization and monetary transfers have produced “neither a uniformly thriving country, nor is it a wasteland or Mezzogiorno” (116). In the contributions on feminism, Ute Gerhard, Ingrid Miethe, and Myra Marx Ferree all recall the disillusionment that gripped eastern and western feminists after 1990 as they realized that their understanding of feminist politics did not mesh. Put crudely, western feminists worked to forge power through autonomous activities and looked askance at state policy as a tool for cultural transformation; eastern feminists focused on promoting equality in education, career, and family through policy. The authors agree in their view of feminist tensions but diverge in their assessments of the current situation. The westerner Ute Gerhard yearningly remembers the pre-1990 feminist movement and emphasizes women’s lack of progress since 1990, including in wage equality and economic leadership. She criticizes the “neoliberal spirit” (148) and expresses rather skeptically her hope that young women will forge a new movement for gender equality. Miethe and Marx Ferree see evidence of cultural convergence as German attitudes and policies about gender shift in a European (and East German) direction. Young westerners increasingly recognize, Miethe notes optimistically, “the desirability of the compatibility of family and career” and the “responsibility of the state to address women’s issues” (166). Klaus Scherpe, Frank Hörnigk, and...

Islamism and gender relations in the Muslim world as reflected in recent World Values Survey data

Ever since Goldin (1995) proposed the idea that there is a U-shaped female labor force participation rate function in economic development, empirical research is stunned by the question why the countries of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) are characterized by such low rates of female labor force participation. This gap in labor economics research is all the more perplexing since gender equality, particularly in education and employment, significantly contributes to economic growth. The research strategy of this paper is within a relatively new tradition in labor market research, initiated by Besamusca et al. (2015), which does not exclude the “religious factor” and what the authors call “gender ideology”. Our analysis of the “gender ideology” of Islamism and gender values is based on an empirical analysis of World Values Survey data. In recent economic theory, Carvalho (2013) maintained that Muslim veiling is a strategy for integration, enabling women to take up outside economic opportunities while preserving their reputation within the community. The empirical data clearly support a pessimistic view. We show that Muslim Feminism, which according to our analysis implies the rejection of Islamism and the veil, and the democracy movement in the Muslim world, are closely interrelated. Thus, it is imperative that Western Feminism develops solidarity with Muslim Feminism, and that labor economics stop excluding the religious factor from the analytical frameworks explaining low female labor force participation rates.

Islamism and Gender Relations in the Muslim World as Reflected in Recent World Values Survey Data

Ever since Goldin (1995) proposed idea that there is a U-shaped female labor force participation rate function in economic development, empirical research is stunned by question why countries of Middle East and North Africa (MENA) are characterized by such low rates of female labor force participation. This gap in labor economics research is all more perplexing since equality, particularly in education and employment, significantly contributes to economic growth. The research strategy of present paper is within a relatively new tradition in labor market research, initiated by recent article by Besamusca, Tijdens, Keune and Steinmetz (2015), which does not exclude anymore factor and what these authors call gender ideology. Our analysis of gender ideology of Islamism and values is based on an empirical analysis of World Values Survey data. In recent economic theory, Carvalho (2013) maintained that Muslim veiling is a strategy for integration, enabling women to take up outside economic opportunities while preserving their reputation within community. The empirical data clearly support a pessimistic view. We show that Muslim Feminism, which implies according to our data analysis rejection of twin brothers - Islamism and veil - and democracy movement in Muslim world are closely interrelated. Thus, it is imperative that Western Feminism develops solidarity with Muslim Feminism, and that labor economics does not exclude anymore the religious factor from analytical frameworks explaining low female labor force participation rates.

Theorizing Institutional Feelings, Bodies, and Spaces: The Case of Feminisms and Women’s Studies in Pakistan

In this article, I draw on Postcolonial, Muslim, and Western feminist theories combined with self-reflexivity as a feminist research method to reflect on my experiences as a professor of English and a feminist educator at a state university in Southern Punjab, Pakistan. Using the self-reflexive approach from a feminist standpoint, I unpack the institutional feelings, reactions, emotions, responses, and reception practices that the teaching of Feminism and Women’s Studies entail in this context. The goal of the research reported here is to theorize institutional feelings and reactions to further our understanding of how these gendered ideologies and discourses—promoted through discursive and coercive measures—might not only impede feminist epistemology and praxis within this context, persecute feminist academics as Westernized and irrelevant, but also lead to the curtailment of general academic freedoms and violation of women’s human rights in similar other Third World contexts. Furthermore, this essay theorizes the ways in which feminist bodies are read, interpreted, and silenced within institutional spaces that are shaped by historical forces of state-sponsored Islamization campaigns that are built upon the bodies of women. The article illustrates how feminist bodies and the work that they do disrupt historically constructed hetero-patriarchal spaces structured by Islamization ideologies.

Subjectivity and Comparison

Subjectivity and Comparison Ashley Glassburn Falzetti (bio) A response to Shino Konishi, “Making Connections and Attachments: Writing the Lives of Two Nineteenth-Century Aboriginal Men.” Biography 39.3 (Summer 2016): 410–428 Shino Konishi argues that through her personal attachment to imaginaries of Indigenous masculinity she is able to counter the colonial tropes of Indigenous biography through empathizing with her subjects. It is certainly true that Konishi’s disclosure of her experience of and worries about Indigenous masculinities foregrounds her gendered analysis of Gogy and Bungin. The subjective background of the author makes it possible for the reader to interpret multiple layers of analysis throughout the article. For instance, when Konishi analyzes Gogy’s brutal attack on his wife as directly tied to his unsatisfying relationship with the French explorer Barrallier, the reader can infer that Konishi is trying to situate Gogy’s actions within the colonial representations of Indigenous gendered violence across time. After all, she concludes that “Our readings of past Indigenous lives shape present-day understandings” (424). The broader question of Indigenous masculinities at the outset of the article brings useful attention to the dynamics between Gogy and Bungin. It highlights questions for me about how French, English, and varied Indigenous masculinities are at play in these historical circumstances, each historical actor attempting to be recognized and to become a recognizing being within alien social structures. Was the distance between Gogy and Bungin rooted in the cultural traditions in which they were raised, or simple differences of personality? What gendered schemas were at play even if Barrallier hadn’t been present? These questions are raised precisely through the framing of the stories in Konishi’s personal interest in Aboriginal masculinities. In [End Page 429] other words, only through Konishi’s discussion of her attachment to the subjects is the heteropatriarchal critique of colonial representations of Indigenous men made clear. Konishi centralizes connection and attachment as the intellectual force of her analysis throughout the paper. She says that “elucidating such personal connections not only allows biographers to empathize with their subjects as individuals as opposed to archetypes, but is also a practice that aligns with Indigenous approaches” (412). I would push this idea further. It not only allows the biographer to empathize, it allows the researcher to work toward a more complex and nuanced, thus objective, depiction of the past by addressing the subjective investments of the author working in the present. Many Indigenous Feminist scholars, including Aileen Moreton-Robinson, whom Konishi cites to support her claim, developed their ideas about the subjectivity of Indigenous researchers in conversation with western feminist epistemology. This field provides useful theoretical underpinnings for understanding the relationships among accuracy, subjectivity, and attachments for critical Indigenous scholarship. One of the most widely valued contributions of western feminist epistemology is a clear articulation of how personal attachment and experience shape how scholarship is produced, from research through analysis and writing (see Collins; Scheman; Lorde; and Smith). Scholars outside of feminist philosophy are less likely to understand the more robust feminist critiques of scientific notions of objectivity, which Konishi calls “privileged notions of objectivity” (411). Such traditional approaches to objectivity wrongly assume that obfuscating or avoiding bias makes the production and analysis of data less biased and more objective. Feminist epistemologists show that such approaches to “objectivity” actually reinscribe bias in favor of the status quo—heteropatiarchal settler colonialism (see Lloyd; Messing; Rogers; and Haraway). To disrupt or correct this bias (resulting from attachments, investments, experiences, etc.), attachments must be acknowledged and critically interrogated as part of the analysis. Only through the interrogation of how the researcher’s subjectivity shapes analysis can we begin the process of understanding and correcting bias as a social and inherent part of research (see Longino; Narayan; and Jaggar and Wisor). Therefore, acknowledging the subjectivity of biographers opens the possibility of working toward more accurate accounts of others’ lives by interrogating writers’ personal investments in the subject’s life. Furthermore, such articulations of subjectivity allow authors to centralize the personal-political questions that inspired their work, and, like Konishi, to invite readers to reflect on the most pressing political [End Page 430] aspect of the research—how historical narratives shape contemporary...

The first UN world conference on women (1975) as a cold war encounter: Recovering anti-imperialist, non-aligned and socialist genealogies

The essay addresses contemporary discussions on women?s transnationalism and women?s agency by looking at the first conference of the UN Decade for Women held in Mexico City in 1975, and at its specific embedding in Cold War geopolitics. Through an engagement with different feminist and activists voices, and particularly with the less visible anti-imperialist, Non-Aligned and socialist genealogies of women?s activism expressed during the meeting, the essay argues that the paradigm of Western feminist knowledge production needs to be revisited, in order to encompass multiple forms of women?s political agency that are not expressed through the liberal framework of women?s individual autonomy from the state. By juxtaposing Betty Friedan?s and Vida Tomsic?s stances during the Mexico City event, the paper shows that women?s political agency during the Cold War era took different forms, which included both the refusal and the acceptance of women?s activism within existing national and international institutions.

Before Bandung: The Anti-Imperialist Women’s Movement in Asia and the Women’s International Democratic Federation

AbstractThe 1949 Conference of the Women of Asia held by the Women’s International Democratic Federation (WIDF) amplified a new anti-imperialist solidarity movement for women in the global South. Leftist feminists emerged from anticolonial movements to organize mass-based women’s groups, a process that created new alliances between regional women’s groups. In India, and across Asia, most groups concentrated their efforts on rural women embedded in the agricultural economy. This article looks at the forms of solidarity and the ideologies of anti-imperialist women’s activism that turned the charity model of Western feminist internationalism on its head. Before the celebrated Bandung Conference of 1955, Asian and African WIDF members emphasized a solidarity of commonalty as well as one of complicity in the international women’s movement to fight colonialism and neocolonialism in the new postwar order.

Para un diálogo inter-epistémico y decolonial entre feministas occidentales y no occidentales

This paper explains why establishing inter-epistemic dialogues between Western and nonWestern feminists is needed. it reflects on Western feminisms becoming, so that their emancipating boundaries are made evident, which are congruent with the emancipating boundaries of the modern project. i

Особливості формування ґендерного літературознавства в Китаї

The purpose of this article is to study some aspects of Gender Studies in Modern Chinese Literary criticism, which were not the subject of study in Ukraine. It will give an opportunity to the orientalists (as well as anyone who is interested in the problems of gender) to expand the understanding of the possibilities of the existing interpretive theories of feminist criticism. The author of the study applies the method of structural description. Particular attention is paid to Chinese methods of the “alternative reading” of classical texts. The article presents three strategies of conceptualization of female characters in Chinese literature mainstream, represented by Meng Yue, Li Ling, Liu Huiying, Wu Yuming, Chen Shunxin: 1) determination of the symbolic female types in the works of writers-men to rebuke false notions about the nature of women; 2) Criticism of the plot models of ancient and modern literature, which demonstrates the masculine nature of image system of the novels; 3) a combination of the abovementioned strategies. The study results demonstrated the dual nature of gender studies in the Chinese literary criticism. On the one hand, the universality of interpretative methods was demonstrated by Western feminist critique (e.g. the method of “a woman’s re-reading” by E. Shovalter, S. Gilbert and S. Gubar). On the other hand, the Chinese researchers have shown constant reinterpretation in the borrowed methodological approaches. It formed new research strategies: the criticism of women's images in the literary mainstream has led to the study of man's psychology of creativity and analysis of archetypal values of feminine discourse eliminated the need for the gender differentiation of the literary canon. Actually such departures from the basic theories define national models of scientific knowledge.

Positionality at the Center

As a Western feminist supporting and researching gender equality in education in postcolonial contexts, I often wonder: Am I doing more harm than good? The privilege of my social location means that my efforts to support education in postcolonial contexts risk being patronizing, insulting, threatening, imperialist, and recolonizing. Yet neglecting and ignoring postcolonial contexts similarly reflects and reproduces a privileged position. I provide a tentative framework designed to address positionality, power, and privilege while creating an ethical research process for working in a postcolonial context. Beginning with an identification of positionality, the objectives of research, and guiding theoretical frameworks to situate the research in relation to the participants and context, I proceed to establish a methodology designed to minimize the negative effects of power and maximize participants’ empowerment. I position myself as a bricoleur, layering feminist standpoint theory and postcolonial theory, and propose the collaborative data collection and analysis techniques, with particular attention to ethical and cultural sensitivity, using a social constructivist approach to grounded theory. This article highlights the need for Western researchers to reflect upon the power dynamics of their research in postcolonial contexts and develop a strategy for conducting empowering research that prevents the misrepresentation and exploitation of participants. Observations from my doctoral thesis data collection provide examples of how these concepts were operationalized in practice as well as reflections on the disconnect between theorizing and conducting ethical research in postcolonial contexts.

Idle No More – Indigenous Activism and Feminism

INTRODUCTIONThe grassroots movement Idle No More spread over the North American continent like a fire on the prairie. In October 2012 Sheelah McLean, Sylvia McAdam, Nina Wilson and Jessica Gordon, four from the Canadian province of Saskatchewan, protested the federal omnibus budget bills C-45 and C-31, that would substantially diminish First Nations treaty, sovereignty and land rights. Idle No More locates itself within the framework of Indigenous renaissance, decoloniality and Indigenous2 activism. Although founded and led by Indigenous women, this group does neither define itself as a women's movement nor as an Indigenous movement. We are a movement led by Indigenous women (Sylvia McAdam, June 14, 2013). Nonetheless, Idle No More members contemplate how feminist theory and praxis may have influenced the movement. Indeed, the movement applies strategies that have been theorized within Indigenous feminism for decades. Looking at Idle No More in particular, I will identify possible interleaving and commonalities as well as differences between feminist and Indigenousdecolonial concerns. Exemplified by the emancipative character of Idle No More I will show under which circumstances struggles under the flags of resource conflicts and decoloniality can complement Indigenous feminism. Therefore, in the following I will look at the activities and goals of the movement within the frameworks of Indigenous feminism as well as postcolonial feminism.COMPLICATED SUBJECT POSITIONSIndigenous women, including the Idle No More activists, speak from complicated subject positions; on the one hand they negotiate their individual rights in postindustrial nation states, on the other they demand their collective sovereignty rights as members of First Nations, exercising power over their Indigenous territories. The position of Indigenous is further complicated and weakened by internal conflicts introduced into First Nations communities by the dominant society. Additionally, even the sentiments of Indigenous towards feminisms are ambiguous; some do not see themselves included by feminists who are unwilling to understand Indigenous in their full historical and contemporary contexts, while others view feminist positions as valid and feminist theory as helpful and adequate to articulate critique on unequal social, economic and political conditions (Green 2007, 20f.). However, Indigenous feminists are being accused of colonial attitudes in their own communities (see below).In the context of competing positions in relation to feminisms Idle No More follows indirectly the call of Chandra Talpade Mohantys (2003): to decentralize the hegemony of Western feminism and to build autonomous, geographically, historically, and culturally based feminisms.3 According to Mohanty, it is not the experience of being a female that unites in the Third World, but lived experience of structural dominance and oppression. The potential commonality lies in resistant political reactions to sexist, racist, and imperialist structures (Mohanty, Russo, Torres 1991, 7). Idle No More, too, calls on people to partake in the formation of emancipative communities.In regards to the characteristics of Idle No More I refer to their own statements which I interpret in front of the background of Indigenousfeminist epistemologies. Without explicit reference to feminist critique and analyses, Idle No More follows the suggestions of Verna St. Denis, to choose this intersectional approach to not only gain an understanding of the circumstances but also of the practices and justifications of those who are responsible for these circumstances (St. Denis 2007, 43). Although Indigenous do not share one single, common culture, they share similar experiences of colonization that have changed Indigenous societies considerably.The special relationship between Indigenous or First Nations and the Canadian government is founded on international treaties with the British Crown and finds recognition in federal law. …

The Dangers of Feminism in Colonial Indochina

This article examines the controversy elicited by the visit of two Western feminists—Camille Drevet of France and Edith Pye of Great Britain—to French Indochina in 1927. Traveling as delegates of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) and as guests of the Annamite Constitutionalist Party, Drevet and Pye challenged French male colonists whose vision of modern colonial governance rested on a defense of tradition and the presumed benefits of paternalistic guardianship over indigenous men and all women. Concerns regarding modern womanhood and an incipient Vietnamese youth revolt led French male colonists to denounce the threat that women's emancipation posed to Indochina. Vietnamese radicals were inspired by the WILPF visit, understanding that arguments to liberate women and the nation both rested on opposition to paternalistic subordination. The WILPF delegates emerged from the trip firmly opposed to colonialism; nonetheless, they struggled to articulate an explicitly feminist anti-imperialist agenda linking female and colonial subservience.