Draws from Latina feminism, existential phenomenology, and race theory to explore the concept of selfhood. This original study intertwining Latina feminism, existential phenomenology, and race theory offers a new philosophical approach to understanding selfhood and identity. Focusing on writings by Gloría Anzaldúa, María Lugones, and Linda Martín Alcoff, Mariana Ortega articulates a phenomenology that introduces a conception of selfhood as both multiple and singular. Her Latina feminist phenomenological approach can account for identities belonging simultaneously to different worlds, including immigrants, exiles, (...) and inhabitants of borderlands. Ortega’s project forges new directions not only in Latina feminist thinking on such issues as borders, mestizaje, marginality, resistance, and identity politics, but also connects this analysis to the existential phenomenology of Martin Heidegger and to such concepts as being-in-the-world, authenticity, and intersubjectivity. The pairing of the personal and the political in Ortega’s work is illustrative of the primacy of lived experience in the development of theoretical understandings of who we are. In addition to bringing to light central metaphysical issues regarding the temporality and continuity of the self, Ortega models a practice of philosophy that draws from work in other disciplines and that recognizes the important contributions of Latina feminists and other theorists of color to philosophical pursuits. Mariana Ortega is Professor of Philosophy at John Carroll University and coeditor (with Linda Martín Alcoff) of Constructing the Nation: A Race and Nationalism Reader, also published by SUNY Press. (shrink)

La democracia en el texto es vista desde una perspectiva integral u onmicomprensiva que complementa la parte instrumental (procedimiento electoral) con la sustancial (goce efectivo de derechos humanos) basado en la concienciación de una real dignidad humana que permita que la persona realice su proyecto de vida, disfrute de sus derechos y funcione efectivamente en la sociedad dentro del Estado democrático constitucional: la interrelación e interdependencia entre democracia, dignidad humana y Estado constitucional de derecho resulta para el autor un norte (...) el cual hay que seguir a cada instante. El libro muestra la importancia de la dogmática actual de la Corte Constitucional colombiana sobre derechos fundamentales, lo cual es un aporte latinoamericano a la estructuración de un constitucionalismo que contribuya con soluciones a favor de la libertad y la justicia en función de la persona humana en un escenario de tensiones evidentes entre la globalización y nacionalismos populistas y patrioteros. En el sentido expresado en el punto anterior la obra del profesor Caldera corrobora la relevancia que dicha dogmática le atribuye a la funcionalidad de los DerechosFundamentales con el logro del contenido normativo de la dignidad humana. Así, para Caldera Ynfante y desde su especial interpretación de la democracia cumple con los requisitos dogmáticos entronizados por la Corte Constitucional para ser considerado como un derecho fundamental generador de todos los efectos instrumentales y sustanciales que le son señalados. El texto nos lleva a establecer conceptualmente con un propósito práctico que la democracia integral, es decir, entendida como derecho fundamental es posible asumirla desde la perspectiva de la denominada teoría de la integralidad de los DDHH a partir de la Declaración y Plan de Acción de Viena sobreDDHH de 1993, instrumento del derecho internacional que resulta apical a partir del cual considera como fundamentales todos los Derechos Humanos. En consecuencia para el autor la democracia integral, como derecho fundamental, es posible asumirla desde la perspectiva del Enfoque Basado enDDHH y así puede ser defendida ante cualquier sistema de protección, ora universal o regional. Por otra parte es necesario para el lector reflexionar en torno al sentido de una democracia integral que para el autor es asumida como una meta garantía de losDDHH; es decir, como el derecho fundamental de los derechos fundamentales. (shrink)

"Analyzes the value of using case-based methodologies to address contemporary social justice issues in philosophy"--.

In this paper I argue that a global bioethicsis possible. Specifically, I present the viewthat there are within feminist approaches tobioethics some conceptual and methodologicaltools necessary to forge a bioethics thatembraces the health-related concerns of bothdeveloping and developed nations equally. Tosupport my argument I discuss some of thechallenges that have historically confrontedfeminists. If feminists accept the idea thatwomen are entirely the same, then feministspresent as fact the fiction of the essential``Woman.'' Not only does ``Woman'' not exist,``she'' obscures important racial, ethnic,cultural, (...) and class differences among women. However, if feminists stress women'sdifferences too much, feminists lose the powerto speak coherently and cogently about genderjustice, women's rights, and sexual equality ingeneral. Analyzing the ways in which the ideaof difference as well as the idea of samenesshave led feminists astray, I ask whether it ispossible to avoid the Scylla of absolutism(imperialism, colonialism, hegemony) on the onehand and the Charybdis of relativism(postmodernism, fragmentation, Balkanization)on the other. Finally, after reflecting uponthe work of Uma Narayan, Susan Muller Okin, andMartha Nussbaum, I conclude that there is a wayout of this ethical bind. By focusing onwomen's, children's, and men's common humanneeds, it is possible to lay thefoundation for a just and caring globalbioethics. (shrink)

Following in Joan Scott's anti-foundationalist footsteps, Linda Zerilli argues for a theory of feminist political judgement not framed in terms of epistemological certainty but assimilated to aesthetic judgement. Tani Barlow criticises Zerilli for not taking adequate account of history in her theory. I analyse the implications of Zerilli's ‘abyssal’ approach to political judgement and Barlow's critique of it. Despite their shared concerns, Zerilli's, Barlow's, and Scott's abyssal approaches struggle to effectively ground the validity of historical analysis and political judgement within (...) a context of plurality and historical difference. All three thinkers focus extensively on discursive and imaginative potential for change while marginalising the role of materiality in the creation of new horizons for women. Incorporating a dynamic account of the materiality of human life into their work would allow them to tie politics and history to an explanation of the role material life plays in constituting plurality, factuality, and historicity. (shrink)

Recent decades of women's rights advocacy have produced numerous regional and international agreements for protecting women's security, including a UN convention that affirms the state's responsibility to protect key gender-specific rights, with no exceptions on the basis of culture or religion. At the same time, however, the focus on universal women's rights has enabled influential feminists in the United States to view women's rights in opposition to culture, and most often in opposition to other people's cultures. Not surprisingly, then, feminists (...) across the global South have criticized the universal-women's-rights agenda. This article reviews representative critical responses to universal-women's-rights advocacy. The author argues that, taken collectively, these critical responses do not reject the possibility of cross-cultural feminist advocacy but they do suggest the need for feminists in the United States and Europe to focus less on transferring rights across the obstacles of culture and more on how they can revise and expand their own understanding of women's rights in response to the struggles of other women, many of whom view women's rights as organic to their own cultures and as connected to broader social struggles. (shrink)

One of the recent attempts to explore epistemic dimensions of forced displacement focuses on the institution of gender-based asylum and hopes to detect forms of epistemic injustice within assessments of gender related asylum applications. Following this attempt, I aim in this paper to demonstrate how the institution of gender-based asylum is structured to produce epistemic injustice at least in the forms of testimonial injustice and contributory injustice. This structural limit becomes visible when we realize how the institution of asylum is (...) formed to provide legitimacy to the institutional comfort the respective migration courts and boards enjoy. This institutional comfort afforded to migration boards and courts by the existing asylum regimes in the current order of nation-states leads to a systemic prioritization of state actors’ epistemic resources rather than that of applicants, which, in turn, results in epistemic injustice and impacts the determination of applicants’ refugee status. (shrink)

Defenders of multiculturalism have been recently criticized for failing to address gender inequality in minority cultures. Multiculturalism would seem incompatible with a commitment to feminism. This article discusses two empirical cases that pose a problem for public policy in the Netherlands: a conflict over wearing headscarves and requests for surgical hymen repair. These cases evoke widespread public controversy, in part because they are presumed to express or accommodate traditions in violation of women's rights and thus raise the question of tolerance. (...) While recognizing the potential discrepancies between feminism and multiculturalism, the author argues that committed feminists can be multiculturalists as well, and that good feminism might well require acts of multiculturalism. In addition, she advocates a contextual approach to tolerance. Her argument is that general justice arguments are too indeterminate to make for good judgement in concrete cases. The national political culture and institutional setting in which multicultural conflicts take place should be considered as morally relevant factors and co-determine our moral considerations. The dispute over feminism and multiculturalism cannot be settled in abstracto. Using a contextual approach, the author argues that wearing a headscarf and hymen repair are justifiable and consonant with feminist concerns in the Dutch educational and medical contexts. (shrink)

Although the universal human rights paradigm has been problematic for women and indigenous peoples, both groups have made advances by framing their demands within a human rights perspective. Indigenous women, however, have frequently found themselves marginalized by women’s movements and indigenous movements alike, particularly when they make demands for rights as indigenous women—not just as members of one group or the other. This article takes the case of Mapuche women in Chile to examine the politics of gender and human rights (...) for indigenous women. Their efforts to articulate their concerns, vis-à-vis Mapuche men, nonindigenous women, and the state, have entailed assertions of their own version of women’s rights, one that responds specifically to their reality as Mapuche women. (shrink)

Through illustrating the similarities between embodied practices rooted in different cultural contexts (such as `African' female genital cutting and `Western' cosmetic surgery), feminist theorists seek to reveal the instability of essentialist binaries which distinguish various groups as culturally, ethnically and morally `different'. They also aim to query how the term `culture' is employed differentially on the basis of embodied axes such as race and nation. However, in emphasizing overarching commonalities between practices, feminist cross-cultural comparisons risk collapsing into economies of sameness (...) that elide the complex relations of power through which such practices have been constituted. They can also fix the imagined subjects of these practices in troubling ways. Using the ubiquitous `African' female genital cutting and `Western' cosmetic surgery binary as an example, this article explores the difference it might make to address culturally essentialist constructions of embodied practice with a focus on relationality rather than commonality. As a means to reorient feminist cross-cultural approaches which depend on assertions of similarity or sameness, it argues for the theoretical and pedagogical utility of thinking through relational webs. (shrink)

This article discusses the politics behind the recently publicized arranged marriage of a 12-year-old Romani girl, Ana Maria Cioaba. It speaks to the anti-Romani racism in Romania and abroad inherent in the media portrayal of the marriage and criticizes the racist politics behind the involvement of the different political figures in an effort to ‘save’ Ms Cioaba. It also discusses the implications of the media’s obsession with the ‘exotic’ oppression of Third World women in the context of Ms Cioaba’s arranged (...) marriage. Ultimately the article also attempts to illuminate the precarious position of Romani feminism in racist countries. (shrink)

There are a variety of discourses and practices that position Western feminists as people who have a moral and political obligation to concern themselves with the welfare, suffering, or empowerment of non-Western subjects, often women, and intervene to “do good” on their behalf. Conversely, there are virtually no discourses and practices that assign moral and political obligations to non-Western feminists to intervene in matters involving the welfare or suffering of Western subjects, including women. A central goal of my paper is (...) to make this asymmetry explicit and distinguish it from charges such as “essentialism” more commonly made against Western feminist representations of their Others. I explore the consequences of discourses and practices that construct Western subjects as entitled to and obligated to concern themselves with the world entire, while not extending this global scope of concern to non-Western subjects. I critically examine, among other things, the roles assigned Western-funded NGOs in enabling Western subjects to engage in practices of “doing good” and I explore alternative possibilities that are more explicitly “political.” Along the way, I examine certain blind spots in Western political theory that appear connected to the picture of Western subjects as obligated to “do good” in distant places. My analysis engages substantially with Alison Jaggar’s essay, “Saving Amina,” drawing attention to matters of agreement and possible disagreement. (shrink)

This article interrogates whether and how the concept of ‘patriarchy’ is used by UN human rights treaty monitoring bodies (treaty bodies) and special procedures to interpret state obligations to respect and ensure women’s human rights. There are two key points that arise out of this study: first, that several treaty bodies and special procedures purposely and consistently use the concept of ‘patriarchy’ when discussing women’s human rights, and second, that although not all treaty bodies and special procedures have referred to (...) the terms ‘patriarchy’ or ‘patriarchal’, an examination of those that have reveals a marked difference in how the terms are used by treaty bodies when compared with special procedures. While treaty bodies render the meaning of ‘patriarchy’ as being synonymous with certain harmful practices, such as female-genital mutilation (FGM), special procedures utilise ‘patriarchy’ as a system of power, permeating every facet of society. In this article I will argue that the current state of dissonance between the understandings of ‘patriarchy’ by treaty bodies and special procedures creates an unnecessary ambiguity that does nothing to advance gender equality. Furthermore, utilising a nuanced understanding of patriarchy, as articulated by intersectional and anti-essentialist feminist scholars, would potentially equip treaty bodies and special procedures for more meaningful interpretation of rights themselves, and greater protection of women’s human rights. (shrink)

A recent trend in curriculum reform argues that a successful liberal education curriculum must incorporate courses on multiculturalism. Though there is some agreement on what topics to cover in those courses, very little attention has so far been directed to the issue of how those courses must be designed. What is important in addressing this 'how' question is a clear understanding of the concepts involved. The question I explore in this paper is: what is the best way of understanding the (...) nature of the concept of 'Indian culture' that would in turn help us achieve the proposed goal of liberal education. I argue that neither essentialism nor postmodernism - the two popular ways of understanding a concept in mainstream philosophy - is going to be of much help. I also consider a historical alternative suggested by Uma Narayan. I then offer a naturalist way of understanding this concept and note its relative advantages over Narayan's historical account. (shrink)

The question of authenticity centers in the lives of women of color to invite and restrict their representative roles. For this reason, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and Uma Narayan advocate responding with strategic essentialism. This paper argues against such a strategy and proposes an epistemic understanding of the question of authentic- ity. The question stems from a kernel of truth—the connection between experience and knowledge. But a coherence theory of knowledge better captures the sociality and the holism of experience and knowledge.

The article focuses on the politics of representation in Kosova since the United Nations took over ‘peace management’ in 1999. It uses UN propaganda posters (political pedagogy) and local nationalist political advertising as a way to read the multiple gendered discourses of representation. It shows how gender is used relationally between competing forces – the ‘international community’ and nationalists – as a tool to ensure UN's imposition of Western policies and norms and as a mechanism for local politicians to consolidate (...) their domination of the domestic/private sphere. Moreover, it discusses the price paid to mimic the West: how Kosovar politicians have sought to ‘undo’ national identity in favour of a Western self-representation through a gendered abnegation of Islam. Thus, as an intrinsic part of the discourse of ‘peace-building’, these images represent the site of power production, domination, negotiation, and rejection, involving the collaboration of different actors, institutions, and individuals. Three specific points will be made: first, the article seeks to show that a Western political modernization discourse has, paradoxically, reinforced patriarchal relations of power and traditional gender roles in Kosova through the subjugation of women. Second, it explains the inability to resolve competing Albanian narratives – one relying on the legacy of peaceful resistance and the other on the armed struggle against Serbian domination during the 1990s. Third, through the intermeshing of international peace-keepers and local nationalist patriarchs, it will show how the militarization of culture is perpetuated through, and in relationship to, gender. (shrink)

Changing social norms has become the preferred approach in global efforts to prevent gender-based violence (GBV). In this article, we trace the rise of social norms within GBV-related policy and practice and their transformation from social processes that exist in the world to beliefs that exist in the minds of individuals. The analytic framework that underpins social norms approaches has been subject to ongoing critical revision but continues to have significant issues in its conceptualisation of power and its sidelining of (...) the political economy. These issues are particularly apparent in the use of individualised measures of social norms that cannot demonstrate causation, and conflation of social norms with culture. Recognising that the pressure to measure may be a key factor in reducing the complexity of the social norms approach, we call for the use of mixed methods in documenting the factors and processes that contribute to GBV and the effectiveness of interventions. As social norms approaches are increasingly prioritised over addressing the non-normative contributors to GBV (such as access to and control over productive resources), awareness of the limitations of social norms approaches is vital. (shrink)

This paper morally evaluates the phenomenon Sylvia Chant calls "the feminization of responsibility," wherein women's unrecognized labor subsidizes international development while men retain or increase their power over women. I argue that development policies that feminize responsibility are incompatible with justice in two ways. First, such policies involve Northerners extracting unpaid labor from women in the global South. Northerners are obligated to provide development assistance, but they are transferring the labor of providing it onto women in the global South and (...) expecting them to do it for free. Second, development policies that feminize responsibility increase women's exposure to sexist domination. These two problems are present irrespective of whether policies that feminize responsibility improve women's basic well-being. (shrink)

Relational conceptions of autonomy attempt to take into account the social aspects of autonomous agency. Those views that incorporate not merely causally, but constitutively necessary relational conditions, incorporate a condition that has the form: A necessary condition for autonomous agency is that the agent stands in social relations S. I argue that any account that incorporates such a condition cannot play one of autonomy’s key normative roles: identifying those agents who ought to be protected from paternalistic intervention. I argue, against (...) objections from Oshana, that there are good reasons for maintaining the notion of autonomy in this role, and thus that such relational conceptions should not be accepted. This rejection goes beyond that from John Christman, which holds only for those relational conditions which are value-laden. (shrink)

Most Third World feminists consider nationalism as detrimental to feminism. Against this general trend, I argue that “polycentric” nationalism has potentials for advocating feminist causes in the Third World. “Polycentric” nationalism, whose proper goal is the attainment and maintenance of national self-determination, is still relevant in this neocolonial age of capitalist globalization and may serve feminist purposes of promoting the well-being of the majority of Third World women who suffer disproportionately under this system.

This article identifies and analyses the dominant stories that academics tell about the development of Western second wave feminist theory. Through an examination of recent production of interdisciplinary feminist and cultural theory journals, I suggest that despite a rhetorical insistence on multiple feminisms, Western feminist trajectories emerge as startlingly singular. In particular, I am critical of an insistent narrative that sees the development of feminist thought as a relentless march of progress or loss. This dominant approach oversimplifies the complex history (...) of Western feminisms, fixes writers and perspectives within a particular decade, and repeatedly (and erroneously) positions poststructuralist feminists as ‘the first’ to challenge the category ‘woman’ as the subject and object of feminist knowledge. Rather than provide a corrective history of Western feminist theory, the article interrogates the techniques through which this dominant story is secured, despite the fact that we (feminist theorists) know better. My focus, therefore, is on citation patterns, discursive framings and some of their textual, theoretical and political effects. As an alternative, I suggest a realignment of key theorists purported to provide a critical break in feminist theory with their feminist citational traces, to force a concomitant re-imagining of our historical legacy and our place within it. (shrink)

This paper examines the problematisation of sex-selective abortion (SSA) in UK parliamentary debates on Fiona Bruce's Abortion (Sex-Selection) Bill 2014–15 and on the subsequent proposed amendment to the Serious Crime Bill 2014–15. On the basis of close textual analysis, we argue that a discursive framing of SSA as a form of cultural oppression of minority women in need of protection underpinned Bruce's Bill; in contrast, by highlighting issues more commonly articulated in defence of women's reproductive rights, the second set of (...) debates displaced this framing in favour of a broader understanding, drawing on postcolonial feminist critiques, of how socio-economic factors constrain all women in this regard. We argue that the problematisation of SSA explains the original cross-party support for, and subsequent defeat of, the policies proposed to restrict SSA. Our analysis also highlights the central role of ideology in the policy process, thus making politics visible in policymaking. (shrink)

Feminism controversially, but fundamentally, influences why and how women's groups become implicated in politics. The debates around the meaning of feminism and the practice of feminist activism have established a discourse and created common melodies as well as some dissonance among women's groups in Hungary. This article discusses different interpretations of women's status that affect how Hungarian feminism has developed in what the author sees, contrary to a more common view, as an East—West continuum. The article analyzes how women's groups (...) in Hungary create affiliations and relate to the West, both ideologically and materially. The article unfolds the many different forms of Hungarian women's groups according to different `layers' of feminist consciousness. A vital element in forming these layers has been anti-feminism and how it has sometimes hindered consciousness or perhaps made some `differently sensitive'. Subsequently, the article uses a feminist reinterpretation of politics — women's interpretations of what belongs to the private and public spheres — without which, the author claims, contemporary women's activism in Hungary cannot be understood or even seen. The author argues that the interlocking forms of political actions among women's groups shape the postCommunist arena, although this shaping may be less immediately visible to the casual observer. (shrink)

Prior research has shown that human trafficking has multiple facets and is deeply enmeshed in societies around the world. Two central challenges for anti-trafficking organizations pertain to confronting systemic injustices and establishing caring organizations for survivors to start the process of healing and restoration. Analyzing the work of an anti-trafficking organization, International Sanctuary in Mumbai, we seek to elucidate how a space for caring for trafficking survivors is constructed in a largely non-egalitarian and unjust context. We contribute to discussions on (...) how caring infrastructures are possibly developed so that they do not write off existing gendered and in-egalitarian social structures and how they shape individual biographies. We also highlight how the specific, situated context—defined by those very structures—shapes and influences the transformative potential of care interventions. (shrink)

Global feminism has been criticized as a form of cultural imperialism, whereby a white, western model of feminism is imposed upon women in non-western contexts under the banner of universal sisterhood. In order to provide this theoretical critique with some empirical grounding, this article focuses on the worldwide impact of one of the most influential books ever to be published in the US, Our Bodies, Ourselves. This book not only had a decisive impact on how generations of American women felt (...) about their bodies, their sexuality and their health, but it was translated and adapted in 20 languages, both within and outside Europe. The dissemination of Our Bodies, Ourselves, particularly in the so-called `third world', makes it a perfect site for exploring the possibilities and the pitfalls of the globalization of feminist knowledge. After showing how Our Bodies, Ourselves travelled and was adapted to meet the needs of women in specific contexts, conclusions are drawn about the viability of the `feminism-as-culturalimperialism' critique as well as about the empowering potential of transnational feminist alliances in the field of body/politics. (shrink)

J’aborde tout d’abord l’objection relativiste aux droits humains, afin de pouvoir ensuite me concentrer sur d’autres questions soulevées par la question des droits humains et des minorités culturelles. Le but de ma discussion est d’identifier et d’interroger les tensions potentielles entre minorités culturelles et droits humains, afin de montrer en quoi les droits humains peuvent protéger les minorités culturelles et, ultimement, de problématiser la manière dont cette protection peut se déployer. Dans ce but, je commence par clarifier deux notions-clés de (...) ce débat : les minorités culturelles et les droits différenciés selon l’appartenance à un groupe, en en proposant une typologie. J’examine ensuite dans quelle mesure les aspects collectiviste et particulariste des droits différenciés se trouvent ou non en tension respectivement avec les aspects individualiste et universaliste des droits humains. Prenant comme points de référence quelques droits humains particuliers, je me penche enfin sur la situation de certaines minorités culturelles dans les démocraties libérales occidentales pour dégager les conditions délibératives de la réalisation de ces droits humains. Au fil de ces trois sections, une de mes préoccupations est de mettre en lumière les enjeux méthodologiques qui sous-tendent ces différents débats et de montrer la nécessité d’adopter une approche améliorative. I first address the relativist challenge to human rights, so as to be able to focus next on other questions raised by the question of human rights and cultural minorities. The aim of my discussion is to identify and to question the potential tensions between cultural minorities and human rights, in order to show how human rights can protect cultural minorities, and ultimately to problematize the way in which this protection can take place. To that end, I start by clarifying two key notions in this debate : cultural minorities and group-differentiated rights, by proposing a typology. I then examine to what extent the collectivist and the particularist aspects of group-differentiated rights are in tension respectively with the individualist and the universalist aspects of human rights. Taking as reference points a few particular human rights, I turn, finally, to the situation of certain cultural minorities in western liberal democracies to draw out the deliberative conditions of the realization of those human rights. Throughout all three sections, one of my concerns is to shed light on the methodological stakes underlying those different debates and to show that we should adopt an ameliorative approach. (shrink)

This article focuses on two memoirs written by Cornelia Sorabji in the 1930s – India Calling (1934), and a subsequent book, India Recalled (1936) – in order to explore how discourses of space and place shaped the representations of femininity which structure these texts. Specifically, I will examine Sorabji's apprehensions of femininity in relation to the Muslim and Hindu women she viewed as her legal ‘clients.’ I am equally interested in these texts as evidence of how memory works as a (...) practice of history – how events as they were recalled and recorded in the volatile 1930s and, especially in the wake of the Katherine Mayo controversy, how they helped shape the versions of the respectable feminine produced in her public writing of the period. (shrink)

On 3 August 2012, Shafilea Ahmed’s parents were convicted of her murder, nine years after the brutal ‘honour’ killing. The case offers important insights into how ‘honour’-based violence might be tackled without constructing non-Western cultures as inherently uncivilised. Critiquing the framing devices that structure British debates about ‘honour’-based violence demonstrates the prevalence of Orientalist tropes, revealing the need for new ways of thinking about culture that do not reify it or treat it as a singular entity that can only be (...) tackled in its entirety; instead, it is important to recognise that cultures consist of multiple, intersecting signifying practices that are continually ‘creolising’. Thus, rather than talking purely about culture, debates on ‘honour’-based violence should explore the intersection of culture with gender and other axes of differentiation and inequality. (shrink)

Critiques of Western feminists’ attempts to extend claims about gender injustice to the global context highlighted a dilemma facing Western feminists, what I call the global gender justice dilemma. In response to this dilemma, Alison M. Jaggar argues that Western feminists should turn our attention away from trying to resolve it and, instead, toward examination of our own complicity in the processes that produce injustice. I suggest that this kind of approach is helpful in responding to an additional dilemma that (...) confronts the Western feminist, namely the epistemic dilemma. Western feminists can speak for women of the global South and run the risk of distorting those women’s experience and further silencing their voices, or we can refuse to speak and abdicate our responsibilities to address injustice. I argue that we should address this dilemma not by trying to resolve it but by examining our role in the reproduction of epistemically unjust practices. To explain this response, I offer a preliminary account of epistemic injustice as epistemic oppression. I conclude by claiming that our own epistemic complicity in epistemically oppressive social practices is a weighty reason for us to work to transform those practices. (shrink)

An examination of case law on forced marriage reveals that in addition to physical force, the role of emotional pressure is now taken into consideration. However, in both legal and policy discourse, the difference between arranged and forced marriage continues to be framed in binary terms and hinges on the concept of consent: the context in which consent is constructed largely remains unexplored. By examining the socio-cultural construction of personhood, especially womanhood, and the intersecting structural inequalities that constrain particular groups (...) of South Asian women in the UK, we argue that consent and coercion in relation to marriage can be better understood as two ends of a continuum, between which lie degrees of socio-cultural expectation, control, persuasion, pressure, threat and force. Women who face these constraints exercise their agency in complex and contradictory ways that are not always recognised by the existing exit-centred state initiatives designed to tackle this problem. (shrink)

Theoretically, feminists ought to be the best deliberative democrats. However, political commitments to inclusiveness on issues of reproductive health and gay and lesbian rights, for example, create a boundary within feminism between those committed to the “feminist consensus” on these issues and women activists who share some feminist commitments, but not all. This article offers theoretically and empirically informed suggestions for how feminists can foster inclusive deliberation within feminist spaces.

This paper explores how Riverbend's blog/book Baghdad burning resonates with representations of Bhabha's conceptualization of the Other through the concept of mimicry which disrupts colonial discourse. Riverbend, the pseudonym of the blogger of Baghdad burning launched 17 August 2003, generates two representations of mimicry. The first is the new Iraqi governing members who, ‘hand-picked by Bremer’, represent how mimicry slips into mockery. To Riverbend, those governing members are puppets with colonial masks who project themselves as Iraqi nationalists. Their interest in (...) Iraq is in fact a continuation of the colonial pretensions. Second, Riverbend resists the colonial discourse by utilizing mimicry as likeness with menace to both the colonizers and their mimic men. As she uses the empowering language of the colonizer as well as western humour and knowledge of pop culture to accentuate resistance, Riverbend eventually becomes a menace to the colonizer because she ‘is almost the same, but not quite’. Through the lens of mimicry as a colonial mode to legitimize authority, Riverbend becomes the voice of dissent or of resistance using cyberspace to expose both the colonizers and their mimic men as part of the ongoing colonial discourse which is both pretentious and dehumanizing. (shrink)

Research on the status and experience of women in academia in the last 30 years has challenged conventional explanations of persistent gender inequality, bringing into sharp focus the cumulative impact of small scale, often unintentional differences in recognition and response: the patterns of 'post-civil rights era' dis­crimination made famous by the 1999 report on the status of women in the MIT School of Science. I argue that feminist standpoint theory is a useful resource for understanding how this sea change in (...) understanding gender inequity was realized. At the same time, close attention to activist research on workplace environment issues suggests ways in which our understanding of standpoint theory can fruitfully be refined. I focus on the implications of two sets of distinctions: between types of epistemic injustice (and correlative advantage) that may affect marginalized knowers; and between the resources of situated knowledge and those of a critical standpoint on knowledge production. (shrink)

This dissertation attempts to preserve the central tenets of a global moral theory called “the capabilities approach” as defended by Martha Nussbaum, but to do so in a way that better realizes its own goals of identifying gender injustices and gaining cross-cultural support by providing an alternative defense of it. Capabilities assess an individual’s well-being based on what she is able to do (actions) and who she is able to be (states of existence). Nussbaum grounds her theory in the intuitive (...) idea that each and every person is worthy of equal respect and dignity. The problem with grounding a theory in a version of intuitionism is that it runs the risk of authoritarian moral reasoning. I argue Nussbaum, in fact, is the final arbiter who decides which intuitions are mistaken, which are not, and how to interpret what people say to fit into her own framework. This method of justifying capabilities is most problematic in cases of social inequality whereby dominant group members do not feel they need to check their intuitions against non-dominant group members, and even if they did, they are not forced to take the non-dominant group’s intuitions seriously. I find capabilities as a global moral theory to be very promising, and I agree with Nussbaum that a list of capabilities is beneficial for identifying people who are not able to live a truly dignified human life. However, I am also sympathetic to the criticism of defending capabilities using a version of intuitionism. So, I offer an alternative method of justifying the capabilities rooted in the discourse ethics tradition. This method seeks all persons that are affected by the outcome to freely and equally share their opinion. This avoids the charge of authoritarian moral reasoning, because (1) it seeks perspectives other than simply one’s own, but unlike traditional ethics, it (2) pays special attention to the ways in which power relations shape dialogue. Ultimately, I hope to have preserved the central tenets of the capabilities approach while better realizing Nussbaum’s commitment to defending a theory that is gender sensitive and has gained cross-cultural support. (shrink)

Can we ever justly critique the norms and practices of another culture? When activists or policy-makers decide that one culture’s traditional practice is harmful and needs to be eradicated, does it matter whether they are members of that culture? Given the history of imperialism, many argue that any critique of another culture’s practices must be internal. Others argue that we can appeal to a universal standard of human well-being to determine whether or not a particular practice is legitimate or whether (...) it should be eradicated. In this paper, I use the FGC eradication campaigns of the 1980s to show that the internal/external divide is complicated by the inter-connectedness of these debates on the international level. As the line blurs between internal and external criticism and interventions, new questions emerge about the representativeness of global institutions. (shrink)

Since Kenya gained independence from Britain in 1963, women’s rights in the country have made slow gains and suffered some setbacks. However, the rights of women and their guaranteed participation in politics was outlined in Kenya’s 2010 Constitution. This paper will survey some of those gains as well as describe the social backlash experienced by women leaders who have been trailblazers in post-colonial Kenyan politics.

When women become perpetrators of suicide bombing, their agency – their ability to act upon and affect the world – is often denied. There are a number of reasons for this and one this thesis considers is that – as females – they are not expected to be violent. Accordingly, such women are judged to be coerced or incompetent, and so unable to rule themselves sufficiently as agents. Models of autonomy propose various frameworks for assessing whether acts or persons are (...) self-governing, and the relational approach in particular has garnered much support recently. However, some aspects of the relational account remain under-theorised, including how autonomy might be measured. In this thesis, I aim to bring these two elements together by examining whether an extension of the relational model may offer a way in which to estimate the autonomy of the bombers in a more nuanced fashion. I make two claims. First, that the relational conception of the agent and autonomy ‘fits’ the bombers. Second, that my spectrum view, which is rooted in the relational approach, maps the bomber’s autonomy approximately but in detail. As such, my spectrum view is a befitting notion of autonomy and allows a graded and comparative representation of the bomber’s autonomy. (shrink)