Women, Gender Sexuality Studies Faculty Publication Series

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  • Publication
    Biopolitics of Adoption
    (2013-01-01) Briggs, Laura
    From the 1930s through the 1970s, first eugenics and then the Cold War made “overpopulation” a key word in defining the nature and cause of “Third World” poverty, as well as what the form of its solution—development—would be. Defining fertility as the problem simultaneously decentered blame—it was not colonialism or extractive world economic systems that cause poverty in the Global South—and provided a very specific cause and site of intervention: irresponsible, careless mothers and their excessive children. We know this story well; many feminist scholars and activists have made the argument that this discourse, imagined in relationship to the social science unit of the national population, was crucial to the elaboration of twentieth-century biopolitical regimes of post/neo/colonial governance.
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    La economía política de la adopción: La neoliberalización del bienestar infantil / Political economy of adoption: Neoliberalization of child welfare
    (2012-01-01) Briggs, Laura
    Guatemala, unlike most Latin American nations in the decades from 1990-2010, saw its rate of transnational adoptions of children rise. This article suggests that the usual explanation for this phenomenon –that thousands of children were displaced by the war, and that the country has no domestic “culture of adoption”– is inaccurate. On the contrary, it argues, transnational adoption from Guatemala began its ignominious history in kidnappings by militaries and paramilities during the 40-year civil war. Most of those children were adopted within the country (showing that Guatemalans do adopt, given the chance), but some were adopted in the U.S. and Europe. The victory by neoliberal forces in the war is mirrored in what happened to adoption: despite decades of efforts at reform, adoption became a very lucrative business for judges, social workers, lawyers, and others. The success of recent efforts to slow or halt transnational adoption from Guatemala will depend on whether those who profited from it find the indirect benefits of an improved “human rights record” to be worthwhile.
  • Publication
    Fieldwork
    (2019-01-01) Asher, Kiran
  • Publication
    Reivindicar la cercanía entre los feminismos poscoloniales y decoloniales con base en Spivak y Rivera Cusicanqui
    (2019-01-01) Asher, Kiran
    En los últimos años, se han puesto los feminismos poscoloniales y decoloniales en contra unos de otros. En este artículo, argumento a favor de tratarlos como emparentados, yuxtaponiendo algunas de las ideas que he hallado en los escritos de Gayatri Spivak y Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui. Ninguna de ellas se presenta como feminista poscolonial o decolonial, aunque sus obras son citadas con frecuencia en referencia a estos campos. Ambas se enfrentan al espinoso tema de la representación de la subalternidad y la indigeneidad, no solo en la academia eurocéntrica, sino también entre académicos migrantes y diaspóricos y en las elites nacionales. Afirmo que son sus críticas persistentes a la representación lo que permite promover un diálogo entre la academia feminista poscolonial y decolonial. Esos diálogos conllevan la necesidad de pasar por encima de limitaciones lingüísticas, históricas, geográficas, políticas y teóricas para entablar alianzas anticoloniales. Palabras clave: poscolonial, decolonial, feminismos, Spivak, Rivera Cusicanqui. In the last few years, postcolonial and decolonial feminisms have been pitched against each other. In this commentary I make a case for treating them as kin. I do so by juxtaposing some of the ideas found in the writing of Gayatri Spivak and Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui. Neither claims to be a postcolonial or decolonial feminist, though their writings are regularly cited in reference to these fields. Both grapple with the thorny matter of representing subalternity and indigeneity, not only in Eurocentric scholarship, but also by migrant and diasporic academics and national elites. I contend that it is their persistent critiques of representation that can help foster a dialogue between postcolonial and decolonial feminist scholarship. Such dialogues entail reaching across linguistic, historical, geographical, political, and theoretical boundaries to establish anti-colonial alliances.
  • Publication
    A Retrospective Look at the Winding Paths to Legalizing Afro-Colombian Rights in Law 70 of 1993
    (2016-01-01) Asher, Kiran
    August 2013 marked twenty years since the passing of Law 70, which legally recognizes the ethnic, territorial, and socioeconomic rights of black communities in Colombia. In the past two decades its implementation has been mixed at best, and the actual political and economic status of most Afro-Colombians remains grim. Yet this flawed law remains an important icon and political instrument of Afro-Colombian struggles. A retrospective look at the processes and peoples that led up to Law 70 may be useful in the context of ongoing Afro-Latin(o) struggles to obtain real and sustained cultural, political, and economic rights.
  • Publication
    Cartographies for Feminist STS: Celebrating the Work of Sharon Traweek
    (2021-01-01) Subramaniam, Banu
    In the 2020 Prague Virtual Conference of the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S) Sharon Traweek was awarded the society's John D. Bernal Prize jointly with Langdon Winner. The Bernal Prize is awarded annually to individuals who have made distinguished contributions to the field of STS. Prize recipients include founders of the field of STS, along with outstanding scholars who have devoted their careers to the understanding of social dimensions of science and technology. In this essay responding to Traweek's Bernal lecture, Subramaniam explores Traweek's mentorship in her own work as a feminist STS scholar in biological sciences.
  • Publication
    Beyond dichotomies: Gender and intersecting inequalities in climate change studies
    (2016-01-01) Djoudi, Houria; Locatelli, Bruno; Vaast, Chloe; Asher, Kiran; Brockhaus, Maria; Sijapati, Bimbika Basnett
    Climate change and related adaptation strategies have gender-differentiated impacts. This paper reviews how gender is framed in 41 papers on climate change adaptation through an intersectionality lens. The main findings show that while intersectional analysis has demonstrated many advantages for a comprehensive study of gender, it has not yet entered the field of climate change and gender. In climate change studies, gender is mostly handled in a men-versus-women dichotomy and little or no attention has been paid to power and social and political relations. These gaps which are echoed in other domains of development and gender research depict a ‘feminization of vulnerability’ and reinforce a ‘victimization’ discourse within climate change studies. We argue that a critical intersectional assessment would contribute to unveil agency and emancipatory pathways in the adaptation process by providing a better understanding of how the differential impacts of climate change shape, and are shaped by, the complex power dynamics of existing social and political relations.
  • Publication
    Sex Work and Queer Politics in Three Acts
    (2012-01-01) Shah, Svati P.
    Sex work has always been relevant to queer and trans communities, both as a livelihood option and as an issue that critically informs the space between social and political margins, and the centralities of queer and trans communities. The vital set of issues raised by the intersections of sex worker and queer populations has not always been addressed by LGBT/Q organizations, however. This essay brings the complex history of those intersections into sharp relief, in order to make a case for the importance of thinking politically about sex work and queer life today.
  • Publication
    Colonial Legacies, Postcolonial Biologies: Gender and the Promises of Biotechnology
    (2015-01-01) Subramaniam, Banu
    Three decades of work in the feminist studies of science and technology have shaped our evolving understandings of the relationships between sex, gender, and biotechnology. Sex, and gender are most often reduced to binary categories, severely limiting our conceptions not only of human diversity, but those of science and technology. Using two case study set in India, transnational surrogacy and the Indian Genome Variation Project, this paper explores how popular positions around biotechnology are reduced to binary positions promoting and opposing biotechnology as the solution for the economic and social development of India. By locating surrogacy and genomics within the larger geopolitical, historical, economic and cultural transformations of postcolonial India, the paper argues that both technologies are far more complex in their impact on women and gender. Why does technology become the major site of hope for the future? Why does genomics become the site for the promises of good health? Why has India become a site for reproductive tourism, and transnational surrogacy in particular? Drawing on the social studies of science, the paper argues that technology and human bodies are never neutral but always prefigured with a gender, race, caste and sexuality. Surrogacy and genomics should be understood within these colonial and postcolonial histories of science and technology.
  • Publication
    The Aliens in Our Midst: Managing Our Ecosystems
    (2014-01-01) Subramaniam, Banu
  • Publication
    Thinking Fragments: Adisciplinary Reflections on Feminisms and Environmental Justic
    (2017-01-01) Asher, Kiran
    Feminisms and environmental justice are some of the names of struggles to understand nature-culture linkages and conceptualize just worlds for non-humans and their human kin. In this paper, I revisit my journey of doing environmental justice research, i.e. of my feminist scientific practice in Asia and Latin America. In this retrospective telling I highlight how gender, political economy, and race were and remain fundamental in producing the subjects and objects of my research and analysis. I discuss how an implicit feminism helped me grapply with the complex nature-culture linkages I observed in the field. Postcolonial and marxist insights supplement and complement feminisms in the questions I pose as we attempt to imagine new nature-cultures.
  • Publication
    Gender Equality as an Entitlement: An Assessement of the UN Woemn's Report on Gender Equality and Sustainable Development 2014
    (2016-01-01) Asher, Kiran; Basnett, Bimbika Sijapati
    Concerns about gender equality and women’s empowerment are re-emerging as part of the post-2015 global development agenda,and addressing them is one of the Sustainable Development Goals(SDGs).Every five years, the United Nations Division for the Advancement of Women(known since 2010 as UN Women),publishes a ‘World Survey onthe Role of Women in Development’. These Surveys are presented to the Second Committee of the General Assembly and focus on specific development themes.The 2014Survey focuses on gender equality and sustainable development and was commissionedto inform the SDG process.Itmakes a case for linking gender equality andsustainable development on the grounds that ‘causes and underlying drivers of unsustainability and of gender inequality are deeply interlocked’(p.11). Furthermore, itnotes that: ‘women’s knowledge, agency and collective action are central to finding, demonstrating and building more economically, socially and environmentally sustainable pathways to manage locallandscapes; adapt to climate change; produce and access food; and secure sustainable water, sanitation and water services’(p.13).
  • Publication
    After Post-Development: On Capitalism, Difference, and Representation
    (2018-01-01) Asher, Kiran; Wainwright, Joel
    The post‐development school associated with the thought of Arturo Escobar treats development as a discursive invention of the West, best countered by ethnographic attention to local knowledge of people marginalised by colonial modernity. This approach promises paths to more equitable and sustainable alternatives to development. Post‐development has been criticised vigorously in the past. But despite its conceptual and political shortcomings, it remains the most popular critical approach to development and is reemerging in decolonial and pluriversal guises. This paper contends that the post‐development critique of mainstream development has run its course and deserves a fresh round of criticism. We argue that those committed to struggles for social justice must critically reassess the premises of post‐development and especially wrestle with the problem of representation. We contend that Gayatri Spivak's work is particularly important to this project. We review some of Spivak's key texts on capitalism, difference, and development to clarify the virtues of her approach.
  • Publication
    When we cannot compare. A commentary on Tariq Jazeel's 'Singularity. A manifesto for incomparable geographies'
    (2019-01-01) Asher, Kiran
    Tariq Jazeel's remarks at the 2017 RGS/IBG annual conference and the paper in this issue are set against the backdrop of an ‘Anglophonic and allegorical’ library (Jazeel, this issue, p. 6). For those of us educated in former British colonies as for Mustafa Sa'eed—the protagonist of Tayeb Salih's novel—the English study is a familiar space. Though never having seen or been in any such study, in my mind's eye I settle myself comfortably in the armchair in front of the fireplace with a book in hand. Jazeel firmly shakes me awake to notice that the book in my hand like the ones on Sa'eed's shelves is in English. Why is this so? To grapple with this question I remove my shoes (to this day I cannot really think with shoes on) and sit up. Of course, bare toes do not belong in a Victorian chair. But surely I may slide down to sit cross‐legged on the rug on the library floor (almost certainly woven in Turkey, North Africa, Central Asia or the Middle East)? Jazeel flags one of the key conundrums of the decolonial imperative: we can neither inhabit a Eurocentric library (comfortably?) nor leave it (uncomfortably?). And by us he means all of us—those who are considered marginal in some way (gendered female, queer, raced, formerly colonized, and more), but also whose subjectivities are dominant or ‘mainstream’ (former colonizers, gendered males, white, able‐bodied, committed to disciplines, etc.).
  • Publication
    Fragmented Forests, Fractured Lives: Ethno-territorial Struggles and Development in the Pacific Lowlands of Colombia
    (2018-01-01) Asher, Kiran
    The culturally and ecologically diverse Pacific lowlands of Colombia are both the locus and product of key political economic and cultural political conjunctures. Twenty‐five years after they emerged in their current form, Afro‐Colombian ethnic and territorial struggles have become important icons of resistance to development and struggles for social change. But in Colombia as in other parts of the world, the rapid and violent expansion of capitalist accumulation and state power have had devastating consequences for the region's forests and communities—literally and epistemically fragmenting both. Based on long‐term fieldwork, this paper examines the ongoing and contentious co‐production of the Colombian Pacific region amidst the increasingly violent forces of neoliberal governmentality in the 21st century. It shows that the Pacific lowlands are an example of “political forests” in the sense that they are a contested site and product of Afro‐Colombian cultural politics and state territorialisation.
  • Publication
    Gender in the Jungle: A Critical Assessment of Women and Gender in Current (2014-2016) Forestry Research
    (2018-01-01) Asher, Kiran; Varley, Gwen
    Fields and forests are gendered spaces. Women's crucial contributions to productive and reproductive work within and beyond the household have been made visible since the 1970s. There has also been a persistent call for mainstreaming gender in sustainable development and environmental concerns. Prior work discusses the importance of women and gender for forests, and provides guidelines and methods to integrate them in forestry research. This paper assesses the uptake of women and gender issues in recent (2014–2016) forestry research. We found that women and gender concerns are still largely absent or inadequately addressed in forestry research published in scientific journals. Despite the call for greater gender integration in forestry, much needs to be done in quantitative and qualitative terms to meet this goal.
  • Publication
    The risky streets of ontologically redesigned cities: Some comments on Arturo Escobar's rurbanization research program
    (2019-01-01) Asher, Kiran
    In Habitability and Design:Radical Interdependence and the Remaking of Cities, Escobarexpandson his remarks at the 2018 GeoForum lecture at the AAG (Escobar2018a, 2018b). He contends that cities are governed by a Western, patriarchal, logic thatdisconnects them from the Earth and makes them unconducive to life. In order to makecities habitableagain, he notes, we must redesign them along the lines of communities whose political ontologies are groundedin their relationship with the Earthas a living system.