Theorizing NGOs: States, Feminisms, and Neoliberalism PDF
Preview Theorizing NGOs: States, Feminisms, and Neoliberalism
Theorizing NGOs NexT Wave New Directions in Women’s Studies A series edited by Inderpal Grewal, Caren Kaplan, and robyn wIeGman Theorizing NGOs StateS, FemInISmS, and neolIberalISm victoria Bernal and Inderpal Grewal, editors Duke University Press Durham and London 2014 © 2014 Duke University Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper ∞ Typeset in Warnock Pro type by Tseng Information Systems, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data Theorizing NGOs: states, feminisms, and neoliberalism / Victoria Bernal and Inderpal Grewal, eds. pages cm.—(Next wave) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISbn 978- 0- 8223- 5551- 9 (cloth : alk. paper) ISbn 978- 0- 8223- 5565- 6 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Non- governmental organizations. 2. Civil society. 3. Women—Political activity—History. I. Bernal, Victoria. II. Grewal, Inderpal. III. Series: Next wave. jz4841.t44 2014 341.2–dc23 2013026388 CONTeNTS vii aCKnowledGmentS 1 IntroduCtIon The nGo Form: Feminist Struggles, States, and Neoliberalism victoria Bernal and Inderpal Grewal PaRT I NGOs Beyond Success or Failure 19 21 Chapter 1 The Movementization of nGos? Women’s Organizing in Postwar Bosnia- Herzegovina elissa Helms 50 Chapter 2 Failed Development and Rural Revolution in Nepal: Rethinking Subaltern Consciousness and Women’s Empowerment Lauren Leve 93 Chapter 3 The State and Women’s Empowerment in India: Paradoxes and Politics aradhana Sharma PaRT II Postcolonial Neoliberalisms and the NGO Form 115 119 Chapter 4 Global Civil Society and the Local Costs of Belonging: Defining Violence against Women in Russia Julie Hemment 143 Chapter 5 Resolving a Gendered Paradox: Women’s Participation and the nGo Boom in North India Kathleen O’Reilly 166 Chapter 6 Power and Difference in Thai Women’s nGo Activism LeeRay M. Costa 193 Chapter 7 Demystifying Microcredit: The Grameen Bank, nGos, and Neoliberalism in Bangladesh Lamia Karim PaRT III Feminist Social Movements and NGOs 219 221 Chapter 8 Feminist Bastards: Toward a Posthumanist Critique of nGoization Saida Hodžic´ 248 Chapter 9 Lived Feminism(s) in Postcommunist Romania Laura Grünberg 266 Chapter 10 Women’s Advocacy Networks: The European Union, Women’s nGos, and the Velvet Triangle Sabine Lang 285 Chapter 11 Beyond nGoization? Reflections from Latin America Sonia e. alvarez 301 ConCluSIon Feminisms and the nGo Form victoria Bernal and Inderpal Grewal 311 bIblIoGraphy 353 ContrIbutorS 357 Index aCKNOWLeDGMeNTS When we began this project, we did not realize how long it would take us to get from start to finish, from a collaborative interest in how non- governmental organizations (nGos) were changing the nature of feminist organizing globally to an anthology that ended up reflecting on an already established new feminist landscape. In this process we benefited from the work of those who are included in this collection, and that of other schol- ars who contributed to our thinking on the topic. We read the work of, spoke to, and participated in conferences with many excellent feminist researchers who, along with us, have been thinking about the path that feminism has taken over the last couple of decades. There is a community of feminist scholars within the academy and outside it, and their writings on nGos have changed the way we look at activism and feminism. Simul- taneously they have enabled us to think about the state and civil society, and thus about culture and politics in the twenty- first century. This col- lection is part of the ongoing conversation in that community. This project has benefited from the support and participation of nu- merous institutions, individuals, and groups. We would like to thank the Rockefeller Foundation for funding our Team Project on “Democratizing Women: nGos, Empowerment, and Marginalization in the 21st Century,” at the Bellagio Center in Italy in August 2004. Our conversations there with some superb participants—including Ambra Pirri, Surina Khan, Lamia Karim, Barbara Einhorn, Sabine Lang, Adetoun Ilumoka, Amina Jamal, and Mary John—raised important questions that are reflected in this anthology. We are also grateful both to the Humanities Research In- stitute of the University of California and its director, David Theo Gold- berg, for supporting the Conference on Global Circuits of Feminism that we organized at the University of California, Irvine (uCI), in May 2004 and to the scholars who participated: Susan Coutin, Boatema Boateng, Angelica DeAngelis, Pheng Cheah, Maureen Mahon, Teresa Caldeira, Lisa Parks, Sabine Lang, Lamia Karim, and Denise Brennan. A grant we re- ceived from uCI’s Computer and Library Collaborative Research initia- tive supported our collaborative research and enabled us to make further progress on this project. We received valuable research assistance from Caroline Melly at uCI and from Sarah Haley and Tina Palivos at Yale Uni- versity. We extend our deep thanks to all of the contributors to the vol- ume, whose unflagging enthusiasm for the project encouraged us, and whose patience and willingness to make changes up to the eleventh hour were crucial to its success. Thanks also to Ken Wissoker and Jade Brooks at Duke University Press, and several anonymous reviewers at the press for their interest in our project and their valuable comments on early drafts. Individually, Victoria would most like to thank Inderpal for a wonderful collaboration. The high points of intellectual synergy were exhilarating, and the inevitable obstacles and frustrations that are part of any project were less daunting because we confronted them together. Our project was in its own way a form of feminist collaboration that involved working across disciplinary boundaries and areas of expertise, as well as across the country, from California to Connecticut. I would like to thank the Wenner- Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research and the Ful- bright Foundation for supporting a year of fieldwork on nGos, women’s political activism, and donors in Tanzania. Although that research is not explicitly included here, it played an important part in shaping the con- tours of this anthology. I also thank the Humanities Research Institute of the University of California for supporting and hosting the quarter- long resident research group I convened in spring 2004 on “Global Circuits of Feminism.” In that group Inderpal and I first began to explore our interests in the nGo form and feminism. I wish to thank the past and present mem- bers of the Women’s Studies Department at uCI for the reading groups, speakers, key word events, and many conversations that have sustained and challenged me as a feminist scholar over the course of this project. I also thank my colleagues in the Anthropology Department, and my stu- dents, particularly Natalie Newton (now Dr. Newton) and Padma Govin- dan for our critical discussions of gender and nGos in Vietnam and India. viii acknowledgments Inderpal would like to thank colleagues and staff at both uCI, where this project began and took shape, and Yale University, from where it finally went to press. My thanks also go to Victoria for a collaboration that has been invigorating, generative, and also part of a wonderful friendship. We shared theories about the state, comparisons between nGos in Africa and South Asia, ideas about diasporas, and debates about feminism—as well as discussions about daughters and college admissions. Victoria and her family became part of the wonderful years I spent at Irvine. She was also a member of the Department of Anthropology, where I found a welcoming second academic home, and where so many other colleagues (Bill Maurer, Mei Zhang, Karen Leonard, Tom Boellstorff, and Susan Coutin), encour- aged and supported our project. I am also grateful to the Women’s Studies Department at Irvine, where my colleagues Laura Kang and Jennifer Terry shared research, theories, and service duties with me to make this project possible. Colleagues at campuses of the University of California and Cali- fornia State University have nurtured and supported this project through many years; Caren Kaplan and Minoo Moallem have wondered when the anthology would be done. My thanks also to the Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies Program at Yale for its support. Yale’s Program on Non- profit Organizations invited me to present my nGo research in India— which, though unpublished, has contributed to the introduction in nu- merous ways—and the provost’s office’s sabbatical leave enabled me to complete my contributions to the anthology. Finally, I thank two organiza- tions for teaching me about nonprofit organizations: the Asian Women’s Shelter in San Francisco and Narika in Berkeley, where I learned about the possibilities and the limits of states and nGos. The editors and publishers would like to thank the following for permis- sion to use copyrighted material: Chapter 2: Lauren Leve, “Failed Development and Rural Revolution in Nepal: Rethinking Subaltern Consciousness and Women’s Empower- ment,” Anthropology Quarterly 80, no. 1 (2007): 121–72. Chapter 3: Aradhana Sharma, “The State and Women’s Empowerment in India: Paradoxes and Politics,” is reproduced by permission of the acknowledgments ix
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