Women, Citizenship and Difference PDF
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Women, Citizenship and Difference edited by Nira Yuval-Davis and Pnina Werbner @ Zed Books LONDON AND NEW YORK joW uvn- Women, Citi^tnsbip and Difftrtnct was first published in 1999 by Zed Books Ltd., 7 Cynthia Street, London N1 9JF, UK and Room 400, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA in association with the International Centre for Contemporary Cultural Research Universities of Manchester and Keele, UK- Distributed in the USA exclusively by St Martin’s Press, Inc., 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA. Editorial copyright © Nira Yuval-Davis and Pnina Werbner, 1999 Individual chapters copyright © authors of individual chapters as indicated on pp. v-vi Cover design by Andrew Corbett Set in lO/ll'/j pt Monotype Garamond by Long House, Cumbria, UK Printed and bound in the U nited Kingdom by Biddles Ltd, Guildford and King’s Lynn The rights of the authors of this work have been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988 All rights reserved A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library US CIP has been applied for ISBN Hb 1 85649 645 7 Pb 1 85649 646 5 Contents Notes on Contributors vii Prvfacc xi cr* \ 1. Introduction: Women and the New Discourse of Citizenship 1 Pnina Werbner and Nira Yuval-Davis PART ONE DIALOGICAL CITIZENSHIPS 39 2. Citizenship Revisited 41 Alison Assiter 3. Right-Wing ‘Feminism’: a Challenge to Feminism as an 54 Emancipatory Movement Birgit Rommelspacher 4. It Works Both Ways’: Belonging and Social Participation 65 among Women with Disabilities Judith Monks PART TWO EXCLUSIONARY CITIZENSHIPS 85 5. Female Education and Citizenship in Afghanistan: 87 a Turbulent Relationship Niloufar Pour^and 6. Citizenship, Difference and Education: Reflections Inspired 100 by the South African Transition Elaine Unterbalter 7. Producing the Mothers of the Nation: Race, Class and 118 Contemporary US Population Policies Patricia Hill Collins 8. Constitutionally Excluded: Citizenship and (Some) Irish Women 130 Ronit Lentin PART THREE AMBIVALENT CITIZENS: 145 MIGRANTS AND REFUGEES 9. Feminism, Multiculturalism, Essenrialism 147 Aleksandra Àlund 10. Muslim and South Asian Women: Customary Law and 162 Citizenship in Britain Samia Bano 11. Embodied Rights: Gender Persecution, State Sovereignty 178 and Refugees Jacqueline Bbabha 12. Refugee Women in Serbia: Their Experiences of War, 192 Nationalism and State Building Maja Korac PART FOUR FEMINIST CITIZENSHIPS IN A GLOBAL ECUMENE 205 13. Globalisation and the Gendered Politics of Citizenship 207 \ » Jan Jin<b Ptttman * J \ 14. Political Motherhood and the Féminisation of Citizenship: 221 Women’s Activisms and the Transformation of the Public Sphere Pnina Werbner 15. An Agenda of One’s Own: The Tribulations of the Peruvian 246 Feminist Movement Virginia Vargas and Cecilia Olea Index 263 Notes on Contributors Aleksandra Alund is a professor in the Department of Sociology, University of Umea, Sweden, and also holds a guest professorship at the Danish Centre for Migration and Ethnic Studies, Esbjerg, Denmark. In addition to her general work on ethnicity and multiculturalism in Europe she has, over a number of years, conducted research on multi-ethnic suburban areas in Stockholm with special focus on gender and youth research. In connection with this she has written a number of articles and books published in English and Swedish. Among her books are (with Carl-Ulrik Schierup) Paradoxes of Multiculturalism (Avebury 1991) and Multikultiungdom: Kbit, etnicitet, identitet (Studentlitteratur 1997). Alison Assiter is Dean of Economic and Social Sciences at the University of the West of England and Professor of Feminist Theory. Her books include Althusser and Feminism (Pluto Press 1991) and Enlightened Women (Roudedge 1998). She lives in London with her partner and their son. Samia Bano works for Southall Black Sisters. Her previous work includes researching identity among second-generation Pakistanis and Bangladeshis in East London as part of a project directed by Professor Floya Anthias at the University of Greenwich. She has recently been awarded an Economic and Social Research Council doctoral research award at the University of Warwick to study the practice of Islamic personal laws in relation to Asian Muslim women in Britain. Jacqueline Bhabha is the director of the Human Rights Programme at the University of Chicago. She is an expert in international refugee law and practised immigration and human rights law in London for 15 years before moving to the United States to teach and write. She has published several books, including (with Sue Shutter) Women's Movement: Women under Immigra tion, Nationality and Refugee Law (Trentham Books 1994). She is currently working on questions of inclusion and exclusion in Europe, on child vii Vili NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS persecution and on mechanisms for improving the implementation of inter national human rights law. Her most recent article is on the need for child- specific guidelines for adjudicating asylum applications by minors. Patricia Hill Collins is currendy Professor of African-American Studies at the University of Cincinnati. She has just completed her third book, entided Fighting Words: Black Women, Critical Social Theory and the Search forJ ustice, to be published by the University of Minnesota Press. Maja Korac received her BA Honours and Masters degrees in Sociology from Belgrade University, in the former Yugoslavia, where she taught for several years. She is currendy a doctoral candidate, Graduate Programme, Sociology, at York University, Canada. Since the spring of 1996 she has also worked as a consultant to the Women in Conflict Zones Network project, initiated and hosted by York University. Ronit Lentin, a feminist sociologist and novelist, is course coordinator of the MPhil in Ethnic and Racial Studies at the University of Dublin, Trinity College, where she also lectures in Sociology and Women’s Studies. She is the editor of Gender and Catastrophe (Zed Books 1997) and In from the Shadows: the University of Limerick Women's Studies Collection Vols 1 and 2 (Limerick 1995, 1996). Among her books is Conversations with Palestinian Women (Jerusalem: Mifras 1982). She has published extensively in relation to her doctoral research on the gendered relations between Israel and the Shoah (Holocaust) and on feminist research methodologies, gender and racism, feminist auto/ biography, women’s peace activism, and women and citizenship. Her latest novel is Songs on the Death of Children (Dublin: Poolbeg Press 1996). Judith Monks is a Lecturer in the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology, Keele University, UK. She is a social anthropologist whose research has been principally in the area of chronic illness and disablement in the UK, a field in which she has also had participatory experience as a nurse and community health worker. She has published articles on personhood, language and personal narrative, and on experiences of locality and belonging. Her forthcoming monograph, based on her doctoral thesis, concerns experiences of personhood and conversation among people with multiple sclerosis. Cecilia Mauleon Olea is an active veteran Peruvian feminist who works at the Flora Tristan Centre for Peruvian Women and is currently Chair of its Board of Directors. She studied Social Anthropology. During the preparation for the Fourth World Conference on Women at Beijing, she was responsible for the Regional Coordinator’s Political Advisory Team. She has published various articles in feminist and political journals and collections, in Spanish and English, about Peruvian and Latin American feminist politics. NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS ix Jan Jindy Pettman is reader in Global Politics and Director of the Centre for Women’s Studies at the Australian National University in Canberra. She is part of a network of feminists researching connections between identity, culture and political economy in the Asian region. Her most recent book is Worlding Women: a Feminist International Politics (Routledge 1996). She is co editor of the new International Feminist Journal of Politics. Nilofar Pourzand is an Assistant Project Officer with UNICEF Afghanis tan. She is also a doctoral student at the University of Greenwich, London, where she is writing a dissertation on ‘Gender, Education and Identity among Educated Afghani Refugee Women in Pakistan’. Before working in Afghanistan, she was Gender and Education Officer for UNICEF in Iran. She has published a number of UNICEF documents on gender analysis in that country. Her contacts with Afghanistan go back to childhood. Birgst Rommelspacher teaches women’s studies at the College of Social Work, Alice Salomon Fachhochschule Berlin, and Social Psychology at the Technische Universität Berlin. She has numerous publications on feminist psychology, right-wing extremism, racism and anti-feminism, including Weibliche Beqehungsmuster. Psychologie und Therapie von Frauen (Frankfurt: Campus 1987); Mitmenschlichkeit und Unterwerfung. Zur Ambivalenz weiblicher Moral (Frankfurt: Campus 1992, with R. Burgard); Leiden macht keine Lust. Der Mythos vom weiblichen Masochismus (Frankfurt: Fischer 1992); Schuldlos-Schuldig\? Wie sich junge Frauen mit Antisemitismus auseinandersetzten (Hamburg: Konkret Literaturverlag 1995); Dominanqkultur. Texte %u Fremdheit und Macht (Berlin: Orlanda 1995). Elaine Unterhalter is a South African woman who is currendy a Lecturer in Education and International Development at the Institute of Education, University of London. She has published extensively in journals and collec tions on themes related to education, gender and international development. Her current research is concerned with gender and curriculum transforma tion in the Republic of South Africa. Virginia Valente Vargas is a sociologist who majored in Political Science. Vargas, an active feminist militant, founded the Flora Tristan Centre for Peruvian Women in 1979. Her works, in Spanish or English, include The Contribution of Women's Rebellion (1989), How to Change Development (1992), Gender and Development (co-edited, 1992) and The Women's Movement and Public Policy in Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean (co-edited, 1998). Since 1990, Vargas has worked as both an activist and organiser in Latin America, and as a Visiting Lecturer at the Women and Development Programme at the Institute of Social Studies, the Hague, Netherlands. During 1994-96 she was Coordinator of the Latin American and Caribbean Women NGOs for the X NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS World Conference on Women, Beijing. Vargas has been honoured with awards for her work with women by Peruvian, Latin American, Spanish and international bodies. Pnina Werbner is Reader in Social Anthropology at Keele University and Research Administrator of the International Centre for Contemporary Cultural Research (ICCCR) at the Universities of Manchester and Keele. Her most recent publications are Embodying Charisma: Locality, Modernity and Emotion in Sufi Cults (with Helene Basu, Routledge 1998), Debating Cultural Hybridity and The Politics of Multiculturalism in the New Europe, both co-edited with Tariq Modood (Zed Books 1997). Her monograph is The Migration Process: Capital, Gifts and Offerings among British Pakistanis (Berg 1990). Her forthcoming book, Diaspora, Islam and the Millennium, is on the political imaginaries of British Pakistanis. Her current research on multiculturalism and on transnational Sufi cults was conducted in Britain and Pakistan. Nira Yuval-Davis is Professor and Postgraduate Course Leader in Gender and Ethnic Studies at the University of Greenwich, London. She has written extensively on theoretical and empirical aspects of nationalism, racism, fundamentalism and gender relations in Britain, in Israel and in settler societies. Among others, she co-authored Racialised Boundaries (Routledge 1992), and co-edited Women-Nation-State (Macmillan 1989), Refusing Hofy Orders: Women and Fundamentalism in Britain (Virago 1992), Unsettling Settler Societies: Articulations of Gender, Ethnicity, Race and Class (Sage 1995) and Crossfires: Nationalism, Racism and Gender in Europe (Pluto 1995). Her most recent book is Gender and Nation, published by Sage (1997). Preface During the last few years, citizenship in general, and women’s citizenship in particular, has occupied a centre stage in feminism, both theoretically and politically. This book constitutes a contribution to this growing accumulative body of literature on the subject. It is a complementary volume to the special issue of Feminist Review, Citizenship: Pushing the Boundaries (FR 57, Autumn 1997), of which we were both guest editors, together with the Feminist Review Collective members Helen Crowley and Gail Lewis. The Feminist Review special issue, as well as this book, are based on the international conference, ‘Women, Citizenship and Difference’, which we organised at the University of Greenwich in London on 16-19 July 1996. The 120 participants in the conference came from a wide variety of geographical and professional locations, both academic and activist. What united them all was a recognition of the interdependence of analytical and political commitment, of situated knowledge and of the intersectionality of gender, race and ethnicity, class, ability and other social divisions. Many although not all of the participants felt that the notion of citizenship might be a useful tool to both analyse and promote women’s position — however heterogeneous this category may be in contemporary society. A paper written by Nira Yuval-Davis was circulated among the participants before the conference and helped to create a common agenda for the debates that took place there. The paper, which was published in our edited issue of Feminist Review, looked at debates concerning citizenship, nationalism and ‘the community’; social rights and social difference; the private and the public; active/passive citizenship and citizenship rights and duties. It aimed at constructing a non-sexist, non-racist non-westocentric theory of multi layered dialogical citizenship. These issues were discussed at the conference in a series of plenary panels as well as in ongoing, intensive small group discussions, which were randomly composed of the confcrcncc participants. The discussions established the possibility of a common language — a transversal dialogue, cross-cutting disciplinary and collectivity boundaries. xi xii PREFACE More than a hundred women, as mentioned, and some men participated at the conference. The level of contributions, both in the form of papers and as active participants in the discussion, was exceptionally high. Inevitably, only a minority of these papers and panel presentations have found their way into this book and the special issue, although we know that many more participants have continued to develop their standpoints in other forums. The panel presentations and the group discussions in the conference were summed up in the conference report that was circulated later among the participants and also sent to the Wenner Gren Foundation for Anthro pological Research and to the members of the European Union Equal Opportunities Commission who sponsored the conference. The generous support of both bodies ensured that the conference was a truly international and interdisciplinary event. Greenwich University hosted the conference and it was also supported by the International Centre for Contemporary Cultural Research at Keele University. We would like to use this opportunity to thank all participants and sponsors for their contributions to the success of the event, and look forward to the continuation of the dialogue. Nira Yuval-Davis and Pnina Werbner
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