Gender and Place



Hurtig, Janise, Rosario Montoya, and Lessie Jo Frazier. "A Desalambrar: Unfencing Gender's Place in Research on Latin America.” Pp. 1-18.
Nash, June. “Postscript: Gender in Place and Culture”. Pp. 289-296.

In Gender's Place: Feminist Anthropologies of Latin America. R. Montoya, L.J. Frazier, and J. Hurtig, eds. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002.

Both articles emphasize the notion of place in relation to gender, as a way to address the situatedness and specificity of historic and cultural contexts; and also point at gender as a useful to category to analyze broader social problems, making connections between gender, language and other power structures. Nation for instance, as a meaning constructed and negotiated in everyday's practices. Note the contradictory and paradoxical effects that economic reconfigurations have on gender relations and local power dynamics.

The use of the metaphor of "unfencing" (desalambrar) responds to a desire to interrogate disciplinary boundaries, challenge the positivist pretentions of social sciences, for interrogating categories, and engage in practices for social change: "desalambrar as a praxis of mapping and dismantling relations of power by engaging the transformative potential of gender's place". (16)

However, Nash makes some dangerous implications in my view about Muslim and Indigenous women becoming an increasing target of violence due to a response to "globalization" (291). She also seems to see a universal oppressor in men, and to consider women as the political agents of feminism.

Comments

  1. JonJuly 19, 2009 at 1:45 AM

    "She also still thinks to see the oppressor in men and women as the political agents of feminism."

    I don't understand this. What do you (or she) mean?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Manuela Valle-CastroJuly 21, 2009 at 11:52 PM

    Well, that was confusing writing, I rewrote a bit.

    But I meant that in her example of the factory she sees the problem as a clear cut division of interests between the male managerial class and the female workers. Then, a feminist project would be emancipatory only for women, which in my view is a limited view of the revolutionary potential of feminism. This kind of view makes invisible the complex webs of power relations in which these actors are constituted, how both women and excludes meaningful alliances with men in dismantling patriarchal relations and sexism.

    ReplyDelete

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