Showing papers in "Wsq: Women's Studies Quarterly in 2010"

On Maternal Thinking

Abstract: Thirty years ago, in the late 1970s, I spent some time hovering over a possibility suggested by Adrienne Rich in Of Woman Born. Could it be, Rich asked, that women are "even now thinking in ways which traditional intellection denies, decries or is unable to grasp?" I had no use for the special graces of "women's intuition" or "feminine sensibility," gifts that marked the absence of mind, not its distinction. Women could reason with the best of "us"; the capacity to reason was a human good. The ways of women's thinking that intrigued me would arise from the activities in which women engaged and that strengthened them. Women bear a disproportionate responsibility for the labor required by people who are ill, illiterate, frail, despairing, very young or very old - who are, in sum, in need of care. I set out to elucidate the "rationality of care," x taking mothering, and the maternal thinking it expresses, as a primary instance. Now, thirty years later, I am returning to my question, only with more specificity. Could it be, I ask, that practices of mothering prompt or require distinctive cognitive capacities, metaphysical attitudes, and conceptions of virtue? If so, to what uses could this maternal thinking be put? Three feminist thinkers have joined me in reflecting on this question: Ranjana Khanna, Andrea O'Reilly, and Amy Richards. I am grateful for their generous attention, which helps me to understand my ideas. Andrea O'Reilly gives us an opening by providing a scene for reading that is also a motherhood scene. With little money and no car, Andrea has left her partner at home and traveled with four children, six years old and younger, to her mother's small cottage. Her intention is to rest and prepare for an upcoming eight-hour exam. But her mother, who adores her grandchildren, is too overwhelmed by the crowd in the small cottage to offer much help. Andrea can barely study or rest. She does, however, begin to read Maternal Thinking. Sometimes she sneaks off with the book, like "an addict in need of a hit." Other times, her children play in the near distance, as she watches closely but not too closely, "scrutinizing" as she reads about scrutinizing in the book. The cover of the edition Andrea reads portrays a woman of indeterminate ethnicity who is somewhat lost in thought. The blurb on the cover describes the book as "the first attempt to describe from a philosophical perspective the thinking that grows out of the work that mothers do." Andrea cites from the book Unes that she beUeves were Ufe changing for many women: "The work of mothering demands that mothers think; out of this need for thoughtfulness, a distinctive discipUne emerges" (24). Andrea writes: "The Unes are underUned, and the page number circled twice and the paragraph remains soiled by sand and water. Yes, mothers think!" Elsewhere, Andrea has said that she is drawn to the details of Maternal Thinking. "I love scrutinizing, I love holding, I love concrete thinking, welcoming change, humiUty and so forth." I love Andrea for loving the details. But here she outUnes major organizing themes of my account of maternal practices, more clearly and energeticaUy than I could manage. I beUeve, however, that I have sowed a confusion that needs neatening. I have said, and Andrea emphasizes, that the work or practice of mothering is distinct from the identity of the mother. Mothering may be performed by anyone who commits him- or herself to the demands of maternal practice. Mother is as mother does. Nonetheless, it makes sense to say, "This mother mothers other mothers' children at a distance from her own children whom she mothers indirectly" (I describe a famiUar situation of immigrant mothers). The self of mothering should not be sUghted. It is inherently relational and generational - marking temporal identities that are at once past and future, legacy and promise. Our maternal stories teU us who we are as weU as what we do. Raising children righteously up - a marvelous phrase left us by Grace Paley - signals relationship, identities, and, emphaticaUy, the work that we do. …

Bare Life, Interstices, and the Third Space of Citizenship

Abstract: The Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben s enigmatic treatise on the intricacy of sovereign power and the state of exception in his Homo Sacer has received wide critical attention from political and social theorists in the past decade. In gesturing to the condition of the modern concentration camp as a paradigmatic case of what he calls "bare life" - human subjects reduced to a naked depoliticized state without official status and juridical rights - Agamben identifies a similar form of totalitarian power operating in the juridical realm of contemporary liberal democracies (Agamben 1998). Extending upon Agamben, critical migration scholars have recently taken up his conception of bare life to delineate the plight of refugees and unauthorized migrants floating in the global economy, who live in an indefinite and suspended state of noncitizenship (Rajaram and GrundyWarr 2004; Salter 2008). The move in paralleling Homo Sacer s caricature of the juridico -political space of "camp" with the geopolitical condition of undocumented migration corresponds with Agamben s call to examine the ways in which citizen-subjects of our age have all "appear [ed] virtually as hominess sacri" (Agamben 1998, 111). Agambens transhistorical call notwithstanding, to what extent is the space of "camp" (and by implication, the largely suppressed agency of bare life caught within the camp) an adequate depiction of the social condition of undocumented migrants? Examining the workspace of private households where female migrants work as domestic workers and where labor laws and regulations are indefinitely suspended, in this essay I argue that, while these laboring spaces relate to camp as the undocumented workers are stripped of juridico -political rights and reduced to a state of exploited bare life, the conception of camp lacks a dynamic account of power relations to address the complex agency of migrant subjects as they negotiate their daily workspace. Significantly what begins for Agamben as a space of interstitiality posited in camp - a zone between life and death; inside and outside - ultimately slides into an immobile binary between the political beings of citizens and the excluded bodies of bare life. Yet if the space of camp is interstitial in nature, what preempts the possibility of the abject manifesting an agency that is also interstitial in character? If the sovereign power occupies a space that is simultaneously inside and outside the juridical order, so does the undocumented in navigating a terrain of resistance/negotiation inside and outside the normative arrangement of citizenship. As I will argue, this negotiated resistance does not fundamentally alter the structured materiality of modern liberal juridical order and the political economy of irregular migration that Agamben and his migration studies followers so powerfully portray. However, at the point when Agamben declares the death of citizenship life for the bare subjects, he omits a crucial spectrum of ambiguous and interstitial practices mounted by the abject - mediating between the two extreme ends of political and nonpolitical - that actually extends and reanimates the life of citizenship from the very margins of abjection. In the following, I will first address the relevance of Agamben s work for studies of undocumented migration. Two elements in his conception of camp are particularly compelling for the condition of refugees and undocumented migrants: the immanence of interstitiality and the depoliticized state of bare life.1 In turn, I look at how critics have problematized Agamben s thesis and its connection to unauthorized migration by raising issues such as location and agency in an effort to "resurrect the political" for the abject. In particular, they point to acts of refugee antideportation campaigns and undocumented-worker protests as counterexamples of "acts of citizenship" or "noncitizen citizenship" that defy the image of camp as bodies of victims. Yet while chronicling such resistant acts constitutes an urgent political intervention that counters the state of abjection, by understanding citizenship as solely visible and audible political acts, this line of critique actually falls into Agamben s rigid binary that divides humanity into political life (citizenship) and bare life (no rights, nonparticipation) - with the only difference being that the latter, byway of her citizen-like political acts, can now transform and elevate into the position of the former. …

The Work of Breastfeeding

Abstract: Breast milk is now the gold standard for infant feeding. The encouragement to breastfeed is consistent in a range of pubUc forums. In the United States, all the major medical and pubUc health organizations are strong promoters of breastfeeding, citing the health benefits to both baby and mother (Kukla 2006) . The American Academy of Pediatrics describes human milk as "uniquely superior for infant feeding" (2005, 1). Recommendations to breastfeed are echoed in popular baby care manuals (Knaak 2005), in a recent Department of Health and Human Services-sponsored advertising campaign (Wolf 2007), and in guideUnes for supplemental government food programs for women and children (USDA 2005) . In line with public health messages about the value of breast milk for babies, breastfeeding is increasingly a symbol and a measure of good mothering in the West (Avishai 2007; Lee 2007). Murphy suggests that by "deciding to formula feed, the woman exposes herself to the charge that she is a 'poor mother' who places her own needs, preferences or convenience over her baby's welfare. By contrast, the 'good mother' is deemed to be one who prioritizes her child's needs even (or perhaps especially) where this entails personal inconvenience or distress" (1999, 187-88). Breastfeeding is thus an integral component of the child-centered and demanding maternal practices inherent in the ideology of intensive mothering (Hays 1996). Lee's recent study of mothers in Great Britain provides clear evidence of this. She describes women's despair when they can't breastfeed and must turn instead to formula and concludes "how good a mother a woman is has come to be measured by whether she breastfeeds" (2007, 1088). The cultural and medical mandate to breastfeed has important implications for the work of mothering. While often unacknowledged as such, breastfeeding is time- and labor-intensive work and it is work only mothers in families can perform. For example, child care duties such as preparing bottles of infant formula, changing diapers, and doing laundry are activities that can be shared by other members of a household including men and other children. In contrast, producing breast milk is an exclusively maternal body job.1 Some previous work takes note of the maternal effort involved in the doing of breastfeeding (Bartlett 2002; Blum 1999; Kelleher 2006; Shaw 2004; Stearns 1999). However, there has not been a comprehensive exploration of breastfeeding as embodied labor and the impact this may have on women and on the division of labor in families. In a social climate that prioritizes and often valorizes breastfeeding as the gold standard for infant care, the meanings and consequences of the labor of breastfeeding demand closer scrutiny. In this paper I add to our understanding of the embodied dimensions of mothering by exploring breastfeeding as body work through an analysis of in-depth interviews with breastfeeding mothers. The concept of body work refers to "work that individuals undertake on their own bodies and to the paid work performed on the bodies of others" (Gimlin 2007, 365). In recent years, feminists and social scientists have established a growing body of empirical research on both types of body work: the body work of appearance enhancement, including practices such as cosmetic surgery, exercise, and dieting; the body work involved in paid care work of the elderly and infirm; and paid beauty work and aesthetic labor performed by workers in nail and hair salons and retail work (for a review of research in this area, see Gimlin 2007; Wolkowitz 2006). This empirical focus has produced enlightening descriptions of the subjective experience of embodiment and the gendered, racialized, and classed social relations of providing paid services to others' bodies. In the following analysis, I describe both aspects of body work identified above: work on a woman's own breastfeeding body and the unpaid maternal body work of breastfeeding a baby. …

Sexual Citizenship and the Pursuit of Relationship-Recognition Policies in Australia and the United States

Abstract: Achieving the right to marry has arguably been the one of the most important agenda items for the U.S. lesbian and gay movement for more than a decade (Bernstein 2002; Eskridge 1996). In contrast, achieving samesex marriage has not been central to the political agenda of lesbian and gay activists in Australia until very recently. Instead, activists have pursued entrance into “de facto” relationships that are in some ways similar to common-law marriages in the United States. However, de facto relationships do not carry all the rights, responsibilities, and obligations of marriage, nor do they necessarily affect parental rights in the case of same-sex couples. Although initially heralded as a great victory in the United States, civil unions, originally developed in Vermont as an alternative to marriage, are now viewed by most activists as a second-class form of relationship recognition. Until recently, major advances in relationship recognition, including same-sex marriage (Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Iowa) as well as comprehensive (Vermont, California, New Jersey, and Washington) or limited (Hawaii) domestic partnerships or civil unions in the United States were achieved through the courts, under threat of a court decision, or were passed as compromise measures in response to the enactment of state-level defense of marriage acts (DOMAs) that denied marriage rights to same-sex couples. 1 In stark contrast, Australian activists have almost entirely eschewed the courts in their pursuit of official recognition of their relationships. Given that Australia and the United States are both considered liberal welfare states (Esping-Andersen 1990) with similar approaches to the development of public policy, what accounts for the differences between the two countries in the strategies they have developed

Constructing Breadwinning-Mother Identities: Moral, Personal, and Political Positioning

Abstract: Considerable changes have occurred in discourses and practices of work and family over the past decades. Even so, common wisdom in dominant U.S. popular culture remains that women more often than men would want to stay home to care for their children and forgo participation in the paid workforce. Particularly in white, middle- to upper-middle-class heterosexual marriage, women's identities often remain tightly coupled with mothering, while men's sense of self centers on earning the family wage. Yet the number of families with a primary earning mother and an at-home father increased 200 percent between 1994 and 2005 (U.S. Census Bureau 2006). Data indicate that of fathers married with children age fifteen and younger, .006 percent, or 142,000, are full-time caregivers with breadwinning wives. While some scholarly attention has been paid to dual-career and dual-earner wives who earn more income than husbands (Atkinson and Boles 1984; Bolak 1997; Brennan, Barnett, and Gareis 2001; Drago, Black, and Wooden 2005; Hood 1983, 1986; Stamp 1985; Potuchek 1997; Raley, Mattingly, and Bianchi 2006), we have only begun to explore the experiences of female breadwinners married to husbands who have chosen to drop out of the paid labor force or to remain at home caring for children following layoff, termination, or voluntary exit. While the number of these so-called earnings-reversal couples remains small and their motivations, duration, and demographics vary (Drago, Black, and Wooden 2005; Winslow-Bowe 2006), no doubt their numbers are increasing. Layoffs resulting from recent economic downturns have purportedly increased the numbers of men at home caring for children for a period of time (Kershaw 2009). Within white, middle-class culture, in contrast to what occurs in many African American communities, where women often take on family breadwinning duties (Amott and Matthaei 2004; Winslow-Bowe 2006), female-breadwinner families are not prevalent. We might initially presume that these majority- culture nontraditional couples are enacting an innovative gendered work and family practice. These couples might operate without available gendered scripts (Ridgeway and Correli 2000) and, as such, have the potential to transform taken-for-granted sexual divisions of labor in marriage and organizational life. However, men and women performing sex-atypical work alone does not guarantee social change (Hochschild 1975; Reskin and Roos 1990) and it has been argued that only a small percentage of female-breadwinner families appear to be motivated by gender-equitable ideologies (Drago, Black, and Wooden 2005). Clearly, the lived experiences of female-breadwinner families require greater research attention. As a means of contributing to our empirical knowledge about the lives of female breadwinners, in this study I investigate the following question: How do breadwinning mothers make sense of their identities as breadwinners in a culture in which they are expected to be the primary intensive caregiver? My goal is to provide a preliminary snapshot of the complicated processes of sense making as evidenced in the accounts of twenty breadwinning mothers. First, I briefly review existing research on female breadwinners and situate this study within feminist poststructuralism and discursive positioning theories. Then, I illustrate how participants construct a sense of identity through three positioning discourses: moral, personal, and political. This exploratory analysis then concludes with implications and directions for future research. FEMALE BREADWINNING AND FEMINIST POSTSTRUCTURALISM A small but growing body of research explores female-breadwinner families. This work primarily centers on issues of persistence in women's breadwinning (Drago, Black, and Wooden 2005; Winslow-Bowe 2006), division household labor effects (Brennan, Barnett, and Gareis 2001), marital discord and divorce (Heckert, Nowak, and Snyder 1998), and related marital power issues (Atkinson and Boles 1984; Gerson 1985; Hood 1986; Stamp 1985; Oppenheimer 1997; Potuchek 1997). …

Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, and . . . Vulnerability

Abstract: Translated from the French by Jeanine Herman Disabilities are multiple - motor, sensory, psychical, mental - and singular. Each disabled person is a singular person experiencing his or her situation in a specific, different, unique way. Yet whatever the disabilities, they confront us with incomparable exclusion, different from the others: the disabled person opens a narcissistic identity wound in the person who is not disabled; he inflicts a threat of physical or psychical death, fear of collapse, and, beyond that, the anxiety of seeing the very borders of the human species explode. And so the disabled person is inevitably exposed to a discrimination that cannot be shared. If I attempt to share this situation, however, it is not only because of my sons neurological difficulties, which led to an atypical education for him and exposed me to the singularity of each disabled person. Nor is it because, as a psychoanalyst, I have treated psychical disabilities (depression, psychosis, borderline states, and other disorders). But because my frequent visits outside the Hexagon have convinced me that, compared to countries such as Sweden, Norway, Belgium, Canada, the United States, and many others, France has been slow to establish a true solidarity with disabled people and to provide personalized support for each of them.1 In fact, at the dawn of this millennium, while biology, anthropology, and astrophysics explore human frontiers and the most advanced democracies refuse discrimination against people whose bodies and minds test our notions of human identity, trying to incorporate them into every level of society, France, in this difficult, provocative, and promising moment, is still a long way from creating what one would be right to expect from the country of the rights of man. More fundamentally still, faced with the rather cynical pragmatism of some and the religious clashes of others, I am convinced that humanism - which has always been in search of itself, from its emergence in the past to its crises or revitalizations today and in times to come - can find a chance to revitalize itself in the battle for the dignity of the disabled by constructing what is still sorely lacking: respect for a vulnerability that cannot be shared. My ambition, my utopia, consists of believing that this vulnerability reflected in the disabled person forms us deeply, or, if you prefer, unconsciously, and that as a result, it can be shared. Could this humanism be the "cultural revolution" with which to construct the democracy of proximity that the postmodern age needs? The outsize nature of this ambition is actually built on ordinary, painful, everyday experiences. Here are three, among many others: John, Claire, and the Woman on Television People Say I'm Crazy was the title of a documentary shown on TV in the United States, which I saw during a recent visit. The film aims to show how a schizophrenic person can be "cured" and "integrated" into society. The hero, stuffed full of medications that make him "obese" (his complaint), might be saved by his sister, a filmmaker who comes up with the idea of filming poor John, who likes to draw and make woodcuts. Thanks to the film, his works are soon made public; he has an exhibition; he is showered with grants. The madman has become "a disabled artist." He can leave the appalling shelter he shares with a few others of his kind, and even find a certain serenity, because social services now pays for a home worthy of being called one. Now he is cured. The only thing left to do is to award the film a prize, which happens shortly thereafter. From time to time, the artist protests against the camera that is trained on him and, to some extent, against those who are making his illness a work of art. But he ends up going along with it, and participates, so to speak, in the filming. Isn't the camera a third party that recognizes him, a bit of space between his ill-being and his family? …

"Ending Women's Greatest Hygienic Mistake": Modernity and the Mortification of Menstruation in Kotex Advertising, 1921-1926

Abstract: Contemporary American discourses about menstruation sustain a fine balance between the realms of freedom and prohibition, a combination that constitutes a potent ideological mixture defining women’s cultural membership within limitations defined by their bodily processes. 1 As Dorothy Dinnerstein describes this cultural terrain, the province of the female becomes that of the “mucky limitations of the flesh” (1976, 133). Medicine contributes the impression that menstruation renders women offensive and incomplete; advertising discourses, in turn, offer products to compensate for this inadequacy, women’s perpetual “problem.” Both function to suppress women’s ability to control the cultural definition and meaning of menses, insinuating that menstruation is shameful, a personal source of mortification that must be hidden, and a force that, because it conspires against women, must be controlled by the latest technologically sophisticated product. To understand the ideological patterns in contemporary cultural discourse about menstruation, particularly as developed in advertisements about “feminine hygiene products,” it is instructive to examine the historical circumstances in which the intersection of social, medical, and commercial interests first manifested itself, specifically in the major American magazine advertising campaign that introduced Kotex sanitary pads to American women in 1921. The early years of the Kotex campaign mark a historical nexus where consumerism merged with medical authority, and it is these initial ideological appeals that persist in contemporary discourse about menstruation. By enticing women to enact and reproduce Western culture’s proscriptions against their own bodies, Kotex set into circulation

Mothers in the Field: How Motherhood Shapes Fieldwork and Researcher-Subject Relations

Abstract: Ethnography as a qualitative research method has evolved over time to increasingly demand that social scientists become reflexive by analyzing the effects of their presence in the field. The emphasis on reflexivity means that the researcher acknowledges his or her subjectivity and the consequences of the fact that the ethnographer is, in the words of Robert Smith, "his own research tool" (2006, 351). The dynamics created by the researcher's presence and interaction with the research subjects may only become apparent once the fieldwork has been completed. Of course, not all ethnographic researchers see the value in having a reflexive approach to their work in the field, and many continue to give short shrift to the complexities of their "place" in the field when writing up their work. For researchers who are mothers, engaging in ethnographic fieldwork with women provides a unique opportunity to analyze the effects of motherhood in the research process and relations with participants. This essay is a reflexive analysis by two ethnographic researchers whose status as mothers became an important component of studies of working women in two very different urban research sites: one in Guayaquil, Ecuador, and one in Brooklyn, New York. We begin by discussing the use of reflexive analysis in ethnography and then provide brief descriptions of the two ethnographic research projects. In the rest of the essay we explore four dimensions of motherhood relevant to the ethnographic research process. Through the lens of motherhood, we show how social science research can be enriched by researchers reflecting on their multiple roles and paying attention to dimensions such as (1) motherhood as building rapport between participants and researchers, (2) researchers' and subjects' philosophies on disciplining children, (3) researchers' and subjects' philosophies and practices of child care, and, (4) motherhood as a component of methodology throughout the research process. When useful, we shift into firstperson narrative accounts. ETHNOGRAPHIC REFLEXIVITY What many consider to simply be thorough ethnography, that which includes an analysis of the researcher's position in the field, stems in part from the core principles of feminist methodology that have been absorbed into sociological and anthropological research (DeVault 1999). Women have often been studied peripherally - in the context of men's lives - as evidenced in the works ofWacquant (2004), Duneier (1992), Liebow (1967), and others. Sociologist Dorothy Smith (1989) argued that women's lives should be studied ethnographically from the women's points of view and that this empirical work could lead to the theorizing of gender and power from women's "standpoints." Feminist researchers also put forth the idea that by having female researchers study female participants, a more open dialogue could be explored, allowing for deeper understanding of social issues. Women anthropologists responded emphatically to the claim by leading male scholars that women's writing was not innovative, pursuing such innovation in part by writing the (gendered) researcher back into the anthropological narrative (Behar and Gordon 1996). Matching the researcher and participants by gender, race, language, marital status, and culture, though, is not enough to eliminate the class and power differences that prevail while doing ethnographic research (LaI 1996; Warren 2001; Wolf 1996). An exploration of the effects of motherhood in the field humanizes the researcher in ways that are not always disclosed in academic writing, even in ethnographies that reflexively analyze the researcher's class/racial/gender identity. Carol Warren has pointed out that motherhood is a key marker of mutual identification between women researchers and participants (2001). With some notable exceptions (Allison 1991; Grasmuck 2005; Stack 1974), researchers who are mothers often leave these identities out of their written ethnographies. …

Corporeal Entrepreneurialism and Neoliberal Agency in the Sex Trade at the US-Mexican Border

Abstract: In this essay I will discuss corporeal entrepreneurialism in the context of commercial sex and neoliberal agency at the United States-Mexico border I want to situate the sex trade in a larger neoliberal context of economic need, mobility and commercialization The essay addresses how bodily entrepreneurialism can function as a gateway to upward social mobility and how erotic capital can level existing social and economic inequalities and thus act as a catalyst to exit marginalized communities I am drawing on Wacquants (1995) work on corporeal entrepreneurs and also on the notion of bodily capital that he has developed therein Using bodily capital in the context of sex work, it makes sense to talk more specifically about erotic capital, which is the primary currency in the sex trade Thus, I will integrate Isaiah Greens (2008) definition of erotic capital and elaborate how women make use of their bodies to enhance their erotic capital and explain what their strategies and perceptions are Inspired by Alexander Edmonds' (2007) work on beauty and race in Brazil, I will elaborate how corporeal entrepreneurs strategically use their bodily and erotic capital to counteract their socioeconomic marginalization and challenge traditional hierarchies As will become clear, corporeal entrepreneurialism ties together women's agency, market demand, and monetary value, and, to succeed, this endeavor requires enormous levels of discipline, emotional resilience, management skills, stamina, and purposefulness Theory Theoretically, this essay is framed within the literature that has addressed entrepreneurial selves in late capitalism (Tyler 2004; Rose 1999; Salecl 2004; Buhrmann 2005; Freeman 2007) Demystifying sex work requires an understanding of sex workers as aspiring corporeal entrepreneurs who make use of their bodily and erotic capital, responding to neoliberal structural demands while creating opportunities for themselves Looking at sex work at the US-Mexican border, we find the complicated entanglement of submission to the entrepreneurial imperative of the neoliberal present combined with the individuals positive advancement and the improvement of her socioeconomic position Andrea Buhrmann ascribes the appearance of an "enterprising self" to the last third of the twentieth century She affirms that the enterprising self is "defined by the steering of action, feeling, thinking and willing on the basis of an orientation on the criteria of economic efficiency and entrepreneurial calculation" (2005, 2) Analogically, Ulrich Brockling (2007) points out that the principle "Act entrepreneurial!" has become the categorical imperative of the present, and Melissa Tyler speaks of the "managerial colonization of everyday life" (2004, 82) Managerial ways of thinking about our selves and our bodies have become dominant in late capitalism Individuals are incited to become engaged in an ongoing process of self-optimization, constantly aspiring to change themselves, and finding more effective ways of managing their own resources Individuals are incited to be entrepreneurial, yet in a self-responsible way, conscious of possible risks, and autonomously engaged in techniques of self-care The enterprising self is expected to be aspiring, purposeful, and willing to be competitive An entrepreneurial imperative, exceeding beyond the economic sphere, interlaces all levels of life whereby marketability becomes a primary focus of the individuals organization of everyday life Simultaneously, every individual is considered an autonomous agent who is capable of creating a successful project of the self Nikolas Rose (1999) has highlighted that individuals in late capitalism are encouraged to become entrepreneurs who shape their lives through the choices they make from among the options available to them Historically, the enterprising self has been a male subjectwho was incited to take risks and exploit his bodily resources in order to become a self-made man …

Taking Custody of Motherhood: Fathers' Rights Activists and the Politics of Parenting

Abstract: What makes a good father in contemporary American society? And more important, can good fathers effectively "mother" their children? Without a doubt, over the past several decades, the cultural imagery surrounding what it means to be a fully participatory father has shifted dramatically (Burgess 1997; Coltrane 1989; Hobson and Morgan 2002; Ranson 2001). Instead of the ideal father being simply the breadwinner of the family, this "new father" - with commentators primarily spotlighting the desired behavior of the white male - combines both earning a living with the day-to-day care of his children (Pleck 1987). In other words, not only does he work full time, but he also is present at his children's birth, goes to school conferences, does their laundry, and prepares their meals. He is fully connected and essential to his children's well-being (Farrell 2001). This "new father" is, in fact, just like any other modern mother. While this recent paternal imagery has been extremely powerful, scholars have also noted that fathers' actions have yet to meet this emerging ideal.1 While their contributions to child care have been increasing over time, particularly since the 1980s, fathers still lag behind mothers in the amount of parental work they perform on a regular basis (Ahmeduzzaman and Roopnarine 1992;Aldous, Mulligan, and Bjarnason 1998; Sandberg and Hofferth 2001; Sayer, Bianchi, and Robinson 2004). In fact, in one of the most recent and comprehensive studies that explored this division of responsibility issue, in 2000, Bianchi, Robinson, and Milkie (2006, 116) found enormous gaps in paid and unpaid work between the sexes, with women allocating 12.9 hours a week to child care, and men only completing 6.5 hours on this task. Nevertheless, despite the fact that real world practices have yet to catch up to the new cultural ideal of fatherhood, fathers' rights groups have seized upon this compelling imagery in making their political claims. More specifically, these fathers' rights organizations, composed primarily of white, middle-class men, have grown in number in recent years in order to challenge the legal system that they must confront when their families dissolve. One of their most prominent assertions is that the family law system, specifically through its child custody procedures that tend to physically place children with their mothers, denies them the opportunity to effectively personify their "new father" roles. In this essay I explore precisely how fathers' rights groups have tapped into the cultural symbolism of the "new father" in order to buttress their claims. RESEARCH CONTEXT The fathers' rights movement began to grow quite rapidly in the United States during the 1980s. With some estimates placing them at ten thousand members in total (Crowley 2008, 37), fathers' rights activists across the board charge that once their families break up, they lack certain parental rights (Clatterbaugh 2000; Coltrane and Hickman 1992; Fineman 1991;Williams and Williams 1995). Their grievances revolve around two critical areas: child support and child custody policy (Crowley 2003). For fathers' rights groups, these two issues are highly interlinked. Activists complain that policy makers force them to pay exorbitant amounts of child support to the mothers of their children, who typically receive primary physical custody. However, these payments would not be necessary at all, argue these men, if the child custody system were reformed in a way to automatically give fathers equal time with their children. Across the United States, judges make custody determinations for dissolving families.There are two types of joint custody at stake Jomi legal custody refers to a partnership between parents over the major decisions that they must make regarding their children's weH-being; joint physical custody refers to equally shared living arrangements for the involved children. Although joint legal custody is fairly common in the United States, joint physical custody is not and therefore is the focus of fathers' rights groups' concerns. …

Mothering Across Borders: Narratives of Imigrant Mothers in the United States

Abstract: Over the past several decades, motherhood has gained a heightened visibility in U.S. popular culture. A combination of disparate phenomenon - the increased media coverage of celebrity moms, the development of targeted marketing strategies, the appearance of "mommy lit" and "mommy memoirs," the prominence of mama bloggers in cyberspace, and the growing political advocacy of mother's rights - has propelled increasing numbers of images of motherhood, as well as mothers' voices, into the public sphere. Many of the books, magazines, essays, websites, and blogs penned by mothers have reflected the full complexity of mothers 'lives and experiences, thus challenging cultural narratives about what it means to be a "good" mother (Hewett 2006a, 2006b). Yet despite this outpouring, and despite evidence of a growing diversity among the mothers who are writing and speaking, few if any of these narratives reflect the experiences of immigrant mothers. During the same period of time, quite a few negative images of immigrants have surfaced. These images have a longer history; as scholars such as Leo Chavez (2001, 2007) and Katrina Irving (2000) argue, racist images of, and mythologies about, immigrants have circulated throughout the twentieth century. The 1980s and 1990s have been marked by the flourishing of a "new nativism" movement that has publicly voiced multiple objections to immigration, particularly from Latin America (Perea 1997; Chavez 1997). This recent surge of anti- immigration sentiment has focused on immigrant women's bodies, most of all those of Mexican immigrant women (Chavez 1997, 2007). The resulting narratives in the popular media portray immigrant women (particularly their reproductive rates) as posing "serious threats to the nation" (Chavez 2007, 87) - a nation that continues to be defined by Anglos, its "legitimate" citizens (88). Chavez (2007) further observes that anti -immigrant discourses and images do not simply remain in the popular realm but can have real political consequences. Indeed, since 9/11, increased consciousness about national security has led to stepped-up deportations, increased workplace raids, increased border security, the construction of hundreds of miles of a border wall, the confinement of undocumented immigrants in detention centers, the separation of families, and incidents of human rights violations. Given this hostile climate, one can understand the obstacles preventing immigrant mothers from sharing their stories - as well as the need for them. One exception to this silence lies in the ongoing research by a group of feminist social scientists studying gender and migration, who not only have begun to analyze and theorize the experiences of immigrant women but also have started to collect personal narratives from many of their subjects. Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo and Ernestine Avila (2007) identified the increasing phenomenon of "transnational motherhood," the practice of mothers living and working in different countries from those of their children, thus resulting in a "care deficit" in many third world/global South nations (Ehrenreich and Hochschild 2003, 8). These scholars are examining the impact of transnational mothering on families as well as on mothers themselves, asking whether the practice of taking on new duties as breadwinners enables immigrant mothers to break free of oppressive ideologies of motherhood - or whether gendered ideologies remain rigid and unforgiving, demanding performances of "supermothering" across the borders of time and space (Parrenas 2005, 103). As a feminist literary critic, I have found much of this research instructive and useful. Indeed, the insights provided by social science, on the one hand, and cultural productions such as literature and film, on the other, can prove quite illuminating when considered together. Literary studies reminds us that creative texts do not provide transparent windows onto the world, but rather individually crafted frames that require us to ask questions about issues of representation and interpretation - to think about how we see in addition to what we see. …

Mothers, Daughters, Mrs. Ramsay: Reflections

Abstract: In her 1923 essay "Jane Austen at Sixty," Virginia Woolf described one group of Austen's admirers as the "twenty-five elderly gendemen living in the neighborhood of London who resent any slight upon her genius as if it were an insult offered to the chastity of their aunts" (Woolf 1924, 261). If we substitute "mother" for "aunt," and imagine how devoted readers might respond to any critique of that figure, we begin to get a sense of the aura surrounding Mrs. Ramsay when I started teaching To the Lighthouse. The year was 1973; I was a newly hired assistant professor, and I was teaching the course on twentieth-century British fiction with a senior male coUeague. He was a mild man, a tolerant man, who had studied with Lionel Trilling and saw his role as encouraging his junior partner, but when, in my lecture on To the Lighthouse, I implied that perhaps Mrs. Ramsay was not the ideaUzed vision of womanhood, motherhood, unity, continuity, and fertility that critics at that time painted her to be, and that in fact she dies, he became apoplectic. "How dare you question Mrs. Ramsay's sanctity" is a fair translation of his response. I was floored - and scared; it was clear I had just committed an act of matricide. Summoning my wits, I also summoned Geoffrey Hartman, whose essay "Virginia's Web "had influenced my thought. Look, I said, here's an eminent critic, and a man, an older man, who makes just this point; if my hands aren't clean, the guilt at least is shared. The moment passed, though I don't think he ever quite forgave me for upending his Mrs. Ramsay. I begin with this anecdote because it introduces my topic: the shifting attitudes toward Mrs. Ramsay over the thirty-five years that I've been teaching the novel and what it tells us about shifting attitudes toward the figure of the mother, particularly among women. This is in many ways a generational story, one that those readers who have been around as long as I have will be familiar with; those who came to the novel more recently might be surprised at the passions swirUng around the topic, especiaUy at the time I gave my initial class lecture. My impetus for tracing this story was an article that appeared in the New York Times in June 2007 under the headline "Mommy Is Truly Dearest"; in it the writer argued that for many women in their twenties and thirties their mothers are their closest confidants, and they talk to them at least once a day (Rosenbloom 2007). I happened to be teaching to the Lighthouse when the article appeared, and I began to wonder whether changes in the mother- daughter relationship translated into changes in the reading of the novel. Setting out to test this thesis, I decided to focus on the moment surrounding my 1973 lecture, when feminism and other critical trends were radicaliy reframing not only Mrs. Ramsay but the mother- daughter relationship itself. Recognizing that my own experience of teaching the novel would not be enough, I sent emails to Woolf scholars from different generations asking if they remembered their initial responses to Mrs. Ramsay, whether their readings had changed over the years, what dieir students' responses had been and were, and whether these had changed. I have incorporated their responses below. Back, then, to winter 1973. Oddly, I don't remember what my reactions to Mrs. Ramsay were when I read the novel in 1965 at age twenty-two, nor do I remember rereading it until I began to teach it. At this point my memories become very clear, for my encounter with my colieague paled before my next experience of the outrage directed toward my so-calied feminist distortion of the text by two far younger men at Middlebury Coliege when I served as an outside reader for a senior thesis on the novel. I, of course, was not alone. As Carolyn Heilbrun wrote that same year, "One criticizes Mrs. Ramsay at one's peril. One of the first critics to suggest in print that Mrs. Ramsay was less than wholiy admirable was Mitcheli Leaska, whose study of the voices in To the Lighthouse was greeted with howls of protest" (1973, 155). …

Milk Markets: Technology, the Lactating Body, and New Forms of Consumption

Abstract: In early chapters of Charles Dickens s 1848 novel; Dombey and Son, Mr. Dombey, a thriving industrialist, is forced to hire a lower-class wet nurse to sustain his family name and the Dombey commercial empire. After the death of his wife, the wet nurse, Polly is the primary source of nourishment and comfort for his only son; to her he states: "It is not at all in this bargain that you need become attached to my child, or that my child need become attached to you. I don't expect or desire anything of the kind. Quite the reverse. When you go away from here, you will have concluded what is a mere matter of bargain and sale, hiring and letting: and will stay away. The child will cease to remember you; and you will cease, if you please to remember the child" (14). In the context of this Victorian novel, breast milk is a valuable commodity exchanged for income and for a place within the household. Dickens represents what was a common reality; wet nurses were often women of the lower classes whose own children were relegated to baby farms or "hand feeding," while nursing became the means of survival for poor women and for the infants of the more privileged classes. Emphasizing the economic nature of this exchange and the need to keep the wet nurse under his watchful eye, Dombey renames Polly "Richards" (implying a shift from poor to rich) and views her intimate interactions with the baby in a little glass conservatory adjacent to his dark, masculine study. The novels emphasis upon the regulation and observation of the intimate act of breastfeeding exemplifies how the female breast, and breastfeeding, became increasingly charged and contested in the nineteenth century. Here, the lower-class female body is disciplined as it exchanges breast milk as a commodity for entry into the middle-class household. In this literary depiction, the wet nurse creates anxiety and unease through her class position and her closeness to the infant, and yet she is a necessary inclusion to the household and crucial to the success of the Dombey family future. By the twentieth century the work of wet nursing began to steadily decline as discourses of maternity encouraged breastfeeding as a maternal duty and as scientific and technological innovations produced new artificial formulas and a range of improved bottle-feeding devices. Consequently breastfeeding was imagined either as the natural process of infant feeding and attachment shared between mother and child - or as bottle feedings alternative or companion. Either way it was a process more deeply embedded in the science of domestic management that emerged in this period. Left not just in the hands of mothers, the act of breastfeeding was increasingly managed and shaped by a broader reading culture and became a subject of discussion and debate among doctors, scientists, and writers of domestic manuals. A model of efficiency that established how to feed infants, when to do it, and how to perform as an effective nursing mother all became scientifically addressed and managed at this time and continue to be today.1 The issues of boundary crossing and circulation that the nineteenthcentury wet nurse embodied continue in representations of breastfeeding and milk-sharing in early-twenty-first-century culture, but they take on new forms and are shaped by a broad range of forces. In this essay I begin to trace the multiple and shifting representations of breast milk and its disembodiment in contemporary culture, examining how its circulation as a product of the larger economy reveals the contradictory ways that motherhood and maternal care is imagined, managed, and, in some contexts, exploited. Tracing the transformation of breast milk as a commodity in the marketplace, I consider how medical technologies produce new corporate and global models of milk sharing based not upon the intimate relationship of maternal and infant bodies, but instead on scientifically transforming milk into a product to be shared on a much wider scale. …

Transnational Subcontracting, Indian IT Workers, and the U.S. Visa System

Abstract: This essay focuses on visa-enabled immigrant work statuses that constitute the variegated continuum between citizenship and noncitizenship, documented and undocumented immigration, and entitlements and negotiated contractual employment in advanced capitalist economies. Specifically, I look at how temporary nonimmigrant visa categories in the United States are used by the corporate sector to create a flexible immigrant workforce with tenuous legal and work status in racial and gendered terms. Thousands of Indian workers on visas, such as the H-IB, have been incorporated into the U.S. economy as information technology (IT) workers since the 1990s. Few among these professionals, however, work directly for the large U.S. companies where they report to work. As direct employees of either Indian or U.S. -owned subcontracting firms located in both countries, the majority work as temporary contract workers moving from one project to the next at client sites all over the United States. A complex interplay of Indian- and U.S.-owned labor subcontractors, their offshore subsidiaries, and immigration policies has synchronized the required access to immigrant IT workers to meet labor demands in a restructured economy increasingly reliant on technology for success in the global market. Even in a climate of severe anti-immigrant sentiments, the U.S. state has managed to enable the corporate sector to reach out to so-called overseas or foreign workers under the aegis of work visas. In this essay I describe how the deployment of this labor force in the United States is strategically organized around a complex set of stateendorsed categories of visas, among them the H-IB, B-I, and L-I, and how the terms of these visas intersect with the neoliberal mandates of flexible employment. I focus on the terms of the visas and their impact on the lived experiences of these workers, as they negotiate a highly fragmented and decentralized employment regime in late capital as a documented but largely marginalized and segregated workforce. Insights offered here are based on qualitative research, including approximately forty semistructured interviews with Indian IT professionals in the United States and fieldwork conducted both in the United States and in India between 2001 and 2005. Interviews typically varied in duration between one to three hours and were tape-recorded, fully transcribed, and then qualitatively coded. The research also included analysis of government documents, such as transcripts of congressional hearings on U.S. work-visa policies and reports from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Government Accountability Office (GAO). Data excerpts selected for this essay represent the forty interviews conducted for this study and reflect some of the central themes concerning visa-related experiences that nearly all the participants addressed during the course of the research. The intricate and varied use of the three visa categories has to be understood in two interrelated contexts in late capital: one, the transnational contours of the IT industrial complex between the United States and India and, two, the system of flexible subcontracting. The logic and practice of flexible accumulation - subcontracting and outsourcing on a transnational scale, the hiring of temporary workers, fragmenting and decentralizing production - have restructured the meaning and content of employment in advanced capitalism (Bonacich and Appelbaum 2000; Ong 1991). The management strategy of "just in time" (JIT) production and delivery used in manufacturing has spread across factories globally and the doctrine of "ready to hire and fire" has been transplanted to the entire range of U.S. companies in the ways in which they obtain IT services. In their efforts to keep employee rosters lean and to minimize the obligations associated with maintaining large in-house labor pools, U.S. companies proceeded to externalize their IT projects, sending them to consulting firms to execute and manage. …

Cargo Culture: Literature in an Age of Mass Displacement

Abstract: The full implication of the identification of the rights of man with the rights of peoples in the European nation-state system came to light only when a growing number of people and peoples suddenly appeared whose elementary rights were not safeguarded by the ordinary functioning of the nation-state. —Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism Much of what is classified today as the literature of migration does not reflect the conditions of extreme duress of those who are trafficked from one part of the world to another. In many instances, postcolonial theories of hybridity and the literary forms in which such theories are instantiated were the product of elite forms of migration that have little connection to the experience of working-class migrants (Ahmad 2008). Even literary works that are more grounded in mass experience nonetheless reflect the tribulations of first- or second-generation diasporic populations who migrated to the developed nations of Western Europe and the United States legally. Such migration was largely a product of what were the now clearly anomalous conditions of labor shortage that obtained for the thirty or so years following World War II and the creation of the postwar social compact between capital, government, and the organized working class within developed nations. In the United States, for example, Congress established the bracero contract-labor program, which lasted from the early 1940s through the mid-1960s, in response to such labor shortages; similar guest worker programs were set up in Western European nations such as Germany, France, and Britain after the war (Bacon 2008). While residence was often initially tied to work, the communities who settled

The Ecofetish: Green Consumerism in Women's Magazines

Abstract: Surprisingly little research has examined environmental communication in the mass media from a feminist perspective, even as environmental communication (as a subfield of media studies) is experiencing rapid growth. This shortage is particularly interesting because like feminism and communication scholarship, feminism and green theory have often been intertwined. Theorists from both fields recognize common concerns: the fetishization of consumer goods, the twin subjugation of women and nonhuman nature to patriarchal desires, and the neoliberal reliance on divisive individualist discourse, to name a few. But perhaps because it is a relatively new area of media studies (research dates only to the early 1970s), environmental communication has not yet been the subject of much - if any - feminist analysis. Starting with a preliminary examination of environmental messages in the women's popular press (specifically, women's magazines), this essay addresses that lack. Although long established, the relationship between feminism and environmentalism is certainly complicated. Beginning in the 1970s, ecofeminists identified a connection between the marginal status of both women and nature compared with masculine and economic interests. Through traditional feminine roles as mothers and nurturers, women have been theorized as somehow closer to the natural, nonhuman world. Some feminist theorists have embraced this linkage (Warren 1990; Plumwood 1991), while others have rejected it as restrictive and essentialist (Davion 1994; Seager 2003). More recently, women have been situated closer to the environment for a somewhat different reason. Because the majority of household purchasing decisions are made by women (Rodino-Colocino 2006), there is growing social acceptance of the idea that women have unique environmental agency and an obligation to ensure that their families are living in an environmentally responsible manner. Thus we are seeing a surge in green commercialism that primarily targets women, who are now expected to take responsibility for addressing environmental problems that are largely the result of patriarchal capitalist expansion. This phenomenon is played out most visibly in the media, where messages aimed at women are increasingly built around commodity-based solutions to environmental ills. Applying a feminist outlook to environmental communication studies helps make sense of these media messages and how they either reflect or distort - and ultimately affect - women's lived experiences. Most simply put, a feminist point of view is one that recognizes the deeply sexist attitudes encoded in social behaviors and belief systems (Hirschmann 2003); with respect to environmental communication, this might mean cultivating an awareness of how messages identify women either with the environment or in relation to it. Such awareness would serve two purposes: first, it would reveal gendered tendencies in environmental communication; second, it would help make sense of female authences' reception and interpretation of environmental messages in the media. More than forty years ago, economist Anthony Downs speculated that media coverage of environmental problems would be subject to an "issue-attention cycle," eventually falling out of public view: "We should not underestimate the American public's capacity to become bored - especially with something that does not immediately threaten them" (1972, 47). Downs 's prediction has been at least partially supported by recent research (Trumbo 1996; Brossard, Shanahan, and McComas 2004). When environmental issues receive media attention, the coverage has often been sensational and event-oriented, lacking the kind of context that might increase issue salience among American citizens (Guber 2003). Further, the generic word "green" was adopted as an all-purpose signifier by the media in the 1980s, and used heavily in environmental issue reporting to indicate an ecologically responsible stance or behavior (Anderson 1997). …

Commodities and Competition: The Economic Marginalization of Female Food Vendors in Northern Mozambique

Abstract: Street vending and petty trading activities form the essential core of informal economic sectors in developing nations. These activities allow individuals to generate income with minimal investments of financial capital and without requiring large quantities of human capital, such as education. Because of the relatively low status of this work and its perception as an extension of gendered caregiving roles, it is often considered "women's work." However, as I note, "Disasters create new sets of opportunities and challenges by altering social dynamics in the markets through increases in competition and shortages of certain goods and services" (Companion 2010,204). In areas of Mozambique, poverty has deepened as a result of displacement from the civil war, a stagnant internal labor market, the loss of staple crops resulting from the proliferation of cassava brown streak disease and drought, and a reduction in wage labor opportunities across the border in South Africa. This is channeling men into petty trading activities in larger numbers. Agadjanian argues that this is forcing a de-gendering and re-gendering of the workplace (2002b, 329). As a result, some coping mechanisms and income-generating strategies of female street vendors have been constrained while other opportunities have increased. In peri-urban and urban areas in northern Mozambique, this pattern has been particularly prevalent. Employing a common coping mechanism, large numbers of people have emigrated from rural to urban centers to escape the widespread food insecurity. However, the limited number of wage labor positions has left men and women vying for niches in the informal economic sector. Income-generating strategies are essential because, as Levin et al (1999) point out, urban livelihood struggles are characterized by a greater dependence on cash incomes. The most significant expenditure in all the areas studied is for food or resources related to food processing, such as cooking fuel Thus, rapid population growth coupled with poverty creates opportunities for urban street vending to increase in visibility and prevalence (Companion 2007; Fonchigong 2005). People engaged in wage labor increasingly need to purchase precooked foods because of time constraints on their own food preparation activities (Fonchigong 2005, 244). Levin et al. (1999, 1978) find that women involved in wage labor sectors devote greater amounts of their food budgets to purchasing processed and convenience foods and snacks and meals available from street food vendors. This expands some opportunities for female vendors. However, over the course of this complex crisis, a split has emerged in the labor patterns of men and women in this informal sector. Men have become increasingly involved in petty trading activities; women have been pushed even further into the economic and social margins of Mozambican commerce. Not only have men taken over a traditionally "female" occupation, but also, their participation patterns have resulted in the increasing marginalization of women. Interviews in northern Mozambique indicate that women have been relegated to the lowest status forms of commerce - selling precooked foods, such as pounded cassava or nshima^ and sauces made with cassava leaves, beans, fish, or vegetables. Echoing Agadjanians findings of asymmetrical opportunities for men moving into traditionally female-dominated occupations, the men in this study have taken over the informal trade in higher-status and higher-profit items such as sorghum, maize, sugarcane, pepper, sesame, and cashews (2002a, 330). This study presents certain challenges that female street vendors face in the changing labor landscape of northern Mozambique. Forty-two female food vendors were interviewed in urban and peri-urban areas in northern Mozambique in 2004. To balance their perspectives, twentythree male food vendors and fifteen bottle shop owners were also interviewed. The data indicate the importance of gossip and innuendo as forms of social capital for female street food vendors, who employ them as a tool to reduce competition in contested vending areas. …

Interconnecting Work and Family: Race and Class Differences in Women's Work Status and Attitudes

Abstract: SHIFTING WORK-FAMILY REALITIES The interdisciplinary work-family field has grown apace in recent years, as scholars, writers, and policy makers have all focused renewed attention on women's work status and attitudes. Much of this resurgence, however, has addressed the behaviors and attitudes of middle- to upper-class white women and their decision to work or parent. But this narrow focus limits our research and theorizing and overlooks how women respond in creative ways by "interconnecting" (or "weaving together") their work and family lives (Garey 1999, 14). Although this work-family reality is relatively more recent for middle- to upper-class white women, it is a much older reality for many working-class or poor women and women of color. In this essay, I broaden the research focus to a more diverse group of women. My goal is to understand how different women respond to new work-family realities.1 STRUCTURAL CHANGES IN THE WORK-FAMILY LANDSCAPE New work-family realities are best reflected in the "structural mismatch" between changed family demographics and partially changed customs, norms, and organizational practices (Moen and Roehling 2005; Roos, Trigg, and Hartman 2006, 201- 2). Women's dramatic entry into the labor force, and changes in their pattern of participation, now mean that they more closely resemble men in their labor force participation. Blau and Kahn's (2005, 42) analysis of Current Population Survey data reveals that between 1980 and 2000 women's work status became less sensitive to both their own and their husband's wages, and they now supply their labor much as men do. Increased labor force participation has been most stark among married women and women with children, those most subject to work-family conflict. Dualearner families are now the most common household type: by 2000, 62 percent of married couples were dual earners, compared with 44 percent in 1975 (Costello, Wight, and Stone 2003, 203). Since 1970 women have also made significant inroads into more demanding "male" professional and managerial occupations (Reskin and Roos 1990). Careers are less likely to unfold in a predictable progression of jobs within single organizations, and workers move frequently across firms in boundaryless careers. Both men and women compete as ideal workers in an increasingly global market, scheduled around a 24/7 economy. The resulting time bind negatively affects workers, especially those with higher education and in time-intensive professional and managerial jobs (Jacobs and Gerson 2000). Entry into professional and managerial occupations is more likely to characterize the changing work prospects of white women, even though black middle-class women preceded their white counterparts into the labor market by many years (Landry 2000, 91). BEYOND SEPARATE SPHERES The popular and scholarly literatures rely on dichotomous language to describe work and family. Garey (1999, 8) faults researchers for relying on "separate spheres" terminology to describe women as either "work-committed" or "domestically oriented" (e.g., Gerson 1985), or as women who "live to work" or "work to live" (e.g., Mason 1988). More recent work (e.g., BlairLoy 2003) theorizes the existence of a "devotion to work schema," where "greedy workplace institutions" demand all our time and commitment, and a "devotion to family schema," where intensive mothering is a woman's major commitment, regardless of her work role. Blair-Loy argues that these cultural schemas powerfully shape women's attitudes and behaviors and are embedded in the beliefs of their husbands, the practices of employers, and workplace institutions more generally. In this view, women are seen as committed to either work or family, a cultural divide that emerges from a malebreadwinner-female-caregiver gender ideology that creates "naturalized" boundaries that working women must cross (Gazso 2004, 465). The changing landscape of the American (now global) labor market makes the choice between work and family largely the prerogative of the privileged (Johnson, 2002) and diverts our attention from the restructured realities of women's lives. …

The "Private" Politics in Caregiving: Reflections on Ruth Lister's Citizenship: Feminist Perspectives

Abstract: Ruth Lister’s seminal work, Citizenship: Feminist Perspectives (2003), still provides the field with critical insights. Her book shows feminists how to retain the emancipatory potential of citizenship, while jettisoning the mas culine privilege the concept engenders because it originally defined “the citizen” in opposition to women and some marginalized groups of men. As readers will recall, Lister does not simply carve out space for women in existing citizenship theories. She redefines what counts as citizenship in the light of the circumstances of multiple categories of women who differ according to class, race, disability, and so on. By virtue of “critical syntheses” of the participatory and legal status traditions in the malestream literature, along with the ethics of care and justice and the related equality versus difference debate in the feminist literature, Lister proposes a vision of citizenship that positions caregiving among its central obligations and entitlements. Complementing insights shared also by Cass (1994) and Fraser (1994), she argues that contemporary citizenship should protect women from the penalties associated with the androcentric status quo, but do so as part of a larger project that reconstructs citizenship norms so that men must forgo their privileged irresponsibility for caregiving. Lister carefully considers the policy implications of this reconstruction. Her fusion of normative theory with policy observations is a methodological breakthrough that remains underappreciated. The citizenship literature gained momentum in the 1990s as scholars showed renewed interest in the Tocquevillian “habits of the heart” that are integral to the health of modern democracies. Yet in their review of the literature, Kymlicka and Norman (2000) lament the timidity with which citizenship the

Illegal Birth and the Dilemma of Color, Culture, and Citizenship in Malaysia

Abstract: Maria, a foreign domestic worker in Malaysia, was in labor. A friend of her employer drove her to a private maternity clinic. Maria was a foreign worker in Malaysia; therefore her pregnancy was illegal and in violation of her work contract. To keep her job, Maria had to give up her infant for adoption and return to work immediately. Through an informal network of friends and neighbors, a childless Malaysian Chinese couple learned about the availability of a baby for adoption. They rushed to the clinic to meet Maria but upon arrival were told that the clinic would not admit Maria as a patient. In desperation, Maria, the friend of her employer, and the adoptive parents sped through the city, stopping at one clinic after another, in search of one that would deliver the baby. At each clinic the receptionist and the nurses argued over the legality of accepting Maria, and each one decided against admitting her. After many hours of agonizing labor pain, Maria found a clinic on the outskirts of the city that agreed to deliver her baby. Handing her healthy little baby girl over to the adoptive family, Maria spoke with the finality of never seeing her child again: "Do not bring her up as a Muslim." The clinic registered the names of the adoptive parents to pass them off as the child's biological parents and obtained a birth certificate for them at the local police station. The grateful adoptive parents paid for the medical charges and, according to Chinese custom, presented Maria with an angpou, a red envelope containing a token monetary gift for her to purchase restorative medicinal herbs to help with postpartum recovery. The adoptive parents gave the child a Chinese name that means sunny and smart. The arrival of Sunny (a pseudonym) provides much joy to the adoptive parents, but also provokes much fear in that they could lose the child if her identity became known. How can we understand Maria s crisis and the adoptive parents' fear of losing their child? In one sense, Marias crisis is representative of the plight of foreign domestic workers in Malaysia and other countries. Malaysia is not unique in its abuse of domestic workers: Human Rights Watch has documented comparable problems of abuses in other Asian countries, the Middle East, South America, and the United States (2005). Marias "illegal pregnancy" and her wish for her newborn signify her desire to have agency in defining her daughter s destiny and not merely to be the recipient of discriminatory state laws and policies. On the other hand, this case highlights the many challenges that go with "proving" citizenship and identity in a nation bound up in history, culture, and communal politics despite its growing movement towards a multiethnic national identity. Sunny s lack of documentation is not unique. There are similar, untold stories of children in Malaysia, and elsewhere in Asia, especially of those in the rural areas whose parents are too poor to register their children s birth or those born to illegal immigrants who became "stateless" (Sadiq 2009, Refugees International 2008).1 For the purpose of this paper, I position Marias labor crisis and the question of citizenship within a number of theoretical frames: (l) the crisis of Marias "illegal" pregnancy, labor contracts, and Malaysias system of labor control; (2) identity, control of social boundaries, and citizenship; (3) agency and citizenship negotiation; and (4) citizenship and human rights. This ethnography provides an opportunity to address Malaysias human rights and regulatory policies on labor practices and citizenship policies in the context of the country's current demand for international labor. Through the story - by documenting the motives and actions that constitute the practices of everyday life, in the tradition of de Certeau (1985) - I wish also to show how the rigidity of the formal discourse of country and culture is being challenged by migration, illegal pregnancy, illegal birth, humanitarian motivations, intricate layers of relationships and networks, fears and desires, and a family's love for a child. …

Annie Leibovitz's Queer Consumption of Motherhood

Abstract: The photographer Annie Leibovitz, chronicler of American life for thirty-five years, has created many of the images that people our collective unconscious: countercultural images in the 1970s when she traveled with the Beades for Rolling Stone to controversial covers for Vanity Fair. She has chronicled her generation's passage through society and every other generation's as well. In the process, she has pushed limits and broken taboos, and she has destabilized notions of the beautiful, the outre, and the poignant. The point here is that she has not only photographed American culture but also changed it - that is, shifted the line between what is considered acceptable and unacceptable. Her genius lies in capturing the images that in retrospect are viewed as iconic: of Allen Ginsburg smoking a joint, of a naked John Lennon wrapped in fetal fashion around Yoko Ono hours before his death, of the actress Demi Moore naked and cradling her pregnant belly. This last, a cover for Vanity Fair in 1991, was almost pulled by then-editor Tina Brown; and while some newsstands wrapped the issue in opaque cellophane to protect the public's sensibilities, others refused to sell it. Eventually, the image won a prize from the American Society of Magazine Editors in 2005 for second-best cover from the past forty years (the first prize went to the Lennon image). This signature ability to shock and then change the public's sensibilities has made Leibovitz a daring moral and aesthetic pioneer even while she continues to be controversial.1 The subject matter of this essay is Leibovitz 's traveling exhibit and her book based on the exhibit, Annie Leibovitz: A Photographer's Life, 1990-2005 and, in particular, her representation of her own "belated" motherhood. The exhibit opened in Brooklyn; traveled to San Francisco, where I saw it in 2008 at the Legion of Honor and then moved on to London and Paris. Leibovitz has typically shocked the public using other people's bodies; in this exhibit and book she also used her own ageing body to discomfit if not outright shock her viewers - in particular through dramatic images of her postmidlife (PM) cooptation of motherhood. I use the acronym PM, which is deliberately ambiguous; it can stand not only for "postmidlife"but also for "post(peri)menopausal." It is meant to suggest the crossing over of a "natural" boundary. The photos of the exhibit, Leibovitz notes in her introduction to the book, span the years of her relationship with the writer and critic Susan Sontag. Their relationship was mostly closeted - in the sense that Sontag and Leibovitz never referred to themselves as lovers, or as lesbians. Indeed, both refused labels other than the one of "friend."2 In this book, Leibovitz again insists on the word "friend" and thus on ambiguity; yet some of the photos seem to depict their relationship as unambiguously intimate. The book, Leibovitz notes in her introduction, is "a beauty book" that gestated in conversation with Sontag. It does contain images of surreal beauty: of timeless landscapes in Jordan and Egypt, for instance, which, notably, she visited with Sontag. It also contains the famous images from Leibovitz's professional portfolio: Hollywood actresses and bionic athletes captured in their moment of incandescent youth and indelible images of the seemingly larger-than-life moguls, entertainers, and politicians of our era. Interspersed with these iconic images - blown up in the exhibit - are small, ostensibly private, family photos: black-and-white images of Leibovitz's large extended family of origin, as well as a great many of Sontag, in bed with a typewriter, on vacation, enduring chemotherapy, and dying; the photos of her dying are juxtaposed with images of the births of Leibovitz's daughters, by which time Leibovitz was in her fifties. "I don't have two lives," Leibovitz explains in her introduction. "This is one life, and the personal pictures and the assignment work are all part of it. …

Motivated by Change: Political Activism of Young Women in the 2008 Presidential Campaign

Abstract: A persistent gender gap in political participation has plagued American politics for many years. Although women are more likely than men to vote, they are less likely to engage in other political activities, such as volunteering for campaigns, being active in community politics, or discussing political beliefs among friends and co-workers (Center for American Woman and Politics [CAWP] 2005; Schlozman, Burns, and Verba 1994; Welch 1977). Although small, this gap in political activism has significant implications for women's citizenship. Citizenship is, at its core, about the ability to exercise a voice in politics and make that voice heard by those in the government. Participation in politics is a key way in which men and women can make their voices heard. As Sidney Verba, Nancy Burns, and Kay Lehman Schlozman write, "Those who are less active pay a price in terms of representation. Public officials hear less about - and, therefore, presumably pay less attention to - their concerns, preferences, and needs" (1997, 1053). Without a voice in politics, women miss a fundamental piece of what it means to be a democratic citizen. Resolving this gender gap in participation depends on changing our assumptions about why women become engaged in politics. We argue that traditional assumptions about what it means to be political may not hold for women, thereby suppressing female participation in politics. To examine this, we focus on Barack Obamas 2008 presidential campaign, which - unlike other campaigns - engaged significant numbers of young women in campaign activism. A postelection survey of campaign activists under the age of twenty-five found that young women were 5 percentage points more likely than young men to engage in some form of activism within the Obama campaign. Likewise, a 2008 study by CIRCLE (Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement) found that, of the 52 percent of young voters who turned out to vote, young women were 8 percentage points more likely to vote than young men (Kirby and Kawashima- Ginsberg 2009). Although the trends in voting among young women were not historically unique, the trends in campaign activism were. To understand the reasons behind this dramatic rise in political activism among young women, we look beyond traditional understandings of what motivates political participation. Our findings suggest that traditional conceptions of politics are limited in their understanding of the factors that motivate young women to get involved. They explain the engagement of young men in politics, but do little to expand our understanding of participation among young women. The young women in our study are less likely to call themselves "political" in the traditional sense, but are more likely than men to be driven by a sense of wanting to make change and be part of a larger movement. To better incorporate women into our political system, then, we need to recognize the alternative factors that can draw women into politics. By exploring new ways to motivate women to participate, we open up the possibility of increasing women s participation and strengthening women's citizenship. Understanding the Gender Gap in Participation Although previous research has made large strides in expanding our understanding of the way resource disparities between men and women contribute to the gender gap in participation, questions about how men and women are motivated to participate remain unanswered. Previous research has not examined the possibility that nontraditional sources of motivation propel women's participation. In addition, most research on the gender gap has focused solely on adult women s participation. We focus particularly on young women and examine the possibility that women are motivated to get involved in ways different from those of men. Given the strong connection between early political activity and lifelong habits, we cannot ignore youth participation when studying the gender gap in participation. …

Reimagining Citizenship through Bilingualism: The Migrant Bilingual Child in Helena María Viramontes' Under the Feet of Jesus

Abstract: Bringing together bilingualism and citizenship may seem a counterintuitive gesture to many given that the most prominent relationship between language and citizenship historically in the United States has been that of literacy in English as proof of citizenship. 1 It is increasingly becoming questionable, however, to what extent the monolingual approach to citizenship that distributes rights and obligations in relation to English and assumes a correspondence between one state and one language can meaningfully account for the practices of citizenship. In After Race Antonia Darder and Rodolfo Torres draw attention to how the changing demographics of the United States—most notably the increasing number of Spanish-speaking populations—have necessitated “the redefining of current ideas of citizenship” (2004, 69). 2 One productive result of such efforts to redefine citizenship is the notion of cultural citizenship, initially proposed by anthropologist Renato Rosaldo and subsequently advanced by other scholars (Rosaldo 1997, 1994; Ong 1996; Flores and Benmayor 1997). A reaction to the limits of the legal and normative idea of citizenship, cultural citizenship locates the substantial meaning of citizenship in the everyday practices of sharing space and forming and exchanging ideas. In its initial formulation by Rosaldo, it radically decentered the emphasis on state power in citizenship by relocating the substance of citizenship in the lives of those considered outside the regime of citizenship such as minority groups or immigrants. Other scholars such as Aihwa Ong have tried to view cultural citizenship as registering both the regulatory force of the legal, normative side of citizenship and the revisions to such citizenship that occur in the lived realities of the disenfranchised. According to

Mobilizing Motherhood: Race, Class, and the Uses of Maternalism in the Welfare Rights Movement

Abstract: Welfare Rights was a movement of poor women and their supporters who were fighting for the right to basic income support for mothers receiving public assistance. In this essay I will argue that the Welfare Rights Movement provides an example of an intersectional social movement that was somewhat successful in using motherhood as a mobilizing feature. Through a historical case study I explore how middle-class and poor women participated in this movement in Detroit. I present the different experiences and perceptions of motherhood that informed the types of maternalism that emerged and that were subsequendy used in this movement. I argue that the specific experiences of the women intersected with their race and class, forming different uses of maternalism that subsequently galvanized their activism in differing ways. During the 1960s in Detroit, poor African American mothers who were receiving welfare became the key establishes of the Welfare Rights Movement in the city, employing what I refer to as "experiential maternalism." They derived this approach from their experiences in navigating the welfare system and resisting the stigma and the race- and class-based discrimination that was a part of their daily lives. However, they were supported by the many Friends of Welfare Rights groups, primarily made up of white middle-class women in the surrounding suburbs, who employed sentimental maternalism and organized on the issue of welfare rights. Middle-class ideology and values drove the use of maternalism for the Friends and formed, as defined by Molly Ladd- Taylor (1993), sentimental maternalism. LaddTaylor identified this form of maternalism through her exploration of the National Congress of Mothers and Parent-Teacher Associations, founded in 1897. She describes this form of maternalism as emphasizing the need for mothers to stay at home with their children and by the reformers' view of their role as "protecting" women and children who did not have male support (110-13). Maternalist movements began in earnest in different countries in the early nineteenth century. This was an age when women reformers began to organize around society's moral obligations to women and children. These early maternalists structured their social concerns within the context of their difference from men and shifted a moral vision to political action with their attempts at social reform for women and children (Koven and Michel 1993). In her discussion of African American club women and maternalist reformers in the early twentieth century, Eileen Boris (1993) illustrates that although class differences separated these women from the poorer black women they were advocating for, a shared racial status was central to their work. Although the middle-class African American women whom Boris examined shared many of the values and ideology of white maternalists of the time, they understood the racism that was inherent in perceptions of black motherhood versus white motherhood and thus were more successful in their cross-class work (213-45). Early welfare policy was also developed through the activism of white middle-class maternalists during the Progressive Era who advocated for mother's pensions that would allow poor white women and children to be cared for in the event that the mother became widowed or was deserted (Gordon 1994). Linda Gordon and other scholars have argued that from the very beginning welfare policy was framed within racist and classist assumptions and stereotypes, with the early intentions of maternalist reformers being to provide for deserving (white) mothers while structuring the policy so that it provided a minimum amount of support, as well as enough sanctions and stigma, so that poor African American families would not become overly dependent on the state (Gordon 1994;Abramovitz 1996a; Neubeck and Cazenave 2001). Riva Polatnick's (1966) later study of women's liberation groups from the 1960s provides some insight into the intersection of race and motherhood. …

Synaptic Peacekeeping: Of Bipolar and Securitization

Abstract: Recent years have seen a dramatic rise in statistical, professional, and popular accounts of "bipolar disorder/' yet, unlike in the case of other occasions of distress and madness, few have discussed the broader context in which these are enacted.1 Curious about this silence, in this essay I explore the bodies and politics swirling in and through representations of bipolar, in particular those produced by the pharmaceutical industry Through these depictions I see bipolar, at once an official "disorder" and also an emerging trope, as a collaborative event in the contemporary United States of medication, whiteness, citizenship, and nation. It is one that creates a racialized, gendered figure of control and balance while simultaneously generating (detaining, deporting) a manic Other. Already considered elsewhere as a "gatekeeper" of medicalization (Conrad 2005) I come to contemplate the pharmaceutical industry as also a vital element in securitization, and thus as perhaps an example of what Jasbir Puar (2007) might call a "contemporary war machine." Some Theory: The Bipolar Body Overall, as per Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari (1987), this essay contributes to a "decoding" of distress, madness, and the use of pharmaceuticals and thus moves toward what we might think of as a more "schizoanalytic" contemplation of peoples experiences as a collision of bodies, technologies, histories, and power. Such an approach does not suggest that feelings of fear, confusion, sadness, flatness, emptiness, loneliness, anxiousness, worthlessness, noisiness, agitation, stress, craziness, grandiosity, psychosis are not "real," that any benefits one receives from pharmaceuticals are "false," or that distress and madness are purely epistemologie al However, the affective states that make up bipolar are part of an embodied dialogue with the world in which we live - our psyches/bodies/souls engaging in unique and dynamic ways with a maelstrom of social, political, and corporate assemblages. Indeed, as "public feelings that begin and end in broad circulation" and "the stuff that seemingly intimate lives are made of" (Stewart 2007, 2), distress and madness offer valuable sites to explore the fleshy negotiation of sociopolitics. Through dialectical engagement, affect is drawn into cultural narratives that transform, modulate, and twirl it into meanings and feelings, which in turn generate subjectivity It is this process of "subjectivization" that renders affect as capacity, as a conduit of becoming that is both unsettling and productive (Deleuze and Guattari 1987), while the body itself is an "enactment" that perpetually organizes subjective experiences via a sort of "affective economy" (Blackman 2008). Thus, although in medical discourse bipolar is meant to infer a condition with a biological substrate, it follows that it can also be understood as a verb: it is not simply that we are or have bipolar, but rather that bipolar is a doing. The bipolar-body is enacting a cultural narrative, one that harnesses affect and spawns subjectivities. Yet this enactment is always uniquely situated in time and space; the narrative itself is socially, historically, politically, and geographically contingent and constituted, while simultaneously landing in raced, classed, and gendered bodies. Moreover, given our current regime of "biomedicalization" (Clarke et al. 2003), the bipolar-body is a technoscientific accomplishment, a convergence of technologies and the corporeal working together to exile mania. I therefore also conceive of bipolar-bodies as assemblages in and of themselves, an event of all these itinerant forces, in perpetual motion as they merge, submerge, (re) emerge. This foregrounding of assemblage enables attention to "ontology in tandem with epistemology" and "affect in conjunction with representational economies" (Puar 2007, 204). Consequently, to explore the rise in bipolar, in what follows I examine a component of the technological, discursive, and political "passage" (Blackman 2007) in and through which affect weaves, via an analysis of pharmaceutical advertising. …

Braveheart , Sacred Heart: Exploring Resistance to Patriarchal Discourses in Mainstream Media and Faith in the American Spiritual Marketplace

Abstract: This research assesses the relationship between gender identity and Christian faith through the lens of myriad forms of media. Specifically this essay first recognizes the use of a new marketing strategy employed by evangelical churches - namely the incorporation of Hollywood movies into religious messages - and then explores how male and female churchgoers receive the patriarchal discourses that exist within the varied media formations they encounter as they develop faith and identity in their everyday lives. This work is defined as a study of resistance to the subordinate identity that female churchgoers are invited to accept in the spaces of their churches - not a struggle against the masculinist tropes within the Hollywood movies that are woven into religious messages, however, but instead opposition only to a perceived patriarchal bias in religious texts. For what this study has revealed is that while evangelical females are quite critical of religious texts used by their church leaders, they offer no overt resistance to the strong patriarchal bias in the mainstream movies used during church sermons, those media formations that have become inextricably woven into religious messages. This research revolves around three central questions. First, what beliefs about gender are evangelicals invited to accept in the spaces of their churches now that the imagery and discourses of commercial entertainment media permeate religious messages ? Second, how do evangelical men and women who are exposed to this new mediated form of religion define and negotiate issues of gender in their lives inside and outside church? Finally, why is there no resistance to the patriarchal discourses in the commercial media texts, those media formations that are meant to attract the "Unchurched Harry and Mary" demographic?1 Is there something about evangelical perception of religious versus secular commercial texts that makes them less critical of the movies that have become an integral part of the development of their faith? Ascertaining what messages regarding gender are being sent to evangelicals in the spaces of their churches and how these individuals navigate issues of gender in the context of their faith is important, given the relatively recent rise of a new, highly mediated spiritual marketplace, one where Hollywood movies and television shows are used to both evangelize and instruct the faithful2 Marketing Religion In recent decades, American evangelicalism has undergone a significant shift. While some of the central tenets of evangelicalism - including a belief in the authority and inerrancy of the Bible, an emphasis on developing a personal relationship with Jesus, and the perceived need to evangelize, or "spread the good news" - remain, there is a new approach to evangelicalism characterized as a spiritual marketplace.3 The phrase "spiritual marketplace" was coined by Wade Clark Roof (1999), who recognized a new religious environment that is more closely influenced by a market mentality of supply and demand, one where religious institutions are redefined as a business and churchgoers are repositioned as consumers with personal choice. Other scholars have built on Roof s findings of increased market influences on religion (Einstein 2009; Hoover 2006; Schofield Clark 2003; Finke and Stark 2005; Wolfe 2003; Cimino and Lattin 1998). Cimino and Lattin, in their exploration of the ways in which evangelical churches market themselves to churchgoers, state that evangelical church leaders have now shifted to a business model of worship, one in which "megachurches ... are the evangelical answer to Home Depot" (1998, 56). The idea of competition between religious institutions is also recognized by Einstein, who in Brands of Faith states it succinctly: contemporary American religion is packaged as just another branded product in the American "consumer-focused environment," one that can be advertised by companies (churches) and purchased by consumers (churchgoers) (2008, 10). …

Documenting Three Gorges Migrants: Gendered Voices of (Dis)placement and Citizenship in Rediscovering the Yangtze River and Bingai

Abstract: What is displaced - dispersed, deferred, repressed, pushed aside - is, significantly, still there: Displaced but not replaced, it remains a source of trouble, the shifting ground of signification that makes meanings tremble - Angelika Bammer, introduction to Displacements: Cultural Identities in Question First envisioned by Sun Zhongshan in 1919 and later supported by Jiang Jieshi and Mao Zedong, the Three Gorges Dam - dubbed "the Great Wall across the Yangtze River" - has always been a controversial project among Chinese citizens After the 1989 Tiananmen demonstration, Li Peng, the hardliner who quelled that movement, also stifled the dams opponents and finally managed to get the project approved by the National Peoples Congress in 1992 The construction of the dam began in 1994 and was fully completed by 2009 It is the world s largest hydroelectric dam, serving the functions of electricity generation, flood control, and navigation control As a megadam, it has provoked criticism worldwide Besides its environmental costs, the dams most controversial consequence is the resettlement of more than two million citizens displaced from their hometowns along the six-hundred-kilometer reservoir area in Hubei Province and Chongqing Municipality (formerly in Sichuan Province) There are essentially three ways these citizens can be relocated: through vertical migration up the mountain slope above the submersion line, through migration to nearby villages, or through distant migration to other counties or provinces along the lower reaches of the Yangtze River While Hubei Province has adopted a policy of intraprovincial resettlement, Chongqing has opted for interprovincial resettlement, because of its already large population (Padovani 2006, 101-2) Numerous studies have charted the Three Gorges Dam resettlement, but most of them were conducted from a social science perspective, which centered primarily on macrosocio economic factors In contrast, in this essay I pay particular attention to aesthetic representations of the dam and resettlement, focusing on two documentary accounts of the dams impact on rural migrant citizens Rediscovering the Yangtze River (CCTV 2006) is a state-sponsored documentary produced by China Central Television (CCTV), and Bingai (Yan Feng 2007) is an "underground/independent" documentary film (Pickowicz 2006) 1 Because the documentary is a unique artistic form that oscillates "between the recognition of historical reality and the recognition of a representation about it" (Nichols 200 1, 39), I firmly locate my analysis of these representations in their larger s ocio historical context, which includes the dams distinct repercussions for female citizens and the very concept of citizenship in China Citizenship, which is materialized in identity cards and passports, is usually understood in legal, political, and social terms according to the politics of inclusion and exclusion In contrast to this traditional understanding of citizenship as a fixed identity status in relation to the state, my study approaches citizenship as a fluid identification A citizen may or may not fully identify with the state and feel like a citizen despite his or her legal citizenship Thus I emphasize the cultural, symbolic, emotional, and psychological dimension of citizenship, based on the politics of recognition and belonging The issue of citizenship becomes especially contested when it intersects with migration, because "migration and especially forced migration, is a conceptual disruption of citizenship in the historical nation-state system" (Dobrowolsky and Tastsoglou 2006, 23) Forced migration not only affects the legal citizenship of migrants, but also has a tremendous impact on the cultural and psychological dimension of citizenship as a result of migrants' experience of dislocation My discussion of the disruption of citizenship caused by the Three Gorges Dam resettlement revolves around the keyword "(dis) placement," which refers not only to physical deterritorialization, but also to migrants' sense of placement or displacement in relation to the state …

Citizenship and Human Rights

Abstract: These three documentaries depict the challenge of building modern nation-states through the efforts of strong indigenous leaders in countries racked with political and economic instability. Modern nation-states with economic and political stability are critical to America s security. However, stability in countries such as Pakistan and Afghanistan require tribal cooperation and participation. Yet, ethnic tribes can lose power and basis as the forces of modernity?seen as "Western" by many tribal leaders?ignore, repress, and condemn tribal custom. That is the conundrum America faces: how to build a modern state amid tribes that could have more to lose than to gain. The Russians imposed Marx ism on Afghanistan to steer it towards modernity and away from "war lords" and tribal custom. When persuasion failed, the Russians murdered a million Afghans and caused the defection of Afghanistan's middle class, upwards of five million people. Marxism failed. Tribal custom is stronger than ever.

"I envision a future in which maternal thinkers are respected and self-respecting": The Legacy of Sara Ruddick's Maternal Thinking

Abstract: The year 2009 marks twenty years since the publication of Sara Ruddick's monumental text Maternal Thinking: Toward a Politics of Peace, a book that is regarded, along with Adrienne Rich's 1976 Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution, as the most significant work in maternal scholarship and the new field of motherhood studies. And in 2009 Demeter Press published my edited volume Maternal Thinking: Philosophy, Politics, and Practice to commemorate and celebrate this herstoric anniversary. I first encountered Sara Ruddick's work in Joyce Trebilcot's 1 984 collection, Mothering: Essays in Feminist Theory, which included two essays by Ruddick: "Maternal Thinking" and "Preservative Love and Military Destruction: Some Reflections on Mothering and Peace." It was spring 1985 and I was the mother of a ten-month-old son and just finishing my first master's course on the subject of "women, violence, militarism, and war." I knew then that I wanted motherhood to be my area of expertise, though this was going to be a hard sell, given that my master's and then my PhD were in the field of English studies. It would be another five years and two more children before I would read Maternal Thinking in the summer of 1990. That year I was reading for my Major Field Comprehensive Exam on the topic of women's studies in literature and I had convinced my committee to substitute books on motherhood on the reading list. My plan was to head to my mother's place for three weeks, with my three kids - aged just turned 1, 31A, and 6 - and my son's best friend, also 6, but without my partner, who was home in Toronto. I arrived at my mom's small cottage with a pile of books, four kids under six years old, no partner or car, and little money. My mother, while adoring of her grandkids, was usually too overwhelmed by them to offer much help. Although I came with the best of intentions, to study and rest well, I did not get much rest or studying done in those weeks. But I did read, or more accurately, consume, Maternal Thinking, sneaking away to read the book whenever I could, like an addict in need of a hit. Today, close to twenty years later, that original copy ?? Maternal Thinking sits on the desk beside the keyboard as I write these reflections on Ruddick's monumental text. The cover of the book features an artist's drawing of a woman with her hand to her head, clearly engaged in deep thought, with these words written underneadi: "The first attempt to describe, from a philosophical perspective, the thinking that grows out of the work mothers do." For me, and I suspect for most mothers and scholars of motherhood, this is what made Maternal Thinking so life changing and groundbreaking. Ruddick foregrounded what all mothers know - motherwork is inherently and profoundly an intellectual activity - and dieorized the obvious: mothers think. "The work of mothering," as Ruddick writes in Maternal Thinking, "demands that mothers think; out of this need for thoughtfulness, a distinctive discipline emerges" (24). I first read those words on an overcast summer day as my young children played on a nearly deserted windswept beach. The lines are underlined and the page number circled twice and the paragraph remains soiled by sand and water. Yes, mothers think! In Maternal Thinking Ruddick seeks to divest mothering of biology, nature, instinct, and sentiment so as to define it as a practice, one governed by maternal diinking. Maternal practice, according to Ruddick, is characterized by three demands: preservation, growth, and social acceptance. "To be a mother," continues Ruddick, "is to be committed to meeting these demands by works of preservative love, nurturance, and training" (1989, 17). When mothers set out to fulfill the demands of motherwork, they are engaged in maternal practice; and this engagement, in turn, gives rise to a specific discipline of thought - a cluster of metaphysical attitudes, cognitive capacities, and values that Ruddick calls "maternal thinking. …