"Bottom Power:" Theorizing Feminism and the Women's Movement in Sierra Leone (1981-2007)

2008 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 491-513 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lynda Day
Keyword(s):  
Sierra Leone ◽  
Multinational Corporations ◽  
Women's Movement ◽  
Political Power ◽  
Political Activism ◽  
Political Authority ◽  
Women In Politics ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Male Privilege ◽  
Economic Marginality

Abstract This paper examines the theory and praxis of women's political activism in contemporary Sierra Leone. In spite of the steady upswing in the number of women elected or appointed to positions of political authority, the growing influence of women in politics runs into male resistance which privately and derisively refers to women's newly held positions of authority and public clout as "bottom power." This essay proposes that male pushback results from a neo-liberal women's movement that frames women's economic marginality and lack of access to political power as the result of patriarchy and male privilege, rather than using an African feminist framework which recognizes women's lack of resources as primarily the result of the appropriation of the country's wealth by multinational corporations, lending agencies and members of the elite. If viewed from this perspective, the women's movement would be framed as a socially transformative struggle for all sectors of society, and not as a contest between men and women for power.

scholarly journals FEMINISM AND HARASSMENT ARE MONSTERS OF THE NEW WORLD, SEEKING TO CONQUER PEOPLE THROUGH THE INTERNET...?!

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (1(82)) ◽  
pp. 29-38
Author(s):  
O. Dvoryankin
Keyword(s):  
Women's Movement ◽  
Information Technologies ◽  
New World ◽  
Main Tool ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
The World

The article examines the women's movement called "feminism", which created a new direction" harassment " in order to achieve superiority over men in the gender confrontation that exists between men and women since their appearance on earth. It is assumed that united, they would be able to become "monsters of the new world", and at the same time the main tool helping them to conquer people and impose their vision of the world over them will be the Internet and particularly its information technologies.

Political Activism and Other Life Forms in Colonial Buganda

2018 ◽  
Vol 45 ◽  
pp. 373-395
Author(s):  
Jonathon L. Earle
Keyword(s):  
Social Movement ◽  
Political Power ◽  
Political Activism ◽  
Life Forms ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Colonial Power ◽  
Political Practice ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
Trade Unionist ◽  
Concrete World

Abstract:This article uses recently unearthed private papers and ethnographic fieldwork to explore the intersection of political practice and environmental ideation in colonial Buganda. In the early to mid-1900s, colonial administrators sought to draw Ganda interlocutors into abstract conversations about a natural world that was devoid of political power. Through Witchcraft Ordinances, imperial administrators sought to distance spirits, rocks, trees, snakes, and other life forms from the concrete world of social movement and dissent. But in late colonial Uganda, the trade unionist Erieza Bwete and the influential spirit prophet Kibuuka Kigaanira navigated environmental spaces that were imbued with political significance. Uganda’s economic and national histories, informed by methodologies that privileged philosophical materialism, overlooked how interactions with multispecies animated anticolonial politics and larger debates about authority. To challenge these earlier assumptions, this article shows how colonial literati and a late colonial prophet interacted with a natural world that was deeply political to conceptualize independence and challenge colonial power.

Obstacles to Political Careers

1985 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 355-366 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yeşslim Arat
Keyword(s):  
Power Relations ◽  
Women's Movement ◽  
Power Structure ◽  
Radical Change ◽  
Political Careers ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Women’S Perceptions ◽  
Patriarchal Power

“Routine politics” becomes central to the study of the nature and limits of women's political aspirations in a context where women have not as yet chosen to organize a women's movement. This article is based on a series of indepth interviews with a group of female Turkish politicians. The skewed structure of power relations between men and women is aptly reflected in women's perceptions of women's problems in politics. Locating the problem at this level makes it more difficult to ameliorate the situation, short of there being a radical change in the patriarchal power structure of society.

Black Victual Warriors and Hunger Creation

2019 ◽  
pp. 89-108
Author(s):  
Rachel B. Herrmann
Keyword(s):  
Food System ◽  
Just War ◽  
African Descent ◽  
Revolutionary War ◽  
Political Authority ◽  
The Political ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Free Black

This chapter looks at how enslaved peoples and self-liberated men and women used food to shape the Revolutionary War in ways that failed to address their own hunger. In November of 1775, before the colonies declared independence, Virginia governor Lord Dunmore issued a proclamation that offered freedom to slaves of rebel masters, setting the stage for an exodus of thousands of self-liberated men and women from colonists' homes and plantations to British lines. Dunmore's Proclamation was also responsible for changing white colonists' and British officers' ideas about hunger prevention and just war. Dunmore's Proclamation affected white colonists and Britons less than it did free black folks, enslaved people, and former bondpeople. People of African descent played various roles in the conflict. Dunmore's offer turned some men into victual warriors capable of creating and preventing white hunger. Throughout the war, self-liberated men and women did not enjoy the luxury of worrying about their own appetites—and sometimes, hunger seemed immaterial. But their experiences created the knowledge that would later become necessary to institutionalize a food system that granted black colonists the political authority to fight hunger.

Social and Political Drivers of the Reorientation of U.S. Trade Policy: The Case of U.S. Withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 199-218 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jesse Liss
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Trade Policy ◽  
Multinational Corporations ◽  
Quantitative Methods ◽  
Political Power ◽  
Political Influence ◽  
The United States ◽  
Qualitative And Quantitative Methods ◽  
Stakeholder Groups ◽  
Sociological Explanation

Previous sociological studies demonstrated that U.S. multinational corporations (MNCs) had durable political power to motivate U.S. trade policy. However, why did the United States switch from a “free trade” to an “America First” trade agenda? Economists and political scientists argue that protectionist voters elected the protectionist candidate—Trump. An alternative sociological explanation is that U.S. MNCs lost political power to competing stakeholder groups. The article uses qualitative and quantitative methods to test these competing theories using the case study of the U.S. withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). The article argues that both theories are necessary, and neither are sufficient. The United States withdrew from the TPP because increasing negative effects of trade and investment in the United States reshaped trade politics, especially on the republican side; however, power relations between stakeholder groups had to shift as well. U.S. MNCs lost political influence over trade policy to new domestic manufacturing organizations and their networks with labor and fair trade coalitions.

Thumos in Aristotle’s Politics VII.7

2019 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-76
Author(s):  
Marguerite Deslauriers
Keyword(s):  
Physical Phenomenon ◽  
Political Authority ◽  
Political Life ◽  
The Political ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Roles ◽  
Political Value ◽  
Political Realm

Abstract Aristotle claims that the citizens of the best city should be both intelligent and spirited at Politics VII.7 1327b19-38. While he treats intelligence as an unqualified good, thumos (‘spirit’) is valuable but problematic. This paper has two aims: (i) to consider the political value of spirit in Aristotle’s Politics and in particular to identify the ways in which it is both essential to political excellence and yet insufficient for securing it, and (ii) to use this analysis of the role of spirit in the political realm to explain Aristotle’s exclusion of women from political authority, even in the context of the household. I analyze spirit as a physical phenomenon and as a type of desire, before considering its moral and affective aspects. I then return to the role of spirit in political life and examine its importance for the activity of ruling. In the last section I consider the implications of this analysis of spirit for the social and political roles Aristotle assigns to men and women.

A Recent Movement to Redefine the Role and Status of Women

1977 ◽  
Vol 71 ◽  
pp. 591-597 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elisabeth Croll
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Women's Movement ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Self Image ◽  
History Of ◽  
Stated Time ◽  
Women's Role ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Status Of Women ◽  
The Cultural Revolution

At the outset of the recent anti-Confucian and Lin Piao campaign it was forecast that this movement would “ surely create still more •r favourable conditions for the emancipation of women.” x To create conditions advantageous to women the campaign set out to identify the obstacles inhibiting the redefinition of the role and status of women, j The identification of problem areas is not a new element in the history of the women's movement, indeed the problems have been stated time and again. The significance of this campaign lies in its concentrated and analytical attempt to integrate the redefinition of the female role with a nation-wide effort to change the self-image and expectations of both men and women. In this it provides a contrast with the strategy of the previous national campaign, the Cultural Revolution. Historically the women's movement has been very much concerned with raising the confidence of women in their own individual and collective abilities and translating the individual experience of suppression into a coherent analysis of oppression, but there is evidence to suggest that there was too little attention given to the position of women in the Cultural Revolution. For instance many associations and enterprises encouraged their members to believe that so long as overall revolutionary aims were fulfilled, there was no need to pay” particular attention to the position of women.2 The recent campaign and its application to practical problems among both men and women is a new recognition that because of their history of oppression it is still necessary to pay special attention to the restraints that continue to hinder the redefinition of women's role and status in society.

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