Why I Am Not a Buddhist Feminist: A Critical Examination of ‘Buddhist Feminism’

2012 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 180-194 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean Byrne
Keyword(s):  
Feminist Theory ◽  
Critical Examination ◽  
Women In Buddhism ◽  
Do So ◽  
Area Of Study

Feminist Buddhology is a burgeoning area of study, with many scholar-practitioners examining the interaction between Buddhism and feminist theory. Here I examine the contributions made by Buddhist Feminists and argue that, in general, Feminist Buddhology runs the serious risk of being ‘apologist’. I contrast the discrimination against women evident in Buddhist traditions with the claims of Buddhist Feminists that ‘Buddhism is feminism’ and ‘feminism is Buddhism’. In order to do so I provide a brief history or the position of women in Buddhism, an overview of Feminist Buddhology and lastly the beginnings of an alternate perspective from which we may interweave Buddhism and feminism, without an underlying apologist perspective.

scholarly journals On the concept of habitus: Feminist critic of Pierre Bourdieu’s social theory

2013 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 174-192
Author(s):  
Dejan Petrovic
Keyword(s):  
Action Potential ◽  
Feminist Theory ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Social Power ◽  
Social Activism ◽  
The Other ◽  
Symbolic Violence ◽  
Critical Examination ◽  
Asymmetric Distribution ◽  
Theoretical System

Key contemporary sociological theorists, such as Foucault or Habermas rarely explicitly discussed gender in their studies. This fact has not caused a lack of interest in the critical examination of the theoretical systems of these authors within a feminist perspective. During the 1990?s feminists? attention was drawn to Pierre Bourdieu?s social theory. French sociologist?s study Masculine Domination deals with issues of gender dynamics and its reproduction. In this study the persistence of the asymmetric distribution of social power between women and men is explained by concepts of habitus and symbolic violence. As this article will show, social change cannot be explained by Bourdieu?s concept of habitus, as a key link between social structure and action, due to its reduction of actors to socialized bodies, which are practically deprived of any true action potential. On the other hand, with regard to social activism as a permanent feature of feminist theory, this paper seeks to examine whether critical examination of Bourdieu?s conceptual apparatus achieves to provide the means to overcome the aforementioned shortcomings of the theoretical system of French sociologist. In other words, this article seeks to answer the question whether such a modification of habitus is possible, which will allow for actors whose action is truly structured and structuring, and lead to possible change of existing power relations.

Historic Preservation in Nazi Germany

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua Hagen
Keyword(s):  
Historic Preservation ◽  
Cultural Politics ◽  
Nazi Germany ◽  
Critical Examination ◽  
National History ◽  
National Heritage ◽  
The Village ◽  
The City ◽  
The Town ◽  
Do So

This chapter offers a critical examination of historic preservationist practices to expand our understanding of the Nazi regime’s ideologies and objectives regarding historic places and national heritage. Rather than catalogue the actual techniques of historic preservation, this chapter focuses on the cultural politics animating the regime’s efforts to construct its vision of national history, heritage, and memory. To do so, the chapter surveys the Nazi regime’s efforts to “preserve” three generalized places: the city, the town, and the village

Verzet en rechten : Een vergelijking van Arendt, Foucault, en Young

2020 ◽  
Vol 112 (2) ◽  
pp. 155-175
Author(s):  
Liesbeth Schoonheim
Keyword(s):  
Social Identity ◽  
Feminist Theory ◽  
Michel Foucault ◽  
The Other ◽  
Total Domination ◽  
Social Agents ◽  
Gender Based ◽  
The One ◽  
Late Modern ◽  
Do So

Abstract Resistance and Rights. Comparing Arendt, Foucault, and YoungThe question if rights can be used in addressing gender-based oppression is at the center of recent debates in feminist theory. On the one hand, post-structuralist critiques have argued that differentiated rights, aimed at redressing injustices, reify the identity of oppressed groups (Brown 2000). On the other hand, proponents of differentiated rights have argued that these should be understood social-phenomenologically, as enabling social agents to counteract their oppression (Young 2011; McNay 2010). This paper argues in favor for the latter position while taking seriously the concern with regard to social identity articulated by the former. I do so by comparing Hannah Arendt and Michel Foucault on the relation between resistance and rights. Starting from the observation that Arendt and Foucault agree on the need for a new law that can curtail the destructive dynamics of late-modernity, I argue that their account of resistance ascribes great importance to rights. Discussing the two authors in turn, I focus on two parallel themes. Firstly, confronted with the fight against anti-Semitic persecution (Arendt) and the struggle against governmental techniques (Foucault), they invoke rights against the near-total domination by late-modern states. Secondly, reflecting on how freedom practices require relationships with others in which one can develop one’s individual uniqueness, they hint towards rights that consolidate these relationships, of which friendship is the paradigmatic example. In conclusion, I return to the feminist debate on differential rights to show how Young’s model of communicative democracy is influenced by and is an instance of the relational rights that can be found in Arendt and Foucault.

Constraints of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Natural Subject

2011 ◽  
Vol 11 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 287-310
Author(s):  
Christian Laheij
Keyword(s):  
Feminist Theory ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Muslim Women ◽  
Critical Social Theory ◽  
Islamic Revival ◽  
Cognitive Theories ◽  
Ethnographic Data ◽  
Epidemiology Of Representations ◽  
Do So ◽  
Critical Social

AbstractIn this paper, I take aim at the typical anthropological routine of criticizing universalist assumptions in social theory by contrasting them with non-Western emic models. I do so by following up on one recent instance of this practice, which has been heralded as a testament to what anthropology can still offer to critical social theory: Mahmood’s work on the Islamic piety movement in Egypt, and her claim that the normative subject of liberal feminist theory needs to be denaturalized, because the women involved in the piety movement hold a self-model that is incommensurable with secular-liberal assumptions about action being structured by innate desires for autonomy and freedom. By analyzing ethnographic data on Egyptian Muslim women through the lens of a combination of non-determinist cognitive theories, I show that in order to understand the lives of pious women much can be gained from keeping psychological predispositions for autonomy in mind. Simultaneously, this paper can be read as an attempt to bring cognitive material on attachment, education and epidemiology of representations into conversation with one another, and discover emerging fault lines and potentialities for mutual reinforcement.

scholarly journals The ‘Duel’ Meaning of Feminisation in International Relations: The Rise of Women and the Interior Logics of Declinist Literature

2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 101-124
Author(s):  
Caron E. Gentry
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Feminist Theory ◽  
Gender Equality ◽  
Sexual Minorities ◽  
Economic Empowerment ◽  
Cautionary Tale ◽  
Contributing Factors ◽  
Women's Participation ◽  
The Feminine ◽  
Do So

‘Feminisation’ in International Relations refers to multiple, and sometimes contradictory, concepts. Much of the time it refers to the incorporation of women into various organisations and institutions, such as women’s participation in militaries or in politics. The decline of violence, or declinist, literature lists it as one of the contributing factors in the decline of violence and associates feminisation with women’s social, political, and economic empowerment. Feminist theory in ir, however, conceptualises ‘feminisation’ in a different light. As the feminine is often devalued or deprioritised for the preferred masculine, feminisation is synonymous with devalourisation. 1 Therefore, this paper will play with the dual meaning of feminisation, offering a cautionary tale for the dependency on women’s empowerment in the declinist literature by asserting that it is hampered by masculinist thinking. It will do so by challenging the equation of women with gender in the declinist literature. Gender equality and/or progress cannot simply be limited to raising women’s status, which implicates an understanding of gender as a binary categorisation of men/masculinity or women/femininity. Instead, gender is a spectrum that understands the multitude of gender identities, going beyond heteronormativity to lesbian, bi-, gay, trans, queer, and intersex (lbgtqi). Limiting gender to women means violences against other communities, particularly sexual minorities, is unrecognised and unaccounted for.

scholarly journals Cartooning the Camp: Aesthetic Interruption and the Limits of Political Possibility

2018 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 169-189 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alister Wedderburn
Keyword(s):  
Feminist Theory ◽  
Comic Book ◽  
Concentration Camp ◽  
The Political ◽  
Sovereign Power ◽  
Relational Understanding ◽  
Vichy France ◽  
German Jewish ◽  
Do So

Over the last 30 years, post-structuralist, feminist and other IR theorists have asked questions of the ways in which discourses on sovereignty seek to foreclose political possibility. To do so, they have advanced a decentralised, contested, incomplete and relational understanding of politics that presupposes some sort of intersubjective agency, however fragmented. There is one site, however, that appears to confound this line of argument insofar as it is commonly understood to exemplify an entirely non-relational, anti-political ‘desolation’: the concentration camp. Drawing on feminist theory to establish the terms of an aesthetic mode of ‘interruption’, this article will identify a compelling challenge to this position in a comic book drawn by Horst Rosenthal, a German–Jewish detainee at Gurs in Vichy, France, who was later killed at Auschwitz–Birkenau. Rosenthal’s piece will be read as an ‘aesthetic interruption’ that mounts a powerful critique of the logic underpinning his concentrationary experience, and in so doing demonstrates one way in which (to however painfully limited a degree) the political might be ‘brought back in’ to discussions about sovereign power.

Constitutive Exclusion

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sina Kramer
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Feminist Theory ◽  
Queer Theory ◽  
Theoretical Frameworks ◽  
Politics Of Recognition ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Political Borders ◽  
Political Agents ◽  
Constitutive Exclusion ◽  
Do So

This chapter introduces “constitutive exclusion” and makes the case for it as a framework for understanding why some claims are unintelligible as political claims, and some actors unintelligible as political agents. While many theoretical frameworks—political theory, critical theory, feminist theory, queer theory, and Afro-pessimism—rely on constitutive exclusion, none take it up explicitly. I do so around three claims: First, political borders are drawn through the internal exclusion of radical political actors, whose claims are then rendered unintelligible. Second, a politics of recognition is insufficient as a response to these exclusions, as recognition is often consistent with domination and disavowal. Third, the radical potential buried within internal exclusions is accessible by means of a method attentive to the temporality and materiality of these exclusions. The critical work of the book is in service of a future in which we no longer define ourselves through such exclusions within.

How Online Grading Feedback Might Benefit From a Grounding in Feminist Theory

2021 ◽  
pp. 188-211
Author(s):  
Jennifer Schneider
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Feminist Theory ◽  
Teacher Research ◽  
Feminist Perspective ◽  
Online Grading ◽  
Do So

This chapter explores the application of feminist theory to online grading feedback processes in higher education. Christianakis describes teacher research as a feminist act. This chapter presents the argument that grading feedback can be viewed from a complementary lens. Many believe that feedback, when offered correctly, has the ability to transform a learner for the better. When actively and intentionally viewed from a feminist perspective, feedback offers a plethora of opportunities to not only teach content, but also to empower and address power inequities. Feminist theory also offers helpful guidance on how to do so.

scholarly journals A Critical Examination of Breeders’ Monopoly Rights to the Detriment of Farmers’ Rights Under the Ethiopian Plant Breeders’ Rights Law

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-30
Author(s):  
Temesgen Abebe Degu
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Method ◽  
Critical Examination ◽  
Secondary Sources ◽  
Stated Objective ◽  
The Future ◽  
Pastoral Communities ◽  
Primary Materials ◽  
Biodiversity Resource ◽  
Plant Breeders Rights ◽  
Do So

Ethiopia adopted plant breeders’ rights proclamation in 2006 to provide recognition and economic reward for breeders for their effort and investment so as to encourage their involvement in the sector. At the same time, the proclamation aims to ensure that the farming and pastoral communities of Ethiopia, who have been conserving and continue to do so in the future the agro-biodiversity resource used to develop new plant varieties, continue to their centuries old customary practice of use and exchange of seed. This article aims at investigating the extent to which the proclamation accommodates its stated objective by giving adequate recognition to farmers’ rights. The investigation adopts a qualitative method by analyzing both primary materials and secondary sources. The article concludes that the Ethiopian plant breeders’ rights proclamation fails to adequately incorporate farmers’ rights beyond its preamble.

scholarly journals Morphological Evolution of the Port‐City Interface of Algiers (16th Century to the Present)

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 119-135
Author(s):  
Khalil Bachir Aouissi ◽  
Said Madani ◽  
Vincent Baptist
Keyword(s):  
Morphological Evolution ◽  
16Th Century ◽  
Critical Examination ◽  
Morphological Development ◽  
Port City ◽  
Southern Mediterranean ◽  
No Man's Land ◽  
The City ◽  
Spatial Threshold ◽  
Do So

This article traces the centuries-long morphological development of Algiers’ port-city interface across four historically relevant time periods that together span from the dawn of the 16th century up until today. Through a diachronic and geo-historical approach, we identify and analyse the origins of Algiers’ persistent port-city divide. In doing so, the notion of the interface is interpreted as a spatial threshold between city and port, which nevertheless supports the material flows of both entities. As a multi-purpose area, the interface holds the potential to weave the disparate entities of a port city back together. To further complement this conceptual angle, we provide investigations of porosity that determine the differing degrees of connectivity between the city and port of Algiers. This is combined with a spatial-functional analysis of Algiers’ current port-city interface, which is ultimately characterised as a non-homogeneous entity composed of four distinct sequences. These results contribute to a better orientation of imminent plans for waterfront revitalisations in Algiers. Whereas the interface was long considered as some kind of no man’s land in the past, port and municipal authorities nowadays aim to turn the interface into a tool of reconciliation, and can do so by acting upon its potential porosity. Finally, this article’s critical examination of the previously neglected case of Algiers can and should also be considered as an applicable model for the continuing study of southern Mediterranean and African port metropolises in general, which share a particular evolution in the relations between city and port.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document