Finding Women in the State

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wang Zheng
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Production ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Male Dominance ◽  
Socialist Revolution ◽  
New Paradigm ◽  
State Feminism ◽  
Socialist State ◽  
Class Hierarchies ◽  
History Of ◽  
Party State

This first book engendering the PRC high politics narrates a hidden history of socialist state formation in which feminists in the CCP operated in a politics of concealment in order to enact their feminist visions of a socialist stateand to launch a feminist revolutiontransforming a patriarchal culture. Analyzing archival sourcesand interviews with a double-lens of gender and class, the book illuminates a gender line of struggle in the CCP, debunks a conceptualization of a monolithic patriarchal party/state that paradoxically supported gender equality, and demonstrates state feminists’ contentions in diverse fields and fierce opposition from a male-dominated CCP leadership from the Party Central to the local government. Socialist cultural production is also examined to demonstrate how feminist leaders consciously created a new paradigm of visual representation of heroines and continued a New Culture anti-patriarchy heritage in socialist film production. The feminist endeavors in the cultural realm aiming to transform gender and class hierarchies are discussedin conjunction with an examination of the dense entanglements among those in the top echelon of the Party and an analysis of how the politicalbeing saturated withthe personal dynamics. Discussing the causes for failure of China’s socialist revolution, the book raises fundamental questions about male dominance in social movements and political revolutions that aim to pursue social justice and equality. The book also scrutinizes post-socialist knowledge production that has operated in a politics of erasure of a history of socialist state feminism.

Fashioning Socialist Visual Culture

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wang Zheng
Keyword(s):  
Visual Culture ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
Film Studies ◽  
Film Industry ◽  
Socialist Revolution ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Patriarchal Culture ◽  
History Of ◽  
Xia Yan

Xia Yan, the underground leader of the left-wing films in the 1930s and top official of the film industry in the PRC since 1954, embodied the cultural history of the CCP. A brief biography of this Communist feminist artist leader disrupts the reductive dichotomy of the Party vs. artists in film studies and illuminates a tension-ridden history of socialist filmmaking that constituted a highly contentious site in the socialist revolution. Situating his politically engagingartistic creativity inside ashiftingpolitical process, this chapter traces Xia Yan’s major role in transmitting the New Culture agenda of transforming a patriarchal culture in socialist cultural production and delineatesdiverse and contradictory politicalpositions and artistic preferences in artists’ innovative experimentsofcreating a socialist new culture. It also analyzes his films that continued the paradigm of revolutionary heroines.

Conclusion

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wang Zheng
Keyword(s):  
Women's Movement ◽  
Global Capitalism ◽  
Male Dominance ◽  
Gender Mainstreaming ◽  
Socialist Revolution ◽  
Contemporary China ◽  
Political Force ◽  
Socialist State ◽  
Cyber Space ◽  
Feminist Revolution

Summarizing socialist state feminists’ struggles in the early PRC, this chapterpoints out thatwithout a conscious feminist transformation of the entrenchedmale supremacisthierarchical mentality,the CCP male leaders’ pursuit of a Communist dream was inherently flawed, and eventually redirected by an inner masculinist drive to reproduce male dominance. Analyses of causes of the failure of a socialist revolution are followed with an examination of socialist state feminist legacies in contemporary China. The chapter ends with a discussion of transformed political fields of Chinese feminism in the age of global capitalism whenthe ACWFno longercommands a unified women’s movement and is not in the position to continue a socialist feminist revolution, instead embracing a UN mandate of gender mainstreaming;and growing numbers of young feminists operate outside the official system via the cyber space interacting with feminists transnationally, rising as a dynamic political force challenging male dominance.

World-Ecological Satire: Peat, Brian O'Nolan, and the Irish Free State's Energy Regime

2019 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 90-104
Author(s):  
Robert Kiely
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Production ◽  
Ecological Perspective ◽  
Energy Regime ◽  
Energy History ◽  
History Of ◽  
External Site ◽  
Ecological Relations ◽  
Nature And Society ◽  
Human Actors ◽  
The Relationship

A world-ecological perspective of cultural production refuses a dualist conception of nature and society – which imagines nature as an external site of static outputs  – and instead foregrounds the fact that human and extra-human natures are completely intertwined. This essay seeks to reinterpret the satirical writing of a canonical figure within the Irish literary tradition, Brian O'Nolan, in light of the energy history of Ireland, understood as co-produced by both human actors and biophysical nature. How does the energy imaginary of O'Nolan's work refract and mediate the Irish environment and the socio-ecological relations shaping the fuel supply-chains that power the Irish energy regime dominant under the Irish Free State? I discuss the relationship between peat as fuel and Brian O'Nolan's pseudonymous newspaper columns, and indicate how questions about energy regimes and ecology can lead us to read his Irish language novel An Béal Bocht [The Poor Mouth] (1941) in a new light. The moments I select and analyze from O'Nolan's output feature a kind of satire that exposes the folly of separating society from nature, by presenting an exaggerated form of the myth of nature as an infinite resource.

Muslim Women and the Politics of Representation

2002 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 1-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jasmin Zine
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Production ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Muslim Women ◽  
Muslim Woman ◽  
Literary Traditions ◽  
Feminist Literature ◽  
Production Of Knowledge ◽  
Feminist Writing ◽  
Textual Representation ◽  
Relations Of Power

This paper examines the politics of knowledge production as it relates to Muslim women in western literary traditions and con­temporary feminist writing, with a view to understanding the political, ideological, and economic mediations that have histor­ically framed these representations. The meta-narrative of the Muslim woman has shifted from the bold queens of medieval lit­erature to colonial images of the seraglio's veiled, secluded, and oppressed women. Contemporary feminist writing and popular culture have reproduced the colonial motifs of Muslim women, and these have regained currency in the aftermath of9/1 l. Drawing upon the work of Mohja Kahf, this paper begins by mapping the evolution of the Muslim woman archetype in western literary traditions. The paper then examines how some contemporary feminist literature has reproduced in new ways the discursive tropes that have had historical currency in Muslim women's textual representation. The analysis is atten­tive to the ways in which the cultural production of knowledge about Muslim women has been implicated historically by the relations of power between the Muslim world and the West ...

TRANSFORMATIONS IN THE JUDICIAL SYSTEM OF THE SMOLENSK REGION (1917–1922)

2020 ◽  
pp. 165-175
Author(s):  
Konstantin Kupchenko ◽  
Nikolay Fedoskin
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
Economic Consequences ◽  
Judicial System ◽  
State Archive ◽  
Red Army ◽  
History Of ◽  
Legal Foundations ◽  
Party State ◽  
State Regional ◽  
Soviet Experience

The article analyzes the results of the state policy implementation withing the formation and development of the Soviet judicial system on the example of Smolensk Governoral Court. The authors set the goal, based on the analysis of sources not introduced into a wide scientific circulation, primarily stored at the State Archive of the Smolensk Region to restore the history of the creation and operation of justice institutions in the Smolensk region in the 1918s–1923s. The source base of the study was composed of documents stored at Smolensk State Regional Archive, materials on the history of the judiciary, statistical materials of the period under the study, documents on the history of the party-state bodies of the Smolensk region. The article studies current office documentation of both the higher and regional state bodies (Workers 'and Peasants' Government, People's Commissariat of Justice, Smolensk Governoral Executive Committee) and local authorities (Smolensk Council of Working People's Deputies, Executive Committee of Smolensk Governoral Council of Workers, Peasants' and Red Army Deputies), as well as Smolensk Governoral Court. The authors analyze the Soviet experience in the formation and development of judicial bodies under specific historical conditions; they consider transformations in the judicial system of the Smolensk Governorate in the 1917s–1922s, as well as the formation of Smolensk Governoral Court. The article studies legal foundations of the Soviet judicial system formation, characterizes processes of creating a judicial apparatus in the first years of Soviet power and analyzes activities of Smolensk Governoral Court during its formation. The authors reveal the essence, degree of efficiency, concrete results, political and socio-economic consequences, positive and negative lessons from the Soviet judicial system existed in Russia. The authors assume that the development of new legislation system in the 1920s was caused by the need to reform legal sources as the main means of socialism building. The authors conclude that the transformation of the Soviet judicial system completed the transition from the principle of «revolutionary expediency» to the principle of «revolutionary legality».

Dancing Women

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Usha Iyer
Keyword(s):  
South Asian ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
The Body ◽  
Theoretical Frameworks ◽  
History Of ◽  
Material History ◽  
Cultural Forms ◽  
Hindi Cinema

Dancing Women: Choreographing Corporeal Histories of Hindi Cinema, an ambitious study of two of South Asia’s most popular cultural forms—cinema and dance—historicizes and theorizes the material and cultural production of film dance, a staple attraction of popular Hindi cinema. It explores how the dynamic figurations of the body wrought by cinematic dance forms from the 1930s to the 1990s produce unique constructions of gender, stardom, and spectacle. By charting discursive shifts through figurations of dancer-actresses, their publicly performed movements, private training, and the cinematic and extra-diegetic narratives woven around their dancing bodies, the book considers the “women’s question” via new mobilities corpo-realized by dancing women. Some of the central figures animating this corporeal history are Azurie, Sadhona Bose, Vyjayanthimala, Helen, Waheeda Rehman, Madhuri Dixit, and Saroj Khan, whose performance histories fold and intersect with those of other dancing women, including devadasis and tawaifs, Eurasian actresses, oriental dancers, vamps, choreographers, and backup dancers. Through a material history of the labor of producing on-screen dance, theoretical frameworks that emphasize collaboration, such as the “choreomusicking body” and “dance musicalization,” aesthetic approaches to embodiment drawing on treatises like the Natya Sastra and the Abhinaya Darpana, and formal analyses of cine-choreographic “techno-spectacles,” Dancing Women offers a variegated, textured history of cinema, dance, and music. Tracing the gestural genealogies of film dance produces a very different narrative of Bombay cinema, and indeed of South Asian cultural modernities, by way of a corporeal history co-choreographed by a network of remarkable dancing women.

‘It Is a Tradition in the Nuclear Industry . . . Secrecy’: Political Opportunity Structures and Nuclear Knowledge Production in France

2021 ◽  
pp. 136078042110250
Author(s):  
Julie Schweitzer ◽  
Tamara L Mix
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Nuclear Energy ◽  
Nuclear Industry ◽  
Political Opportunity ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Nuclear Program ◽  
Opportunity Structures ◽  
Shaping Process ◽  
History Of ◽  
Political Opportunity Structures

Employing the example of France’s civil nuclear program, we connect political opportunity structures (POSs) to mechanisms of knowledge production, identifying how opposing stakeholders generate knowledge about a controversial technology. A history of nuclear dependence in France creates a context that praises, normalizes, and rationalizes nuclear energy while stigmatizing attempts to question or contest the nuclear industry’s dominant position. Integrating Bond’s knowledge-shaping process with Coy and colleagues’ concept of oppositional knowledge, we consider how the broader social, political, and economic context influences opposing stakeholder assessments of nuclear energy. Employing qualitative semi-structured interviews, we offer unique insight into the French nuclear debate, discussing the role of POS in shaping knowledge production.

Transforming Historical Objectivism into Historical Hermeneutics: From “Historical Illness” to Properly Lived Historicality

2019 ◽  
Vol 61 (4) ◽  
pp. 490-515
Author(s):  
Thomas Tops
Keyword(s):  
Reception History ◽  
Biblical Studies ◽  
Historical Study ◽  
Necessary Condition ◽  
New Paradigm ◽  
History Of Interpretation ◽  
Critical Methodology ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
History Of ◽  
Biblical Texts

Summary The present study analyses recent criticisms against the use of modern-historical methodologies in Biblical Studies. These methodologies abstract from the historical horizon of the researcher. In order to relate properly to the historicality of the researcher, historical objectivism needs to be transformed into historical hermeneutics. Recent developments in the historical methodology of biblical scholars are unable to reckon with the historicality of the researcher due to the partial or incorrect implementation of Gadamer’s views on reception history. I analyse the views of Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, and Gadamer on historicality and contend that the study of reception history is a necessary condition for conducting historical study from within the limits of our historicality. Reception history should not be a distinct methodological step to study the “Nachleben” of biblical texts, but needs to clarify how the understanding of these texts is already effected by their history of interpretation. The awareness of the presuppositions that have guided previous interpretations of biblical texts enables us to be confronted by their alterity. This confrontation calls for a synthesis between reception-historical and historical-critical methodology that introduces a new paradigm for conducting historical study in Biblical Studies in dialogue with other theological disciplines.

Embracing Four Tensions in Human-Computer Interaction Research with Marginalized People

2021 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-47
Author(s):  
Calvin A. Liang ◽  
Sean A. Munson ◽  
Julie A. Kientz
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Human Computer Interaction ◽  
Thematic Analysis ◽  
The United States ◽  
New Paradigm ◽  
History Of ◽  
Interview Survey ◽  
Interaction Research ◽  
Oriented Approach ◽  
Computer Interaction

Human-computer interaction has a long history of working with marginalized people. We sought to understand how HCI researchers navigate work that engages with marginalized people and considerations researchers might work through to expand benefits and mitigate potential harms. In total, 24 HCI researchers, located primarily in the United States, participated in an interview, survey, or both. Through a reflexive thematic analysis, we identified four tensions—exploitation, membership, disclosure, and allyship. We explore the complexity involved in each, demonstrating that an equitable endpoint may not be possible, but this work is still worth pursuing when researchers make certain considerations. We emphasize that researchers who work with marginalized people should account for each tension in their research approaches to move forward. Finally, we propose an allyship-oriented approach to research that draws inspiration from discourse occurring in tangential fields and activist spaces and pushes the field into a new paradigm of research with marginalized people.

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