scholarly journals ‘Women’ in ‘Asia’: An Interrogation

Author(s):  
Devleena Ghosh

The articles in this special issue section of PORTAL had their first iteration as presentations in the Eighth Women in Asia Conference held at the University of Technology Sydney in 2005, the theme of which was ‘Shadow Lines’. The concept ‘Women in Asia’ is problematic since some of the major debates in gender or women’s studies have focused on the diversity of women’s life worlds and beings and the contested nature of the term ‘Asia’. As a theme it has the potential to become a holdall phrase for scholarship, research and activist work ‘from Suez to Suva’. However, reflecting on these difficult terms can be a creative and rewarding process. The attempt to locate Australia within the region, rather than within a putative ‘west’, and to deal with her geography rather than just her white history, can be an effective way of challenging many current ‘white blindfold’ discourses. At the same time, gendered analyses of society, politics and culture that attempt a re-insertion of ‘herstories’ into academic discourses have to be sophisticated enough to demonstrate the intrinsic gendering of all-embracing, supposedly ‘neutral’, ideas such as race, nationalism, ethics, and the state, rather than simply ‘adding in’ women. The marginalised spaces of women’s activities have to be legitimated as crucial elements of all social relations, highlighting the intimate relationships and connections between men and women. These concerns animate the papers collected in this issue.

Author(s):  
Paul Allatson

Welcome to the July 2005 issue of Portal, a special issue with the title ‘Strange Localities: Utopias, Intellectuals and Identities in the 21st Century,’ guest edited by Alistair Fox and Hilary Radner (both from the University of Otago, New Zealand), who convened an international colloquium on this theme in January 2004, and Murray Pratt (University of Technology Sydney, Australia). As Alistair Fox says in his introduction to the special issue, the twelve papers gathered under the ‘Strange Localities’ rubric provide rich insights into the ways by which ‘the contemporary utopian impulse is expressing itself, both in the search for utopia, and through the exposure of false utopias.’ With a broad geographical reach, and an equally broad critical gaze, the essays collected here shed new light on the critical, yet often ambivalent, role that identity politics play in myriad utopian projects, and also in such critical enterprises and epoch-defining processes as postcolonialism, postfeminism, postmodernism, transnationalism, multiculturalism, and economic and cultural globalization. In addition to the papers collected in the special issue section, this issue of Portal includes a number of essays that, while not addressing the special issue theme, also have much to say about the nexus between contemporary identity debates, intellectual practice, and utopian imaginaries. We are also pleased to introduce in the Portal Cultural Works' section two short chronicle-like pieces by Moses Iten, a young Australian writer. Paul Allatson, Chair, PORTAL Editorial Committee


Author(s):  
Yuliia Yu. Bobrova ◽  
Yuriy O. Bobrov

The analysis of numerous scientific publications demonstrates the great relevance of gender studies at the current stage of Ukrainian social development, in almost all spheres of social relations. As for ensuring equal participation of men and women in the functioning of the military organisation of the state, the implementation of such a gender balance contributes to improving civilian control over it through the possibility of developing the capacity of regulatory bodies in gender issues, promoting dialogue between the community and control bodies, and drawing public attention to the problems of accountability of institutions of this organisation. The main purpose of this study is to highlight the state of gender equality in the military organisation of the state through the lens of civilian democratic control. The study determined the state of legislative regulation of the concept of military organisation of the state and civil democratic control. The study analysed the introduction of a gender perspective in Ukraine in the subject matter and the dynamics of establishing a gender balance in the military organisation of the state; the impact on existing trends of legislative initiatives. It is stated that the modern Ukrainian army is mostly “male”. Despite the fact that women are allowed to serve in the military, they do not take part in making socially important decisions, they do not hold high military positions, and career growth is challenging for them. The study identified the main problems of implementing gender equality in the Armed Forces of Ukraine and other structures of the Defence Forces of Ukraine, which are more based on social stereotypes of pre-defined roles for men and women. Civil control over the Armed Forces is described as a socio-political process in this area


2019 ◽  
Vol 47 (3) ◽  
pp. 335-340
Author(s):  
Markian Dobczansky ◽  
Simone Attilio Bellezza

AbstractThis article introduces a special issue on Ukrainian statehood. Based on the conference “A Century of Ukrainian Statehoods: 1917 and Beyond” at the University of Toronto, the special issue examines the relationship between the Ukrainian Revolution of 1917–1920 and the Soviet Ukrainian state over the long term. The authors survey the history of the Ukrainian SSR and propose two points of emphasis: the need to study the promises of “national” and “social” liberation in tandem and the persistent presence of an “internal other” in Soviet Ukrainian history.


Author(s):  
Paul Allatson

‘Post-Mao, Post-Bourdieu: Class and Taste in Contemporary China,’ is a special issue of PORTAL Journal of Multidisciplinary International Studies guest-edited by Yi Zheng (University of Sydney) and Stephanie Hemelryk Donald (RMIT University). The special issue explores the relationship between taste, choice and social stratification in contemporary China, and includes a new section, ‘New Perspectives Reports,’ which is intended to showcase opinion and ideas—in this case from the People’s Republic of China, in Mandarin—that complement the main articles. We hope to include this section in future issues of the journal. The guest editors and the PORTAL editorial committee would like to acknowledge that this special issue of is a result of a funding grant from the Australian Research Council, 2003-2005: ‘The Making of Middle-Class Taste: Reading, Tourism, and Educational Choices in Urban China.’ I am also delighted to announce that the PORTAL Editorial Committee has three new members, all from the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Technology, Sydney: Dr Malcolm Angelucci, Dr Beatriz Carrillo, and Dr Fredericka van der Lubbe. Paul Allatson, Editor, PORTAL Journal of Multidisciplinary International Studies.


Organization ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrizia Zanoni

In this introduction to the second part of the special issue on alternative economies published in Organization in 2017, I first briefly chart key fora where the debate has continued in the last two years, and then present the three additional contributions included here. Moving the conversation forward, I argue that, in order to evaluate the prefigurative potential of alternative organizations, we need to address more thoroughly the relation between alternatives and their outside. A productive place to ground this reflection is in the debate between post-capitalism and anti-capitalism. The main lines of this debate are reconstructed based on the keynote speeches delivered by Jodi Dean and Stephen Healy at the last Rethinking Marxism conference held in Amherst, Massachusetts, in September 2013. I conclude by claiming that post-capitalist immanence should be articulated with an anti-capitalist communist horizon, and advance the Open Marxist notion of de-mediation of social relations as key to do this. Although capitalist institutions (e.g. the market, the state) mediate all social relations, mediation is never definitive, as it always contains the possibility for its own negation, de-mediation. So conceived, de-mediation redefines our understanding of class struggle beyond the capital-labor relation in the workplace, into society as a whole, broadening the ethical and political scope of the organizational research agenda on alternatives to capitalism.


Author(s):  
Martin Gibbs

The 2017 Digital Games Research Association International Conference (DiGRA 2017) was held in Melbourne, 3-6 July 2017. Swinburne University of Technology, RMIT University and The University of Melbourne joined together to host the conference.The DiGRA International Conference series offers a venue for research from all disciplines to present and discuss games-related research. Founded in 2003, DiGRA is the premiere non-profit international association for academics and professionals who research both digital and analogue games and associated phenomena. Since its beginnings, it has encouraged high-quality research on games, and promotes collaboration and dissemination of work by its members.


2013 ◽  
Vol 21 ◽  
pp. 65 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nelly P. Stromquist

The implementation of non-discriminatory sex legislation provides theoretical and empirical grounds to examine responses by the state to gender equality. Tracing the trajectory of one such law in the U.S.—Title IX—over a period of 40 years, this study analyzes the extent to which the state: (1) acted as a unitary body, and (2) functioned to dismantle its own oppressive gender features. By examining the federal government’s three core branches (executive, legislative, and judicial), the study finds differential responses by branch, with the greatest variability expressed by the executive branch, revealing the state to be less than a coherent institution. The study also shows only modest efforts to enforce the law, raising doubts about the commitment of the state to transform the social relations of gender. The state’s framing of gender equality exclusively in terms of non-discriminatory practices falls short of fostering changes in gender mentalities and identities in U.S. educational institutions—an outcome reflected in the persistent gender clustering of fields of study at the university level.


2013 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. xiv-xviii ◽  
Author(s):  
T. Titchkosky

This special issue edited by Katie Aubrecht demonstrates that a focus on translations of happiness makes us attend to the interpretive process animating social relations. There are many registers of translation that individuals, communities, and the state make use of as they grapple with relations to happiness. Among the vast array of historical registers that aim to make happiness comprehensible or compelling, medicine and politics are two of the most noteworthy. Moving from one register to another, such as from institutional versions of happiness as a medically regulated matter, to its appearance in situations of war, trauma, illness, local community or state, between these differing registers, we come to re-encounter happiness in many important ways as this special issue demonstrates. This issue thus invites its readers to question modernity’s progressive interest in and use of happiness as a way to narrate and assemble our essential inter-relatedness.


2016 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lorraine Weinrib ◽  
Patricia Paradis

This Special Issue of the Forum is a compilation of articles presented at a Symposium held at the University of Toronto in February 2016 on “The State of Canada’s Constitutional Democracy”. The Symposium was organized by Cheryl Milne (Asper Centre for Constitutional Rights) and Professor Lorraine Weinrib (University of Toronto), and they were later joined by Patricia Paradis (Centre for Constitutional Studies, University of Alberta). Its purpose was to examine the extent to which current Canadian governance is complying with modern constitutional principles.It is the organizers’ hope that the publication of these conference proceedings will broaden and deepen our understanding of the reform projects discussed at the “State of Canada’s Constitutional Democracy” Symposium that lie ahead.


Author(s):  
Paul Allatson

‘Fields of Remembrace,’ is a special issue of PORTAL Journal of Multidisciplinary International Studies guest-edited by Matthew Graves (University of Provence) and Elizabeth Rezniewski (University of Sydney). The issue focuses on what the guest editors call the ‘world-wide turn to commemoration in recent years,’ which is typified by the diverse drives by states, organisations, institutions and interest groups to reclaim spaces for overlooked, disputed and/or rehistoricised and refashioned memories in ways that appear to place memory at discursive odds with history. Taking a transcultural rather than transnational approach to the memory-history dyad, and attending to the potential abuses of history as pasts are rehistoricised and refashioned in line with contemporary political and cultural paradigms, the special issue makes an important contribution to contemporary memory debates. It is also a timely contribution, given the vituperative qualities of so-called history and culture wars in Australia, the USA, many parts of Europe, and throughout many parts of the decolonised world. The contributions to the special issue were first presented at a workshop entitled ‘Histories of Forgetting and Remembering’ in October 2008. The workshop was jointly sponsored by the faculty of Arts at the University of Sydney, which hosted the event, and the Transforming Cultures Research Centre at the University of Technology Sydney. The special issue is dedicated to the memory of François Poirier (1947-2010), Director of the Centre for Intercultural Research in the English- and French-speaking Worlds, at the University of Paris XIII, who showed the way as one of the first scholars in France to work on the transnational dimension of memory studies: ‘Whispering lunar incantations / Dissolve the floors of memory’ (TS Eliot).


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