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- Convenor:
-
Edzia Carvalho
(University of Amsterdam)
- Location:
- C407
- Start time:
- 27 July, 2012 at
Time zone: Europe/Lisbon
- Session slots:
- 1
Short Abstract:
This panel brings together various strands of research on politics in South Asia that take a closer look at how 'gender' is conceptualized and applied in social science research.
Long Abstract:
This panel brings together various strands of research on politics in South Asia that take a closer look at how 'gender' is conceptualized and applied in social science research. The first presentation examines the notion of masculinity in the context of the separatist groups involved in the civil war in Sri Lanka. The second paper takes this discussion further by addressing the issue of 'the third sex', i.e. eunuch tribes in Calcutta (West Bengal, India) and the application of colonial modes of legal thought and social ordering to them. The last two presentations address the role of women's political participation in India and Pakistan through the prism of electoral quotas and the the conceptualization of 'Islamic Feminism'.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Jani de Silva (Centre for Studies in Gender & Post-Conflict Development)
Paper short abstract:
This paper will explore the way in which combat violence transforms practices of masculinity in young Tamil boys involved in Sri Lanka's protracted inter-ethnic war
Paper long abstract:
This paper explores the way in which combat-training and battlefield experience transforms young Tamil lads into hard militants. Built on life-narratives collected between 2007-8 from members of an ex-militant Tamil Separatist faction, it argues that the transformation of the body is also a transformation of the self. Bodily courage is not spontaneous but has to be endlessly struggled for. Alternately, bodily courage is not always the same as moral courage. While young militants acquire an enormous capacity to extend their bodies and overcome physical obstacles, the ability to retain analytical clarity and integrity in ideological issues also has to be learnt.
Caio Araújo (Graduate Institute for International and Development Studies)
Paper short abstract:
This paper will look at effects and the legal reasoning underlying the Criminal Tribes' Act of 1871, which criminalizes the "eunuch" population in colonial India. I will discuss how the Act tried to reform their bodies in terms of stable gender roles, sexuality, production and spatial practices.
Paper long abstract:
In this paper, I will focus on the Criminal Tribes' Act of 1871, which established, a priori, the criminality or illegality of the activities conducted by groups considered to be potentially "dangerous". I will argue that this legal act is better understood as a strategy of production of space through the fixation of particularly "deviant", queer, bodies into it. Queerness, in this context, is precisely the condition of strangeness, abjection, of deviance of a kind of body resistant to the legal, productive and spatial politics of the Empire. I will be particularly focused on the figure of the "eunuch", which was, in this context, both a legal and an anthropological "invention", as the "third sex" of the hijras of the local cosmologies was transformed on the "male impotence" or "cross-dressing" of the eunuch. I will then explore how the provisions of the Act are basically meant to regulate eunuchs' bodies in their spatiality by disposing and confining them into one particular sphere of colonial space - secrecy, as opposed to publicity/public sphere. The focus of this research is West Bengal, and more precisely colonial Calcutta in the late period of British presence. I will, last but not least, reflect on how the eunuchs' case may open new avenues of inquiry on the gendered nature of the production of colonial space, as well as on the articulations between law, colonialism and gender/sexuality.
Shandana Khan Mohmand (Institute of Development Studies)
Paper short abstract:
This paper revisits and questions the concept of empowering women through reserved seats and electoral quotas without first addressing social restrictions that severely limit their political participation.
Paper long abstract:
In this paper I question the concept that women's political participation and representation can be increased through quotas and reserved seats for women in political institutions (parliaments, parties, local government councils). I use research and data on women's social and political participation from three different projects conducted in rural Pakistan between 2004 and 2008 to point out that quotas can play only a limited role in empowering women and increasing their participation because of the presence of severe social restrictions on women's mobility and social engagement. These restrictions have two main impacts on women's political participation. First, it restricts their ability to play an active or effective role within local political institutions when elected or nominated to electoral seats. Second, the restricted mobility and participation of female voters means that women representatives are unable to build a critical support base within these voters. Instead, they continue to interact with and represent the concerns of male voters, so that even though the number of female representatives may increase, women's concerns and issues do not get built into political agendas and manifestos. Making women's political participation effective, therefore, requires more than simple quotas and reservations where severe social restrictions on their mobility exist.
Nida Kirmani (Lahore University of Management Sciences)
Paper short abstract:
This paper will compare the approaches of Indian and Pakistani women's movements to the promotion of women's rights vis-a-vis Islam. It will explore when these movements have chosen to engage proactively with Islamic discourses or taken a more secular or 'human rights' based approach.
Paper long abstract:
Both the Indian and Pakistani women's movements have had a historically troubled relationship with religion, and Islam in particular. In India the Shah Bano case brought the issue of Muslim women's rights to the centre of national attention, and led the women's movement to an impasse on the question of minority women's rights. Since this time, Muslim women have emerged as leaders within the women's movement and have been working through both 'Islamic feminist' and secular approaches. In the Pakistani context, the women's movement was consolidated in response to Zia ul-Haq's aggressive 'Islamisation' programme, which led to a serious regression in women's rights. The women's movement at this time confronted the right of the ulema to interpret Islam by arguing for progressive interpretations of Islam as well as by utilizing the language of human rights. Women's movement activists in Pakistan have since taken both 'Islamic feminist' and secular approaches depending on the issue at hand and the particular individual or group. This paper will highlight when and how women's rights activists in both contexts have chosen to work through an Islamic framework and when they have chosen a secular or human rights based approach. Furthermore, it will explore the debates that have taken place amongst feminists on the question of religion, which have led to sharp splits within both movements. This paper will provide a unique, comparative perspective, hence shedding light on the impact of political and social context on the constraints and strategies of women's movements vis-a-vis Islam.