Kenya's tourist industry and global production networks: gender,race and inequality

In this article, I consider the position of gender and race in the tourism global production network in Kenya. To address a gap in scholarship on global production networks, I explore the racial and gender characteristics evident in functionally upgraded national tour operators and socially upgraded workers and community members around the Maasai Mara National Reserve. The main findings address the relation of race and gender to disarticulation practices identified in ‘societal’, ‘network’ and ‘territorial’ forms of embeddedness supported by racial and gender representations of skill capabilities and tourist desires. These practices and representations support a production network symbolized by whites, Kenyan‐Asians and expatriates in the highest value segments and jobs, and indigenous African, Maasai and female workers in the lowest value positions. The findings highlight how disarticulation in economic and social upgrading is a gendered and racial process that perpetuates social difference and hierarchy.     

Transnational Migration: Bringing Gender In

This article aims to bring gender into an even tighter transnational migration focus by broadening and deepening our original framework of “gendered geographies of power,” linking it more directly to existing and emerging scholarship. We examine and highlight previously neglected areas such as the role of the state and the social imaginary in gendering transnational processes and experiences. We identify topics that remain under‐appreciated, under‐researched, and/or under‐theorized. Finally, we initiate a discussion of how a gendered analysis of transnational migration can help bridge this particular research to other gendered transnational processes under study that do not privilege migration.     

Gendering (Trans)National Advocacy

Whether lauded or deplored, transnational organizing among non-governmental organizations (NGOs) generally, and women's NGOs specifically, is recognized as an active player in debates about international economic policy. In this article, I turn attention toward one consequence of women's transnational NGO organizing that has been under-analyzed: the impact that transnational activism has on domestic political organizations and opportunities. The recent increase in activism on gender and policies of free trade in the USA is the product of women's transnational political organizingover the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). In the case of NAFTA, theoretical insights about the ways that gendered categories undergird the economy were made visible by and through the transnational advocacy in which feminists engaged.And, this article indicates, these transnational advocacy efforts have helped to shift the domestic political terrain of women's organizing in the United States. I argue that as women's rights advocates in the United States were confronted with the realization that the nexus between gender and trade policy was important to many women's rights and feminist activists around the world, they began to question why the gendered implication of trade policy did not hold a comparable place in the US feminist arena. Thus, changes in the domestic political landscape of non-governmentalactivismmay be one of the longest lasting (and most overlooked) consequences of transnational political engagement.     

The democratic deficit of transnational environmental activism: a case study of e‐waste governance in India

The literature on transnational activism often associates environmental NGOs with democratic legitimacy, grassroots representation and environmental justice. Authors employ case studies to demonstrate how engaging in transnational networks increases the political agency of environmental NGOs. Yet, there is a tendency mostly to select successful cases. In this article, I investigate the political activities of the environmental NGO, Toxics Link, surrounding the recycling of electronic waste in India. Based on qualitative research, this study shows how the political incorporation of Toxics Link in transnational advocacy networks and domestic governance networks constrains their political agency. The structural exclusion of e‐waste labourers from Indian policy negotiations negates the discursive claims of legitimacy, representation and justice. These incorporation processes create a democratic deficit. I use the insights gained from this case study to provide a critical assessment of theories of transnational environmental activism.     

The spatial politics of the past unbound: transnational networks and the making of political identities

In this article I consider the relations between historical and contemporary forms of transnational political networks. I contest accounts that counterpose a networked present against a more settled and bounded past, arguing that this contrast rests on a problematic temporalization of difference in the construction of political identities. I consider how this temporalization produces particular accounts of relations between space, politics and identity. Drawing on the insurgent imaginative geography of resistance in C. L. R. James's The Black Jacobins, I argue for a focus on the dynamic geographies of connection formed through transnational networks. I develop this position through a discussion of the relations of the London Corresponding Society, formed in London in 1792, to transnational routes of political activists, organizational forms and ideas. This account highlights the multiple political identities crafted through transnational political networks. I conclude by outlining elements of a ‘usable past’ for contemporary counter‐global struggles.     

Transnational advocacy in the eighteenth century: transatlantic activism and the anti‐slavery movement

Abstract In this article, I assess how a transnational campaign against the slave trade developed in the eighteenth century, focusing on the seminal role of Quakers. Building on Keck and Sikkink's study of the international campaign against slavery in America in the mid‐nineteenth century, I show how one can identify transnational advocacy on this issue more than half a century earlier. I examine the features of Quakerism ‐ specifically the close links between American and English Quakers ‐and the historical circumstances that gave rise to the campaign. In particular, I assess the role of transatlantic correspondence and travel among individual Quakers and the close organizational links between the society's branches on either side of the Atlantic. I analyse the development of anti‐slave trade activism according to Khagram, Riker and Sikkink's model of network development and find that this model is broadly applicable. I note, however, the change within the campaign from truly transnational (transatlantic) to predominantly domestic (British) as it changed from a coalition to a broader social movement, and as the campaign began to interact with the state, thus suggesting that the development of transnational networks is neither linear nor inevitable.     

Contending masculinities: the gendered (re) negotiation of colonial hierarchy in the United Nations debates on decolonization

The emergence of legal decolonization in the mid-twentieth century, as evidenced by the 1960 United Nations Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples, is often understood through the lens of race and the disruption of racial hierarchy. If we take seriously the transnational feminist contention that the colonial racial order was also gendered, however, how might this perspective shift our understanding of decolonization? In this article, I explore the debates on decolonization that take place in the UN General Assembly from 1946–1960 that lead to the 1960 Declaration from a transnational feminist perspective to answer this question. Specifically, I use comparative historical and discourse methods of analysis to explore how colonialists and anti-colonialists negotiate the onset of legal decolonization, focusing especially on how colonialist hierarchies of race, culture, and gender are addressed in these debates. I argue that, on the one hand, colonialists rely on a paternalist masculinity to legitimate their rule (i.e., our dependencies require our rule the way a child requires a father). In response, anti-colonialists reply with a resistance masculinity (i.e., “colonialism is emasculating;” “decolonization is necessary for a return of masculine dignity”). I argue that decolonization in the United Nations transpires via contentions among differentially racialized masculinities. Ultimately, a transnational feminist perspective that centers the intersection of race and gender offers a richer analysis than a perspective that examines race alone.     

Place,gender and power in transnational Sikh marriages

In this article I explore the importance of place during transnational marriages and in particular during wedding rituals. The rituals described are two Sikh weddings taking place in East Africa and the Punjab respectively. Highlighting the importance of status and hierarchy during wedding events, the ethnography focuses on how transnationalism is experienced as a generator of status as well as a potential risk to status. Through an account in the article of ritual practices in transnational marriages and households, I underline place as a significant factor in gender relations during wedding events.     

Place,space, networks,and the sustainability of collective action: the Madres de Plaza de Mayo

This article provides a framework for analysing social movements and explaining how collective action can be sustained through networks. Drawing on current relational views of place and space, I offer a spatialized conception of social networks that critically synthesizes network theory, research on social movements, and the literature on the spatial dimensions of collective action. I examine the historic and contemporary network geographies of a group of human rights activists in Argentina (the Madres de Plaza de Mayo) and explain the duration of their activism over a period of more than two decades with regard to the concept of geographic flexibility. To be specific, first I show how, through the practice of place‐based collective rituals, activists have maintained network cohesion and social proximity despite physical distance. Second, I examine how the construction of strategic networks that have operated at a variety of spatial scales has allowed the Madres to access resources that are important for sustaining mobilization strategies. Finally, I discuss how the symbolic depiction of places has been used as a tool to build and sustain network connections among different groups. I conclude by arguing that these three dimensions of the Madres’ activism account for their successful development of geographically flexible networks, and that the concept of geographic flexibility provides a useful template for studies of the duration and continuity of collective action.     

Micro-entrepreneurship,new media technologies,and the reproduction and reconfiguration of gender in rural China

This article explores the connections between micro-entrepreneurship, new media technologies, and gender in rural China. Based on fieldwork among diverse individuals engaged in agricultural and non-agricultural micro-entrepreneurship, I examine how uses of technology in economic production become the site for the reproduction and/or reconfiguration of gender hierarchies. Grounding my analysis in feminist and critical theories of technology, I investigate the gendered uses and discourses of new media technologies that emerge from three types of entrepreneurial spaces: physical places where micro-entrepreneurship is based on new media technologies, such as internet cafés and mobile phone shops; virtual realms where new media technologies potentially facilitate entrepreneurship, including text messaging and various websites; and virtual spaces where informal learning and sharing take place via mediated networks formed around common occupations. I argue that in the context of entrepreneurship, even among women and men who are young and have migration experience, deeply entrenched gendered power differentials produce unequal access to capital and social networks, and hence uses and understandings of technology. Although engagement with technology has opened up new spaces for economic enhancement and the rearrangement of conventional gender norms, such engagement does not overcome – indeed, in many cases reproduces – gendered power relations.     

Between rebellion and uprising intersecting networks and discursive strategies in rebel controlled Syria

ABSTRACT

In the article I explore how, at the individual level, participation in multiple networks opens up questions regarding the classification of social activism. The central contention is that as mobilization networks increasingly intersect, explicit discursive designations of activism (being ‘political’ or ‘nonpolitical, social’) by individual activists becomes more prevalent. I substantiate this argument with an in-depth exploration of the Syrian uprising. I show that as two distinct networks─one that emerged around nonviolent activism, another that emerged around a violent uprising─increasingly intersected, activists began to use specific discursive strategies. On the one side, a strategy emerged that emphasized the nonpolitical nature of mobilization, distancing activism discursively from intersecting networks. On the other side, a strategy emerged of politicizing collective identities, thereby bridging discursively various mobilization networks. The article thereby adds to existing studies on the intersection between network structure and individual activism. The analysis builds on more than a hundred primary sources from various rebel groups and relevant local actors in addition to thirty interviews with relevant players among activist, rebel and public services organizations.     

Not a Silk Road: trading networks between China and the Middle East as a dynamic interaction of competing Eurasian geographies

This article offers a different theorization of the commercial geographies and economic networks that connect China to the Middle East from those associated with the metaphor of the ‘Silk Road’. Many accounts of the recent and ongoing internationalization of the Chinese trade in small commodities through the well‐known market city of Yiwu describe the increasingly significant flows of commerce between China and the Middle East in these terms. In this article, I propose an alternative theoretical frame, arguing that the commercial geographies fashioned by Arab traders in Yiwu are, rather, formed through a dynamic relation of competition and cooperation between a series of distinct but overlapping Eurasian political geographies which have been in process from the 1970s onwards. Analysts have also often highlighted the Muslim and Arab ethnic nature of the transnational economic networks that connect Yiwu to markets across the Middle East. But rather than adopting a network governance approach, which sees these networks as embedded in a shared culture or ethnicity that furnishes the possibility of trust, I adopt a structural analysis approach in which traders act as brokers, moving and mediating between different geographies. I argue that they act strategically to keep several contexts in play at once because they are faced with an unforeseeable future and marginal citizenship rights.     

Aspiration,reunification and gender transformation in Jat Sikh marriages from India to Canada

Abstract In this article I explore marriage as a strategy of family migration among a transnational community of middle‐class Jat Sikhs. Family reunification and status aspirations are examined as central concerns of the transnational movement of Jat Sikhs from India to Canada. It is argued that Jat Sikh transnationalism and gender are mutually‐constitutive: migration strategies can construct women, as well as men, as agents of marital citizenship, and in facilitating migration, transnational marriage may transform practices and notions of gender and status. The article is based on preliminary ethnographic research among Jat Sikh brides in Toronto and Vancouver, and forms part of a larger study of gender, modernity and identity in Indo‐Canadian Jat Sikh marriages.     

Tracking ‘the transnational’: studying transnational organizations and managements,and the management of cohesion

This article argues for greater clarity in researching transnational organizations and management, and the need for gendered multi‐level theory and gendered multi‐actor analysis. It examines different understandings and conceptualizations of ‘the transnational’ in studying transnational organizations and management, and their implications for understanding and conceptualizing the ‘management of cohesion’. In so doing, three conceptual and theoretical questions are considered: what are the major meanings of ‘the transnational’ in studying transnational organizations and management? What are the major different disciplinary frameworks in studying transnational organizations and management? What are the major epistemological debates in studying transnational organizations and management? Particular emphasis is placed on: the field of studies on transnational organizations and management; transnational research projects on transnational organizations and management; and the lives of transnational researchers. Two ongoing research projects – on gender relations in transnational organizations and managements, and men's changing organizational practices in Europe – are focused on to illustrate these issues. The theme of gender critique is developed throughout.     

‘Knowing one's place’: gender,mobility and shifting subjectivity in Eastern Indonesia

Abstract In this article I analyse the gendered space of transnational mobility by problematizing migrant subjectivity in everyday practices. In line with feminist perspectives I highlight the significance of the micro‐scale experience of female migrants from Eastern Indonesia in acquiring mobility as a struggle for new subjectivity. I frame this migration as a production of the subjective space of power. Based on in‐depth interviews with returned migrants, I present reflexive accounts of two migrants on contract domestic work abroad to illuminate the changing contours of the relationships between gender, mobility and shifting subjectivity. Households take into account the cultural meanings of space in everyday life including local relations in the decisions on mobility. Strategies of ‘knowing one's place’ reflect women's agency in negotiating alternative roles and positions within the intra‐household dynamics and in the workplace. Women's personal accounts have the potential to illuminate spatial processes of migration as a contested space for the repositioning of self in networks of family, kin, local and global relations.     

Towards a performative understanding of deservingness: Merit,gender and the BBC pay dispute

Drawing largely on a high‐profile case of unequal pay at the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) as an illustrative example, this conceptual article considers differences and interrelationships between merit and deservingness, where the latter captures how, through appropriate performances, merit is given recognition and value. We propose a performative understanding of deservingness that highlights its gendered and embodied dimensions. Informed by Judith Butler's account of gender performativity, we show that, while merit is conventionally conceptualized as a relatively fixed set of attributes (qualifications, skill) 'attached' to the individual, deservingness captures how, in gendered terms, value and recognition are both claimed and conferred. As we argue, a gendered, deserving subject does not pre‐exist but is performatively constituted through embodied practices and performances of what is seen as worthy in a particular time and place.     

Anchors,Habitus, and Practices Besieged by War: Women and Gender in the Blockade of Leningrad

As war challenges survival and social relations, how do actors alter and adapt dispositions and practices? To explore this question, I investigate women's perceptions of normal relations, practices, status, and gendered self in an intense situation of wartime survival, the Blockade of Leningrad (1941–1944), an 872‐day ordeal that demographically feminized the city. Using Blockade diaries for data on everyday life, perceptions, and practices, I show how women's gendered skills and habits of breadseeking and caregiving (finding scarce resources and providing aid) were key to survival and helped elevate their sense of status. Yet this did not entice rethinking “gender.” To explore status elevation and gender entrenchment, I build on Bourdieu's theory of habitus and fields to develop anchors: field entities with valence around which actors orient identities and practices. Anchors provide support for preexisting habitus and practices, and filter perceptions from new positions vis‐à‐vis fields and concrete relations. Essentialist identities and practices were reinforced through two processes involving anchors. New status was linked to “women's work” that aided survival of anchors (close others, but also factories and the city), reinforcing acceptance of gender positions. Women perceived that challenging gender relations and statuses could risk well‐being of anchors, reconstructing gender essentialism.     

Communicating Global Activism

Many observers doubt the capacity of digital media to change the political game. The rise of a transnational activism that is aimed beyond states and directly at corporations, trade and development regimes offers a fruitful area for understanding how communication practices can help create a new politics. The Internet is implicated in the new global activism far beyond merely reducing the costs of communication, or transcending the geographical and temporal barriers associated with other communication media. Various uses of the Internet and digital media facilitate the loosely structured networks, the weak identity ties, and the patterns of issue and demonstration organizing that define a new global protest politics. Analysis of various cases shows how digital network configurations can facilitate: permanent campaigns; the growth of broad networks despite relatively weak social identity and ideology ties; transformation of individual member organizations and whole networks; and the capacity to communicate messages from desktops to television screens. The same qualities that make these communication-based politics durable also make them vulnerable to problems of control, decision-making and collective identity.