Validation of immigrants’ prior foreign learning as a framing practice

This paper explores the attempts by public officials and caseworkers to manage an overflow of immigrants in the labour market in Sweden. I draw on notions of framing and overflowing, inspired by Michel Callon's (1998) work on the organizing of market-based exchange relationships. I argue that validation is best understood as a framing practice, aimed at creating an understanding for the vastness of foreign experience – including skills and competence – of recent immigrants to Sweden, to make this experience measurable and manageable. Validation as a framing practice thereby exemplifies the widespread trust in framing as a way to normalise overflows – to turn overflows into normal flows. However, as the ethnography-inspired study reported here shows, repeated framing does not remove overflows; instead, it produces new and different types of overflows. In the conclusions, I emphasise the heavy investments required by validation in contrast with the fragility of the results it produces in the context of migration management.     

壮族通灵巫师的组织流派及其他——壮族巫信仰研究系列论文之三

壮族巫师群体散布于各地民间,与正统的宗教团体组织相比,其组织形式是松散的,但是,有其特殊的民间组织形式。另外,巫师有独特的行头和巫具,在壮族社会中也有一定的影响。     

Service Users,Social Work Education and Knowledge for Social Work Practice

This paper explores the implications of service user contributions to social work education in the light of historical critiques of disability research. The paper reflects on the authors' dual service user and academic perspectives as well as their dual disability studies and social work disciplinary affiliations. Referring back to early critiques of disability research, it argues that isolated user involvement in social work education can be problematic, particularly where that involvement is under the control of the academy. Drawing on feminist critiques of traditional social science, the authors present arguments for the collective involvement of service users in research and underpinning knowledge for social work as well as in social work education.     

中国大陆对西方女性主义文学批评的回应

受西方女性主义文学批评的影响而产生的国内女性主义文学批评,在中国语境下,与西方形成了一种对话关系,并呈现出"阴阳互补"的跨性别对话特征,在世界学苑独树一帜;立足中国现实,坚持女性主义文学批评仍很必要,这必将推动世界女性主义文学批评的发展和深化.     

The “what” and “who” of co-optation: gendered racialized migrations,settler nation-states and postcolonial difference

In this article, I focus on the management of postcolonial difference and the production of belonging in a white settler nation-state in order to rethink the notion of co-optation. I first develop a theoretical framework for understanding co-optation by separating the “who” and the “what” of co-optation: actors who embody diversity in public, political debate become the “who” of co-optation, as their agency is shaped by gendered and racialized processes of subject making. The “what” of co-optation revolves around particular conceptualizations of practices, rights and freedoms, associated in this case with “gender equality,” which is rendered an empty signifier in the process. I then illustrate this framework by drawing from research on the Sharia-based arbitration debate that took place in Ontario, Canada, between late 2003 and early 2006. I focus on the claims of two Canadian Muslim women activists to show that co-optation occurs as attempts to further liberation instead advance illiberal practices.     

Beyond “filling in the gap”: the state and status of Latina/o Feminist Media Studies

Against the socio-economic and cultural backdrop of the ongoing Latina/o media “boom,” this critical literature review delineates the location and status of contemporary Latina/o Feminist Media Studies. Departing from a critique of current mainstream Feminist Media Studies research and citational practices, it traces the influence of rapidly expanding transnational Latina/o media markets, the gendering of Latinidad, and transnational feminisms on recent Latina/o Feminist Media Studies scholarship. As it not only breaks with exclusively domestic analyses of intersectionality and accurately reflects twenty-first century media’s transnational orientation, this essay argues that the theoretical paradigms and thematic concerns of Latina/o Feminist Media Studies must ultimately be reframed as central, not marginal, to Feminist Media Studies research.     

女性主义文化批评视阈下的“开罗三部曲”

在近现代埃及文学史上,女性在新的“解放”话语系统中依旧被塑造成“他者”的地位,女性解放神话的出现只是为了掩盖作为主体的女性不在场的事实。本文试图通过对埃及著名作家纳吉布·马哈福兹的代表作“开罗三部曲”中三种女性反抗传统性别角色的分析,指出由男性主控的女性解放话语在女性的新型性别角色的塑造和自我规范中产生的影响。     

Toward a Feminist Political Economics

Feminist critiques of globalization have received insufficient attention in public discourse.Spike Peterson's RVP framework integrates feminist scholarship in a way that adds punch to such critiques. Its main contribution consists in bringing into view women's labor in the 'reproductive' economy. A shortcoming is that it retains the opposition between production and reproduction. The RVP framework is built on a constructivist ontology that allows for the integration of discursive and institutionalist approaches and provides grounds for further theoretical elaboration.     

Engendering Global Democracy

The inadequacies of hegemonic liberal democratic ideas and institutions have been exposed by feminist theorists focusing on the marginalisation of women and by global theorists examining the impact of globalisation. These theorists have developed two distinct sets of reconstructive strategies that, until very recently, have remained in ignorance of each other. Further, both feminist and global democratic schemes have been dogged by problems in terms of their theorisation of power, politics, agency and change. Recent feminist arguments about citizenship and governance go some way to bringing together concerns about gender inequality and globalisation, but they remain centred on states and the states-system as vehicles for democratic representation and participation. This article argues that a more radical reconstructive strategy can be derived from debates about the democratisation of feminism itself. Drawing on the responses of black and third world feminists to racism in the white-dominated feminist movement, and examining their influence on efforts to organise transnationally, the article points to innovative ways of thinking about power, politics, agency and change. Together these amount to a democratic framework which has applicability beyond feminist organising and which confronts the marginalisations of both gender and globalisation.     

近十五年西方历史学的新发展

20世纪后期,历史研究的重点继续是从分析的社会科学转移到更加强调文化因素的方面来,但是面临着迅速变化的世界局面,却具有其更加繁富且已改变了的焦点。历史学家并未受到后现代主义太多的影响,但关于应该如何重铸过去的问题的确更趋复杂了。在历史学思想与实践的重新定向过程中,人们更为深入地反思和质疑了历史作为引向今日西方文明的一种单向历程的观念,政治领域和阶级的概念扩大或改变了,妇女与性别的历史日益被纳入到通史系统中来。而在迫切需要另行考察现代性以及撰写全球史的状况面前,我们对于广泛跨文化的方法仍然缺乏综合的认知,有待于未来的进一步规划。