Calls for educating girls in the Third World: futurity,girls and the ‘Third World Woman’

In this article I examine three calls for Western support for girls' education in the ‘developing world’. Using transnational feminist theory and discourse analysis I look at three examples of these calls; Three Cups of Tea, ‘Because I Am a Girl’ and the United National Girls Education Initiative. I suggest that what Mohanty (1988) terms the ‘Third World Woman’ – a homogeneous, static image of women in the third world – is the spectre used to motivate Western support. Through representations of girls, Western viewers/readers are hailed to invest in order to save the girl-child from the haunting ‘Third World Woman’. The girl-child, through her particularity as a girl, her future womanhood as motherhood and her neoliberal potential, becomes presented as emblems of a better future with the investment of Westerners.     

Cameroonian Schutztruppe Soldiers in Spanish-Ruled Fernando Po during the First World War: A ‘Menace to the Peace’?1

When the German forces were ousted from Cameroon in early 1916, they fled south to neutral Spanish Guinea. Tens of thousands of Cameroonians joined them. Over 20,000 African soldiers and hangers-on were eventually accommodated by the Spanish authorities on the island Fernando Po, off the Cameroonian coast. Despite mounting Allied pressure on Spain to disband and repatriate the troops, they remained on the island until after armistice. They were largely under German control, and received military training during their internment. The delayed repatriation of Cameroonian soldiers, in 1919, had a pronounced effect on their communities at home.     

‘Assisting you to become a local’: NGOs and constructed foreign spouses in Eastern Taiwan

As social and cultural contexts change and globalization spreads, the number of transnational-marriage migrants mainly from Southeast Asia has increased in Taiwan. Using institutional ethnography, this article investigates the roles of local non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and projects aimed at helping foreign spouses to adapt to their new life. I mainly elaborate that NGOs emerge as important actors in assisting and empowering transnational spouses to ‘become locals’. In empowerment projects, foreign spouses are given a voice to elaborate themselves. However, this article elaborates that these projects are a scheme of education to shape each such migrant into a proper ‘Taiwanese wife/mother/daughter-in-law’. Also, these projects particularly promote ‘exoticism’ of migrants and become key sources of how local people understand the images of ‘foreign spouses’. As a result, though NGOs play positive roles in empowering foreign spouses, we need to be aware that NGOs’ efforts may ironically become a mechanism to strengthen transnational spouses’ gender roles and cultural stereotypes.     

(Im)Mobilization and hegemony: ‘hill tribe’ subjects and the ‘Thai’ state

In the mountains of northern Thailand the constraints and restrictions placed upon ‘hill tribe’ people and their bodies are often counter-posed to a legendary past where people could move freely across borders, where refuge in the mountains represented freedom from oppressive state powers, and where highlanders could come down from the mountains and integrate. This paper explores how highland subjects have been transformed as the emergence of the Thai state has imposed concrete and regulated boundaries demarcating Thailand, and a Thai people. Building on historical narratives in which the freedoms of the past are counterpoised with the closely governed present, I present a more complex and contradictory picture of the national subjects in Thailand. I discuss the citizenship movement, in which activists have been fighting for citizenship status for highlanders through a strategy that seeks a place for highland people within hegemonic discourses of the nation-state and belonging. The citizenship movement establishes a new ‘Thai hill tribe’ subject position, formed in opposition to its constitutive outside—the ‘non-Thai hill tribe’. And as highlanders find new ways to fit with the hegemony of the nation-state, both more fixed and more mobile subject positions open up as Thai-ness and its ‘others’ are redefined.     

The ‘Sex Question’ in Anglo-American Relations in the Second World War

During the viceroyalty of Lord Curzon, 1899–1905, the Persian Gulf states came to be treated by Calcutta as closely analogous to Indian Princely states. This shift in policy was most clearly expressed in the state tour of the Gulf in 1903 by the Viceroy. During this tour a number of symbolic, informational, diplomatic, and military methods were employed by the British to expand the role of the Indian Empire in the Persian Gulf. Curzon paid particularly close attention to his government's relationship with Muscat (modern Oman) and Kuwait. The catalyst for this change in the way the Government of India treated the Gulf states was a fear that France, Russia, and Germany were attempting to gain a foothold in the region. Historians of British Indian expansion have tended to focus on the role of ambitious frontier agents; the result has been a distortion which underplays the central role of metropolitan Calcutta, and in this case Lord Curzon, the Viceroy himself.     

Arms Racing in ‘Space’: Spatial Modelling of Military Spending around the World

This paper builds on previous research into determinants of military spending by examining global and local spatial effects. Other research has examined the effects of regional differences and neighbours' spending levels with standard econometric techniques. This paper uses spatial econometrics to gain a better understanding of the influence of location and distance on levels of defence spending. I find that a spatial lag specification provides much more robust evidence of arms racing and security dilemma dynamics than previous studies. These basic dynamics have been difficult to detect empirically without the context and nuance introduced by spatial modelling. The paper represents a first cut at the topic, but two specific findings emerge. First, globally there is positive spatial correlation (nearby states have similar levels of spending). This conforms to arms racing and security dilemma expectations. And, second, locally there is variation in the patterns of spatial clustering across broad international regions (e.g. Europe, Asia etc.). The second finding supports previous research suggesting important qualitative regional variation in patterns of defence spending and international conflict. The models also confirm the effects of political regime type and interstate war on defence spending, and are robust to the inclusion of a temporally lagged dependent variable.     

‘The Navy Principle is Now ‘Safety First’’: Naval Aspects of the Papuan Campaign in the Second World War

Abstract

Inter-service rivalry and personality friction characterized various stages of the US war effort in the Paci?c against the Japanese. The ?ghting at Buna exempli?ed these problems, in which inter-service friction (among other reasons) deprived Allied troops of needed naval support during the Papuan campaign of 1942–43.     

‘As a lever gains power by its distance from the fulcrum’: tracing Frederick Douglass in the Irish Atlantic World

Following the publication of his autobiography and fearing recapture and return to slavery, in 1845 the abolitionist Frederick Douglass embarked on an 18-month lecture tour of the United Kingdom, during which his thinking on the subject of abolitionism developed significantly. While this period in Douglass’ life has received only modest scholarly attention, even less has been paid to the fact that the tour commenced in Ireland – then arguably more akin to a colony than an integral region of the UK. Drawing on archival research and scholarship that advocates for a more interconnected sense of place, a more oceanic perspective on history and consequently a better sense of how political activity is forged relationally, the paper traces Douglass’ journey through the Irish nodes of the abolitionist Atlantic network. In the process, it considers the degree to which Douglass was influenced by this colonial and deeply sectarian society, it illuminates a forgotten world of Irish abolitionist activity, and contributes to debates regarding intersecting histories and geographies in the Atlantic World.     

‘Chilling’ and ‘hopping’ in the ‘teenage space network’: explorations in teenagers’ geographies in the city of Mechelen

Within the field of children's geographies several calls have been made to develop ‘teenagers’ geographies’ as a complementary field of research and practice. It has been stated that teenagers remain ‘invisible’ or ‘marginalised’ in public debates as well as in research and practice, even within childhood studies and children's geographies. Further explorations in teenagers’ geographies could contribute to the research on ‘diverse childhoods’. This article explores the spatial worlds of teenagers (approximately 12–16 years) in Flanders (Belgium), a region characterised by a dense network of smaller cities and ‘urban sprawl’. Based on street interviews and observations in a small city several mental maps and patterns of teenagers’ use of public space were identified. Starting from a case study in the city of Mechelen, this article suggests how these perspectives can be integrated into urban planning by identifying and tying together relevant planning layers, thus creating a more closely knit ‘teenage space network’. Wouter Vanderstede is an urban planner, anthropologist and historian. He is a researcher and staff member at Childhood & Society Research Centre–Onderzoekscentrum Kind & Samenleving vzw. Child friendly and teenager friendly planning and design of public space is one of the main research themes of the institute. View all notes     

‘Playing the daft lassie with them’: Gender,Captivity and the Special Operations Executive during the Second World War

This article examines the gender-specific experiences of female prisoners, using SOE agents arrested by the Nazis during the Second World War as a case study, in order to contribute an understanding of the complex interaction of the identities of ‘woman’, ‘soldier’ and ‘prisoner’. Using oral history, as well as information gleaned from auto/biographies and SOE reports, it is argued that many female captives resorted to gender stereotypes by ‘playing the daft lassie’, that they experienced punishment with distinct sexist and sexual overtones and that gender was significant in their accounts of incarceration within concentration camps. Examining the gendered experiences of captivity casts light on the male chauvinistic nature of the Nazi regime, illuminating the SS and Gestapo response to being confronted with women who overstepped traditional gender boundaries by undertaking paramilitary roles.

Résumé?Cet article considère l'expérience de captivité des agents secrets féminins de façon à questionner les catégories de prisonnier, femme et soldat. Basé sur une recherche d'autobiographies et d'histoire orale, cet article met en valeur l'utilisation de stéréotypes féminins pour déjouer des punitions souvent caractérisées par leur tonalité sexiste et sexuelle dans des camps de concentration. Ce conflit entre ces femmes atypiques et les SS et la Gestapo permet une nouvelle perception de l'importance des rôles masculins dans l'idéologie nazie.