Marketing Fabrics and Femininity in Interwar France

Abstract

This article examines discourse about the gender of garments and dress fabrics in the French fashion media, using Roland Barthes's 'informal semiotics' of modern consumption, and particularly his notion of the fashion magazine as a 'machine' articulating the meaning of fashion, including the gender implications of fashion and fabrics. The article also tracks the response of French couturiers and textile manufacturers to anxieties about gender ambiguities in ladieswear between the two world wars. The first part analyzes coverage of chemise dresses and ladies' suits in 13 illustrated magazines: four fashion magazines, three fashion supplements, three trade magazines and three society magazines. The second part of the article explores the attitudes of textile manufacturers' associations, of prominent woollen and silk producers, and of their marketing campaigns, to more androgynous styles using the same sources, professional bulletins, and the minutes of the Silk Manufacturers Syndicate (Chambre Syndicale des Fabricants de Soieries).     

American Girls and French Jeunes Filles: Negotiating National Identities in Interwar France

This essay is a transnational and comparative study of how gendered national stereotypes structured the experience of American women who studied in France in the 1920s and 1930s and how this cross‐cultural exchange contributed to cultural internationalism. In both the French and American popular imaginations, American girls and French jeunes filles connoted opposite modern and traditional notions of femininity. In the process of negotiating these two competing identities in popular consciousness and in daily life, some American women students came to appreciate the limitations of the stereotypes, as well as more complex underlying cultural differences, notably in their encounters with French youth's heterosocial practices and with French women students. I argue that the outcome of this process included women's construction of alternative identities for themselves and a new tolerance and appreciation for cultural difference that represents a distinctive development toward cultural internationalism. This study challenges the cultural asymmetry of United States and European relations between the wars and locates gender and women at their centre.     

The Extreme Right in Interwar France: The Faisceau and the Croix de Feu

While most discussions of the international efforts at post-war exploitation of German science and technology by the Allied occupation powers assume similar methods and aims across the nations involved, the French case diverges in important ways because of a fundamentally different understanding of technology transfer. The Americans and British hoped to enlist the French in exploitation programmes similar to their own, and to an extent succeeded, but persistent distrust of French motives largely prevented this co-operation from forging similarities beyond the surface level. French policy-makers’ alternate conception of science and technology as socially embedded led to very different strategies for exploiting German advances, and despite post-war antagonism, led to Franco-German research collaboration that would prove valuable building relationships between these nations.     

Women,Peace and Security as an ASEAN priority

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Secretariat and its member states have repeatedly professed their commitment to the protection and advancement of women's economic and human rights. Such commitments have included the Declaration of the Advancement of Women in the ASEAN Region in 1988, the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women in the ASEAN Region in 2004, and the ASEAN Human Rights Declaration in 2012, as well as the establishment of the ASEAN Committee on Women in 2002 and the ASEAN Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Women and Children in 2009. However, none of these regional commitments or institutions expressly take up the core concern of the Women, Peace and Security agenda set out in United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 in 2000. ASEAN has no 1325 regional action plan and, amongst the ASEAN membership, the Philippines is the only state that has adopted a 1325 National Action Plan. The authors explore the possible reasons for the lack of ASEAN institutional engagement with 1325, outline the case for regional engagement, and suggest specific roles for the ASEAN Secretariat, donor governments and individual member states to commit to United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 as a regional priority.     

The Women,Peace and Security agenda: Australia and the agency of girls

This article argues that young women and girls are significant stakeholders in peace and security efforts. Understanding their roles, views and capacity is essential to an adequate perspective on peace and security. Yet girls remain the most marginalised group when it comes to peace and security efforts globally. Gender- and age-based hierarchies often leave their interests ignored. Excluding girls hinders prospects for sustainable peace by denying their rights, entrenching inequity and affecting future chances for increasing women's participation. Australian government statements on Women, Peace and Security are evaluated on how they relate to young women and girls. The article presents a series of cases to analyse how young women are impacted by security factors, how they are actively working to create peace and security, and how to better include girls in seeking peace. Options for action by Australian policymakers are discussed.

本文指出,青少年女性是和平与安全努力的重要相关方。正确的和平安全观需要理解这些青少年女性的角色、观点和能力。但全世界但凡涉及和平安全,女孩都是一个最边缘化的群体。性别及年龄的等级制忽视了她们的利益。对女孩的排斥拒绝了她们的权利,强化了不平等,妨碍了妇女未来的参与,这都不利于未来的持久和平。作者评估了澳大利亚政府关于妇女、和平及安全的宣示与青少年女性有多大关系。本文分析了安全因素如何影响年轻女性,青年女性右如何积极致力于创建和平及安全,和平事业该如何吸收女孩等等。作者还讨论了澳大利亚政策制定者的行动选择。     

A Daily Revision of the Past: Fascism,Anti-Fascism,and Memory in Contemporary Italy

Recent cultural and political debate in contemporary Italy, which has often been focused on Fascism and the Resistance, has seen an attempt to reconsider the importance of the constitutive moment of the Republic, namely the Liberazione from Nazism–Fascism, and to equate the memories of Fascism and anti-Fascism. The direct consequence of these confused revisionist approaches is either to rehabilitate many aspects of the Duce's regime, or on the contrary to assign this shady page of history to oblivion. The effect of this would be to marginalize anti-Fascism, and even to depict Fascism as relatively ‘harmless’ or ‘apolitical’. The danger is that this trend may construct an artificial and distorted history and thus a ‘manipulated’ public memory for Italian society. The purpose of this article is not to defend anti-Fascism but to restore the reality of ‘Fascism in action’, and to challenge distorted revisionist perceptions of the past.     

Gendering normative power Europe: lessons of the Women,Peace and Security agenda

The European Union is seen to operate at the international level by promoting ideas and values, rather than by exerting military or economic power. As a gender actor, the EU has played a key role in the development of formal equality, which is presented as a foundational principle of European integration. It therefore follows that normative power Europe should seek to promote these values in external affairs. This article interrogates the role of the EU as a normative gender actor in relation to its implementation of the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda, set out in UN Security Council Resolution 1325 and related resolutions. Documentary analysis will be supplemented by a detailed assessment of speeches and public statements about the role of the EU as a gender actor in external affairs. This data will be used to assess whether there is a disjuncture between the dominant narrative about gender equality as a fundamental value of the EU and the actions of the organization. It will also allow us to assess whether gender mainstreaming is a tool for public diplomacy or has made a significant change to the way the external relations agenda is formulated and implemented. Additionally, the article will draw attention to the institutional obstacles to the EU performing a role as a gender actor in external affairs. It identifies a critical tension between framing the WPS resolutions as an extension of the EU's equality on the one hand, and understanding that gender mainstreaming is a mere policy tool in international affairs. In doing so, it highlights how competing institutional demands can ultimately undermine core values (e.g. equality) when they are used instrumentally.     

The futures past of the Women,Peace and Security agenda

The Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda has developed at the United Nations over the course of the past 15 years, and there have been critical engagements with it for nearly as long. In this article, we first take stock of the operationalization of the WPS agenda, reviewing its implementation across a number of sectors. In the second section, we expose the tensions that have marked the WPS agenda from the start. With others, we argue that there has been a narrowing of the agenda's original scope, reducing it to the traditional politics of security rather than reimagining what security means. We highlight this reduction primarily through an analysis of the tension between the ‘participation’ and ‘protection’ pillars of the agenda. Further, we argue that the WPS agenda faces a current challenge in terms of the actors entrusted with it. Although in some ways involving civil society, the consolidations and implementation of WPS principles at the national and international levels have become increasingly state‐centric. Third, we imagine some possible futures of the agenda, from a trajectory characterized by increasing marginalization or even irrelevance, to new avenues like the emergent, albeit tentative, ‘Men, Peace and Security’ agenda. We close with an argument for a revival of the WPS agenda beyond a fixation on states, beyond a narrow heteronormative or essentialist focus on the ‘Women’ of the WPS resolutions, and moving towards the radical reimagining of security as peace that inspired the original architects of these important resolutions.     

Women and Peace Building: Local Perspectives on Opportunities and Barriers

The UN Security Council Resolution 1325 has made strong provisions to include women in peace‐building interventions and actions. This is, however, rarely observed in practice beyond local‐level activities. This article discusses new qualitative evidence on the opportunities and barriers to women's participation in peace‐building processes, based on a comparative analysis of case studies conducted in Afghanistan, Liberia, Nepal and Sierra Leone. The findings show that women's engagement in peace‐building activities, beyond their immediate social relations, is restricted by institutional, economic, cultural and social obstacles. These barriers prevent the realization of gender equality objectives in peace‐building initiatives. Moreover, local understandings of peace typically place family relations at the centre of how women engage with peace‐building processes, and how other community members perceive women's roles in peace building.     

Promoting Women,Peace and Security in the Pacific Islands: hot conflict/slow violence

How has the Women, Peace and Security agenda been advanced in the Pacific Islands? While some observers argue that this region suffers from a contagion of unrest, violence and state weakness, these estimates commonly ignore the vital work women have performed in the region as promoters of peace and security. Even when such activity places them in direct personal danger, women across the region have spearheaded efforts to bridge communal boundaries and challenge the increasing normalisation of violence, gendered and otherwise, that accompanies threatened or actual incidents of conflict. As this article demonstrates, these efforts have had profound impacts on the ground in conflict-affected Pacific Island countries. They have also received increased recognition at the level of institutional politics, with member states of the Pacific Islands Forum recently accepting a Regional Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security. This has been hailed as a significant achievement for the region's women peacebuilders. But much of this plan is focused on women's contributions to peacebuilding at the pointy end of a crisis. This overlooks the extent to which the ‘slow violence’ of environmental degradation, masculinised politics and militarism also compound gendered insecurity in the region. Attention to these issues offers a contradictory picture of the gains made in promoting the Women, Peace and Security agenda in the Pacific Islands. While this advocacy framework has provided important opportunities for the region's women peacebuilders, it may also have discouraged broader reflection on the prevailing structural conditions at work across the region which function in an attenuated fashion to undermine women's security and the achievement of a gendered regional peace.