Gender in Post-Doi Moi Vietnam: Women,desire, and change

On the eve of doi moi's twentieth anniversary, this group of papers examines the impact of ‘economic renovation’ on the lives of Vietnam's women. Economically, the transformation is unarguable. Socially, the impacts have been as deep, but more uneven and possibly less predictable. These four papers examine different aspects of contemporary Vietnamese women's experience through the lens of desire: mothers confronting the age-old desire for sons under the government's small-family policy, young women's desire to explore sexuality in the strict moral environment of the countryside, piece-workers' desire for better conditions and better lives but unable to mobilize their proletarian class position in a socialist regime, and the desire of authors to evoke women's war-time roles to create a shared national remembrance of suffering, sacrifice, and loss. In their diverse ways, these papers offer unusual insights and rare glimpses into the lives of women in post-doi moi Vietnam.

El Género en Vietnam Post-‘Doi Moi’: Mujeres, deseo y cambio

La víspera de que cumple veinte años el doi moi, esta antología de papeles examina el impacto de ‘la reforma económica’ en las vidas de mujeres vietnamitas. Económicamente, no se puede discutir la transformación. Socialmente, los impactos han sido no solo profundo sino más desigual y posiblemente menos previsible. Los cuatro papeles examinan unos aspectos distintas de las experiencias contemporánea de mujeres vietnamitas a través de las lentes de deseo: madres se enfrentan al deseo antiguo de tener hijos bajo la política estatal de pequeña-familia; las mujeres jóvenes que desean a explorar su sexualidad dentro de un ambiente de morales estricto en el campo; el deseo de destajistas de tener mejores condiciones y vidas mejores pero incapaz de movilizar a sus posiciones de la clase proletaria bajo un régimen socialista; y el deseo de autores de suscitar los papeles de guerra que tenían mujeres para crear una conmemoración nacional compartida de sufrimiento, sacrificio, y pérdida. De sus modos diversos, estos papeles ofrecen perspicacias originales y raras vislumbres de las vidas de mujeres en post-doi moi Vietnam.     

Gender and social change: new forms of independence for Simbu women

This article discusses gender roles and behavior and changing relationships between the sexes resulting from Western influence on the Simbu people in Papua New Guinea. Sexual segregation and taboos, cult secrecy, and male domination of women have weakened during 50 years of contact with the West. The observations upon which this paper is based were made during 1958-65 and through individual and group interviews obtained in 1976, 1984, 1985, and 1987. Simbu women have been self-sufficient while appearing to comply with male dominance and group claims. More younger women are now asserting their individuality. With Westernization, many home crafts have been abandoned. Women have responded to new ideas and economic goals by promoting the education of their children. A notable few women have achieved professional positions or business success and have joined a new class of elite citizens with opportunities to expand their lives in ways formerly unimaginable. Both urban men and women retain close ties with their rural families. Urban men depend upon rural support groups to achieve their political ambitions. When successful, these men distribute favors to their rural supporters. Urban women may incorporate rural relatives into their urban households, but many reject their own domestic roles. This new urban elite is still in the formative stage and it is impossible to predict whether it will ultimately reject its rural foundation to embrace an urban multi-ethnic affiliation.     

Stubborn identities and the construction of socio-spatial boundaries: ultra-orthodox Jews living in contemporary Britain

Despite ultra-Orthodoxy being the fastest growing component of the British Jewish community (and Jewry worldwide), it has received little academic coverage by geographers. This paper provides an in-depth examination of a community of ultra-Orthodox Jews in Broughton Park, Manchester. It maps out the residential concentration of these Jews and, using in-depth qualitative interviews, discusses the construction of socio-spatial boundaries that are used to define and mark out 'them' from 'us'. Through this the paper contributes to wider geographic discussions about identity, segregation and religion. It shows how the power of religion to define people's beliefs and everyday practices remains, for certain groups, extremely strong.     

Sexual trafficking in Nepal: constructing citizenship and livelihoods

Sexual trafficking is a priority issue for many governments and has increasingly become a focus for debate within the academy. Despite this, many aspects of sexual trafficking remain poorly understood. In this article we focus on an area that has received scant attention in the literature: the situation of trafficked women when they return home and, specifically, the livelihood opportunities available to them as they experience differing notions of citizenship. In addition to the fact that there has been very little attempt to document poverty alleviation strategies post-trafficking, within the mainstream development literature little attention has also been given to questions of sexuality and how they relate to development and poverty reduction strategies. The aim of this article, therefore, is to seek to highlight a new research agenda and to develop an interdisciplinary framework to understand what we have termed ‘the sexual politics of poverty’. Bringing together distinct literatures on sexual citizenship and sustainable livelihoods we develop our analysis of these themes through a focus on the livelihood opportunities and strategies of returnee trafficked women in South Asia, drawing on policy analysis at national and regional levels and qualitative research carried out in Nepal. In particular, the Nepal case study highlights problems with skills training for returnee women and examines the relationship between marriage and sustainable livelihood opportunities.     

Writing Gender into History and History in Gender: Creating A Nation and Australian Historiography

This paper reflects on the impact of gender in the writing of history by considering the reception of Creating A Nation, the first gendered history of Australia. It argues that while there has emerged an impressive volume of feminist history and with it has come an important acceptance of women's historical experience, the reception of ‘gender’ within the historical profession has paradoxically been ambivalent and ambiguous. This is the case because of an unease about feminist theory and its relevance to history. There also remains a prevailing belief that a gendered neutral historical place exists, to which historians can retreat.     

Gender Myths and Feminist Fables: The Struggle for Interpretive Power in Gender and Development

Gender and development has grown enormously as a field over the last thirty years. In this introduction, we interrogate the ambivalence that underpins feminist engagement with development and examine what current dilemmas may suggest about the relationship between feminist knowledge and development practice. In recent years, there has been growing frustration with the simplistic slogans that have come to characterize much gender and development talk, and with the gap between professed intention and actual practice in policies and programmes. Questions are now being asked about what has become of ‘gender’ in development. This collection brings together critical reflections on some ideas about gender that have become especially resonant in development narratives, particularly those that entail popularization and the deployment of iconic images of women. This introduction explores more closely the issues raised by such myth‐making, arguing that these myths stem from exigencies within the politics and practices of development bureaucracies, within the difficult politics of feminist engagement with development policy and practice and within feminist politics itself.     

Commodity Cultures: The Traffic in Things

Focusing on the commodification of various forms of cultural difference, this paper reviews recent work within the 'globalization' and 'creolization' paradigms, outlining an agenda for future research. Rather than condemning commodification as an unwarranted threat to the 'authenticity' of local cultures, the paper argues for a more complex understanding of people's relationship with the world of goods. Using a variety of examples, it is argued that the 'traffic in things' is associated with a wide range of meanings and a diversity of responses. Informed by recent debates in anthropology and material culture studies, it is suggested that geographical metaphors (such as distance and displacement) provide a more productive way of engaging with contemporary commodity cultures than do visual metaphors (such as unveiling or unmasking). Other means of transcending the distinction between cultural and economic geographies are also discussed.     

Gender representation in geography: Singapore

ABSTRACT

This paper explores key skills required by potential employers of geography graduates. Academic ability combined with a variety of transferable skills such as communication, organisation and self-motivation appeal to many of the employers questioned. Graduates can face potential difficulties expressing these key skills in standard application forms and interviews. Extracurricular activities and previous employment can provide impressive ways to display skills relevant to the job. Key skills are dynamic; graduates need to keep pace with ever changing expectations particularly with regard to information technology.     

Patterns of Regional Inequality in Transition Economies

This paper provides a comparative account of important aspects of regional development in transition economies, on the basis of regional statistics available for Poland, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria. More specifically it examines the geographical pattern of disparities, the convergence/divergence trends that have taken place at the regional level and the relation of regional disparities to the process of transition. It is found that spatial adjustments under transition favour metropolitan and western regions, especially in countries sharing common borders with the European Union (EU) and being a short distance from the European core. In addition, disparities have increased at various rates and degrees in transition countries to levels that are higher than most of the EU countries. Given that the catch-up process, which favours more often efficiency than equity policies, has a long way to go, the regional problems in these countries may take alarming, by EU standards, dimensions.     

Sonorous Specters: On Some Recent Histories and Economies of Afro-Latin Jazz

This essay examines the shifts and recalibrations in the Latin Americanist musical production at stake in the relation between Jazz at Lincoln Center and the Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra, institutions sharing an abiding commitment to the past but differing in how they conceive and enact time, space, and place. I identify a set of figures consistently and constantly invoked by contemporary actors to create symbolic and material economies grounded less in a tradition than in the differing relations that the living held with their specters, past, present, and future.