Women,gender and feminism in the Australian Journal of Political Science: A review

This review article, written for the fiftieth anniversary of the Australian Journal of Political Science (formerly Politics), analyses articles focusing on women, gender and feminism that were published in the journal. The analysis demonstrates that the study of gender is relevant to a broad range of fields, and methodological approaches used, in political science. It also demonstrates that political science knowledge is itself historically and socially constructed, reflecting both traditional social power relations and the influence of the social movements that challenge them. Consequently, key articles have drawn attention to the ways in which the frameworks of mainstream forms of political science were gender-biased and have sometimes continued to be so, particularly in terms of narrow constructions of the ‘political’. Such narrow constructions may still be contributing to some ongoing gaps in the literature, despite the important contributions made by work published in the journal.     

以党员先进性教育活动为契机积极探索流动党员教育管理的新机制

流动党员的教育和管理问题是新形势下党建工作面临的一个突出课题。如何针对流动党员形成的特点和规律,积极探索加强流动党员教育和管理工作的新机制,不仅是各级党组织肩负的重要责任,也是加强党的执政能力建设和先进性建设、巩固党的执政基础以及加强党的基层组织建设的迫切要求。     

The rise and fall of the NPT: an opportunity for Britain

Long seen as an unexpectedly successful example of international cooperation, the NPT is now like a wisdom tooth that is rotten at its root and the abscess is poisoning the international body politic. The price for agreement to the substance of the treaty was the inclusion of Article 6, which committed the Nuclear Weapon States (NWS) to the ultimate elimination of nuclear weapons. With the strategic arms race underway, in 1968 the NWS saw Article 6 as an empty aspiration; 25 years later it had acquired a whole new significance. The first half of the 1990s was a period of constructive optimism as non-signatories hastened to sign the treaty and the non-nuclear weapon states were persuaded to agree to its indefinite extension. The second half brought disillusionment as it became increasingly clear that the NWS had no intention of meeting their Article 6 obligations or the promises made at the five-yearly review conferences (1995, 2000, 2005), and that Washington was set on developing useable nukes for pre-emptive prevention. The bad faith and double standards fuelled wide-spread resentment (particularly in the Non-Aligned Movement) and contributed to the post-9/11 image of the 'The West against the Rest', a corrosive concept that is reinforced by US rhetoric. Rather than 'cooperative security', America is explicitly set on global military supremacy, which will evoke countervailing power and inevitably lead to nuclear arms racing and the renewed danger of inadvertent nuclear war. The likely long- and short-term consequences of the present situation require a fundamental response involving a major policy initiative. Only Britain is in a position to take such an initiative, but it will require us to withdraw from our self-appointed role of 'loyal vassal' to America and to adopt a role that has the potential of being not only more important and influential, but also more appropriate to our history, capabilities and talents.     

Gender Segregation,Effacement, and Suppression: Trends in the Status of Women in Israel

The aim of this article is to analyze the phenomenon of the exclusion of women from the public sphere in Israel. The article describes some of the causes of this phenomenon, its impact on Israeli society, and the difficulty in confronting it. Israeli women have made impressive gains on many fronts, but the exclusion of women from the public sphere as a result of the influence of the growing Ultra‐Orthodox minority, which imposes its norms on the general public, raises serious concerns. The exclusion of women manifests itself in several forms: gender segregation in public spaces, the effacement of women's images from the public sphere, and the suppression of women's voice. The infiltration of Orthodox Jewish fundamentalism into Israeli society may cause the regression of advancements previously made in women's rights in Israel. The article points to the limitations of the treatment of this phenomenon within a theory of multiculturalism, and suggests an alternative framework of discourse, which relies on concepts that are drawn from the literature on environmental ethics, public rights, and public ownership of space and resources.     

Indigenous claims and heritage conservation: an opportunity for critical dialogue

Abstract

Indigenous claims of ownership and access to material culture challenge the field of heritage conservation. This article illustrates how indigenous concerns conflict with basic constructs of Western conservation, and how conservators respond to these claims. Despite efforts of inclusion, relatively few conservation projects integrate indigenous knowledge with scientific research. Redistribution of conservation authority is rarely put into practice. The article concludes by pointing to conservation as a meeting ground where collaborative decisions can be made about material culture on display. Conflict negotiation in conservation presents a potential forum for cultural representation and contested meaning of objects on display.     

Women who DARE: driving attitudes and road experiences among ultraorthodox women in Israel

This study seeks to gain insight into a unique group, ultraorthodox women in Israel, and their views and attitudes on driving and road experiences. Ultraorthodox women are generally contending with spatial and mobility restrictions due to stringent gendered spaces and social norms in their communities. Specifically in Israel, throughout the ultraorthodox sector, women are strictly forbidden to drive. In this research, we put the emphasis on driving dilemmas that have received marginal attention both socially and empirically. A qualitative method was used, based on face-to-face in-depth interviews, with women from three major ultraorthodox communities. The findings reveal that the driving ban for ultraorthodox women in Israel generates ambivalence and conflict, and exacts a heavy social price. Moreover, in line with approaches of feminist geography, it raises issues of gender relations and cultural implications, such as restricting the space and the mobility of women in order to keep them in a subordinate position. The results are discussed in terms of gender roles, cultural exclusion, and spatiality, on both the practical and emotional levels. The study opens a window to a unique sector of the Israeli population, revealing unique dilemmas with which ultraorthodox women grapple daily in their community.     

The model of ethnic democracy: Israel as a Jewish and democratic state

The liberal democratic nation–state is on the decline in the West as a result of globalisation, regionalisation, universalisation of minority rights, multiculturalism and the rise of ethno–nationalism. While Western countries are decoupling the nation–state and shifting toward multicultural civic democracy, other countries are consolidating an alternative non–civic form of a democratic state that is identified with and subservient to a single ethnic nation. This model, ‘ethnic democracy’, is presented; its defining features, the circumstances leading to it and the conditions for its stability are elaborated upon; and it is applied to Israel. Contrary to its self–image and international reputation as a Western liberal democracy, Israel is an ethnic democracy in which the Jews appropriate the state and make it a tool for advancing their national security, demography, public space, culture and interests. At the same time, Israel is a democracy that extends various kinds of rights to 1 million Palestinian Arab citizens (16 per cent of the population) who are perceived as a threat. The criticisms against the general model and its applicability to Israel are discussed. The model has already been applied to other countries, but more applications are needed in order to develop it further.     

Transcending Nationalist Divides: Religious Reconciliation as the Basis for a One‐State Solution in Israel/Palestine

Nationalism's inability to yield peacefully coexisting forms of political identity in Israel/Palestine has persisted for more than a century. This is so whether one refers to strands of secular nationalism that composed predominating, modern historical foundations for Israeli and Palestinian political consciousness, or subsequent forms of nationalism that have become intertwined, ever more, with religion. Further, nationalism's failure to foster a way out of the Israel/Palestine impasse infects not only the familiar (but increasingly problematic) “two‐state” solution but also the contested (but perhaps more productive) “one‐state” solution. The one‐state solution has tended to involve a secular approach, for example, the binational variety emblematized by Edward Said, or, alternatively, a nonbinary democratic state where equal citizenship is not contingent on distinct forms of identity. However, the untapped promise of the one‐state solution could be better actualized with ingredients for the construction of citizenship that, in a real, spiritual sense, transcend the limiting divisions of nationalism. Specifically, shared religious roots, including the modes of reconciliation integral to the three Abrahamic traditions—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—most directly ensnared within the Israel/Palestine bind might offer a more fruitful basis for coexistence.     

Women as Pilgrims: Memoirs of Iranian Women Travelers to Mecca

A hitherto neglected aspect of the Iranian women's lives and activities is their traveling and travelogues. A number of Iranian women pilgrims to Mecca and the Shi'ite holy shrines of Mesopotamia during the past four centuries have left behind memoirs of their travels. They recorded interesting details about their spiritual experience as pilgrims to the holy lands of Islam and of the difficulties of the journey, especially the notoriously dangerous land route from Iran to Mecca through the Arabian Desert. This paper examines four examples of that genre, the oldest dating from the early eighteenth and the other three from the late nineteenth centuries. As expected, the authors were all members of upper class families: one was a princess, another a former queen, and the other two were also affiliated with the ruling families in one way or another. However, they shared the same goals with all other female, and male, pilgrims: to perform their Muslim religious duty of hajj and to do it right. They all wrote about their spiritual satisfaction but also of the disadvantages and the extra burden that a woman experienced in her pilgrimage journey, simply for being a woman.     

Subsistence practices in an arid environment: a geoarchaeological investigation in an Iron Age site,the Negev Highlands,Israel

The Negev Highlands (southern Israel) is an arid zone characterized by settlement oscillations. One settlement peak occurred in the early Iron Age IIA (late 10th and early 9th centuries BC). The most conspicuous structure in many sites of this period is an oval compound comprised of an internal courtyard surrounded by rooms. Two hypotheses for the function of these oval compounds are that they served as Israelite fortresses which guarded the southern border and routes of the Solomonic kingdom, or that they represent local agro-pastoral groups. In order to gather more information regarding the subsistence practices conducted in these oval compounds, we carried out a small-scale excavation at the site of Atar Haroa. We focused on sediment sampling and used several geoarchaeological, as well as isotopic, techniques in order to identify macroscopic and microscopic remains related to animal husbandry and crop agriculture. The remains identified from the archaeological sediments were compared with modern reference materials collected from abandoned Bedouin camps. The excavation included two half rooms and several test pits in the courtyard of the oval compound, featuring one Iron Age occupation level composed of gray sediments and relatively small amounts of pottery, bones and macro-botanical charred remains. Micromorphological, mineralogical, dung spherulite and isotopic analyses carried out on the gray occupational sediments from the rooms show that they originate from wood ash and dung, both used as fuel. Similar analyses of the gray sediments in the courtyard show that they originate only from degraded livestock dung. Phytolith analyses show that the gray anthropogenic sediments have similar concentrations of phytoliths as in control (yellowish) sediments and in the dung of winter free-grazing desert livestock and lichen-grazing black dwarf Bedouin goats. Phytoliths indicative of cereal crops are completely absent in the archaeological dung remains, indicating that cereal crops were not processed by the site inhabitants. Based on ethnographic and archaeological parallels, and on the presence of grinding stones and absence of sickle blades in the excavated rooms, we infer that the inhabitants at the oval compound at Atar Haroa subsisted on livestock herding and bought or exchanged cereal grains. Our results support the hypothesis that the inhabitants at the oval compound at Atar Haroa were desert-adapted pastoralists, rather than garrisoned soldiers.     

Securing international society: towards an English school discourse of security

English School approaches to international politics, which focus on the idea of an international society of states bound together by shared rules and norms, have not paid significant explicit attention to the study of security in international relations. This is curious given the centrality of security to the study of world politics and the recent resurgence of English School scholarship in general. This article attempts to redress this gap by locating and explicating an English School discourse of security. We argue here that there is indeed an English School discourse of security, although an important internal distinction exists here between pluralist and solidarist accounts, which focus on questions of order and justice in international society respectively. In making this argument, we also seek to explore the extent to which emerging solidarist accounts of security serve to redress the insecurity of security in international relations: the tendency of traditional security praxes to privilege the state in ways that renders individuals insecure.     

Reconsidering nationalism and feminism: the Kurdish political movement in Turkey

Feminist scholars have documented with reference to multiple empirical contexts that feminist claims within nationalist movements are often side‐lined, constructed as ‘inauthentic’ and frequently discredited for imitating supposedly western notions of gender‐based equality. Despite these historical precedents, some feminist scholars have pointed to the positive aspects of nationalist movements, which frequently open up spaces for gender‐based claims. Our research is based on the recognition that we cannot discuss and evaluate the fraught relationship in the abstract but that we need to look at the specific historical and empirical contexts and articulations of nationalism and feminism. The specific case study we draw from is the relationship between the Kurdish women's movement and the wider Kurdish political movement in Turkey. We are exploring the ways that the Kurdish movement in Turkey has politicised Kurdish women's rights activists and examine how Kurdish women activists have reacted to patriarchal tendencies within the Kurdish movement.     

Missing an opportunity: the Italian Mezzogiorno's trading troubles during European integration

Among the many troubles that southern Italy's economy is facing, its deficient trade performance receives little attention. Yet the Mezzogiorno's comparative disadvantage in trade is a recurring theme in the long history of Italian inter-regional disparities. Adverse conditions for firms in tradeables persist while European integration opens up new opportunities for this sector to expand. In this paper, a dataset of employment rates in tradeable and non-tradeable sectors from 2000 to 2010 is constructed to analyse the strength and development of the Mezzogiorno's export base during European integration. The analysis shows that the new trade opportunities alone did not suffice to even the Mezzogiorno regions' road to export orientation.