Gender,Race, and Rumours: Re-examining the 1943 Race Riots

Focusing on three riots of the World War II era – those of Beaumont (Texas), Detroit, and New York's Harlem – this essay examines the rumours that sparked these disturbances to uncover the gendered ideologies that underlie racial violence. In these rumour narratives, women appear as either rape victims or tortured mothers, while men appear as either depraved rapists or noble protectors. The deployment of these images helped forge a defensive collective identity that facilitated the outbreak of violence. Because racial and gender ideologies were intimately linked, the author argues, race riots must be analysed through the lens of gender in order to be fully understood.     

Moving Towards An American Industrial Technology Policy

While the term "industrial policy" has come to be associated by many Americans with too much government involvement in private markets, the United States is nevertheless moving rapidly towards a more active and explicit industrial technology policy. The American policy is certainly different from those of Japan and Western Europe; but the recent emphasis on civilian technology and targeted manufacturing sectors, along with the continuing efforts of state-level technology programs, add up to a much more coherent industrial technology policy than in the past. Although this trend comes at the end of the Cold War and is related to defense conversion efforts, it is part of a larger trend tied to increasing pressure in the area of international competitiveness of American industry. A more pragmatic, less ideological approach emerged, first in numerous state capitals, and is emerging gradually in Washington, DC.     

What future for feminist geography?

Drawing primarily on my own work, speculations are offered on a range of possible futures for feminist geography. It is suggested that the most likely trajectory is one of incorporation as feminist geography is dismissed, regarded with indifference or included within a pluralist, but basically unaltered discipline. While a contentious and depressing suggestion, an alternative trajectory is offered by a feminist geography which actively engages with other progressive developments in the discipline and creatively incorporates new developments in feminist scholarship on, for example, the body, deconstruction and post‐colonialism. A third future builds on such engagements to offer various transformations of the subject, power relations and conceptual baggage which presently constitute feminist geography, through a process of self‐reflection and critical positioning. These three trajectories of incorporation, engagement and transformation I see as simultaneously operating in my own work. Reflections on them are offered for others to consider and to stimulate debate.