Gender,Environment and Population

Based on field research from three regions with distinct variations in environment, population density, livelihood bases and levels of resource dependency, this study investigates the gender aspects of environmental change. It seeks to illustrate the relevance of gender factors for the patterns of adaptation to change, for the welfare impact of changes on the population, and for the ramifications for resource management and livelihood generation at the community level. It employs a gender analysis to examine the impact of such changes on population variables, particularly on health and nutrition, and to explore the more general question of whether women's socio-economic status is being threatened by the pressures of environmental change.     

Book reviews

Women's Lives and Public Policy: the international experience. M. Turshen & B. Holcomb (Eds), 1993. Westport, CT, Praeger. xix + 217 pp. ISBN 0–275–94523–5 paperback, 0–313–27354–5 hardback.

Decolonizing Feminisms: race, gender and empire‐building. Laura E. Donaldson, 1992. Chapel Hill, NC, University of North Carolina Press.

African Encounters with Domesticity. K. T. Hansen (Ed.), 1992. New Brunswick, NJ, Rutgers University Press. 315 pp., $42.00 hardback, $16.00 paperback. ISBN 0–8135–1803–2 hardback, 0–8135–1804–0 paperback.

Women and the Environment: a reader. S. Sontheimer (Ed.), 1991. New York, Monthly Review Press. 205 pp., $13.00 paperback. ISBN 0 85345–835 9.

Defining Females. S. Ardener (Ed.), 1993. Oxford, Berg. 216 pp., £10.95/$17.95 paperback.

Modernity and Identity. S. Lash & J. Friedman (Eds), 1992. Oxford, UK and Cambridge, MA, USA, Blackwell. 379 pp., £15.99/$19.95 paperback. ISBN 0–631–17586–5.     

How to Attract Managers and Professionals to Peripheral Regions? Recruitment Strategies in the Weser-Ems Region,Germany

An adequate supply of highly qualified workers is a central prerequisite for the ability of peripheral and economically lagging regions to develop. In order to take advantage of endogenous potential, bottlenecks in human knowledge and know-how must be overcome by means of support from outside. An important element in this is migration. Taking as an example the Weser-Ems region in northwestern Germany, the strategies used by local enterprises to motivate managerial staff to move from other regions are shown and the level of success achieved is described. As is shown, the regional labour market has lost significance for the upper segment in the course of structural changes in the economy, which has led to an increase in the necessity for cross-regional searches in order to fill managerial posts. As enterprises in peripheral locations have poor starting conditions in the cross-regional competition for highly qualified workers, this development demands that more and more enterprises mobilize considerable resources for the recruitment of staff. Although the findings indicate that the potential of workers willing to migrate is greater and more diverse than is often assumed, they also show that certain types of enterprises have great difficulty in overcoming independently the personnel-related disadvantages resulting from the location, and require support through regional structural policy.     

Negotiating social identities: The influence of gender,age and ethnicity on young people's ‘street careers’ in Tanzania

This paper explores the diverse ways that children and young people negotiate their social identities and construct their life course trajectories on the street, based on ethnographic research with street children in Tanzania. Drawing on the concept of a ‘street career’, I show how differences of age, gender and ethnicity intersect with the time spent on the street, to influence young people's livelihood strategies, use of public space, access to services, and adherence to cultural rites of passage. Using the notion of ‘gender performativity’, I analyse how young people actively reconfigure gender norms and the concept of ‘the family’ on the street.     

Love as difference: the politics of love in the thought of Malek Chebel

This article discusses the ongoing discourses on love that first developed in the 1980s in France as they are articulated through the work of Malek Chebel. It argues that for Chebel ‘love’ contributes to the ongoing negotiation between Islam and the West and of Islam in France/Europe. The article considers his discourse on love within the context of the current debates on French constructions of community and membership and examines how love engages with the question of difference and identity to decentre and de‐essentialise ‘Islam’. It concludes that the negotiation between Europe and Islam involves questioning the role of Maghrebi culture and tradition in defining ‘Islam’ in France.     

Refusing Reform,Reworking Pity,or Reinforcing Privilege? The Multivalent Politics of Young People’s Fun and Friendship within a Volunteering Encounter

This paper analyses initiatives which took British young people from ethnic minority and disenfranchised backgrounds to volunteer in sub-Saharan Africa. It asks whether decolonial possibilities can be seen in the politics of youthful fun and friendship amid a practice undeniably driven by interpenetrating neocolonial logics, where enrolment in helping “needy” others is seen as a means to “improve” working-class and racially marked youth. The paper argues that volunteers’ investments in leisure constituted a politics of refusal towards how they were acted upon as objects of concern. More ambivalently, playful, friendly interactions between British and African youth disrupted relations of charitable pity and signalled desires for solidarity and equality, but cannot be claimed as fully decolonial. At times, fun also re-entrenched neocolonial and other oppressive relations. Overall, the paper demonstrates that a close reading of the multivalent, affective politics of young people’s fun and friendship can reveal much about the reproduction or subversion of contemporary neocolonial logics that operate both within and beyond the borders of postcolonial Britain.     

Introduction. Anarchism and the national question—historical,theoretical and contemporary perspectives

This article provides an introduction to the themed section ‘Anarchism and the national question—historical, theoretical and contemporary perspectives.’ We discuss first the long and often overlooked engagement of anarchists with the colonial and national liberation question, particularly—but not exclusively—in the heyday of the movement (from the second half of the 19th to the first decades of the 20th century). We discuss in particular the overlaps and tensions between anarchists and republicans (those who favoured republics as opposed to monarchies) and anti-colonial nationalists (anti-colonialists who defended the right of national self-determination). Then we proceed to discuss the potential for a dialogue between anarchist and nationalism studies based on three interventions. First, to problematise the narrative that conflates nations with state-building processes. Second, to better grasp the emergence of alternatives to the nation–state as a historical construct. Third, to complicate narratives that associate in an unproblematic fashion internationalism and classless society. Finally, the introduction highlights the four questions which lie at the core of the themed section and discuss briefly how the papers relate to these.