Gender and feminist studies in Albania – a brief state of the art

Abstract

The aim of this contribution is to identify how gender and feminist studies have positioned themselves within the higher education system in post-socialist Albania. In Albania, the post-socialist context was featured by a negative connotation of the left-wing perspective hindering the development of critical and feminist thinking in academia. There is a lack of feminist debate, and hostile prejudices against feminists stick well, particularly in the absence of a thorough debate about feminism. Gender and women’s studies are present mainly in the public university system in association with the Social Sciences Faculty. The only complete program on gender studies is situated within the Department of Social Work and Social Policy, as a Master program in Gender and Development. Gender or feminist studies are mostly taught as “optional” courses often just for the sake of having them present in the program. In this contribution, we aim at briefly presenting some of the main developments, gaps and challenges regarding gender and feminist studies in the Albanian higher education.     

“Madam,you ought to be the man such times as these”: gendered confrontations and the Runaway Scrape

This article examines the power dynamics between men and women during the “Runaway Scrape.” During this chapter of the Texas Revolution, the situation looked bleak for the Texas army as they withdrew towards the Louisiana border to avoid the Mexican onslaught. Women, slaves, and the men not engaged in battle joined the retreat. This study focuses on the gendered contestations between those fleeing the attack. Women often found themselves challenging the authority, decision-making, character, and even manliness of their male counterparts; some casting aspersions on the masculinity of a wide array of historical actors, ranging from deserters to government and military officials.     

‘Poor heathens’, ‘Cone-headed natives’ and ‘Good water’: the production of knowledge of the interior of Australia through German texts from around the 1860s

This essay critically reviews the textual archive related to the two German mission stations in the South Australian Lake Eyre basin: the Lutheran Hermannsburg mission at Killalpaninna and the Moravian mission at Kopperamanna. The multiple entanglements of these stations far beyond their missionary activity become evident through examining distinctly religious material, such as mission journals, and secular texts, in German-language newspapers and scientific journals. These include entanglement in German domestic affairs as well as German diasporic politics; and in debates over scientific advancement and British colonial expansion.     

Changing intergenerational contracts: gender,cohorts and elder care in central rural China, 2005–2013

In the absence of stable pension systems, elder care arrangements in rural China depend on intergenerational contracts. The existing scholarship on elder care in rural China tends to treat the elderly as a homogeneous group and depict them mainly as ‘care recipients’. Based on a diachronic qualitative study in central rural China between 2005 and 2013, this research examines the changing intergenerational contracts between two cohorts of rural elderly and their adult children. These cohorts hold different positions in terms of family structure, number and sex composition of adult children, living arrangement, physical situation, economic standing and appreciation of intergenerational exchange. These differences further produce different social exchange patterns and disparate elder care modalities between genders and cohorts. Drawing upon insights from gender theory on social gerontology, this research identifies the ‘agency’ of older rural women and explores ageing issues among older rural men. This study also presents policy implications by identifying the most disadvantaged group in terms of elder care support.     

Understanding ‘trafficking vulnerabilities’ among children: the responses linking to child protection issues in Nepal

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this paper is to discuss child trafficking in Nepal within the broader framework of child protection. It examines both individual (gender, ethnicity and caste) and structural (their experiences in relation to work, migration, education and lack of birth registration) vulnerabilities and their links with child trafficking as a child protection concern. The paper provides suggestions for why there is a need for a more nuanced understanding of trafficking vulnerabilities as part of a continuum, rather than a distinct event, to improve outcomes for children. We use the evidence presented here to call for a holistic approach. Policies and programmes must be integrated within the broader concerns of child protection, thus strengthening the system from local to national level, while recognising the importance of children’s rights to participate in any decision-making.     

Ordinary Geographies: Care,Violence, and Agrarian Extractivism in “Post-Conflict” Colombia

In Colombia’s agrarian spaces, war and extractivism are deeply entangled. Almost four years after the peace accords signed between the national government and the FARC guerrilla, post-conflict geographies are best characterised by the ongoing dispossession of local populations related to the entrenchment of extractivism. Drawing from ethnographic work carried out in the Colombian Caribbean on the ordinary practices and spaces of social reproduction, the ordinary geographies, this article explores gendered practices of care and their role in both sustaining and disrupting paramilitary violence and agrarian extractivism. The focus not just on the gendered effects of war and extractivism, but on gender’s constitutive role in the configuration of these processes and dynamics, allows us to contribute to recent literature on extractivism, dispossession and violence from a feminist standpoint.