Towards transnational feminist queer methodologies

This article introduces the possibilities of transnational feminist queer research as seeking to conceptualise the transnational as a methodology composed of a series of flows that can augment feminist and queer research. Transnational feminist queer methodologies can contest long-standing configurations of power between researcher and researched, subject and object, academics and activists across places, typically those which are embedded in the hierarchies of the Global North/Global South. Beginning with charting our roots in, and routes through, the diverse arenas of transnational, feminist, participatory and queer methodologies, the article uses a transcribed and edited conversation between members of the Liveable Lives research team in Kolkata and Brighton, to start an exploration of transnational feminist queer methodologies. Understanding the difficult, yet constructive moments of collaborative work and dialogue, we argue for engagements with the multiplicities of ‘many-many’ lives that recognise local specificities, and the complexities of lives within transnational research, avoiding creating a currency of comparison between places. We seek to work toward methodologies that take seriously the politics of place, namely by creating research that answers the same question in different places, using methods that are created in context and may not be ‘comparable’. Using a dialogue across the boundaries of activism/academia, as well as across geographical locations, the article contends that there are potentials, as well as challenges, in thinking ourselves through transnational research praxis. This seeks complexities and spatial nuances within as well as between places.     

Studying Interests and Policy From the Inside1

This is a nontraditional PSJ article. It is intended as an advocacy essay on one way to study organized interests and their public policy role. It's written in a light-hearted fashion, calling for more professional involvement in the actual politics of public policy, going beyond Fenno's famous “soaking and poking.” There are three purposes here. One is emphasis on the usefulness of intense policy domain studies. The second is arguing for close and ongoing academic relationships with policy players. The third is arguing that those relationships provide wonderful opportunities to gather large and reliable data sets that are unavailable otherwise.     

‘What you say when you're pissing’: gender and sexual difference in heteronormative toilets

This article is part of a review symposium of Sheila Cavanagh's book Queering bathrooms: gender, sexuality and the hygienic imagination, 2010, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 295 pp., £19.94 (paperback), ISBN 978-1-4426-10736     

Reviews

The Economy of Islamic Iran: Between State and Market , Thierry Coville, ed., Tehran: Institut Français de Rechere en Iran, 1994, 275 pp.

A Century of Revolution: Social Movements in Iran , Social Movements, Protest, and Contention Series, vol. 2, John Foran, ed., Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994, 263 pp., incl. Select Bibliography, Index, $19.95 (paper).

Sutra and Other Stories , Simin Daneshvar, trans. Hasan Javadi and Amin Neshati, Washington, D.C.: Mage Publishers, 1994, 189 pp.

The Making of Exile Cultures: Iranian Television in Los Angeles , Hamid Naficy, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993, 283 pp., $44.95 (hard), $18.95 (paper).

Nomads in Archaeology , Roger Cribb, New Studies in Archaeology, Cambridge University Press, 1991, xiv + 253 pp., $69.95 (originally $54.50).

Twenty‐Three Years: A Study of the Prophetic Career of Mohammad ,^cAli Dashti, trans. F. R. C. Bagley, Costa Mesa, Calif.: Mazda Publishers, 1994, xviii + 228 pp. (first published London: George Allen & Unwin, 1985 in hardcover).

Politische und kulturelle Auswirkungen des Auslandstudiums auf die iranische Gesellschaft im 19. Jahrhundert. Unter Berücksichtigung der iranischen Stipendiaten in Westeuropa (1812–1857) , Farideh Jeddi, Frankfurt a/M‐New York, 1992, 276 pp.

Class, Politics, and Ideology in the Iranian Revolution , Mansoor Moaddel, New York: Columbia University Press, 1993, x + 346 pp.

Politics, Gender, and the Islamic Past: The Legacy of ^cA'isha bint Abi Bakr , D. A. Spellberg, New York: Columbia University Press, 1994.

Crisis and Consolidation in the Formative Period of Shi^cite Islam: Abū Ja^cfar ibn Qiba al‐Razi and his Contribution to Imamite Shi^cite Thought , Hossein Modarressi, Princeton: The Darwin Press, 1993, vii‐viii + 280 pp., incl. Bibliography, $35.00 (hardcover).

Persian Studies in North America: Studies in Honor of Mohammad Ali Jazayery , Mehdi Marashi, ed., Bethesda, Md.: Iranbooks, 1994, xx + 422 + 107 pp.

Fihrist‐i asnad‐i qadim‐i vizarat‐i umūr‐i kharijah: dawran‐i Qajariyah, 1124–1316 , Tehran: Institute for Political and International Studies, 1371 Sh./1992, xiii + 598 pp., 4,500 rials.

Islamic Development Policy: The Agrarian Question in Iran , Asghar Schi‐razi, trans. P. J. Ziess‐Lawrence, Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1993.

Politische Parteien und Bevölkerung in Iran: die Hezb‐e Demokrat‐e Iran und ihr Führer Qavamo s‐Saltana , Ralph Kauz, Berlin: Klaus Schwarz Verlag, 1995, III + 322 pp.

A History of the Armenian People , vol. 2: 1500 to the Present , George A. Bournoutian, Costa Mesa, Calif.: Mazda Publishers, 1994, xviii + 237 pp.

The History of al‐Tabari (Ta'rikh al‐msul wa³l‐mulūk), vol. XXXI: The War between Brothers , Bibliotheca Persica, trans, and annot. Michael Fish‐bein, Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1992.     

Aboriginals: The Smell of Frustration

D. E. Hutchinson (ed.), Aboriginal Progress. A new era? Western Australia U.P. (distributed by M.U.P.), 1969, pp. ix + 189, $3.     

Best for society? Transnational opposition to sexual and gender equalities in Canada and Great Britain

While much has been written about the limitations of new legislative equalities, there is a silence in geographies of sexualities regarding the backlash to these changes and the reiteration of particular heteronormativity. In working across Great Britain and Canada, we argue that these resistances are trans-scalar, operating transnationally as well as evoking nation, classroom, home and body. Arguments at the local level are embedded in and draw on the broader ‘natural family’ arguments circulating at local/regional, national and transnational levels. Drawing on the literature on transnationalism that understands these processes as (re)forming values and practices, this article explores the discourses that reiterate the naturalness and centrality of particular forms of heterosexuality as key for a healthy society and the protection of children. The latter works on three levels. First, the child cannot be ‘naturally’ produced outside of heterosexual sexual relations. Second, the raising of these children appropriately and healthily redefines ‘family’ within heteronormative structures. Third, comments that might be termed ‘homophobic’ are reframed as merely free speech as a way to counter LGBT recognition. We finish the article by arguing for explorations of heterosexuality within transnational networks to resistances to LGBT equalities.