Heft 3, 2001    

Gender-blind Discourse - Women's Movement in Comparative Perspective
Abstracts (english)

Wolfgang Kraushaar: The Historicization of the German student movement 1968, FJ NSB 2/01, pp. 13-22.

An historicization of the German student movement of 1968 is overdue. The alternative are myths and its instrumentalisation. However, the task is not an easy one. The discussions about the militant youth of foreign minister Joschka Fischer was about power as well as history. A scientific assessment of the movement by historians should be distinct from both. Neither should historical science help the political instrumentalisation nor should they only question the movement of its inherent potential for modernization. An historical evaluation of the student movement has to be done from a scientific perspective in two steps: first, an assessment of the present situation. Second the movement should be assessed in respect to its impact on the present situation.

Raka Ray: The Burden of History. Women’s Movements in India, FJ NSB, 2/01, pp. 23-33.

This paper argues that there is too little interaction between the mainstream literature on social movements and that on third world women’s movements. Using research from my work on women’s movements in India and the literature on Third World women’s movements, I argue that three questions in the social movement literature would benefit from the scholarship on Third World women’s movements: collective identity, nature of the state, and right wing movements. The larger thesis within which I embed these themes is that local and international historical processes are the most significant players in the construction and possibilities of social movements, and efforts to develop abstract mechanisms are not the most useful way to understand movements.

Gay W. Seidman: Defining Interests: The South African Gender Commission, FJ NSB, 2/01, pp. 34-43.

Created as a result of gendered mobilization within the anti-apartheid movement, the South African Commission on Gender Equality represents an unusual experiment in feminist intervention, and in the construction of gendered citizenship. But it faces difficult challenges, starting with the problem of how best to define ‘women’s interests’. Based on an ethnographic study of the Commission, this paper explores the processes through which the Commission has set priorities, and discusses some areas of tension within the Commission.

Suzanne Staggenborg/Josee Lecomte: Movement Communities in New Social Movements. The Montreal Women’s Movement, FJ NSB, 2/01, pp. 44-53.

The concept of a “social movement community” builds on characterizations of new social movements as decentralized networks of actors capable of coming together for collective action from time to time. This paper identifies several characteristics of movement communities that vary over time and affect the movement’s ability to mobilize for collective action: linkages within and between movement communities; the number and type of organizations within movement communities; the existence or absence of movement “centers”; and the extent of institutionalization. Using the example of the Montreal women’s movement we show how characteristics of the movement community influenced mobilization of the 2000 World March of Women. We discuss the importance of such movement campaigns and their effects on movement communities and subsequent collective action.

Leila J. Rupp/Verta Taylor: ‚Loving Community’ The Emotion Culture of the International Women’s Movement, 1888-1945, FJ NSB, 2/01, pp. 54-64.

Research on feminist organizations shows that they frequently devise distinctive emotion cultures that conform to a feminine logic by treating emotional expressiveness and caring relationships as primary. In this paper we use the concept of emotion culture, drawn from social constructionist approaches to emotions, to understand how women in the three major organizations of the international women’s movement built solidarity across national boundaries. Our analysis focuses on how the gendered emotion culture of the international women’s movement, from the late nineteenth century through the Second World War, promoted a loving community that had the potential to transcend national rivalries. We identify three types of emotional labor activists engaged in to build solidarity and positive affect among feminist internationalists: 1) staging expressive public rituals of reconciliation between women who stood on opposite sides of national conflicts; 2) forming intense affective ties across national boundaries; and 3) drawing on the emotional template of mother love. Making explicit the role of emotions allows us to recognize the significant role that gender processes play in the formation of collective identity.

Ingrid Miethe: Framingkonzepte in a biographical perspective. The Example of the women’s peace movement in the GDR, FJ NSB, 2/01, pp. 65-75.

Using the example of the women's peace movement of the GDR, this article shows how the biographical perspective contributes to the understanding of collective action by examining not merely differences among frames but how these frames emerge. The central argument is that in order to understand the dynamics and changes of social movements and their participants it is not only necessary to capture this ‘how’ but also the ‘why’ the principles of construction that are the basis for frame formation and give them their meaning for the participants. Following Goffman, three different analytical levels are distinguished. First, the descriptive level of the frame itself; second, the performative level of how the frame is constructed; and third, the level of keying or the modulations in the frame which reveal which functions they have for the actors. The paper concludes that the individual variation that the biographical method reveals contributes to understanding processes of collective organization and action.

Cheryl Hercus: Emotion, Consciousness and the Process of Becoming Feminist. An Example from the Australian Women’s Movement, FJ NSB, 2/01, pp. 76-86.

This paper examines the relationship between identity and emotion in collective action, particularly as it applies to involvement in feminism and to the process of becoming and being feminist. A multidimensional model of involvement based on four intertwined dimensions of subjectivity - knowing, feeling, being and doing - is proposed. It is suggested that these dimensions exist at both the personal and the collective level. Ways of knowing, feeling, being and doing are constructed collectively as discourses and practices which can be used by individuals as resources for constructing the self. Dualist conceptions of the self which have led to emotion either being ignored or viewed as subservient to cognition, are rejected in favour of an integrated understanding of thinking and feeling selves. The theoretical issues raised in the paper are illustrated using data from a study of feminist collective action carried out in north Queensland, Australia.