Gender studies (knowledge) (theory)

Gender studies (knowledge) (theory) Do your analyzing of this article based on this question : 1) What is mutually beneficial knowledge production? (Nagar) Can you give examples from the readings. ANALYZED AND BREAK DOWN DEEPLY Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. 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Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-andconditions Downloaded by [University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)] at 14:12 09 July 2013 Gender, Place and Culture, Vol. 9, No. 2, pp. 179–186, 2002 VIEWPOINT Footloose Researchers, ‘Traveling’ Theories, and the Politics of Transnational Feminist Praxis RICHA NAGAR, University of Minnesota, USA When feminist scholars from Western countries come here to do their research, they often try hard to do everything in our local language and idiom. But why is it that when they return to their institutions, they frequently write in ways that are totally inaccessible and irrelevant to us? … The question of access is not just about writing in English. It is about how one chooses to frame things, how one tells a story … [Suppose] you tell my story in a way that makes no sense at the conceptual level to me or my community, why would we care what you have to say about my life? (Group discussion with three feminist scholaractivists in Pune, India, July 27, 2000) In the last decade, re exivity, positionality and identity have become keywords in feminist . eldwork in much of anglophone academia. Indeed, it is now rare to . nd . eldwork-based feminist research that does not engage to some degree with the ‘politics of . eldwork,’ i.e. with a reexive analysis ‘of how the production of ethnographic knowledge is shaped by the shifting contextual, and relational contours of the researcher’s social identity with respect to her subjects, and by her social situatedness or positionality in terms of gender, race, class, sexuality and other axes of social difference’ (Nagar & Geiger, 2000, p. 2). Despite this proliferation of self-re exivity, however, feminist social scientists have largely avoided the most vexing political questions that lie at the heart of our in/ability to talk across worlds. The opening quotation vividly illustrates that at the most basic level these political questions have to do with the theoretical frameworks and languages that we deploy in our work. But the concern about the utility of theory and theoretical languages in transnational feminist praxis is entangled with at least three other complex issues. First is the question of accountability and the speci. c nature of our political commitments: who are we writing for, how, and why? The second involves a serious engagement with questions of collaboration: what does it mean to co-produce relevant knowledge across geographical, institutional, and/or cultural borders? Third, the concern entails an explicit interrogation of the structure of the academy and the constraints and values embedded therein, as well as our desire and ability to challenge and reshape those structures and values. Existing models of ‘doing’ positionality and re exivity fail to engage adequately with these issues. This inadequacy recently led Susan Geiger and me to argue that much Correspondence: Richa Nagar, Department of Women’s Studies, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455, USA; e-mail: [email protected] ISSN 0966-369X print/ISSN 1360-052 4 online/02/020179-08 Ó 2002 Taylor & Francis Ltd DOI 10.1080/0966396022013969 9 179 Downloaded by [University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)] at 14:12 09 July 2013 180 R. Nagar important theoretical work on the concepts of re exivity, positionality and identity has led to an impasse with respect to feminist research involving . eldwork (Nagar & Geiger, 2000). This impasse is re ected, among other things, in the abandonment of . eldwork by some researchers in favor of textual analyses and in accusations by critics that self-re exive exercises amount to mere ‘navel gazing’ and serve either as ‘tropes that sound like apologies’ or as ‘badges’ worn by researchers to prove their legitimacy (Patai, 1991; Wolf, 1997). By identifying these problems, we do not dismiss the importance of understanding how our situatedness as researchers and our multiple and shifting contextual identities and agendas shape the knowledges we produce. Rather, we maintain that such re exivity does not go far enough in terms of political engagement, especially when it comes to feminist . eldwork in ‘Third World’ contexts. In this viewpoint, I reframe and extend some of the arguments that Geiger and I make about the nature of this impasse by analyzing varying responses that I received in 2000 to my manuscript, ‘Mujhe Jawab Do! (Answer me!)’ (subsequently published in Gender, Place and Culture) from three very different feminist audiences. These audiences were located respectively in the US academy and in two non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in India—one being a ‘grass-roots’ organization of women in rural Bundelkhand (North India) and another a research and documentation center in the city of Pune (western India). When juxtaposed and compared to each other, the three responses are instructive in not only rethinking issues of re exivity, positionality and identity in feminist . eldwork, but also in concretely identifying and grappling with some of the key challenges associated with transnational feminist praxis. But before I discuss the responses, a few words about ‘Mujhe Jawab Do! (Answer me!)’ are in order. Mujhe Jawab Do: juggling multiple feminist agendas After eight years of research and writing on the gendered communal and racial politics among South Asians in Tanzania, I dramatically shifted the course of my intellectual journey to North India and embarked on a new research project in Chitrakoot district of Bundelkhand region (Uttar Pradesh) in 1998. The reasons for this shift were related to my own struggles with what constitutes politically relevant research, and I address this topic at length elsewhere (Nagar & Geiger, 2000). For the purposes of my argument here, it should suf. ce to say that despite the theoretically and empirically exciting nature of my work in Tanzania, the material, institutional, and ethical constraints associated with this research seriously limited the spaces available to me for radical collaborative efforts with socially marginalized Asian and Asian-African communities in Tanzania. These factors led me to shift my next project to rural women’s activism and social spaces in North India. One of the central goals of my new research was to examine the spatial tactics adopted by rural women in Bundelkhand, often described as one of the most impoverished and violence ridden areas in the country. Bundeli women’s activism over issues of water and literacy had made a big splash in Indian newspapers and I was eager to learn about these struggles, and about the way in which women’s activism on the ground was shaped by institutions such as the Dutch Government, the World Bank, the Government of India and state- and district-level governmental and non-governmental organizations. However, once I became immersed in the two grass-roots organizations working in this area, activists from one of these organizations, Vanangana, made it clear that they wanted their emerging street theater on domestic violence to be a major part of my research inquiry. Accordingly, the . rst publication to come out of this research (Nagar, Downloaded by [University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)] at 14:12 09 July 2013 Viewpoint 181 2000) focused on charting the ‘discursive geographies’ (the term is Gerry Pratt’s—see Pratt, 1999) of women’s resistance through Vanangana’s street theater on domestic violence. I explored the manner in which activists used a series of social spaces to develop their political discourses for their own mobilization, and how they creatively used kinship and gendered materialities of women’s natal and conjugal villages to claim the maledominated spaces of the community. The original version of the paper hinged on two main issues. First, it highlighted how rural women’s activism on issues surrounding access to water and literacy led them to critique an instrumentalist vision of empowerment in development organizations and how they theorized and acted upon their understandings of the interconnections between empowerment, violence, space and politics. Second, it argued that feminist social scientists located in the ‘Western’/’Northern’ academy cannot choose to remain silent on marginalized women’s struggles concerning sensitive issues such as domestic violence in the so-called Third-World simply because there is a messy politics of power and representation involved in the . eldwork encounter. Rather, they should accept the challenge of . guring out how to productively engage with and participate in mutually bene. cial knowledge production about those struggles. Responses to the Paper On . nishing the initial version of Mujhe Jawab Do! in March 2000, I sent off one set of copies to Gender, Place and Culture and another set to the two (and only) Vanangana members who were  uent in English. Later, when I visited India in July 2000, I presented the same paper—in a mixture of Hindi and English—to feminist scholar-activists at Aalochana, a women’s research and documentation center in Pune, Maharashtra. While the responses from all three audiences were quite positive and enthusiastic, each group emphasized very different things in relation to the politics of positionality, re exivity and identity. Response from Gender, Place and Culture Two out of the three reviewers of GPC were disturbed because they assumed that my argument about the need for US-based feminist scholars to engage with sensitive topics such as domestic violence in the homes of rural women in India was coming from a white researcher. They wanted to know why the author did not explain how s/he dealt with cultural and linguistic differences, and why s/he did not highlight the contributions of Indian feminist scholars who were trying to engage in similar research endeavors. Both reviewers suggested that I either say more about my personal background and positionality, or drop the argument about the need for US-based feminists to engage with marginalized women’s struggles in the ‘Third World.’ Response from Vanangana, Chitrakoot The two English-speaking organizers at Vanangana expressed excitement about my in-depth ethnographic analysis of their street theater and said that it helped them think about their political and spatial methodologies in a different light. However, they had reservations about the theoretical section of the paper. While they understood how a discussion of power and representation, and of relationships between US-based feminist scholars and poor women’s activism in the ‘Third World’ could be important to other Downloaded by [University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)] at 14:12 09 July 2013 182 R. Nagar (academic) feminists, this subject was the least interesting or relevant for them. This section, they said, did not help them for two reasons. First, it was too theoretical and inaccessible for the members of their organization. The readers suggested that I eliminate the theoretical language and write a shorter version of the paper in Hindi so that women who were active in the street theater campaign could read, re ect and respond to my analysis of their movement. Second, they wished to share my paper (in English) with other feminist organizations in the country and with prospective funding agencies because they themselves did not have the time or resources to produce such an analysis. They believed that the paper would serve this purpose much better if I could substitute the section on representation with a more detailed discussion of the relationship between empowerment and violence in development thinking and in women’s social movements in South Asia. Response from Aalochana, Women’s Research and Documentation Center, Pune When I presented the paper at Aalochana, an organization comprising feminist thinkers who are active in women’s development NGOs, its members responded with great passion and keen enthusiasm. Several of them expressed an interest in building direct bridges with Vanangana members, in exchanging ideas, and discussing future collaborations and strategies with them. Most women saw me as belonging to North India, and did not raise any issues about whether I was an authentic enough researcher to undertake the project. One scholar activist from New Delhi, however, who was the only other ‘North Indian’ in the room besides me, asked why ‘American’ researchers like me did not leave such research projects for ‘Indian’ feminists, and choose to do research on Indian communities living in the USA instead. Comparing the Responses: implications for transnational feminist praxis None of the aforementioned groups questioned the relevance of the struggles that I narrated and analyzed in Mujhe Jawab Do! Yet, the divergent nature of their responses uncovered the messiness associated with attempts by feminists located in the ‘Western’ academy to talk across worlds—worlds that are separated not just socially, geopolitically and materially, but also in their understandings of what constitutes relevant theory and politics. Sorting through this mess necessarily implies making decisions regarding which/ whose understandings about relevant theory matter the most to ‘us’ and why. Interestingly enough, this messiness also vividly illustrates what Geiger and I label as ‘the impasse.’ For instance, the response from the two GPC reviewers exempli. ed the central problems that we identify with existing models of doing re exivity. First and foremost, re exivity in US academic writing has mainly focused on examining the identities of the individual researcher rather than on the ways in which those identities intersect with institutional, geopolitical and material aspects of their positionality. This kind of identity-based re exivity is problematic because it fails to distinguish systematically among the ethical, ontological and epistemological aspects of . eldwork dilemmas. Consequently, the epistemological dilemma of whether/how it is possible to represent ‘accurately’ often gets con ated with the issue of ethical relationships and choices, as well as with the ontological question of whether there is a pre-de. ned reality (about researcher– subject relationship) that can be known, represented, challenged or altered through re exivity (Nagar & Geiger, 2000, p. 3). Last, but not least, a simple identity-based Downloaded by [University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)] at 14:12 09 July 2013 Viewpoint 183 re exivity demands that we uncover ourselves in terms of certain categories or labels. As Susan Geiger and I have argued: This demand needs to be challenged and resisted because uncovering ourselves in these terms contradicts our purpose of problematizing the dominant meanings attributed to pre-de. ned social categories—that is, social categories that are not just essentialist or overly coherent, but a view of categories as existing prior to and isolated from speci. c interactions, rather than as created, enacted, transformed in and through those interactions. (Nagar & Geiger, 2000, p. 8) The response from the scholar-activist at Aalochana proves that the tendency to reduce re exivity to simply an identity-based re exivity is by no means con. ned to the ‘Western’ academic establishment. In raising questions about who constituted an ‘authentic’ feminist researcher, the aforementioned member of Aalochana was clearly reducing positionality to the retrogressive kind of identity politics that allows only ‘Xes to speak to X issues’ (di Leonardo & Lancaster, 1997, p. 5). It was the constructive criticism from the two Vanangana of. cials that I found to be the most helpful for my project at hand, and to further grapple with the two key questions that lie at the heart of feminist research in ‘Third World’ contexts: First, how can feminists use . eldwork to produce knowledges across multiple divides (of power, geopolitical and institutional locations and axes of difference) in ways that do not re ect or reinforce the interests, agendas and priorities of the more privileged groups and places? Second, how can the production of those knowledges be tied more explicitly to the material politics of social change in favor of the less privileged communities and places? (Nagar & Geiger, 2000, p. 2) Like Wendy Larner’s work on Maori and Pakeha women in New Zealand, Vanangana’s critique was based in an implicit recognition that in any given context there are likely to be multiple situated knowledges rooted in different and often mutually irreconcilable epistemological positions (Larner, 1995, p. 187). The question that Vanangana members posed, then, was neither ‘Who was making the theoretical claims about power and representation?’ nor ‘What was the epistemological basis for those theoretical claims?’ but rather, ‘What kinds of struggles did my analysis make possible for them?’ (paraphrased from Larner, 1995, p. 187). In so doing, Vanangana of. cials circumvented the problems of a simple identity-based re exivity that characterized the responses by the GPC reviewers and the critic from Aalochana. Instead, they articulated a more complex critique—grounded in a deeper political re exivity—that pushed me to rethink the sociopolitical implications of my theoretical framework, and how my choices regarding theoretical languages were explicitly tied to questions of accountability and commitments in transnational feminist praxis. Let me give a quick example to highlight this key difference in the two kinds of critiques. One of the GPC reviewers (who had assumed that I was white and wanted me to say so) thought it was pretentious of me to claim that the problems surrounding accurate representations of ‘the subaltern’ should not deter feminist scholars from getting involved in messy issues such as domestic violence in the lives of poor women in the ‘Third World.’ The reviewer also expressed irritation that at one place, I used the term ‘talking to’ instead of ‘talking with’ when elaborating on the need for feminist academics located ‘here’ to seriously engage with theorizations of grass-roots activists ‘there.’ In order to please this reviewer, then, all I would have had to do was to claim an authentic status as a ‘real native’ from Uttar Pradesh, and use the correct lingo that replaced Downloaded by [University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)] at 14:12 09 July 2013 184 R. Nagar ‘talking to’ with ‘talking with’ without changing my argument. Ironically, however, these modi. cations would have made no difference whatsoever to the usefulness of my analysis to Vanangana. In fact, it was precisely the abstract discussion of subalternity, representation and talking with/for/to that made it hard for my initial analysis to speak directly to Vanangana’s concerns. The concrete practice of talking with the campaigners, however, led me to reorient my story away from what was fashionable in the academic realm of theory, into the direction of the Bundeli women’s political and intellectual priorities. This entailed eliminating the ‘jargon’ about politics of representation and replacing it with an analysis of the intersections among empowerment, violence, space and gender in South Asian development politics. Ultimately, however, our ability to talk across worlds—to align our theoretical priorities with the concerns of marginalized communities whose struggles we want to advance—is connected to the opportunities, constraints and values embedded in our academic institutions. In the concluding part of this viewpoint, I turn to this structural issue and identify some of the key areas we need to reshape in order to create institutional spaces that can facilitate more productive dialogues among feminists located in materially, geographically, socially and politically diverse worlds. Academia, Theory, and Transnational Feminist Praxis: Some Conclusions If you ask me what is the object of my work, the object of the work is to always reproduce the concrete in thought—not to generate another good theory, but to give a better-theorized account of concrete historical reality. This is not an anti-theoretical stance. I need theory in order to do this. But the goal is to understand the situation you started out with better than before. (Hall, 1988, pp. 69–70) [1] Transnational feminist conversations, especially between worlds as far removed from each other as the ones I have described, cannot be productive unless feminist academics based in Western/Northern institutions produce research agendas and knowledges that do not merely address what is theoretically exciting or trendy here, but also what is considered politically imperative by the communities we work with or are committed to over there. By making this distinction between theory and politics I am not implying that people who ‘do’ theory are not engaged in political work, or that political activists are not simultaneously engaged in important theory building. Rather, I am echoing the manner in which each group commonly states its priorities: for feminist academics in major research institutions in the USA, the primary concerns are often articulated in terms of theory, while NGOs such as Vanangana or Aalochana are mainly interested in the political and strategic rami. cations of a given concept or analysis. In other words, widening the notion of what constitutes theory should form the core of transnational feminist praxis. At a time when our students and colleagues are increasingly drawn to the elegance of ‘high’ theory and the headiness of the abstract, we need to go back to theorists like Stuart Hall who remind us that concrete political engagement does not translate into an anti-theoretical stance. Equally, it is critical that such knowledge be produced and shared in theoretical languages that are simultaneously accessible and relevant to multiple audiences here and there. While many academics accept the idea that working with NGOs or social movements requires producing written products other than scholarly books or articles— for example, workshops, organizational reports, and newspaper articles in local lan- Downloaded by [University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)] at 14:12 09 July 2013 Viewpoint 185 guages—I believe that it is increasingly important for us to produce scholarly analyses that can be accessed, used and critiqued by our audiences in multiple geographical, social and institutional locations. This kind of scholarship is necessary not only to dismantle the existing hierarchies of knowledge but also because, as we know so well, scholars in US research universities are often too overcommitted to devote much time to developing workshops, organizational reports, or other ‘non-academic’ products. At the same time, however, we must continue the struggle to create new institutional spaces that favor, facilitate, and give due recognition to alternative research products and to new forms of collaboration. Workshops, organizational reports, or newspaper articles in local/non-local languages that emerge from our work, for instance, must be institutionally recognized—not as extra-curricular activities that we do on the side—but as research products that require special skills and time and energy commitments, and that are central to scholarly knowledge production. Similarly, we must carry on . ghting for institutional recognition that knowledge is never produced by a single individual. This involves replacing the notion of sole authorship with one that genuinely recognizes and encourages collaboration with actors such as NGO workers, life-historians, and research assistants—not only in shaping the outcome of research—but also in articulating and framing our research priorities and questions. In the context of research that focuses on feminist organizing at the grass-roots level, it is also important to consider how women’s groups are building alliances with men and the ways in which male research assistants and co-researchers can play a critical role in yielding insights about activism, gender and space, particularly in gender-segregated social contexts. Finally, I would like to draw upon Cindi Katz’s notion of translocal ‘countertopographies that link different places analytically and thereby enhance struggles in the name of common interests’ (Katz, 2001, p. 1230). For transnational feminist research to produce such ‘countertopographies’, researchers must seriously consider how we can serve as useful channels of communication between scholars and activists located in different places who are not as mobile as we are. For example, organizations working on environmental issues and economic policies in India want to know about how local organizations coordinated and developed their strategies during the World Trade Organization protest in Seattle. Similarly, women’s organizations in Pune want to . nd out how they can build bridges with women’s organizations in Bundelkhand. And feminist researchers working in New Delhi want to know how they can link up with feminists working on similar issues in Dar es Salaam and Cape Town. Combining this concern in our own re exive process can help us use our locational, material and institutional privileges to develop more politically effective feminist research strategies in the context of globalization. Acknowledgements I dedicate this essay to the memory of Susan Geiger, who never got a chance to read this piece, but who instilled in me the passion and inspiration for the issues I raise here. Discussions with David Faust, Naomi Scheman, and Mary Jo Maynes, and comments from an anonymous reviewer were critical in helping me articulate several of the points I make here about re exivity, political engagement, collaborative knowledge, and relevant theory, and I thank them for generously sharing their time and ideas with me. Last but not least, I am grateful to Lynn Staeheli for her interest, encouragement, and vision, for her excellent feedback on an earlier version of this article, and for making this viewpoints section happen. Downloaded by [University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)] at 14:12 09 July 2013 186 R. Nagar NOTE [1] I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for pointing out this quotation by Stuart Hall to me. The reviewer also adds (a` la Marx), and I agree completely, that after understanding ‘the situation you started out with better than before,’ the goal is to change that situation. REFERENCES DI LEONARDO, MICAELA & LANCASTER, ROGER N. (1997) Introduction: embodied meanings, carnal practices, in: ROGER N. LANCASTER & MICAELA DI LEONARDO (Eds) The Gender, Sexuality Reader: culture, history, political economy, pp. 1–10 (New York, Routledge). HALL, STUART (1988) The toad in the garden: Thatcherism among the theorists, in: CARY NELSON & LAWRENCE GROSSBERG (Eds) Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, pp. 35–73 (Urbana, IL, University of Illinois Press). KATZ, CINDI (2001) On the grounds of globalization: a topography for feminist political engagement, Signs, 26, pp. 1213–1234. LARNER, WENDY (1995) Theorising difference in Aotearoa/New Zealand, Gender, Place and Culture, 2, pp. 177– 190. 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