Deindustrialized cities in the United States are at a particular crossroads when it comes to the contest over refugees. Do refugees represent opportunity or danger? These cities are in desperate need ...to stem population and resource loss, problems that an influx of refugees could seemingly help address. However, the cities are simultaneously dealing with local communities that are already feeling internally displaced by economic and technological flux. For these existing citizens, the prospect of incoming refugee populations can be perceived as a threat to financial, cultural, and personal security. Few U.S. locations provide a more vivid case study of this fight than Metro Detroit, where competing interest groups are waging war over the meaning of the figure of the refugee. This book dives deeply into the discourse on refugees occurring among various institutions in Metro Detroit. The way in which local institutions talk about refugees gives us vital clues as to how they are negotiating competing pressures and how the city overall is negotiating competing imperatives. Indeed, this local discourse gives us a crucial glimpse into how U.S. cities are defining and redefining themselves today. The figure of the refugee becomes a slate on which groups with varied interests write their stories, aspirations, and fears. Consequently, we can figure out from local refugee discourses the ongoing question of what it means to be a Metro Detroiter—and by extension, what it means to be a revitalizing U.S. city in this age.
This commentary makes the case for keeping marginal perspectives and experiences in clear view as we try to decenter the West/North in the field of global communication and social change. Otherwise, ...we risk replacing current blinders with new ones. To be truly relevant, we need to take into account the experiential reality of people who have historically been marginalized, but also those who continue to become marginalized by current economic and political forces, including neoliberal policies and practices. In addition, it will be useful to build upon existing bases of knowledge in the South within academia but also residing within marginalized communities. Such a grounded and reflexive approach promises to challenge our current perspectives and theories, harkening toward new paradigms.
This article examines a few appropriations of the main women characters in the Indian epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, by ordinary women in their folk songs, as well as by women writers and ...artists in the feminist domain. The appropriations dip into already existing associations about the epic heroines, but rearticulate these to create greater space for the elaboration and positioning of postcolonial Indian feminisms. While the appropriation of the epics carries certain risks, such as unintentional complicity with right-wing conservative projects and the positioning of Indian feminism as exclusive of caste and class concerns, it is contended here that the risk is worth taking because the epics continue to be an important and contested part of the cultural field, and because the feminist appropriations are able to absorb and respond to the critiques to some degree. The appropriations in the folk domain are juxtaposed with those in the feminist domain: those of Sita from the Ramayana are juxtaposed with those of Draupadi from the Mahabharata. In addition, all appropriations are placed within the debate in Indian feminism over the use of traditional narratives in order to garner insight into the potential of the narratives as a resource for feminist projects.
This essay examines personal narratives and gender‐sensitive fictional representations of the Partition between India and Pakistan to contribute to a counterhistory that takes centrally into account ...the ways in which nation formation was written on the bodies of women. The juxtaposition of my mother's stories, the oral histories gathered by feminist historiographers, and critical analyses of Partition‐related fiction, allows us to see the limitations and potential of each. While dominant ideologies are seen to seep into the narratives, each in its own way also goes beyond the dominant version of Partition history to lay the ground for new ways of understanding and imagining the pain that women experienced and the responses they made to circumstances not of their own making.
This article examines a few appropriations of the main women characters in the Indian epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, by ordinary women in their folk songs, as well as by women writers and ...artists in the feminist domain. The appropriations dip into already existing associations about the epic heroines, but rearticulate these to create greater space for the elaboration and positioning of postcolonial Indian feminisms. While the appropriation of the epics carries certain risks, such as unintentional complicity with right-wing conservative projects and the positioning of Indian feminism as exclusive of caste and class concerns, it is contended here that the risk is worth taking because the epics continue to be an important and contested part of the cultural field, and because the feminist appropriations are able to absorb and respond to the critiques to some degree. The appropriations in the folk domain are juxtaposed with those in the feminist domain: those of Sita from the Ramayana are juxtaposed with those of Draupadi from the Mahabharata. In addition, all appropriations are placed within the debate in Indian feminism over the use of traditional narratives in order to garner insight into the potential of the narratives as a resource for feminist projects.
This chapter argues for focusing on the communicative empowerment of "women of the South" (women living in poverty and deprivation in every region of the world) in the conviction that it is by ...learning from these women that alternative visions for a more just and sustainable future can be created. Through a review of literature, this chapter documents the ways in which women of the South are silenced within (a) colonial discourse, (b) news and academic discourses, and (c) development discourse. The chapter then reviews literature describing a number of efforts by women to use traditional and modern communicative practice to create social change. This chapter derives insights from the literature on both the obstacles and possibilities that exist in the path to the communicative empowerment of women of the South.
This textual comparison of articles on female foeticide in the Indian English press based in Bombay, and activist literature and documentaries, found that news frames followed closely the activists' ...own frames of interpretation, although certain themes were amplified and others attenuated. The meshing of frames enabled a construction of the female foeticide issue that was favorable to the campaign, but it also created important absences that could stem the radical potential of the women's movement.
Thesis (M.A.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1982.
Typescript. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves ...86-87).
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