Contrary to regional and global masculine narratives of social change, third world women have in fact been the backbone of their countries’ economic “development” as well as oppositional movements.  Women’s paid and unpaid labor have produced the “economic miracles” of incrementally increasing capital growth and women have underwritten the national texts of “capitalization” and “civilization.”  Women’s movements transformed the ways oppositional movements are imagined and enacted in the most fundamental manner.  What have real and imagined national transformation meant to and for women?  How do third world women construct and reorder their world on a daily basis? When, where, and why do they mobilize themselves and emerge as agents of social change?  How do they negotiate their often-conflicting positionalities in familial, communal, national, and international spheres? This course investigates the concepts of political agency, the gendered construction of class, and globality by construing the ways third world women’s movements have been imagined, constructed, regulated, and represented in various discourses--sociological, historical, political, and cultural.  By studying and discussing films, narratives, and theoretical texts, we will investigate and celebrate the ways in which third world women have interrogated and re-written the political and cultural imaginings of their histories, labor, and bodies.  

This is a student-centered, process-oriented seminar in which students work individually and in groups to prepare written and oral reports and critiques.  East student is asked to make two oral presentations, write a short essay (5-8 pages) and a longer term paper (12-15 pages).  
 

Week 1: Introduction—Movements, Gender, and Representation

Week 2 & 3: Where are the Third World Women?
Selections from History of Doing
Selections from Dignity and Daily Bread
Spivak’s “Can the Subaltern Speak?”

Week  4: Nation and Women’s Movements
Davies, Miranda Ed.  Third World-Second Sex: Women’s Struggles and National Liberation, Third World Women Speak Out.  London: Zed, 1983.

Week 5: Third World Women and the International Politics
Enloe, Bananas, Beaches, and Bases

Week 6 & 7: Representations and Struggle
Selections from Embodied Violence
Articles to be distributed

Week 8 & 9: Postcoloniality and Women’s Movements
Selections from Kumar, Radha. The History of Doing. New Delhi: Kali for Women, 1993.
Devi, Imaginary Maps

Week 10 & 11: Sexual Violence and Third Women’s Movements
Park, You-me “Comforting the Nation.” Interventions.
Choi, Positions special issue on comfort women

Week 12 & 13: Struggle for Dignity in Local Movements
Rowbotham, Sheila and Swasti Mitter. Dignity and Daily Bread.  London: Routeldge, 1994. 
Articles to be distributed

Week 14: Conclusion
 

Additional Readings: Capitalism in the age of globalization : the management of contemporary society / Samir Amin. Author/Contributor: Amin, Samir. 

Publisher/Date: London ; Atlantic Highlands, N.J. : Zed Books, 1997. Description: xii, 158 p. ; 23 cm. Subjects: Capitalism.
Business cycles.
Competition, International. Contents: 1. The Future of Global Polarization -- 2. The Capitalist Economic Management of the Crisis of Contemporary Society -- 3. Reforming International Monetary Management of the Crisis -- 4. The Rise of Ethnicity: A Political Response to Economic Globalization -- 5. What are the Conditions for Relaunching Development in the South? -- 6. The Challenges posed by Globalization: The European Case -- 7. Ideology and Social Thought: The Intelligentsia and the Development Crisis. Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.

1856494675
1856494683 (pbk.)

East Asia and globalization / edited by Samuel S. Kim. Primary Material: Book Publisher/Date: Lanham, Md. : Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, c2000. URL: George Mason holdings 

Location: GM: Click "George Mason Holdings" for holdings and status Call Number: HF1600.5 .E17 2000 Number of Items: Status: No information available

Inequity in the global village : recycled rhetoric and disposable people / Jan Knippers Black. Publisher/Date: West Hartford, Conn. : Kumarian Press, 1999. Description: xi, 275 p. : ill. ; 23 cm. 

1. Introduction: No Place to Call Home. 2. Marketing Snake Oil and Theory -- Pt. I. A Cookie-Cutter World: The New Nationalism. 3. Tinderbox in the Balkans' Southern Tier. 4. The Spillover of Suppressed Nationalism: Poland and the Baltics. 5. Empire Implosion and Independence by Default: Central Asia and Belarus -- Pt. II. The Displaced and the Dispossessed. 6. Ethiopia's Costly Family Feud. 7. A World of Refugees: The Uprooted of Indochina. 8. Trafficking in Labor: Southeast Asia and the Modern Muslim World -- Pt. III. Second-Coming Capitalism and Comparative Disadvantage. 9. Previews of the New World Order: Colonialism and the Caribbean Basin Initiative. 10. Privatizing Privilege: Russia and Central Asia. 11. Cuba: Clinging to the Dream -- Pt. IV. The Plundered Planet and Its Endangered Peoples. 12. Boom and Bust in the Brazilian Amazon. 13. Papua New Guinea: Modern Materialism and the New Cargo Cult. 14. Greenpeace: An Ecowarrior's Belated Victory -- Pt. V. Input Democracy and the Unemployed State. 15. Redemocratization in the Southern Cone: A Legacy of Abuse. 16. Election Monitoring in Paraguay: The Show and the Critics. 17. Magic Realism and Mexican Elections -- Pt. VI. Security States and States of Insecurity. 18. When Democracy Fails: The Legacy of Burma's Abortive Uprising. 19. Anarchy at Street-Level: The New Security Threat in Southern Africa. 20. Food Security: The Bottom Line for Africa's Front-line States -- Pt. VII. When All Else Fails: Engendering a New Order. 21. Dowry Abuse: No Honeymoon for Indian Brides. 22. Doing More with Less: Structural Adjustment in the Caribbean. 23. Globalizing Popular Organization: The Old Girls Network. 24. Conclusion: Back to the Future. Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index. Summary: "As globalization rapidly replaces the cold war paradigm, disturbing aspects of this transition are often glossed over. Jan Black illuminates the problems that have arisen such as growing refugee populations, increased nationalism, and describes how the narrow distribution of benefits from globalization has created a yawning gap in wealth and power both among and within states. She works on the premise that this disturbing and growing gap is partly the product of a globalized capitalist system run amuck and which she describes as "mobile money and immobilized political leadership.""--BOOK JACKET. 
ISBN: 1565491009 (cloth : alk. paper)
1565490991 (paper : alk. paper) Primary Material: Book 

Location: AU: LIB Stacks Call Number: HC79.I5 B598 1999 
Number of Items: 1 Status: Available

Rising from the ashes? : labor in the age of "global" capitalism / edited by Ellen Meiksens Wood, Peter Meiksins, and Michael Yates. Publisher/Date: New York : Monthly Review Press, c1998. Description: 217 p. ; 24 cm. Subjects: Capitalism.
International trade.
Labor movement. Contents: Labor, class, and state in global capitalism / Ellen Meiksins Wood -- Talking about work / Doug Henwood -- Same as it ever was?: the structure of the working class / Peter Meiksins -- On gender and class in U.S. labor history / Johanna Brenner -- American labor: a movement again? / Kim Moody -- Organizing the unorganized: will promises become practice? / Fernando Gapasin and Michael Yates -- Race and labor organization in the United State / Michael Goldfield -- Class, community, and empire: toward an anti-imperialist strategy for labor / Eric Mann ---Labor eduction in the maelstrom of class struggle / Bill Fletcher, Jr. -- Worker insurgency, rural revolt, and the crisis of the Mexican regime / Richard Roman and Edur Velasco Arregui ---Globalization on trial: crisis and class struggle in East Asia / David McNally -- Communists and workers in ex-Communist Europe / Peter Gowan -- European industrial relations: impasse or model / Gregory Albo and Chris Roberts -- The ICFTU and the politics of compromise / Gerard Greenfield -- Notes on labor at the end of the century: starting over? / Sam Gindin. Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index. Other Authors/Contributors: Meiksins, Peter, 1953-
Wood, Ellen Meiksins.
Yates, Michael, 1946- URL: George Mason holdings ISBN: 0853459398 (pbk.)
0853459495 (cloth) Primary Material: Book 

Location: GM: Click "George Mason Holdings" for holdings and status Call Number: HD4901 .R57 1998

1. Bandung Conference—the formation of “the third world”—nonalignment movements
2. Colonial legacy and nationalist aspiration—nationalism and development
3. Nationalism—tradition/patriarchy
4. Development—labor and sexuality
5. Labor—formalized labor—casualized labor—domestic labor
6. Sexuality—prostitution and the institution of marriage—violence
7. Violence and Labor/Violence and Sexuality (Sexual Violence)—sexual harrassment/marital rape
8. Exploitation or oppression?
9. How and who to organize?—SEWA and the Marxist tradition of labor organization