gender
The Front Room: Diaspora Migrant Aesthetics in the Home – review
In The Front Room, Michael McMillan examines the significance of domestic spaces in creating a sense of belonging for Caribbean migrants in the UK. Delving into themes of resistance and creolisation, these sensitively curated essays and images reveal how ordinary objects shape diasporic identities, writes Antara Chakrabarty.
Migration, at its most basic level, means a physical relocation. However, this “mobility” entails a complex, polysemous reality whose consequences reverberate for those who leave one place for another. Michael McMillan’s The Front Room: Diaspora Migrant Aesthetics in the Home presents a poignant personal tale of materiality, memory and diasporic emotions. It connects with readers by presenting the past without falling prey to anachronism, narrating ordinary aspects of our day-to-day lives through pertinent sociological themes and recurring issues like racism, world politics, aspirations, diasporic memory and more. Michael McMillan, a playwright and artist, offers a text that unfolds as a choreopoem to the domestic spaces inhabited by migrants, infused with theatricality and a curatorial sensibility around the images and references shared. The book, originally published in 2009, has been re-released and is divided across several themes and including additional essays, including by eminent cultural anthropologist Stuart Hall.
Caribbean diaspora re-imagined the Victorian parlour, (the front room) through a sense of decolonial resistance, cultural survival and aspirational attempts to adapt to the new culture in which they found themselves.
The book takes us on a journey of discovery as to what spaces meant, looked, smelled and felt like for Caribbean diaspora settled in the UK from the mid-20th century. It describes how the tactile sensations and emotions held in a room amount to so much more than its aesthetics. The text begins with a section on how Caribbean diaspora re-imagined the Victorian parlour, (the front room) through a sense of decolonial resistance, cultural survival and aspirational attempts to adapt to the new culture in which they found themselves. The images used to showcase the different varieties of such front rooms were mostly taken from the response to the exhibition, A front room in 1976 , curated by McMillan at the Museum of the Home in London in 2005-06.
A primary thematic focus is the emergence of a significant cultural process of change often called as creolisation which gives rise to a third culture which is neither Caribbean, nor British, but a diasporic intermingling of the two. This creolisation also occurs as a result of intergenerational change in the wake of World War Two and apartheid. Moreover, it speaks to the changing imagination around what can be called a “home”, reflecting changes in identity in a foreign land. The lucidity of the essays and the various references to sociological and anthropological works on the perception of “self”, vis-à-vis place making like those by Erving Goffman, Emile Durkheim, Stuart Hall gears the book towards students beyond the disciplinary boundaries of Sociology, Anthropology, Arts and Aesthetics, History, Museology and more. Towards the latter part of the book, McMillan also brings in other diasporic communities beyond the Caribbean, such as Moroccan, Surinamese, Antillean and Indonesian migrant communities in the Netherlands.
Front rooms generally resisted change, carrying forward an aesthetic and sensibility as the badge or identifier of a community.
The book presents an important diasporic narrative underpinned by a critical struggle of the diasporic experience: underneath the subject of the ”front room” lies the process of subverted diasporic emotions and anti-assimilation cultural change. The emotional attachments are prioritised over fitting exactly within the typical British space. McMillan presents his readers with ten commodities that were normally seen in the Caribbean households which were also seen in the diasporic “front room” in the UK. These objects wordlessly communicated the Caribbean way of life without. A homogenisation of the objects found in the across the British Caribbean front room happened gradually as people visited one another, trying to emulate the aesthetics of a diasporic migrant culture. As someone from South Asia, I can vouch fora very similar pattern post-colonisation. Some chose to keep religious symbolic items at the forefront whereas the others chose to fit into the moral definition of aesthetics according to the British. A front room could become a Durkheimian quasi-sacred space which had to be seen beyond its mundane nature. McMillan emphasises the changes across generations and how front rooms generally resisted change, carrying forward an aesthetic and sensibility as the badge or identifier of a community. The book makes its readers aware of the significance contained in the spaces not just through imagery, but also literary compositions like songs, poems, and other varieties of literature.
The gendered division of aesthetics was apparent in the crochets made by the women in contrast to the glass cabinets and drinks trolleys that showcased men’s tastes.
The book describes the affective power of objects through ten examples including the paraffin heater, which gave a sense of reassurance and reminded migrants of their homes through the scent of paraffin oil. The radiogram (a piece of furniture that combined a radio and record player) played the role of “home” in another new land, a sonic gateway into the past. Several other items also acted in service of what Goffman would call ‘impression management’ to a larger audience. The gendered division of aesthetics was apparent in the crochets made by the women in contrast to the glass cabinets and drinks trolleys that showcased men’s tastes. Notably, the carpets and wallpapers, though quintessentially British in theory, could be reclaimed and subverted through the choice of colourful options rather than plain base colours. The book also captures the effects of technological evolution through the inclusion of televisions, telephones and pictures of revered role models such as politicians and singers on display.
McMillan’s work takes account of the constant search for refuge in the perfectly arranged room as a way of way of asserting one’s identity and materialising an authentic diasporic identity in one’s home.
One may make the mistake of perceiving this text as an over-romanticisation of material objects that convey diasporic identity. However, McMillan avoids this, convincing his readers of the deeply felt significance of the ordinary in connecting diaspora to the places they left behind. He bolsters this through setting ordinary items, spaces and lives in the context of unique epistemological nuances such as apartheid, cultural hybridisation, symbolic capital, taste and more. His work takes account of the constant search for refuge in the perfectly arranged room as a way of way of asserting one’s identity and materialising an authentic diasporic identity in one’s home.
The book is successful in its theatrical and thoughtful presentation and the depth it achieves over only a limited number of essays. Its effect is to fill readers’ minds with questions and to pave the way for similar studies in other postcolonial diasporic communities.
Note: This review gives the views of the author, and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, or of the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Image credit: 12matamoros on Pixabay
Q and A with Sumi Madhok on Vernacular Rights Cultures
In this interview with Anna D’Alton (LSE Review of Books), Sumi Madhok speaks about her latest book, Vernacular Rights Cultures which subverts prevailing frameworks around human rights by exploring how subaltern groups mobilise for justice through particular political imaginaries, conceptual vocabularies and gendered political struggles.
Read a review of the book for LSE Review of Books here.
Q: In Vernacular Rights Cultures, you critique the Eurocentred discourse around rights and identify the “politics of origins” as an important aspect of this. What is the “politics of origins” and why do you push against it?
The politics of origins is the key framework around which global human rights is organised. It is a racialised and binary global human rights discourse, which stipulates that human rights originate in, belong to, travel from and operate for the West. This politics of origins is a shared discourse; shared by not only celebrants and detractors of human rights but also by critical and progressive scholarship on human rights. Significantly, it organises the global human rights discourse into a series of binary distinctions, the key ones being between West/non-West, universalism vs cultural particularism and “Asian values” vs “Western political and civil human rights”. An important way in which these binaries constantly appear is by asking the question, are rights are Western? This question is relentlessly rehearsed, by both celebrants and detractors of human rights, ie, both by those who claim human rights are given to the rest of the world by the “West”, as well as by those who use the originary argument to refuse it, saying that human rights have no cultural or political traction in contexts outside the “West” because they are not part of ”non-western” cultural values.
One of the things the book does is to sidestep the politics of origins and the binary formulations that foreground rights conversations across scholarly, practitioner and policymaking contexts.
One of the things the book does is to sidestep the politics of origins and the binary formulations that foreground rights conversations across scholarly, practitioner and policymaking contexts. Two things to note here: firstly, the politics of origins is not without consequences. In the hands of the detractors, and particularly authoritarian nation states, it places a handy argument to delegitimise democratic protest, politics and questioning of excessive state power on the basis that human rights are illegitimate, alien and foreign and therefore with little cultural traction and legitimacy. In critical/progressive scholarship on human rights, on the other hand, this originary story shores up the “West” as the sole epistemic subject of human rights, although this time via critique and through displaying wilful ignorance and historical unknowing of rights struggles in most of the world. Therefore, for instance, you could be the most radical theorist of human rights and yet, you wouldn’t be under any obligation to display any knowledge, let alone theorise, about rights politics outside the Euro-North Atlantic world.
Secondly, participants in rights politics in “most of the world” don’t think of their worldmaking projects and rights struggles as universalist or not universalist or particularist. One of the things they’re asking for is for their struggles and worldmaking projects to be considered part of the universal and for these to be heard and to matter epistemically – that’s a big part of the struggle. However, this aspiration is often thwarted by the refusal to think outside of the politics of origins, resulting in an almost unmoveable impasse in global human rights. A key intervention of the book is to shift this stasis and move rights thinking out of this impasse.
Conceptual diversity is part of my broader project on anti-imperial epistemic justice.
Q: Why do you emphasise conceptual diversity as a “key intellectual project of vernacular rights cultures” (177)?
Conceptual diversity is part of my broader project on anti-imperial epistemic justice. The book is a key constituent of this project. Conceptual diversity is important in order to theorise and conceptually capture the stakes and struggles of rights politics in most of the world. We urgently need conceptual scholarship from most of the world, one that illuminates the critical conceptual vocabularies and the political imaginaries of rights politics taking place in different parts of the world. This is crucial because when people do think about rights struggles in most of the world, that work is mostly embedded in Eurocentric frameworks and tends to be either not only overly descriptive but also converts “the other and elsewhere” into “case studies” of global human rights, as though these have no epistemic authority of their own.
Q: Why do you foreground haq, a transregional vernacular of rights prevalent in South Asia, over a universalist idea of human rights?
Haq is a fantastically cosmopolitan concept. The word is first sighted in classical Hebrew and in Semitic languages like Aramaic and Mandaean. It then comes into pre-Islamic poetry and into the Quran. Over the centuries, it travels extensively to become the principal. word for a right across East Africa, North Africa, the Middle East, Iran, Turkey, South Asia. It comes into South Asia though Persian, which was a state language of undivided India and Pakistan before partition by the British Empire. The word has been used by people across two continents, and in my own tracking, in at least eight different languages to speak about their entitlements and rights. This begs the question: what is the conceptual nature of haq? What kinds of things is it being used to articulate and demand as a rights claim, and what is (or isn’t) it able to accommodate? Who are the subjects of haq? What sorts of rights politics does it animate? In what ways does rights politics for haq expand existing human rights politics, scholarship and theoretical frameworks? For instance, paying attention to conceptual languages of haq shows that it not only sutures the politics of rights to the politics of justice but also grounds rights in alternative justificatory premises and conceptual meanings. In other words, the rights politics in most of the world, appears as the politics of structural justice. It is therefore, not the civilisational, racialised, minimalist, depoliticised, humanitarian politics of moralism and despair. Rather, it is one that is located within political struggles for freedom, rights and justice, and underpinned by a conception of justice as non-exploitational and structural.
The word [haq] has been used by people across two continents, and in my own tracking, in at least eight different languages to speak about their entitlements and rights.
Q: Establishing a “feminist historical ontology” underpins your methodology. What does this involve and what is gained from taking this theoretical perspective?
The book refuses methodological nationalism and statism and the “great men” stories that it champions, not least, because more than ever, there is a need for scholarly accounts of rights and human rights to move outside of methodological nationalism in order to document and theorise rights politics that can form solidaristic coalitions for rights and justice across the globe, while also being able to hold nation states to account. At the same time, the book is also invested in giving an epistemic account of the critical conceptual vocabularies of rights politics that are used in contemporary subaltern movements. However, the question that arises is how does one do this? In order to give an epistemic accounting of this politics of rights, I’ve had to both devise a theoretical framework for their study, which I call vernacular rights cultures, as well as a methodological device, which I call a feminist historical ontology. Rather than looking at human rights or rights politics in different nation states or privileging state actors in global fora, I tracked the way the word haq appears in subaltern movements across different geographical areas, focusing on South Asia, specifically central eastern Pakistan, and north-western India. Vernacular rights cultures are not authentic or pure hermetically sealed sites in the Global South. These rights cultures are co-produced through and invoked within multiple, diverse and conflictual encounters with developmentalism, extractivism, dispossession, militarism, statism, legal constitutionalism, and activism; therefore, it is at the intersection of these and not as some freestanding “authentic” abstraction, that haq as a contemporary idea operates.
Rights cultures are co-produced through and invoked within multiple, diverse and conflictual encounters with developmentalism, extractivism, dispossession, militarism, statism, legal constitutionalism, and activism
Feminist historical ontology has two constitutive parts: it brings together historical ontologies with a feminist critical reflexive politics of location. The first borrows from the philosopher Ian Hacking and his work on historical ontology, which tracks how concepts come into being and acquire traction at particular historical points. Concepts enable us to describe and visualise the world, and result in what Hacking calls “making up people”. In my ethnographies of rights mobilisations, I tracked the work that haq was doing in “making up people”. Haq not only signifies political subjectivities and worldmaking imaginaries but also brings into being a particular relation to the self. It’s important to note that critical conceptual vocabularies of rights are not simply formalistic or technical literal terms, but that they produce political imaginaries and set in motion processes of subjectification, which have very particular consequences on the ground.
Haq, too, is a gendered concept; it brings into being gendered subjects of rights and puts in place a gendered set of political possibilities, futurities and actions.
Like all phenomena, concepts are gendered. Haq, too, is a gendered concept; it brings into being gendered subjects of rights and puts in place a gendered set of political possibilities, futurities and actions. In order to be able to foreground the gendered nature of concepts, historical ontology, therefore, requires a supplementation with a critical reflexive feminist politics of location that draws on feminist anti-imperial, postcolonial, anti-colonial, decolonial and critical race scholarship in order to reflect existing hierarchically and oppressively arranged site-specific gendered power relations on the one hand, and Eurocentred knowledge production on the other. Accordingly, feminist historical ontologies (of rights in this case) are methodological devices that produce an orientation towards generating conceptual accounts of rights encounters in the world that are responsive to a critical reflexive politics of location, to gendered power relations and struggles, to political imaginaries of subaltern struggle and worldmaking, and to the coming into being of gendered subjects of rights.
Note: This interview gives the views of the author, and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, or of the London School of Economics and Political Science.
HE 2 SHE: Artist Pippa Garner Hacks Her Gender
Pippa Garner is a fabulous, mercurial artist with an extrasensory attunement to cultural shifts, a habit of self-mythologization, and a taste for absurdity. ...
Experiences of Menstruation from the Global South and North – review
In Experiences of Menstruation from the Global South and North, Kay Standing, Sara Parker and Stefanie Lotter compile multidisciplinary perspectives examining experiences of and education around menstruation in different parts of the world. Spanning academic research, activism and poetry, this thought-provoking volume advocates for inclusive approaches that encompass the diverse geographical, social, cultural, gender- and age-related subjectivities of menstruators worldwide, writes Udita Bose.
As Bobel writes in the foreword to Experiences of Menstruation from the Global South and North, “Menstruation is simultaneously everywhere and nowhere” (xvii). The book attempts to create dialogues between the Global North and Global South, recognising that menstrual experiences are a global issue, but the stigma, shame, and secrecy surrounding menstruation, make it difficult to address the various problems associated with menstruation.
The book criticises how discourse about menstruation in the Global South is characterised by the development approach produced by the Global North.
The book criticises how discourse about menstruation in the Global South is characterised by the development approach produced by the Global North. In the introduction, Lotter et al argue that development approaches adopted in the Global South focusing on “alleviating poverty and working towards gender equality and improvement of living conditions” (10) have reinforced stigma associated with menstruation. This occurs because such development approaches centre the supply and demand of menstrual products, which, according to Garikipati in Chapter Seven, promotes the concealment of menstruation through the use of menstrual products (105). Lotter et a argue that a decolonial approach will help to acknowledge that countries in the Global South have made “trailblazing developments” (11) in destigmatising menstruation and tackling period poverty: Kenya ended the taxation of menstrual products long before Canada, in 2004 (11). The editors thus call for the Global North to learn from the Global South and promote a collaborative global approach when discussing menstrual experiences.
The book identifies how a lack of scientific knowledge and information about menstruation exacerbates the stigmatising of sociocultural experiences associated with it
The collaborative approach is evident in how the chapters in the collection have been organised and linked. For instance, the book identifies how a lack of scientific knowledge and information about menstruation exacerbates the stigmatising of sociocultural experiences associated with it, in the Global North and the Global South. King (Chapter Three) discusses at length how “physiology textbooks” recommended for medical students in the UK do not explain that even though menstruation is a prerequisite for conception and pregnancy, they do not inevitably follow from menstruation (24). Such emphasis on the alleged “purpose” of the menstruating body obscures the reality of the experience for women and girls. The pain, discomfort and blood loss that regularly accompany menstruation is minimised, hindering girls’ and women’s ability to respond to and understand their own bodies. This resonates with Amini’s research in Iran (Chapter 12). Amini demonstrates how most girls in Iran respond to menarche thinking that they have either lost their virginity or have a bad illness (165). These chapters show how the experience of the biological process of menstruation is conditioned by the cultural meaning it gains in a context.
Research [in Nepal] found that intersecting factors like caste, religious ideologies and ethnicity determine whether a teacher can discuss menstruation in school.
Amini’s research connects to that of Parker et al (Chapter Four) which, based in Nepal, reiterates the importance of imparting knowledge about menstruation and placing it in its sociocultural context. Their research found that intersecting factors like caste, religious ideologies and ethnicity determine whether a teacher can discuss menstruation in school. In this chapter and in the research project Dignity Without Danger – a research project launched in 2021 by Subedi and Parker developing and gathering educational resources on menstruation in Nepal (2021) – research participants noted that they were left to study the topic of menstruation on their own (38). The contextualisation of menstrual knowledge also frames the work by Garikipati (Chapter Seven) who focuses her research on menstrual products in the Indian context (103). Along with criticising the profit-driven global market, she emphasises the need to focus on sustainable development. Garikipati advocates for solutions that are tailored appropriately to the individual context (105).
The discussions on contextualising knowledge production about menstruation by researchers in diverse sociocultural and physical contexts underline the need for inclusivity. Inclusion is discussed in relation to several dimensions of menstrual knowledge production. Various researchers have captured menstrual experiences in the everyday context of the workplace (Fry et al, Chapter Eight), the school (Parker et al, Chapter Four; King, Chapter Three), the community (Garikipati, chapter Seven; Quint, Chapter Five; Macleod, Chapter 13) and the home (Amini, Chapter 12). In every setting, it is the menstruating body whose agency takes centre stage. This is enabled through the diverse and creative research methods employed by the researchers to explore menstrual experiences. For instance, Macleod (Chapter 13) had menstruating girls shoot films to narrate their menstrual experiences and held informal sessions in the schools in Gombe and Buwenge in Uganda to watch the films (190). This resonates with Lessie’s (Chapter Two) multi-sectoral approach to addressing menstruation and menstrual health. As Letsie underscores, the right to information and the right to health are basic human rights. Menstrual health is therefore a human rights issue, and its inclusion in health and development policies and programmes should be prioritised.
The book encompasses menstruating bodies at different stages of life, be it menarche or menopause
The book encompasses menstruating bodies at different stages of life, be it menarche or menopause (Weiss et al, Chapter 10), and menstruating bodies that are disabled (Basnet et al, Chapter Nine). The concluding pages of the book discuss the future prospects of research on menstruation. In doing so, Standing et al highlight the need for more research on “menstruators at margins” (230), for example, menstruators in prisons and detention centres, in humanitarian settings, sex workers, and those with disabilities. Thomson’s (Chapter 11) poem calls for normalising menstruation irrespective of gender and menopause irrespective of age, describing voluntary menopause at a young age to convert from being a female to a male (“because when I was a little girl, I knew I wasn’t…I just thank God that me and my Mother’s menopause didn’t align” 156-157). The poem echoes Lotter et al’s observation in the introduction that “not all women have periods and not all people who menstruate are women” (7). More than seeing menstruation through a lens of gender, it needs to be seen as “an issue of equity and justice” (7).
In this way, the book thus comes full circle in attempting to locate the menstruating body at the epicentre of the school and integrate all other sectors of society (family, community, policy development) into the production of knowledge on menstruation. The amplification of the need for inclusivity is particularly valuable, recognising the differences between menstrual experiences in the Global North and the Global South and challenging the gender binary, as captured in Thomson’s poetry. It is a thought-provoking volume which exposes the reader to the geographical, social, cultural, gender- and age-related subjectivities in which menstruation is experienced, examined through a variety of epistemological approaches. The book thus sets the ball rolling for further advancement of knowledge production around menstrual experiences in all their diversity.
Note: This post gives the views of the author, and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, or of the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Image credit: PINGO’s Forum on Flickr.
Defamatory Remarks Prompt Resignations & Legal Restructuring at Philosophical Society
Four members of the executive committee of the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain (PESGB) resigned in the wake of complaints that Impact, the society’s journal, published defamatory remarks about a philosophy graduate student.
In issue 27 (September 2022) the journal published “How can universities promote academic freedom? Insights from the front line of the gender wars,” by Judith Suissa (UCL) and Alice Sullivan (UCL). As explained here, the authors of that article attack Christa Peterson, a philosophy graduate student at the University of Southern California: “Suissa and Sullivan insult Peterson by calling her a ‘troll’, insinuate she has mental problems by characterizing her as ‘obsessive’, falsely accuse her of ‘bullying’… and misdescribe her work in an inflammatory way.”
According to minutes from a meeting of the society in November, 2023:
Amanda Fulford, Naomi Hodgson, David Lewin and Victoria Jameson resigned from their positions on the Executive Committee in June 2023. Naomi, David and Amanda resigned in response to criticism from some members of the Executive over the handling of complaints received by the Society about IMPACT 27. They felt this criticism to be unfair and obstructive to the work they had been appointed to carry out. Victoria resigned in solidarity with the officers.
Officers of the society had suggested that in light of the complaints, the piece by Suissa and Sullivan be revised:
At [a previous meeting], the Secretary and Treasurer had reviewed the complaints and recommended that the authors be asked to amend two passages in the pamphlet. The authors had declined to make the suggested amendments. The Trustees were therefore considering the option of withdrawing the pamphlet. Following the AGM, however, it came to light that the Society is not authorised to amend or withdraw the pamphlet without the authors’ consent. IMPACT 27 will therefore remain in the public domain.
The only revision to the article made by the authors related to an inaccurate statistic.
The complaints about the authors’ defamatory remarks led to a legal restructuring of the Society, according to the minutes:
One of the things brought to light by this affair is the personal liability of the Trustees should a legal case be brought against the Society. Therefore, legal advice has been sought from a law firm specialising in charity law, VWV. The advice relates to the transition from an unincorporated charitable association to a charitable incorporated organisation (CIO). This transition will require the formal dissolution of the PESGB as an unincorporated association and the creation of a new CIO with the same name. This in turn will require the consent of PESGB members. The Executive plans to bring a proposal to this effect to the AGM in March. VWV has advised that a complete elected Executive Committee is required before steps can be taken to incorporate, which is why these mid-term elections have been called. Once the vacancies are filled, discussions with the Charity Commission about incorporation can begin.
The meeting minutes are here.
The post Defamatory Remarks Prompt Resignations & Legal Restructuring at Philosophical Society first appeared on Daily Nous.
The Women Bus Drivers Overcoming Stereotypes in Bogotá
When Paola Perez shifts into gear and puts her foot down on the accelerator, the lime-green bus zips forward with an almost-silent whoooosh. Neat rows of dozens of identical vehicles are visible on either side through its large rectangular windshield.
“This is a very beautiful place to work,” says Perez, as she steers the bus through the pleasingly symmetrical universe of white lines, smooth gray asphalt and angular metal platforms that house nearly 200 electric charging stations. “It’s new, it’s clean and it all works.”
La Rolita’s 195 buses are 100 percent electric. Credit: Peter Yeung
This impressive space in the southwest of Colombia’s capital, Bogotá, which opened in September 2022, is the headquarters of a project taking a rare gendered approach to urban mobility. Nicknamed La Rolita — a diminutive of the word for a person from Bogotá, un rolo or una rola — it is a public transit operator largely driven by women.
“It feels like a sorority,” says Perez, 37, who has been a driver since the start. “There’s a camaraderie. We speak to each other and help each other whenever we can.”
By placing women at the heart of La Rolita, which employs about 300 female drivers and is led by a female director, city authorities are creating a more sustainable, safe, equal and just transport system in the sprawling metropolis of eight million people.
Paola Perez, who has been driving with La Rolita from the beginning, has found a camaraderie among the women who work there. Credit: Peter Yeung
“This is a masculinized sector that we are working in,” says Carolina Martinez, the organization’s general manager. “But we are beginning to change that. There are many positive and important opportunities for us to benefit from in the long term.”
For one, according to Martinez, women bus drivers have fewer traffic accidents: La Rolita, which is the city’s only public bus operator, has the second-lowest number of injuries due to accidents — 72 in 18 months — when compared with the numerous private bus operators. (Other research backs this up: One study published in 2020 by Belgium’s road traffic institute Vias found that generally women drivers “take fewer risks behind the wheel than men” and “are less involved in serious accidents.”)
The presence of female drivers in public transit also helps female passengers to feel safer in the face of high levels of gender-based violence across the city, adds Martinez. A survey in 2020 found that 84.3 percent of women in Bogotá have experienced sexual harassment while using public transit.
The post The Women Bus Drivers Overcoming Stereotypes in Bogotá appeared first on Reasons to be Cheerful.
Cartoon: Electric vehicles gone wrong
I appreciate that the new Dodge Charger EV does not have a ten foot-high grille. But it comes with an obnoxious feature called "Fratzonic Chambered Exhaust" which creates fake engine-revving sounds through a system of woofers and speakers and acoustic chambers, with a volume up to 126 decibels. According to the CDC, "loud noise above 120 dB can cause immediate harm to your ears."
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The European Congress of Families and The International Organization for the Family
Conservative MPs Miriam Cates and Ranil Jayawardena attended the European Congress of Families conference (ECF) which ran from 15-17 September 2023 in Croatia, as speakers in a programme that included members of far-right parties, organisations designated by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) as hate groups, and several of those named in a European Parliament report into the funding of religious extremism with dark money from the US radical right and Russia.
Both Cates and Jayawardena were outliers at the ECF for not having publicly called for a rolling back of sexuality and reproductive rights, and they have distanced themselves from the more strident positions of the recently rebranded and Russian-funded World Congress of Families.
However, Cates' speeches at other conferences and the manifesto of her New Social Covenant initiative include some of the same motifs used by the anti-gender movement.
In the Background: a Hundred Million Dollar Network
Tip Of The Iceberg (TOTI), a report published in 2021 by the European Parliamentary Forum for Sexual and Reproductive Rights, assembled financial data between 2009 to 2018 to detail how more than $707million was funnelled into a network of more than 50 anti-gender actors operating in Europe with the intention of rolling back human rights in sexuality and reproduction under the guise of supporting the traditional family.
A key organisation in this network bridging the US and Russia is the World Congress of Families (WCF) which rebranded in 2016 with its umbrella organisation the International Organization for the Family (IOF). One of ECF’s headline speakers was the IOF's chairman Brian Brown, other speakers included IOF members Keith Mason and Allan C Carlson, WCF founder and International Secretary.
Brian Brown, who is also on the board of another key organisation, CitizenGO, is on TOTI’s list of the thirteen most influential individuals in the anti-gender network. TOTI’s section on Russian “laundromats” covers Brown’s involvement with WCF board member Alexey Komov.
Komov serves as the External Relations Representative of the Russian Orthodox Church , is a board member of CitizenGO and is the focal point for international projects at the St. Basil the Great Charitable Foundation, since its founder, the oligarch Konstantin Malofeev, was banned from Europe and much of the West due to sanctions after the annexation of Crimea. US intelligence services considered Malofeev to be “Putin’s right arm for operations of political interference in Europe”.
In total the report identifies $186,400,000 of Russian funding for anti-gender activities with $77,300,000 from the St. Basil the Great Charitable Foundation.
Demonstrating its close ties to Putin’s regime, in 2014 the WCF was due to gather in Moscow, inside the Kremlin Palace, but because of international sanctions, the WCF rebranded the event as the “Large Families and the Future of Humanity Forum”, while keeping the same location, date, speakers and participants.
The largest European funder of anti-gender activities is the Jerome Lejeune Foundation (JLF) which spent $120,167,509 in the time period covered by the report. David G Lejeune who established the foundation’s US chapter, and was its President from March 2017 to February 2023, was a speaker at the ECF conference.
Another ECF speaker, David Ibáñez, represented Political Network for Values (PNfV), an ultra-conservative platform that connects far-right politicians and activists from Europe, Latin America, US and Africa, and is yet another influential organisation named in TOTI, receiving funding from the JLF.
PNfV has hosted events sponsored by organisations designated as anti-LGBTQ+ hate groups by the SPLC, according to an analysis by Ipas, an international organisation working to advance sexual and reproductive rights. Among the groups are Family Watch International, Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), The Center for Family and Human Rights and the IOF. ADF provided $23,300,000 in funding to the network identified by TOTI.
Sharon Slater, the head of Family Watch International and a PNfV board member, was revealed by openDemocracy to have been deeply involved in the political organising behind the infamous Uganda law that criminalises LGBTQ+ people.
PNfV has close links to Hungarian politics, having previously been chaired by a former minister and member of the country’s parliament, Katalin Novák, who left her position with the organisation in 2022 to be sworn in as Hungary’s President. In 2020 the Hungarian Government provided $140,000 to PNfV and the next PNfV Trans-Atlantic Summit in November 2021 was held in the Hungarian Parliament.
Another speaker, Nicola Speranza, is Secretary General of the Federation of Catholic Family Associations, which is listed by TOTI as an anti-gender organisation and has produced joint reports with the European Christian Political Movement (ECPM). The ECPM has hosted events against abortion, surrogacy and in support of “reintegrative therapy”, a rebranded version of gay conversion therapy.
Diego von Stauffenberg, founding member of Crossroads Pro-Life, was at the ECF conference representing Rivada Networks, a US-based communications technology business financially backed by Peter Thiel.
Right Wing Connections
The ECF conference featured numerous European politicians from the hard and far-right: Margarita De La Pisa Carrión, Victor González Coello de Portugal and Hermann Tertsch are all members of the Spanish far-right Vox Party which is named by TOTI as a beneficiary of anti-gender funding and is described as the “political expression” of CitizenGO and HazteOir, “one of the most important organisations on the far-right political spectrum” due to its extensive social media activity.
Three members of Georgio Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia party, Eugenia Maria Roccella Minister for Family, Natality and Equal Opportunities, Nicola Procaccini MEP, and Cinzia Pellegrino of the Italian Senate also spoke at the event.
Croatian MP Ladislav Ilčić, whose party openly advocates for a ban on abortion and artificial reproduction, was also a speaker at the conference. He has claimed “health education in schools is used to introduce homosexual propaganda” because “It teaches the children that homosexual acts are equally valuable and natural as heterosexual”, continuing “The Church condemns behaviour of homosexuals as evil and it has the right to say it.”
Also speaking was another Croatian MP, Vesna Vučemilović from the Homeland Movement, a coalition of minor right-wing and far-right parties which opposes abortion and same-sex marriage.
Jayawardena and Cates were approached for comment and asked what the values of the IOF are, as they understand them.
Jayawardena’s office replied, “Ranil was present for a short part of the conference – to set out his own views – and our records do not indicate that he shared a platform with anyone representing the International Organisation of the Family.”
Cates’ office was also keen to stress that speaking at the conference didn’t constitute sharing a platform with other speakers. “She spoke on a panel. Nobody from that organisation was on the panel. They were all MPs or MEPs.”
Innovation for the Masses: How to Share the Benefits of the High-Tech Economy – review
In Innovation for the Masses: How to Share the Benefits of the High-Tech Economy, Neil Lee proposes abandoning the Silicon Valley-style innovation hub, which concentrates its wealth, for alternative, more equitable models. Emphasising the role of the state and the need for adaptive approaches, Lee makes a nuanced and convincing case for reimagining how we “do” innovation to benefit the masses, writes Yulu Pi.
Professor Neil Lee will be speaking at an LSE panel event, How can we tackle inequalities through British public policy? on Tuesday 5 March at 6.30pm. Find details on how to attend here.
While everyone is talking about AI innovations, Innovation for the Masses: How to Share the Benefits of the High-Tech Economy arrives as a timely and critical examination of innovation itself. Challenging the conventional view of Silicon Valley as the paradigm for innovation, the book seeks answers on how the benefits of innovations can be broadly shared across society.
When we talk about innovation, we often picture genius scientists from prestigious universities or tech giants creating radical technologies in million-dollar labs. But in his book, Neil Lee, Professor of Economic Geography at The London School of Economics and Political Science, tells us there is more to it. He suggests that our obsession with cutting-edge innovations and idolisation of superstar hubs like Silicon Valley and Oxbridge hinders better ways to link innovation with shared prosperity.
Lee stresses that innovation doesn’t make a difference if it stays locked up in labs; it needs to be shared, learned, improved and used to make real impacts.
Innovation goes beyond the invention of disruptive new technologies. It also involves improving existing technologies or merging them to generate new innovations. In this book, Lee illustrates this idea using mobile payment technologies as an example, showcasing how the combination of existing technologies – mobile phone and payment terminals – can spawn new innovations. He argues that “technologies evolve through incremental innovations in regular and occasionally larger leaps” (23). Moreover, Lee stresses that innovation doesn’t make a difference if it stays locked up in labs; it needs to be shared, learned, improved and used to make real impacts. It is important to think beyond the notion of a single radical invention and recognise the contributions not only of major inventors but of “tweakers” who make incremental improvements and implementers who operate and maintain innovative products (25).
In challenging the conventional narratives of innovation, this book guides us to expand our understanding of innovation and paves the way for a discussion on combining innovation with equity. When we pose the question “How do we foster innovations?”, we miss out on asking a crucial follow-up: “How do we foster innovations that translate into increased living standards for everyone?”. Lee argues that the incomplete line of questioning inevitably steers us towards flawed solutions – countries all over the world building their own Silicon-something.
While the San Francisco Bay Area is home to many successful start-up founders who have made billions, it simultaneously struggles with issues like severe homelessness.
While the San Francisco Bay Area is home to many successful start-up founders who have made billions, it simultaneously struggles with issues like severe homelessness. The staggering wealth gap is evident, with the top 1 per cent of households holding 48 times more wealth than the bottom 50 per cent. Other centres of innovation like Oxbridge and Shanghai are also highly unequal, with the benefits of innovations going to a small few.
The book introduces four alternative models of innovation – Switzerland, Sweden, Austria and Taiwan – that suggest innovation doesn’t inevitably coincide with high-level inequality.
The book introduces four alternative models of innovation – Switzerland, Sweden, Austria and Taiwan – that suggest innovation doesn’t inevitably coincide with high-level inequality. Through these examples, Lee highlights the significance of often-neglected aspects of innovation: adoption, diffusion and incremental improvements. Take Austria, for instance, which might not immediately come to mind as a global hub of disruptive innovation. Its strategic commitment to continuous innovation – particularly in its traditional, industrial sectors like steel and paper – sheds light on the more nuanced, yet equally impactful, facets of innovation. (92) Taiwan, on the other hand, gained its growth from technological development facilitated by its advanced research institutions such as the Industrial Technology Research Institute and state-led industrial policy. Foxconn stands as the world’s fourth-largest technology company, while the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) accounts for half of the world’s chip production (116).
In all four examples, the state played a critical role in creating frameworks to ensure that benefits are broadly shared, showing that policies on innovation and mutual prosperity reinforce each other.
Building on these examples, the book highlights the vital role of the state in both spurring innovations and distributing the benefits of innovation. In all four examples, the state played a critical role in creating frameworks to ensure that benefits are broadly shared, showing that policies on innovation and mutual prosperity reinforce each other. Taking another look at Austria, ranked 17th in the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO)’s Global Innovation Index (99), its strength on innovation is accompanied by the state’s heavy investment on welfare to build a strong social safety net.
As the book draws to a close, it advocates for the development of a set of specific institutions. The first type, generative institutions, foster the development of radical innovations. These are heavily funded in the US, resulting, as British economist David Soskice claims, in the US dominance in cutting-edge technologies (169). The book shows a wide array of generative institutions through its four examples. For instance, in Taiwan, research laboratories play a crucial role in the success of its cutting-edge chip manufacturing, while the government directs financial resources towards facilitating job creation. On the other hand, Austria has concentrated its fast-growing R&D spending on the upgrading and specialisation of its low-tech industries of the past.
The second and third types, diffusive and redistributive institutions, aim to address issues of inequality, such as labour market polarisation and wealth concentration that might come with innovation. These two types of institutions offer people the opportunity to participate in the delivery, adoption and improvement of innovation. Switzerland’s mature vocational education system is a prime example of such institutions, “facilitating innovation and the diffusion of technology from elsewhere and ensuring that workers benefit.” (172)
Discussions about ‘good inequality’ where innovators are rewarded, and “bad inequality,” where wealth becomes too concentrated demonstrate the book’s strong willingness to call out inequality and tackle complex issues head-on.
Discussions about “good inequality” where innovators are rewarded, and “bad inequality,” where wealth becomes too concentrated demonstrate the book’s strong willingness to call out inequality and tackle complex issues head-on. (8) This integrity extends to Lee’s candid examination of the examples. Despite presenting them as models of how innovation can be paired with equity, he does not gloss over their imperfections. By recognising the persistent disparities in gender, race, and immigration status in all four of these examples, the book presents a balanced narrative that urges readers to think critically. Although these countries have made strides in sharing the benefits of innovation, they are far from perfect and still have a significant journey ahead to reduce these disparities. Take Switzerland, for example. Though it consistently tops the WIPO’s Global Innovation Index, maintaining its position for the 13th consecutive year in 2023, it grapples with one of the largest gender pay gaps in Europe. This gender inequality has deep roots, as it wasn’t until 1971 that women gained the right to vote in Swiss federal elections (71).
Lee warns against the naive replication of these success stories elsewhere without adapting them to the specific context. This frank and thorough approach enriches the conversation about innovation and inequality, making it a compelling and credible contribution to the discourse and a convincing argument for changing what we consider to be the purpose of innovation.
This post gives the views of the author, and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, or of the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Image Credit: vic josh on Shutterstock.
The Hunger Artist
“I watched my body shrink in the mirror,” Clein writes, “proud to discover how powerful my mind was.” I know the feeling....