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BOOK REVIEWS
THDtD
WORLD
WOMEN
AND
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POLITICS
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Third World Women and The Politics of Feminism, exlited by Mohanty. Russo, and Lourdes, provides a critical
analysis for understanding womens oppression. The
various articles in the text generally oppose sexism, racism, homophobia, capitalist exploitation, and patriarchy. The articles also reveal how sexism pervades the
various social institutions of Third World nations. The
book is divided into four major sections: (1) Power,
Representation, and Feminist Critique; (2) Public Policy, the State, and Ideologies of Gender; (3) National
Liberation and Sexual Politics; (4) Race, Identity. and
Feminist Struggles. The general theme maintained
throughout the book by the various contributors is that
colonial structures, world capitalism, and patriarchy
promote exploitation.
In Section One, Chandra Mohanty explicates conceptual issues with which feminist scholarship struggles.
The central point is that Feminism is used as a world
wide phenomenon for understanding and reconstructing
ideologies. Also, the section on Third World women is
presented within the context of women who are subjugated economically and politically all over the world.
There is a formidable attempt by Mohanty to explain
Third World Women as a concept different from (but
inclusive of) women of colonized, decolonized, post colonial, or developing countries. The reader is cautioned
to be careful not to consider Third World women as a
cohesive group with similar experiences. as other feminist literature sometimes alludes to. Different histories
and experiences are significant tools toward understanding the conditions and pains of these women.
While the first section of the book deals with contending issues of conceptualization, Section Two centers
on the role of the State in perpetuating patriarchy. Redrafting Morality as captioned by Jacqui Alexander focuses on the role of the state as sexist and exploitative.
Alexander indicates that in post colonial Trinidad and
Tobago, the state takes the position of remaking sexual
identity for both males and female-s and also takes the
position in sexualizing relationships that do not meet
with legitimate heterosexual standards. On the other
hand, Faye Harrisons discussion on Women in Jamaicas Urban Informal Economy reveals the feminization
of unemployment, poverty, and the shift from equal exploitation of sexes during slavery to the domination of
women in subsistence economy as compared to the control of the dominant sectors of the economy by their
male counterpart.
The sexploitation of Third World women as discussed in Section Two leads to correctional measures
discussed in Section Three, which deals with National
Liberation and Sexual Politics. Angela Gilliam in
Womens Sexuality and National Liberation chal-
OF SOCIOLOGY
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STATECOLLEGE
JERSEYCITY,NJ,USA
JER~EYCMY
lblMISTPRAcFlcEOFORAL
FRY.
edited by Shema Berger Gluck and Daphne
Patai, 234 pages. Routledge, New York and London,
1991. Hardcover, UKK35.00; Paper, f10.99.
In 1988. I read Judith Staceys article Can there be a
Feminist Ethnography? (in Womens Studies International Forum, II, 21-27) which made a lasting impression on me. Staceys own field work challenged the facile
assumption of a feminist ethnography which postulated
an egalitarian research process that would end the exploitation of women as research objects, and led her to a
more critical and self-reflexive stand on the problematic
relationship between field worker and informant. The
essays collected in WornenS Womk, which include Staceys article, all scrutinize the feminist practice of oral
history. With its 16 authors approaching their topic from
different scholarly backgrounds, ranging from anthropology, history, sociology, to linguistics, literature,
619
620
Book Reviews
folklore. et al., the collection earns interdisciplinary status. What transpires is that in their common feminist
goal, namely to give voice to womens lives, and their
awareness of ethnic and class differences, the authors
transcend the boundaries of disciplinary methodologies,
something that I, as a feminist scholar in Germanywhere the language barriers between our different
disciplines often hamper communication-find
noteworthy.
Womens Words is well structured. Part I focuses on
language and communication. and on the ways in which
they are shaped by gender (p. 9). While two authors
sh&e with us thei; learning p&&s to listen and to attend to meta-statements, another supports the importance of metalinguistic and nonverbal signs via a hypothetical group d%cussion; the last one emphasixesihe
multilayered texture of black womens lives which
oral narrative can reveal when perceived without the
trappings of Western thought @. 43). Part II proceeds
to the problematics of interpretation, with the oral interview being transformed into a written text, and the question of who has authority over the text. Examples given
try to illustrate the delicate balance between the researchers commitment to scholarship and the speakers
ownership of her words; the life storys narrative structure and socio-symbolic content which needs to be
mapped and deciphered (p. 90); the relations of power
and shift of meaning from the oral to the written product. especially striking in interviews with Third World
women. Claudia Sal-rs
rereading of I-Rigobertu
Manchu(a Guatemalan Indian civil rights organizer) reminds me of such 1930s documentaries as Black Elk
Speaks or The Autobiography of a Papago Woman and
their ongoing criticisms, which highlight the dilemmas of
representing reality in narrative form and point to the reduction of the speech event that occurs through writing.
Salaxar combines these post-ethnographic
considerations with feminist criticism.
While Part III is concerned with the dilemmas and
contradictions embedded in the very research process,
the last part offers alternative research models, thus ending the collection on a note of encouragement. I found
Sondra Hales account of her interview with the Sudanese political activist Fatma Ahmed Ibrahim especially
touching because of her self-critical analysis of a failed
interview that she links in part to an inherent bias in
western feminism, which she calls the dominance of
process (p. 131). But her account, to my mind, exposes
even more the importance of the social class and public
position of the interviewee: hers is not the life story of a
muted woman (or man) - the typical object of anthropological research- but the presentation of a political persona for public consumption. Because of her female gender. we expect from Ibrahim a more intimate revelation
and are frustrated when she does not cooperate. Shema
Berger Gluck when interviewing Palestinian women in
resistance- the last essay in Womens Woru!s-avoids
Hales pitfalls by toning down her expectations. Her emphasis is on advocacy: oral history as an agent of social
change; her preoccupation centers on the potential for
misuse of the very information made publicly available.
Glucks cautions reminded me of how shocked I was
when. at a meeting of the Society for Applied Anthropology, I learned for the first time about instances where
the funding agencies turned out to aim at exploiting
those whom they purportedly professed to serve, and