Venue: Duke of Windsor Social Service Building, 15 Hennessey Road, Wanchai, Hong Kong (Wanchai MTR Exit A2)
Public Lecture in January
Date: 2010年1月27日
Speaker: 畢恆達，台灣大學建築與城鄉研究所副教授
Topic: 我（ ）塗鴉
Abstract:
塗鴉也有性別差異。女性較少塗鴉。男性塗鴉，有較多的色情文字、政治課題或競爭，也比較會使用毀謗、負面、敵意字眼來貶低不同種族、膚色、性傾向，或性別的人。至於街頭塗鴉次文化裡的危險與考驗，提供的是「男性氣概」而不是女性認同。
Bio:
畢恆達小時候是乖乖牌，一路從國中順利考上高中、大學；在「男生應該讀理工」的社會共識 下，進入台大土木系。由於不想當與混凝土混一輩子的土木工程師，研究所時，選擇最接近人文社會科學的都市計劃組，隨後出國留學，進入紐約市立大學主修環境心理學。紐約的留學生活裡，身邊的同學不是黑人、女人，就是同志、窮人，開始從邊緣的角度看待世間事物；其間大量閱讀女性主義著作，將理論與經驗連結起來。回台灣任教之 後，帶著性別之眼，閱讀生活周遭以及社會事件中的性別意涵，並投入性別與空間的研 究領域：從住宅空間、公共街道、廁所、運動，一直到男性研究。
Date: APRIL 28, 2010
Speaker: Meltem Ahiska, Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, Boğaziçi University [Istanbul], Turkey
Topic: The Gendered Grammar of Occidentalism: Modes of Addressing Violence Against Women in Turkey (西方主義的性別文法：關於土耳其針對女性暴力的不同論述)
Abstract:
Incidents of violence against women, mostly in the form of killings of women by family members, together with ongoing forms of domestic violence, rape and sexual assault, have become more visible in Turkey in the recent years. The issue of violence against women surfaces as a grave problem in media, and a wide range of actors including politicians, journalists, civil society organizations and academics address the question in various ways. The most widespread and dominant way of explaining this disturbing social question have been by reference to “tradition” and creates a “tradition effect” in Dicle Koğacıoğlu’s terms in a very important article on the issue. Interestingly what is rendered as tradition and regarded as “backward” is also connected to ethnicity and a certain conception of the “East”. In other words, the question is usually posed as belonging to Kurdish people who are labelled as Eastern and regarded as an obstacle to Westernization as a synonym of modernity. In discussing this question, which is also politically charged due to the severe conflicts with the Kurdish, I employ the framework of Occidentalism that I developed before. I take Occidentalism as a historical and dialogical construction of modernity in Turkey in relation to the so-called “East” and “West”. I argue that Occidentalism has established a performative grammar of power, which can be put into service for explaining away, and legitimizing gender discrimination and violence by using the terms of a projected Westernism.
Bio:
Meltem Ahıska is Associate Professor of Sociology at Boğaziçi University. She is the author of The Magical Door of Radio: Occidentalism and Political Subjectivity (Radyonun Sihirli Kapısı: Garbiyatçılık ve Politik Öznellik) and the co-author of ‘The Indivisible Unity of the Nation’: Fragmenting Nationalism(s) in the Demcoratisation Process (‘Milletin Bölünmez Bütünlüğü’ : Demokratikleşme Sürecinde Parçalayan Milliyetçilik(ler)). She has contributed to Waiting for the Barbarians: A Tribute to Edward Said with a chapter entitled ‘Orientalism/Occidentalism: The Impasse of Modernity.’ Her articles and essays on Occidentalism, social memory, gender and related issues have appeared in various publications including Defter, Toplum ve Bilim, New Perspectives on Turkey, and The South Atlantic Quarterly. She has published a book of poems, and co-curated exhibitions, the most recent being ‘The Person You Have Called Cannot Be Reached at the Moment: Representations of Lifestyles in Turkey, 1980-2005.’ Her book, Occidentalism in Turkey: Questions of Modernity and National Identity in Turkish Radio Broadcasting by I.B.Tauris of London is forthcoming.
Speaker: Richa Nagar, Professor of Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies, Associate Dean for Faculty, College of Liberal Arts, University of Minnesota, USA
Topic: From Feminist Fieldwork to Collaborative Praxis: Lessons from the Sangtin Movement in India (從女性主義田野調查到協作實踐：印度Sangtin運動的啓示)
Abstract:
Much “cutting-edge” knowledge produced in academic institutions of the global north often proves to be of little value to the socioeconomically marginalized communities of the global south, even when those communities are themselves the focus of the study. This problem is tied to a series of difficult issues that are built into the dominant systems of knowledge production and distribution, including questions of who defines the research question and methodology, who evaluates the results, to whom is the researcher accountable, and who controls the distribution of the knowledge produced.
Professor Nagar will address these questions by focusing on her ongoing collaboration with the Sangtin organization in India. This movement of 5000 rural peasants and laborers began as a collective of nine authors who critically reflected on how caste, class, religion, and gender shape the lives of poor rural women, and shape the internal processes, effectiveness, and limitations of non-governmental organizations that work on their behalf. The lecture will highlight the key moments in this journey, as well as the transformative dialogues triggered by the collaboration among rural and academic communities, NGOs, activist collectives, and donor agencies.
Bio:
RICHA NAGAR is Professor of Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies and Associate Dean for Faculty in the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Minnesota. She is a founding member of Sangtin Kisaan Mazdoor Sangathan (Sangtin Peasants and Workers’ Organization) in Sitapur district of Uttar Pradesh (India). She has co-authored Sangtin Yatra (in Hindi), Playing with Fire: Feminist Thought and Activism through Seven Lives in India, A World of Difference: Encountering and Contesting Development, and she has co-edited Critical Transnational Feminist Praxis. Richa’s academic research on gender, race, and communal politics among South Asian communities in postcolonial Tanzania and her subsequent work have resulted in numerous articles and essays. Since 1996, her research, organizing, and creative writing (in Hindustani) have focused mainly on collaborative efforts that seek to reconfigure the political terrain and processes associated with “empowerment” projects aimed at “the poor.” Richa was a resident fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford in 2005-2006 and was named a Scholar of the College in 2008.
Linda McDowell, FBA
Professor of Human Geography
School of Geography and the Environment
University of Oxford, UK
Bio:
Linda McDowell is Professor of Human Geography at the University of Oxford and a fellow of St John’s College. She is a Fellow of the British Academy and an honorary fellow of the Gender Institute at the London School of Economics. Her main research interest is the interconnections between economic restructuring, new forms of work in the labour market and in the home and the transformation of gender relations in contemporary Britain. She has written several books about these issues, including Capital Culture (1997), Redundant Masculinities? (2003) and Hard Labour: the forgotten voices of Latvian migrant ‘volunteer’ workers (2005). Her most recent book Working Bodies (2009) is about interactive service sector employment and workplace identities. Her book about the development of feminist geography, Gender, Identity and Place (1999) has been translated into Spanish, Chinese and Korean. She is currently working on a project about recent EU migrants to Greater London as well as a study of South Asian women’s involvement in workplace disputes in the UK and is planning a new book about women migrants’ working lives in Britain between 1946-2006.
PUBLIC LECTURE
Date: OCTOBER 27, 2010
Topic: Transforming Lives: Gender, Identity and Employment Change (生命轉化：性別、身份與就業的轉變)
Abstract:
In this lecture, I want to explore the changing connections between gender, identity and labour market participation over the last century or so, through a focus on three generations of women's lives and through my own empirical studies over the last decade. I show how both women's and men's lives have changed as women's employment opportunities have expanded, especially with the rise of service sector work since the 1970s, altering the connections between class and gender in the UK.
*CUHK PUBLIC LECTURE
Date: FRIDAY, OCTOBER 22, 2010
Topic: Migration and Memory (遷移與記憶)
Abstract:
In this lecture I explore the histories of migration into the UK over the last sixty years, looking at the ways in which women migrants became part of the British labour force in different decades. I want to explore the changing reasons for migration and the consequences for migrant women in the changing circumstances of postwar Britain and the transformation in gender relations. I shall draw on oral histories undertaken with women of different origins who came to the UK to work in different sectors of the economy over these six decades.
*CUHK Postgraduate Seminar
Date: THURSDAY, OCTOBER 21, 2010
Topic: Sex, Emotion and Money: Gender, Financial Crises and Interactive Employment (性、情、錢：性別、金融危機與互動就業)
Abstract:
Here I want to look back critically at the work I published as Capital Culture (Blackwell 1997), to assess its relevance to the recent financial crisis in western economies (from 2007 onwards), exploring the significance of gender to the events and then to draw wider conclusions about the significance of gender in the types of interactive service employment that dominate in western economies.
*CUHK Faculty Roundtable
Date: THURSDAY, OCTOBER 28, 2010
Topic: Gendering Labour Studies (勞動研究的性別視角)
Abstract:
Through a set of introductory remarks, I should like to explore the connections between social class and other social divisions, arguing that a labour studies that focuses on the connections between gender and ethnicity, nationality, sexuality, age etc provides better explanations of labour market change than a singular focus on class.
*Details of the venues and time of CUHK events will be confirmed later.
