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By Wellsy
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Leti Volpp I believe makes articulate points to some of the problems in the discourse of gender equality and culture that I would like to share as a point to some problematic framings and their outcome in such discussions.

The two papers which I read were:
1. Blaming Culture for Bad Behavior
&
2. Feminism versus Multiculturalism

From it seems two of the problematic assumptions are:

Culture as static and monolithic - page 94-95
Examining the way culture is conceptualized and linked with race provides an explanation. We sometimes assume culture to be static and insular, a fixed property of groups rather than an entity constantly created through relationships. This assumption is made much more frequently for outsider communities such as communities of color. Culture, for communities of color, is transformed into what Paul Gilroy calls a "pseudo-biological property of communal life. 28 Under such a paradigm, culture for communities of color is a fixed, monolithic essence that directs the actions of community members. Racialized culture thus becomes an essence that is transmitted in an unchanging form from one generation to the next. 9 We can contrast this racialized culture to culture that is considered to be "hegemonic"-the culture established as the norm?0 Hegemonic culture is either experienced as invisible31 or is characterized by hybridity, fluidity, and complexity. 2 The sophistication with which we understand hegemonic culture to be complicated and contradictory-something with which we actively negotiate-is unmatched by an equally complicated understanding of outsider cultures.


For more on culture as a concept, see What is Culture?

Outgroup behaviour is caused purely/largely by culture, ingroup is devoid/minutely of cultural influence - page 95
These visions of culture influence our perceptions of individual acts. For communities of color, a specific individual act is assumed to be the product of a group identity and further, is used to define the group. Thus, people perceive Adela Quintana's early sexuality and marriage to be the product of Mexican identity and definitive of Mexican identity.33 In contrast, the media does not present early sexuality and marriage by Tina Compton as the product of white identity, and thus her case does not perpetuate any perception that teen marriage is a phenomenon of "white culture."

See page 92 for details on Adela and page 91 for details on Tina.

Problems that stems from these assumptions within discussions on feminist goals of gender equality across cultural groups:

Denies agency of third world women (ie non-agents, passive victims) - page 1211
leads many to deny the existence of agency within patriarchy, ignoring that these women are capable of emancipatory change on their own behalf.13 ' The binary assumption that women in the West have choice, and that those in immigrant and Third World contexts have none, in part reflects the limits of our language in describing choice: Either one is an agent, or one is a victim. 13 2 This binary also reflects historical representations of the West as the site of rugged individualism, and the East as the repository of passivity and culture. Furthermore, it reflects a legacy of feminist politics and theory that presents Third World women as bound by culture, as described above. This conceptualization has bled into discourses that can deny the subjectivity of immigrant and Third World women, 13 3 both in terms of feminist empowerment 34 and in terms of their enjoyment of pleasure. 135


Obscures sexism in the west page - 112-113
As Homi Bhabha has recently written, the construction of a conflict between feminism and multiculturalism relies on the monolithic characterizations of minority, migrant cultures.'26 Such a construction mistakenly presumes the "Western" domestic scene to be egalitarian and empowering; depicts minorities as abject "subjects" of their cultures of origin "huddled in the gazebo of group rights, preserving the orthodoxy of their distinctive cultures in the midst of the great storm of Western progress";"' and assumes that Western liberal values-utterly foreign to immigrant communitieswill lead to their salvation."

page 121 -1214
A fourth effect of this intense focus on other women's sexist cultures is that it obscures violence at home, namely specific practices of violence against women within the United States,' 36 including those perpetrated by the state. The First World is seldom depicted as a violator in discussions of women's international human rights. For example, the obsessive focus on Muslim countries' "Islamic" reservations to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women obscures the fact that the U.S. government has made reservations in the same manner. 137 Both Muslim countries and the United States have entered sweeping reservations based on domestic law to the principle of equality-Muslim countries on the basis of Islamic law, and the United States on the basis of the U.S. Constitution.138
The United States has specifically interpreted broader treaty obligations that would require establishing the doctrine of comparable worth, introducing paid maternity leave, and promoting the full development of women and prohibiting discrimination, as enforceable only to the extent required by the U.S. Constitution. 13 9 Although the specific reservations made are not identical to those made by Muslim countries, it has been argued that through these reservations, both countries refuse to recognize international obligations due to a domestic "sacred law." 140 The "sacred law" of the United States is the U.S. Constitution, which, by treating sex discrimination as less serious and harmful than racial discrimination, is used to deny the treaty obligations of international law.141

page 1187
Culture is invoked to explain forms of violence against Third World or immigrant women while culture is not similarly invoked to explain forms of violence that affect mainstream Western women. The specific case of dowry and domestic violence murders provides an example of this phenomenon. Dowry murders take place when a new wife is murdered, usually burned to death, in connection to escalating dowry demands. Dowry murders are thought of as a peculiar indicator of the extreme misogyny of India and are frequently confused with sati-the widow immolation supposedly justified by Hindu scripture that rarely takes place in contemporary India. Recently an article in The New Yorker about arranged marriages in South Asian communities contained the suggestion that dowry murders are the cultural alternative to Western divorce-a way to exit relationships.2 1 Instead, as some have pointed out, the more appropriate analogy is to equate dowry murders with domestic violence, and specifically, domestic violence murders in the United States.2 2 The philosopher Uma Narayan has calculated that death by domestic violence in the United States is numerically as significant a social problem as dowry murders in India.2 3 But only one is used as a signifier of cultural backwardness: "They burn their women there." As opposed to: "We shoot our women here." Yet domestic violence murders in the U.S. are just as much a part of American culture as dowry death is a part of Indian culture. In the words of Narayan, when "cultural explanations" are given for fatal forms of violence only in the Third World, the effect is to suggest that Third World women suffer "death by culture. ' 24

page 115-116
Extraterritorializing of problematic behavior by projecting it beyond the borders of "American values" has the effect both of equating racialized immigrant culture with sex-subordination, and denying the reality of gendered subordination prevalent in mainstream white America. The failure to interrogate these effects has real-life consequences. These assumptions about gender, race, culture, and nation do not solely raise questions of descriptive representation; they result in shifts in material reality and in distributions of power. While the sexist culture of immigrants of color is used to justify calls for immigration exclusion (some racebased, some not),"3 there appears to be little headway against the shocking incidence of domestic violence in nearly one-third of intimate relationships in the United States.'39 To be perfectly clear, I am not pointing out the problematic discursive representations of racialized communities in these cases in order to assert that these cultures are not sexist.' Rather, I am calling for an approach to combat gendered subordination across communities, an approach that neither attacks the cultures of communities of color based on racial assumptions, nor presumes that the United States is always a site of liberation.


Continuation of Western Imperialism/colonialism discourses - page 97-98
The idea that nonwhites are more culturally determined can be traced to historical antecedents in colonialist and imperialist discourse. This discourse contrasted tradition and modernity in the service of justifying the conquest and subjugation of the colonized." Colonialism associated tradition with colonized peoples, ancient ritual, despotism, and barbarity, while connecting modernity to Western progress, democracy, and enlightenment.4" According to the West, culture-not the high culture of opera, but the culture of daily activities, quotidian practices and rites-did not rule the lives of the rational thinkers of the West as it did those who were governed by tradition, folk ways, and tribal affiliations. Because the association of culture with tradition continues to linger, people tend to forget that culture undergoes constant transformation. A sophisticated and accurate understanding of culture requires us to recognize its fluidity. We are all agents who define our culture and identity, not solely marionettes positioned and directed by our culture.' At the same time, we must recognize that our society tends more readily to identify those who deviate from the hegemonic norm, who are perceived to inhabit outsider communities, to inherit culture that we assume to be monolithic, fixed, and dysfunctional.47


It is reductive by neglect multicausal models which are more reflective of a complex reality in favor of unicausal models - page 1205 and page 1208
First, in concealing structural forces that shape cultural practices, what can be erased are forces that make culture. Specific cultural practices are connected to forces that deny women economic and political agency. These forces include global inequalities; new articulations of patriarchies in specific regions that are, for example, the result of emerging religious fundamentalisms; 10 8 the legacies of colonialism and racism; 1° 9 and the flows of transnational capital.' 10 Our culture is not constructed within "hermetically sealed"' boxes that travel with us from cradle to grave. While culture is often represented as the product of timeless ritual insular to particular communities, such forces profoundly shape culture

The second point is that the extreme focus on what is commonly conceptualized as cultural violence or subordination makes it difficult to see forces beyond culture. There are other important social, political, and economic issues affecting women's lives other than the cultural practices that garner so much attention. Only certain problems receive coverage or generate concern, namely those used to illustrate the alien and bizarre oppression of women of color; for example, sati, dowry death, veiling, female genital surgeries, female infanticide, marriage by capture, purdah, polygamy, footbinding, and arranged marriages. 122 Other problems which raise questions of the role of dominant individuals, communities or states in shaping gendered subordination, such as ongoing relationships of economic inequity, development and community policies, exploitation by transnational corporations, or racism-are ignored.


Distorts understandings of feminism and culture - page 111-112
Just as these discussions perpetuate a distorted feminism, they assume a multiculturalism that resembles crude cultural relativism. Under a multicultural regime, this discourse suggests that we as a society would be unable to critique any culture and would be forced to accept the bizarre customs and behaviors of nonwhites at the expense of long-cherished American principles. 2' This portrayal of multiculturalism relies on problematic assumptions. First, it invents a homogenous, "American" tradition of principles, a monoculturalism of transcendent values with a "we" or "us" at an unwavering center of rationality. This assumption is historically inaccurate, relying upon distortions and marginalizations for its narrative coherence." Second, this account confuses the multiculturalist valuation of ethnic particularity with a defense of cultural relativism."3 Valuing difference does not destroy our ability to judge among differences.'" We need not rely upon "long-cherished Western principles" that masquerade as universal values in order to make critical judgments about gender-subordinating practices."


Ideas for Action, Cynthia Kaufman, Chapter - Fighting Racism, pg. 134, Psychology of Racism
Fanon describes the dynamics that are an important undercurrent to consciousness of white supremacy. While these dynamics most accurately characterize the ways that white construct images of African Americans, they form a matrix of meaning that impacts the construction of any racialized other who is seen as "primitive". Indigenous, Latino, and African American people are built into the dominant racial consciousness as people with no history or civilization, as backward primitives.

Europeans had a harder time racializing their distrust of civilizations that had elaborate written records of their own histories before contact with merchants and adventurers from the West. This group of "others," includes Asians, Arabs, Persians, and Jews, has been characterized as having decadent and hierarchical civilizations that were not compatible with the Enlightenment idea of progress. Where the mind/body split - and its correlative split between rational and emotional people - was central to basic beliefs about less literate peoples; these "decadent" civilizations were seen in terms of a different set of dynamics. They were defined in religious rather than psychological terms, that is, by opposition between good Christians and immoral heathens.

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