Abstract
Political cultures—assumptions members of a group share about their own rights, customs, and history—vary according to gender, region, and historical period. Seldom documented, political cultures live in local histories, histories which frequently get reinterpreted—even mythologized—when local people are under attack. Historical circumstances sometimes compel otherwise apolitical people to enter the political arena when they perceive themselves to be the only force capable of saving their “community” from disaster. Whether peasants, minorities, nationalities, or women, the threatened group generally legitimates its appearance on the historical stage by arguing that its collective rights have been violated and that only the group itself can save the community from greater peril. Such “communalist” resistance movements, political associations of people organized around concrete issues affecting everyday life, frequently attract women of the popular classes.
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Notes
The best collection of views about these women’s movements to preserve life can be found in Adrienne Harris and Ynestra King, eds. Rocking the Ship of State: Toward a Feminist Peace Politics, (Boulder, San Francisco, & London: Westview Press, 1989). See especially, Gwyn Kirk, “Our Greenham Common: Feminism and Nonviolence,” pp. 115–130; “Our Greenham Common: Not Just a Place but a Movement,” pp. 263–280; Barbara Omolade, “We Speak for the Planet,” pp. 171–189; Amy Swerdlow, “Pure Milk, Not Poison: Women Strike for Peace and the Test Ban Treaty of 1963,” pp. 225–237; Rhoda Linton, “Seneca Women’s Peace Camp: Shapes of Things to Come,” pp. 239–261.
Temma Kaplan, “Female Consciousness and Collective Action: The Case of Barcelona, 1910–1918,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, vol .7, no.3 (1982), pp. 545–566.
I first discussed women’s involvement with what I call communal strikes, in Temma Kaplan, “Women and Communal Strikes in the Crisis of 1917–1922,” in Renate Bridènthal, Claudia Koonz and Susan Stuard eds., Becoming Visible: Women in European History, Second Edition (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987), pp. 429–449. An especially good analysis of a communal strike can be found in Ardis Cameron, “Bread and Roses Revisited: Women’s Culture and Working-Class Activism in the Lawrence Strike of 1912,” in Ruth Milkman ed., Women, Work and Protest: A Century of U.S. Women’s Labor History (Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985), pp. 42–61. An analysis of a contemporary instance of a communalist movement can be found in Ida Susser, “Working-Class Women, Social Protest, and Changing Ideologies,” in Ann Bookman and Sandra Morgen eds., Women and the Politics of Empowerment (Philadelphia: Temple University Press 1988), pp. 257–271.
Marjorie Agosin, Temma Kaplan, and Teresa Valdez, “Women and the Politics of Spectacle in Chile,” The Barnard Occasional Papers on Women’s Issues, vol. 3, no. 2, pp. 2–9.
There is a vast literature on women’s mobilizations in Africa. For example, see Ousmane Sembene, God’s Bits of Wood (New York: Doubleday Anchor, 1975), a novel about the involvement of women in a community struggle that emerged out of labor resistance in Senegal in 1947.
See also, Judith Van Allan, “Sitting on a Man: Colonialism and Lost Political Institutions of Igbo Women,” The Canadian Journal of African Studies, 1972, vol. 6, no. 2, pp. 165–181; ‘“Aba Riots or Igbo ‘Women’s War’? Ideology, Stratification, and the Invisibility of Women,” in Nancy J. Hafkin and Edna G. Bay eds., Women in Africa: Studies on Social and Economic Change (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1976), pp. 59–85.
A brief survey of South African Women’s resistance to Pass Laws can be found in Femmes noires en lutte et victimes de la repression sous l’apartheid, (Paris: Collectif Anti-Apartheid, 1985), pp. 20–22, in the Bobbye Ortiz Collection of the Barnard Center for Research on Women. An analysis of the relationship between women’s political struggles in South Africa and the general struggle for emancipation taking place there is well covered in Shireen Hassim, Jo Metelerkamp, and Alison Todes, ‘“A Bit on the Side’?: Gender Struggles in the Politics of Transformation in South Africa,” Transformation, 1987, pp. 3–32, in the Bobbye Ortiz Collection.
A discussion of Crossroads can be found in Josette Cole, The Politics of Reform and Repression, 1976–86, (Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1987).
See also, Julie Wells, “The Impact of Motherist Movements on South African Women’s Political Participation,” paper presented at the Seventh Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, June 19, 1987. A lot of my knowledge of these events came as a result of discussions with Julie Wells and Anne McClintock in a study group on grassroots movements of women that took place between 1986 and 1988 at the Barnard Center for Research on Women. I am grateful to them and to the other members of that group: Marjorie Agosin, Amrita Basu, Dana Frarik, Ynestra King, Marysa Navarro, Sara Ruddick, Ann Snitow, Amy Swerdlow, Meredith Tax, Teresa Valdex, and Marilyn Young.
This section draws heavily on work Marjorie Agosin, Teresa Valdez and I did in preparing “Women and the Politics of Spectacle.” See also, Chile Fights: News from Latin America: Magazine of the Chile Solidarity Campaign, (London: Summer, 1984); Malghenes: Movimiento de Mujeres por Chile, (San Francisco: Octobre y Noviembre de 1986); Teresa Valdez, ‘“Women For Life’: Women’s Struggle for Democracy in Chile,” Unpublished manuscript, 1986, all available in the Bobbye Ortiz Collection of the Barnard Center for Research on Women.
Discussions of the 1984 mobilization of women can be found in Especial-mujer, 8 de marzo, dia internacional de Ia mujer, (Santiago, Chile: Instituto latinoamericano de estudios transnacionales, 1986); “Las mujeres se toman la calle,” Analysis Santiago: March 11–17, 1986, p. 7, both available in the Bobbye Ortiz Collection. For a discussion of the relationship between communal strikes and the origins of International Women’s Day, see Temma Kaplan, “Commentary: On The Socialist Origins of International Women’s Day,” Feminist Studies, Spring (1985), vol 11, no.1, pp. 163–171.
Campaña: Soy mujer. . . tengo derechos: Síntesis del documento final, Santiago: November 23, 1989, available in the Bobbye Ortiz Collection.
Kaplan, “Women and Communal Strikes in the Crisis of 1917–22,” pp. 444–446.
“Protesting Advocate for Homeless Convicted,” The New York Times, December 25, 1988, p. 27.
Sara Rimer, “Homeless Organize to Fight for Themselves,” The New York Times, January 26, 1989, pp. Bl, B4.
Ann Snitow, “A Gender Diary,” Rocking the Ship of State, pp.35–73: 52–56.
The dissolution of feminist or women-focused autonomous organizations has been the norm following revolutionary victories. For discussions of two such losses, see Janet Weitzner Salaff and Judith Merkle, “Women and Revolution: The Lessons of the Soviet Union and China,” in Marilyn B. Young ed., Women in China: Studies in Social Change and Feminism, (Ann Arbor, Michigan: Center for Chinese Studies, 1973), pp. 145–177.
Debate between Katherine McKinnon and Phyllis Shafley, Stanford University, September 1982.
Maria de los Angeles Crummett, “El Poder Feminino,” Latin American Perspectives, Fall 1977, vol. IV, no.4, pp. 103–113.
Maxine Molyneaux, “Mobilization Without Emancipation? Women’s Interests, the State, and Revolution in Nicaragua,” Feminist Studies, Summer (1985), vol. 11, no. 2, pp. 227–253, provides just one example of how women were excluded from power after victory.
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Kaplan, T. (1998). Community and Resistance in Women’s Political Cultures. In: Diamond, M.J. (eds) Women and Revolution: Global Expressions. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-9072-3_19
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