23 - 24 MAY 2000
LEIDEN, THE NETHERLANDS
Gender and Transmission of Values
The International workshop 'Gender and the Transmission of Values and Cultural Heritage(s) in South and Southeast Asia', organized by the Belle van Zuylen Institute of the University of Amsterdam, took place on 23 24 May, 2000. The Asia Committee of the European Science Foundation and the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs had sponsored the two-day event, which featured speakers from around the world.
By FRANCIS GOUDA
The primary objective consisted of initiating a dialogue between historians, anthropologists, and literary scholars of South and Southeast Asia. Because of the stature of the theoretical literature on the British Raj and decolonization in India, Southeast Asianists habitually read new scholarship on South Asia. Indianists, on the other hand, are rarely familiar with work Southeast Asianists produce. Accordingly, the workshop sought to foster an exchange of ideas between South and Southeast Asian scholars concerning gender relations, female agency, and cultural transmission during the colonial and postcolonial era. In relation to this, the 'homogenization' of colonial discourse analysis and postcolonial scholarship was questioned. Due to the dominance of the Indian model, these interconnected fields of knowledge run the risk of overlooking the palpable differences in social circumstances and national cultures.The workshop's last objective entailed forging closer bonds between academic discourses and the more pragmatically oriented agenda of social activists on behalf of women. Since the 1970s, international development agencies as well as numerous non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have allocated funds to projects throughout the world under the flag 'Women in Development'. This category's having been renamed 'Gender and Development', implicitly raises questions about the ways in which men and women in the developing world are assigned particular social roles in economic development and maintain different relationships to national cultures and their reproduction.
A significant issue, among a range of themes, was the 'Woman's Question' in development nationalist movements. This cluster of papers provoked a discussion about the unique manner in which powerful and well-educated upper-caste Indian women managed to inject a social component into the politics of Indian nationalism and independence. Prior to World War II, the affiliation between colonial patrimonialism and indigenous patriarchy was a topic of debate among Indian feminists. By contrast, the nationalist movements in Southeast Asia privileged the political agenda with its irrevocable termination to colonial mastery over and above the social policy agenda, which often affected gender and family relations.
In many of the workshop's presentations, the crucial concept of 'Female Agency', its meaning and definitions thereof, surfaced as a subject of recurrent discussion (Gauri Vishwanathan, Nita Kumar, Vilan van de Loo, Suzanne Schroter, Juliette Koning, Joana Passos). A secondary theme was the question on whether female agency should be defined and valued as an inherently positive performative stance or assertive claim on the part of women. If so, how should we assess those forms of female agency that lead to women's active involvement in ethnic hostilities or their willing participation in religious rivalries? In the course of the two-day discussion, a wide array of meanings was attached to the term 'Female Agency'.
Unrealistic stereotypes
Yet another topic entailed a comparative discussion concerning the essentialist myths of the 'downtrodden, oppressed Indian woman', versus the equally persistent myth of 'equitable gender relations' in Southeast Asia. Both these fictional constructions have yielded unrealistic stereotypes. In India, the degradation of women has often been cited as emblematic of the alleged cruelty and backwardness of the nation's myriad indigenous cultures. But in Southeast Asia, the imagery of the cheroot-smoking, feisty Burmese woman or the contentious female trader in the Javanese marketplace also constitutes an erroneous portrayal of gender relations. An array of questions focused on the reasons why and how these divergent but enduring clichés about the position of women continue to affect both scholarship and social policy initiatives.
A fourth topic focused on gender and violence, or the manner in which ethnic hatred and religious rivalry have often featured as deliberate humiliation and strategic brutality against women in the form of abduction and rape (Urvashi Butalia, Peter Carey, Melani Budyanta). The partition of India in 1947, the pro-democracy and anti-Chinese upheavals in Jakarta in 1998, and the Indonesian military occupation of East Timor since the 1970s constituted the empirical case studies. Debate revolved around the dilemma implicit in a project of gathering data, investigating, and publicizing violence against women as one could run the risk of reproducing and thus adding epistemic violence to women's previous experience of physical cruelty.
Another theme constituted the contemporary discourses on 'women in development' versus gender and development (Mojibur Rahman, Lies Marcoes, Monette Santos). Several papers and subsequent intellectual exchanges raised questions about World Bank and/or agency for international development-sponsored 'gender-sensitive' projects or governmental or NGO-financed 'gender responsive' programs. While women in many national contexts have been identified as legitimate agents of development who should be nurtured and mobilized by international development agencies, the application of Western cultural values and conflicting ideas about women's proper role continue to clash with unique local circumstances that are gendered in unique ways. Hence continues the disruption or undermining of development projects' efficacy, despite the best of intentions.
A final cluster of presentations concentrated on post-colonialism, gendered identities, and diaspora narratives (Sandra Ponzanesi, Pamela Pattynama). These papers deciphered the ways in which former colonial subjects who now live and write in metropolitan Europe define themselves. Often their new location in cities such as London, Amsterdam, Paris, or Milan requires a stance of masquerading in order to achieve a new malleable identity. In the process, they also redefine prevailing notions of cultural citizenship and the use of urban space.
Female agency as:
Women's autonomous and/or self-directed behavior in society and the marketplace;
Women's effort to rise beyond essentialized categories in order to achieve an independent critical voice;
Women's calculated process of manipulating cultural symbols for protective or strategic purposes;
Self-fashioning and personal volition;
A form of self-governing desire whether of a material, physical, or emotional variety that is unconstrained by patriarchal dictates;
Women's attempts to harness ethnic solidarity for the purpose of protecting their children or to exonerate family honor.
Professor Francis Gouda is professor of Gender Studies and History at the Belle van Zuylen Institute, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
E-mail: gouda@pscw.uva.nl