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Scholarship on nationalism and gender explores the processes by which gender affects and is impacted by the development of nationalism. Sometimes referred to as "gendered nationalism," gender and nationalism describes the phenomena whereby conceptions of the state or nation, including notions of citizenship, sovereignty, or national identity contribute to or arise in relation to gender roles. [1] [2]
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Though there are different varieties of nationalism, gender and sexuality affect the way nationalism develops in specific contexts. Different gender systems and gender roles are instituted by or invoked to support nationalist movements in differing ways. For example, when communities determine that nationhood is necessary, and often inevitable, the identity of the nation is often imagined in gendered ways. [3] The physical land itself may be gendered female (i.e. "Motherland"), considered to be a body in constant danger of violation by foreign males, while national pride and protectiveness of "her" borders is gendered as masculine. [4]
Legal rights related to gender and sexuality are also impacted by nationalist movements. Kumari Jayawardena's work has explored how the desire for legal recognition and equity motivated women's participation in nationalist movements in Asia. [5] Relatedly, Emil Edenborg has investigated how opposition to legal rights for LGBT people in Russia and Chechnya is linked to particular nationalist discourses. [6] Scholarship on gender and nationalism has tended to examine the relationships between gender, sexuality, and national structures by exploring themes of men and masculinity, women and femininity, heteronormativity and sexuality, or along the intersection of religion, race, gender and nationalism. [7]
Normative understandings of masculinity and male behavior vary across cultural, historical, or geographical contexts. [8] Because male behavior and masculinity impact social and political relations, men and masculinity affect the development of nationalism. George Mosse has argued that modern masculine stereotypes exist in a mutual relationship to modern nationalism. [9] Nationalism and the structure and expansion of the state are closely related, and institutions like the military as well as state projects such as imperialism and colonialism are often dominated by male participants. [8] : 248–249
Shirin M. Rai has also pointed out how economic development tied to nation-building projects in postcolonial contexts is often gendered as masculine, ultimately devaluing the economic stability of women and subaltern men. [10] Within national structures, hierarchical models of authority and decision-making often prioritize men's authority, legal rights, labor, and sexuality. [8] : 251 Symbolically and ideologically, nationalist movements frequently valorize masculine projections of honor, patriotism, bravery, physical virility, rationality, individualism, and duty. [8] : 251–252 [11]
Specific social and political roles expected of women are not only tied to conceptions of femininity, but are also linked to local and national power relations. Social responsibilities, such as child-rearing, or particular forms of employment and interpersonal engagement become feminized and expected of women. [12] Women's labor and women's bodies have provided material and symbolic resources to nationalist and colonial projects. [13] National identities are often linked to women and their reproductive capacity. [14]
[15] When women resist these expectations, projections, and roles, their resistance impacts the development of national identity. [12] At the same time, nationalist movements have also provided disenfranchised women with potential opportunities to be treated as active participants within political and social spheres. [16] Summarizing the relationship between women and nationalism, Nira Yuval-Davis and Flora Anthias distinguish five forms by which women participate in nationalism. In their framework, women act as: biological producers of new national members, symbols of national difference, carriers and creators of cultural narratives, agents enforcing the boundaries of the nation, active participants in national movements. [17]
Nationalist movements are often aligned with heteronormative family models, that is, heterosexual family units assuming male leadership, female reproduction, as well as natural and complementary roles between men and women. Thus, nationalism has been identified as a tool to support heteronormative structures of power that exclude or subjugate sexual minorities and those outside of the male-female gender binary. [18] : 117 [19] These kind of movements also tend to emphasize heterosexual ideals as an antagonism of countries where LGBTI rights have been legislated, in a dynamic that some have called heteronationalism. [20] [21] [22]
Race and religion intersect with the development of nationalism and impact how gender roles are structured in relation to nationalism. Racialization, the process of ascribing race to particular social groups or individuals, always corresponds to particular configurations of gender, class, and nationalism. [23] [24] For example, according to scholar Anne McClintock, the development of Afrikaner nationalism in South Africa was dependent on the rise of an apartheid doctrine among Afrikaner people and was also tied to gender roles that positioned women as subservient to men and with responsibilities of service to the nation. [18] : 104 Religion may also affect participation in nationalist movements, nationalist discourse, and motivations for establishing nation-states. [25] [26]
The inclusion or expulsion of particular religious communities may be aligned with particular forms of gendered nationalist discourse. Theorist Jasbir Puar suggests that gendered discourses of nationalism often demonize or advocate the expulsion of Muslim people in the United States, thus tying particular understandings of the nation-state and nationalism to specific configurations of gender. [27] Religion may also inform gender roles in particular locations, thus when nationalist projects are undertaken women and men may feel tension between the gender expectations of their religion and the gender expectations associated with nationalist discourse. [28] [29]
Nationalism and gender studies is a subfield within the broader interdisciplinary study of nationalism, also referred to as nationalism studies. Nationalism and gender studies draw on feminism, queer theory, postcolonialism, and interdisciplinary methods to investigate the interplay between gender and nationalism. [30] A shared evaluation among many scholars is that gender, sexuality, and nationalism are socially and culturally constructed. [30] Scholars of gender and nationalism thus argue that gender configurations are always intimately related to and impact the development of nationalism. [1] The development of nationalism and gender studies arose due to a lack study about the way gender and sexuality intersect with nationalism by mainstream scholars of nationalism. [1] Feminist scholars were among the first theorists to approach the relationship between nationalism and gender and began writing of the relationship between gender, sexuality, and nationalism in the 1980s and 1990s. [1] These early feminist studies of gender and nationalism focused primarily on the role of women in the development of nationalism. [1] However, several scholars are now approaching multiple dimensions of gender and sexuality in relation to the development of nationalism. [31]
Context and location are important for understanding how nationalism develops. Therefore, scholars often use case studies to explore how gender and nationalism are linked in specific contexts. [32] Among other locations, case studies exploring gender and nationalism have analyzed situations in Canada, [33] Argentina, [34] India, [11] [35] [36] [37] South Africa, [18] Israel, [38] Russia, [39] Ireland, [40] and the United States. [41] Due to the interplay between colonialism, migration, and nationalism, other theorists have paid specific attention to the interplay of gender and nationalism in postcolonial contexts [42] [43] and have explored the relationship between transnationalism and gender. [44] [45]
Muscular nationalism is a term developed by the political scientist Sikata Banerjee to describe the development of nationalism amidst tensions produced by gender binaries. Banerjee describes muscular nationalism as a form of nationalism that relies on a binary notion of gender with opposing conceptions of man versus woman. In such a situation, female activists and political actors contest a dualistic notion of nationalism, thus generating political, cultural, and social tension. The form of nationalism resulting from the binary and its contestation is muscular nationalism. [46]
Within studies of nationalism, gender, and sexuality, queer nationalism refers the process wherein homosexuality and queer sexuality function as the basis of social and political organization and produce particular nationalisms. Queer nationalism can also refer to the process of using queerness as a metaphor for types of affiliations between nation-states. [33] [47] [48] [49]
Scholars have used the term homonationalism to describe the emergence of nationalism that advances support for homosexuality and LGBT rights while also promoting xenophobic, racist, colonialist, and supremacist ideologies. [50] [51] [52] Jasbir Puar, who first developed the term homonationalism, has argued that it describes a form of nationalism that assumes "sexual exceptionalism, queer as regulatory, and the ascendancy of whiteness." [53]
Developed by theorist Sara Farris, femonationalism describes a particular form of nationalism within western European contexts. Farris defines femonationalism as a form of nationalism that deploys feminist critique and support for gender equality while simultaneously promoting xenophobic, racist, and anti-Islam sentiment and policy. [54] [55]
Nationalism is an idea and movement that holds that the nation should be congruent with the state. As a movement, it presupposes the existence of nations and tends to promote the interests of a particular nation, especially with the aim of gaining and maintaining its sovereignty (self-governance) over its perceived homeland to create a nation-state. It holds that each nation should govern itself, free from outside interference (self-determination), that a nation is a natural and ideal basis for a polity, and that the nation is the only rightful source of political power. It further aims to build and maintain a single national identity, based on a combination of shared social characteristics such as culture, ethnicity, geographic location, language, politics, religion, traditions and belief in a shared singular history, and to promote national unity or solidarity. Nationalism, therefore, seeks to preserve and foster a nation's traditional culture. There are various definitions of a "nation", which leads to different types of nationalism. The two main divergent forms identified by scholars are ethnic nationalism and civic nationalism.
Gender studies is an interdisciplinary academic field devoted to analysing gender identity and gendered representation. Gender studies originated in the field of women's studies, concerning women, feminism, gender, and politics. The field now overlaps with queer studies and men's studies. Its rise to prominence, especially in Western universities after 1990, coincided with the rise of deconstruction.
Queer is an umbrella term for people who are not heterosexual or are not cisgender. Originally meaning 'strange' or 'peculiar', queer came to be used pejoratively against those with same-sex desires or relationships in the late 19th century. Beginning in the late 1980s, queer activists, such as the members of Queer Nation, began to reclaim the word as a deliberately provocative and politically radical alternative to the more assimilationist branches of the LGBT community.
Identity politics is politics based on a particular identity, such as race, nationality, religion, gender, sexual orientation, social background, caste, and social class. The term could also encompass other social phenomena which are not commonly understood as exemplifying identity politics, such as governmental migration policy that regulates mobility based on identities, or far-right nationalist agendas of exclusion of national or ethnic others. For this reason, Kurzwelly, Pérez and Spiegel, who discuss several possible definitions of the term, argue that it is an analytically imprecise concept.
Lesbian feminism is a cultural movement and critical perspective that encourages women to focus their efforts, attentions, relationships, and activities towards their fellow women rather than men, and often advocates lesbianism as the logical result of feminism. Lesbian feminism was most influential in the 1970s and early 1980s, primarily in North America and Western Europe, but began in the late 1960s and arose out of dissatisfaction with the New Left, the Campaign for Homosexual Equality, sexism within the gay liberation movement, and homophobia within popular women's movements at the time. Many of the supporters of Lesbianism were actually women involved in gay liberation who were tired of the sexism and centering of gay men within the community and lesbian women in the mainstream women's movement who were tired of the homophobia involved in it.
Men's studies is an interdisciplinary academic field devoted to topics concerning men, masculinity, gender, culture, politics and sexuality. It academically examines what it means to be a man in contemporary society.
African nationalism is an umbrella term which refers to a group of political ideologies in sub-Saharan Africa, which are based on the idea of national self-determination and the creation of nation states. The ideology emerged under European colonial rule during the 19th and 20th centuries and was loosely inspired by nationalist ideas from Europe. Originally, African nationalism was based on demands for self-determination and played an important role in forcing the process of decolonisation of Africa. However, the term refers to a broad range of different ideological and political movements and should not be confused with Pan-Africanism which may seek the federation of many or all nation states in Africa.
Queer nationalism is a phenomenon related both to the gay and lesbian liberation movement and nationalism. Adherents of this movement support the notion that the LGBT community forms a distinct people due to their unique culture and customs.
Cynthia Holden Enloe is an American political theorist, feminist writer, and professor. She is best known for her work on gender and militarism and for her contributions to the field of feminist international relations. She has also influenced the field of feminist political geography, with feminist geopolitics in particular.
Feminism is a broad term given to works of those scholars who have sought to bring gender concerns into the academic study of international politics and who have used feminist theory and sometimes queer theory to better understand global politics and international relations as a whole.
Sadhvi Nisha Rithambara is a Hindu nationalist ideologue and the founder-chairperson of Durga Vahini.
The Bande Mataram was an Indian nationalist publication from Paris begun in September 1909 by the Paris Indian Society. Founded by Madam Bhikaji Cama, the paper along with the later publication of Talvar was aimed at inciting nationalist unrest in India and sought to sway the loyalty of the Sepoy of the British Indian Army. It was founded in response to the British ban on Bankim Chatterjee's nationalist poem of Vande mataram, and continued the message of the journal Bande Mataram edited by Sri Aurobindo and published from Calcutta, and The Indian Sociologist that had earlier been published from London by Shyamji Krishna Varma.
Jasbir K. Puar is an American professor at Rutgers University. Her most recent book is The Right to Maim: Debility, Capacity, Disability (2017). Puar is the author of award-winning Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times (2007). She has written on South Asian diasporic cultural production in the United States, United Kingdom and Trinidad, LGBT tourism, terrorism studies, surveillance studies, biopolitics and necropolitics, disability and debilitation, theories of intersectionality, affect, and assemblage; animal studies and posthumanism, homonationalism, pinkwashing, and the Palestinian territories.
Feminist security studies is a subdiscipline of security studies that draws attention to gendered dimensions of security.
Roderick Ferguson is Professor of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and American Studies at Yale University. He was previously professor of African American and Gender and Women's Studies in the African American Studies Department at the University of Illinois, Chicago. His scholarship includes work on African-American literature, queer theory and queer studies, classical and contemporary social theory, African-American intellectual history, sociology of race and ethnic relations, and black cultural theory. Among his contributions to queer theory, Ferguson is credited with coining the term Queer of Color Critique, which he defines as "...interrogat[ion] of social formations as the intersections of race, gender, sexuality, and class, with particular interest in how those formations correspond with and diverge from nationalist ideals and practices. Queer of color analysis is a heterogeneous enterprise made up of women of color feminism, materialist analysis, poststructuralist theory, and queer critique." Ferguson is also known for his critique of the modern university and the corporatization of higher education.
Pinkwashing, also known as rainbow-washing, is the strategy of promoting LGBT rights protections as evidence of liberalism and democracy, especially to distract from or legitimize violence against other countries or communities. The concept has been used by Sarah Schulman in 2011 with reference to Israeli government public relations, and is related to homonationalism, the exploitation of sexual minorities to justify racism and xenophobia. Pinkwashing is a continuation of the civilizing mission used to justify colonialism, this time on the basis of LGBT rights in Western countries. More broadly, pinkwashing can also be defined as "the deployment of superficially sympathetic messages for [ends] having little or nothing to do with lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) equality or inclusion", including LGBT marketing.
Homonationalism is often seen as the favorable association between a nationalist ideology and LGBT people or their rights, but is further described as a systematic oppression of queer, racialized, and sexualized groups in an attempt to support neoliberal structures and ideals. The term was originally proposed by the researcher in gender studies Jasbir K. Puar in 2007 to refer to the processes by which neoliberal and capitalist power structures line up with the claims of the LGBT community in order to justify racist, xenophobic and aporophobic positions, especially against Muslims, basing them on prejudices that immigrants are homophobic and that Western society is egalitarian. Thus, sexual diversity and LGBT rights are used to sustain political stances against immigration, becoming increasingly common among far-right parties. In Terrorist Assemblages, Puar describes homonationalism as a "form of sexual exceptionalism [dependent on the] segregation and disqualification of racial and sexual others" from the dominant image of a particular society, most often discussed within an American framework.
Queer of color critique is an intersectional framework, grounded in Black feminism, that challenges the single-issue approach to queer theory by analyzing how power dynamics associated race, class, gender expression, sexuality, ability, culture and nationality influence the lived experiences of individuals and groups that hold one or more of these identities. Incorporating the scholarship and writings of Audre Lorde, Gloria Anzaldúa, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Barbara Smith, Cathy Cohen, Brittney Cooper and Charlene A. Carruthers, the queer of color critique asks: what is queer about queer theory if we are analyzing sexuality as if it is removed from other identities? The queer of color critique expands queer politics and challenges queer activists to move out of a "single oppression framework" and incorporate the work and perspectives of differently marginalized identities into their politics, practices and organizations. The Combahee River Collective Statement clearly articulates the intersecting forces of power: "The most general statement of our politics at the present time would be that we are actively committed to struggling against racial, sexual, heterosexual, and class oppression, and see as our particular task the development of integrated analysis and practice based upon the fact that major systems of oppression are interlocking. The synthesis of these oppressions creates the conditions of our lives." Queer of color critique demands that an intersectional lens be applied queer politics and illustrates the limitations and contradictions of queer theory without it. Exercised by activists, organizers, intellectuals, care workers and community members alike, the queer of color critique imagines and builds a world in which all people can thrive as their most authentic selves- without sacrificing any part of their identity.
M. Jacqui Alexander is a writer, teacher, and activist. She is both a Professor Emeritus at the Women and Gender Studies Department of the University of Toronto as well as the creator and director of the Tobago Centre "for the study and practice of indigenous spirituality". Jacqui Alexander is an enthusiast of "the ancient African (diasporic) spiritual systems of Orisa/Ifá, and a student of yoga and Vipassana meditation". She has received teachings on this meditative practice in Nigeria, the Kôngo, India, Haiti, Trinidad and Tobago, and New York. The themes of her work have captured a range of social justice subjects from the effects of imperialism, colonialism, and enslavement with special attention paid to the "pathologizing narratives" around homosexuality, gender, nationalism. Alexander's academic areas of interest specifically include: African Diasporic Cosmologies, African Diasporic Spiritual Practices, Caribbean studies, Gender and the Sacred, Heterosexualization and State Formation, Transnational feminism.
Feminist peace research uses a feminist framework to expand on conventional peace research practices, examining the roles of gender and other power structures to conceptualize and actively build peace with justice. Feminist peace research understands peace and violence to be interwoven and ongoing processes that occur at many scales, and points to how these scales are interconnected. While gender is the dominant lens through which processes of peace and violence are analyzed, this research seeks to address the ways in which other intersecting systems of power, such as race, class, sexuality, and disability, among many others, further complicate these dynamics.
