Gender, Power, and Non-Governance: Is Female to Male as NGO Is to State? 9781800734616

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Gender, Power, and Non-Governance

Gender, Power, and Non-Governance Is Female to Male as NGO Is to State?

Edited by

Andria D. Timmer and

Elizabeth Wirtz

berghahn NEW YORK • OXFORD www.berghahnbooks.com

First published in 2022 by Berghahn Books www.berghahnbooks.com

© 2022 Andria D. Timmer and Elizabeth Wirtz

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

A C.I.P. cataloging record is available from the Library of Congress Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Control Number: 2022008537

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

978-1-80073-460-9 hardback 978-1-80073-461-6 ebook https://doi.org/10.3167/9781800734609

In Memory of Mai Lan Gustafsson

Contents

List of Illustrations

ix

Introduction.  Is Female to Male as NGO Is to State? Andria D. Timmer, Christopher Loy, and Elizabeth Wirtz

1

Part I.  Patterns of Reproduction: NGO and State Relations through a Gendered Lens29 Chapter 1.  NGOs and States of Aging: NGO as Male/Culture Advocates and as Female/Nature Caregivers Alexandra Crampton Chapter 2.  Surviving the State: Strategic Essentialism and the Complexities of Indigeneity among the Ainu of Northern Japan Christopher Loy Chapter 3.  From “Warm and Fuzzy” to “Business Oriented” Practices: The Politics of Exclusion and Masculinization of Alternative Justice in the United States Amanda J. Reinke

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50

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Part II.  Care Work as Feminized Work93 Chapter 4.  From Stranger to Neighbor: Gendered Voluntarism as Feminist Caring Politics against Australia’s Hostile Borders Tess Altman Chapter 5.  Rural Women’s Self-Determination and Grassroots Resistance Movement: Reclaiming Land and Traditional Livelihoods in Odisha Smita Mishra Panda and Annapurna Devi Pandey

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viii • Contents

Chapter 6. Neglectful Fathers and Mothers Who Mean Well: Love and Hate of Hungarian Roma “Children” Andria D. Timmer

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Chapter 7. En/gendering Aixin: Philanthropy and Gendered Practice of Compassion in Postsocialist China Yang Zhan

172

Part III. Beyond the Binary: Intersectionality and Queer Spaces in NGOs

191

Chapter 8. “Little Dear Mothers”: Governing the “Republic of NGOs” Mark Schuller

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Chapter 9. Identity and the Construction of Trans Citizenship in Guatemala Alejandra Wundram Pimentel

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Chapter 10. To Foresee the Unforeseeable: LGBT and Feminist Civil Society and the Question of Feminine Desire Tamar Shirinian

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Conclusion. Queering the NGO/State Binary: On Governing Stateless Peoples Elizabeth Wirtz

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Index

286

Illustrations

Figures Figure 2.1. The cover of the first edition of Ezo no Hikari (Hokkaido Utaro Kyōkai 1990a). Used with permission from the Ainu Association.

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Figure 4.1 Children’s hampers. Photo taken by author with permission. © Tess Altman, 2016.

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Figure 7.1. Mediating role of danwei and commune. Image created by author. © Yang Zhang.

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Tables Table 5.1. Forest area and adivasis in the state of Odisha. Forest Department of Odisha (2011).

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Table 5.2. Land allocated to industries in Kalinganagar. Source: Office of ADM, Kalinganagar (Dash and Samal 2008).

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Table 11.1. Intergovernmental organizations and governmental agencies. Created by Elizabeth Wirtz.

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Table 11.2. Nongovernmental organizations. Created by Elizabeth Wirtz.

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INTRODUCTION

Is Female to Male as NGO Is to State? Andria D. Timmer, Christopher Loy, and Elizabeth Wirtz

What is the relation of the State to nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and are these relationships gendered? Drawing inspiration from Sherry Ortner’s influential contribution to feminist anthropology, “Is Female to Male as Nature Is to Culture?” (1974), this volume asks if a similar analogy could be used to interrogate the relationship between nongovernmental organizations and the State: Is female to male as NGO is to State? That is, are the same power relationships that maintain a male/female dichotomy, despite the blurred boundaries between the two categories, evident in the ambiguous division between NGO and State (Bernal and Grewal 2014)? The contributors to this volume provide case studies of nongovernmental organizations throughout the world to exemplify how the NGO/State dichotomy is one that is maintained, strengthened, and contested through normative understandings of NGOs as feminized and the State as masculine. Through analyses that explore the analogy posed here, the ethnographies demonstrate that the complex NGO/State relationship is one that can be understood as a power relationship; one that is constructed similarly to gendered power relationships. This is not to say that NGOs are female and States are male; rather, we explore the in-betweenness of male/female, State/NGO and argue that the unbounded categories are hegemonically bounded in very similar ways. Posing the question (Is Female to Male as NGO is to the State?) does not presuppose an answer and certainly not that the answer is yes. However, asking the question catalyzes several strands of productive analyses to help scholars uncover, rethink, or recognize certain

2 • Andria D. Timmer, Christopher Loy, and Elizabeth Wirtz

identifying aspects of NGOs. Putting these two concepts—governance and gender—together in Ortner’s structuralist binary opposition allows scholars to reconceptualize a key inquiry within NGO studies: power dynamics inherent to the NGO/State relationship. Exploring Ortner’s classic analogy also allows us to uncover the myriad ways in which the “NGO form” (Bernal and Grewal 2014) is feminized, alongside parallel ways in which the State is masculinized (e.g., Heng and Devan 1995; Hofstede 1998; Mackinnon 1989). Asking the question also provides a heuristic for recognizing emerging discoveries within NGO studies, such as what Liisa Malkki (2015) refers to as the “domestic” arts of women’s labor. Further, as chapters in this volume demonstrate, highlighting culturally constructed dichotomies such as male/female and State/NGO also allows scholars to deconstruct binaries inherent to these symbolic representations.

Gender and Power The analogy posed by Ortner is representative of the structuralist analyses employed by many anthropologists of the time (e.g., Douglas 1966; Lévi-Strauss 1969; Sahlins 1981). She asserts that the universal inequality between the sexes is underwritten by a cultural logic that devalues women due to their symbolic association with nature, whereas men are valued due to their (also symbolic) association with culture. Given the gender disparities in political and economic power that continue to exist globally (Inglehart and Norris 2003; Ortiz-Ospina and Roser 2018), seeking a universal explanation is a reasonable endeavor. That said, the simplistic outlying of x versus y belies the complexity of the relationships between the variables. In other words, the essentialisms that anchor Ortner’s analogy (female/male, nature/culture) are merely starting points for, not the ultimate conclusion of, her analysis. Feminist anthropology has made great strides in reformulating concepts of gender since Ortner’s original proposition of power and the sexes in a number of fundamental ways. First, the very categories “male” and “female” demonstrate more of a Western cultural model of bodily differences than a reflection of human biological diversity (Fausto-Sterling 2000a, 2000b). Biological sex is recast as a more complex process of determining normative markers of reproductive organs and hormonal levels that belies binary categorization and complicates efforts to categorize human biological sex altogether. Second, gender is no longer

Is Female to Male as NGO Is to State? • 3

seen as simply the social roles that are applied to and enacted by biologically “sexed” individuals. That is, gender is not simply a social concept that is overlaid onto sex. Rather, gender is recast as a cultural system of meaning that reflects cultural representations of difference. Anthropologists have long noted that many cultures, past and present, have cultural representations of gender that extend far beyond the binary of “man” and “woman” (Brettell and Sargent 2017; Kulik 1998; Nanda 1998). Gender is not only a culturally created social role, but also a process of subject making and identity formation. Third, feminist scholars have decoupled gendered social roles (i.e., “man” and “woman”) from a much broader system of gendered attributes—masculine and feminine. Essentially, male, man, and masculinity (and conversely female, woman, femininity), while associated conceptually, need not be enacted in parallel manners. For example, a human assigned “female” sex can have a social role “man” and behave in a combination of masculine and feminine ways. All these categories articulate with one another, yet also demonstrate that gender is a project that is complicated and often contradictory. Despite the growing understanding in both popular culture and scholarship that gender is nonbinary, the performative aspect of gender still aligns individuals into two discrete categories (West and Zimmerman 1987). As Judith Butler well articulates, individuals do not have bodily autonomy in that “the body has its invariably public dimension, constituted as a social phenomenon in the public sphere, my body is mine and not mine” (2004: 21). That is, bodies are publicly surveilled and inscribed a gendered social meaning. Moreover, the act of “doing gender,” engaging in social interactions that reproduce gender differences (Deutsch 2007; West and Zimmerman 1987), is attributed to nonhuman entities as well. As gendered attributes have meaning outside of the human biological body, they are also assigned not only to people but to many other aspects of our natural world, such as animals, birds, insects, environmental elements, colors, sounds, clothing, and buildings. Researchers have found that there is a tendency to ascribe gender to inanimate and animate objects that are objectively genderless (Boroditsy, Schmidt, and Phillips 2003; Grohmann 2009; Wilkie and Bodenhausen 2012). Gendered attributes are associated with intangible concepts as well—deities, symbols, and even institutions and organizations. That is, an institution can be gendered female or male regardless of the biological sex of the members within that institution. Gender is a complex process in which differences in bodies, behavior, and (in)tangible concepts are assigned meaning in the form of

4 • Andria D. Timmer, Christopher Loy, and Elizabeth Wirtz

gendered attributes. But gendered attributes do not simply describe difference. Masculine and feminine are not only situated as different but inherently unequal. Male and female, as iterations of the culture/ nature dichotomy, are culturally elaborated through the production of a masculine model that is different from the feminine. The constructions are characterized by a fundamental, universal inequality: not only does woman not equal man, but they are situated as fundamentally unequal. Ortner’s 1974 analysis entails a complexity that seethes under its analogic elegance. Her critique transforms the apparent naturalistic universals into artifacts of cultural and power. As such, her analogy serves as a jumping off point for a more nuanced and provocative analysis of gender and culture. Our reformulation of Ortner’s analogy is offered in the same spirit as her critique: as a heuristic that serves as an entry point for a broader investigation into the cultural work that goes into framing and mediating the relationship between NGOs and States. In the course of this volume, we problematize a static notion of either while maintaining that there is a widely perceived difference between government and NGO functions and endeavors. The ethnographic inquiries presented in this volume expose the complexity and nondichotomous ways of being and living. Humans do not live their lives in binaries, but cultures do produce dichotomous symbols, categories, and schema that influence how we understand ourselves and the world around us (Geertz 1973; Goodenough 1981; Hofstede 1998; Inglehart and Norris 2003; Kroeber 1952; Sharifian 2010). Humans (anthropologists included) identify and understand the unboundedness and complexity of reality through categorical representations. These imaginaries are powerful in that they shape how we approach the world. Our perceptions of reality, mediated by categorization, influence our thoughts and behaviors and, therefore, the construction of our reality.

(Non) Governance Before we delve further into the explication of the analogy we are using to frame this analysis, it is important to situate NGOs as our subjects of study. Voluntary organizing to confront local issues of, for instance, poverty, illiteracy, environmental degradation, State overreach (or underreach) has long been an attractive site of study for commentators interested in culturally situated responses (Comaroff and Comaroff 1999;

Is Female to Male as NGO Is to State? • 5

Hann and Dunn 1996; Herbert 2017; Prato 2016; Rutherford 2004). For political scientists interested in civil society as a social phenomenon, these organizations appeared to be vital for the development of robust democratic institutions (e.g., Keane 1998). Yet, as Arjun Appadurai argues, democracy is characterized by a paradox whereby democracy as a mode of governance is profoundly anchored to the Westphalian Nation-State. At the same time, democracy as a set of values only makes sense as a universal, that is, as a mode of governance deployed globally (Appadurai 2001: 42). Given that Western-styled civil society institutions, understood to be an important countervailing force to antidemocratic statist tendencies, were not present in all nations, interested parties in the US sought to find ways to create or strengthen civil society organizations abroad by leveraging existing international aid organizations, like USAID (Hearn 2001; Ottaway and Carothers 2000; van Rooy 2013. The hope was that by creating, some would say “imposing” (see Ferguson 2014), civil society institutions in Africa, Latin America, and Eastern Europe, the people themselves would become empowered to address social problems that Nation-States could not, or would not, address. As Cold War divisions unwound, neoliberal interests, ignoring the centrality of both “voluntary” and “social” in the definition of civil society, began to couple “private property” and “freedom from regulation” to notions of civil society (Fukuyama 2003). Civil society is often constituted through the establishment of nongovernmental organizations. There is no consensus within the NGOworld or among scholars as to what constitutes a nongovernmental organization. The term and institutional structure, although by no means new at this time, came into vogue in the 1980–90s, a period of time called the “NGO boom” (Agg 2006; Alvarez 1999) or “NGO fever” (Bernal 2017). The rise in nongovernmetalism is often associated with the end of Sovietism and the fall of the Iron Curtain as well as the establishment of neoliberal development models in the 1980s in the Global South. During this time, organizational structures emerged from the civil sector—defined as “the realm of organized social life that is voluntary, self-generating, (largely) self-supporting, autonomous from the State, and bound by legal order” (Diamond 1994: 5)—bearing the designator NGO increased both in number and scope throughout the world. This time also saw a great proliferation in transnational advocacy organizations, which arose due to the emergence of a global public, a civil society. Not insignificantly, as Keck and Sikkink (1998) point out, many of these transnational organizations emerged from historical movements

6 • Andria D. Timmer, Christopher Loy, and Elizabeth Wirtz

such as women’s suffrage and developed to address global women’s rights. The development of a third sector of civil action in society is idiomatic of the era of transition in the post-Cold War/neoliberal era. During this time, especially in post-Soviet Central and Eastern Europe but also in the Global South, a number of NGOs formed with the specific goal of increasing democratic capacity in potential democracies. They rose in part due to the opening of spaces in which people could act in civic ways outside of the government. In the Soviet world, activities that were the purview of the bureaucratic State before 1989 were privatized and later marketized. This is especially true regarding care for marginalized people. Lynne Haney (2002), for example, explains how the needs of the poor, especially poor women, transferred from the State to private and civic entities throughout Soviet-era and post-Soviet Hungary. Accordingly, the post-Cold War era is characterized by a marked rise in civic, activist, and humanitarian organizations. Outside of the post-Soviet world, NGOs proliferated as a response to what many Western nations saw as the incompetence and corruption of newly formed nations in the postcolonial new world order. NGOs developed to presumably foster democracy and, as such, receive aid from Western governments that had originally been given to other governments but had shifted to fund newly formed NGOs, further undermining and potentially weakening nascent States. International aid to NGOs was seen as a “civilizing” endeavor through which Western values could be introduced and integrated into “third world” communities. As a result of this specific history, NGOs are associated with democratic ways and being and acting because they are perceived to be grassroots, horizontally structured organizations that seek to benefit an underserved beneficiary group (Ferguson and Gupta 2002). They rose to prominence during a time of the expansion of Western styles of liberal democracy. It is for this reason that much of the early scholarship, what Vannier and Lashaw (2017) call the first generation of NGO studies, lauds their democratic power and ability to “do good” (Anderson 1999; Fisher 1997). Hardt and Negri, for example, identify NGOs as “some of the most powerful pacific weapons of the new world order” (2000: 36). As the field of study has matured and entered the second generation (Vannier and Lashaw 2017), however, researchers have recognized that there is nothing inherently democratic (or good) about NGOs. Rather, they tend to mirror the hierarchies found in the neoliberal States within which they work in that they function through elitism, are unaccount-

Is Female to Male as NGO Is to State? • 7

able to anybody except to their donor, and are distanced from those they seek to serve. NGO actors uphold themselves as, and may believe themselves to be, prime movers of social change but are in fact handmaidens of neoliberalism (Barnett and Weiss 2008; Donini 2008; Edwards and Hulme 1996; Gunewardena 2008; Harvey 2005; Hulme and Edwards 1997; Kamat 2002; Schuller 2012; Wallace 2009).

The Many Faces of NGOs As this above discussion highlights, “NGO” describes and encapsulates many different organizational forms. On the one hand, for example, are GONGOs, or government-organized NGOs, which explicitly carry out the ideological and material directives of the State. On the other hand, NGO can also describe activist grassroots organizations that seek to subvert State or corporate power. NGOs can be expansive entities with a global reach, or they can be a neighborhood collaboration. And, of course, there are many intermediate positions between these extremes. Despite the inherent messiness of this site of engagement, Lewis and Schuller (2017) posit that the study of NGOs is important and productive precisely because of the analytical instability of these organizations. Studying NGOs requires us to ask such questions as: (1) How are such disparate entities understood as being the same? (2) What is the salience of the NGO form to the structure of society? And (3) who are the actors in (beneficiaries) and of (benefactors) any NGO work? In this volume, we take up these questions by looking at how the NGO sector of society is understood as a bounded form outside of the State. Our intention here is not to draw the boundaries between NGO and State but rather to explore the tension that exists at these boundaries. First, it is necessary to explore where the border is typically drawn. Although usually defined by negation, what they are not, organizations so defined are expected to look and act a certain way. Since the 1990s, NGOs have become major players and expected contributors in national and global politics (Bernal and Grewal 2014: 1). Accordingly, they have captured the interest of social scientists, particularly anthropologists. However, despite, or perhaps because of, their ubiquity and increasing global, social, and political importance, NGOs remain poorly understood (Fisher 1997; Leve and Karim 2001; Lewis and Schuller 2017). NGO is in practice an ambiguous, catch-all category. A rather bland, cookie-cutter definition posits NGOs as that which they are not—they are not governmental and not for profit. This definition,

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while technically accurate, falls short of grasping the complexity and nuance of what occurs in the NGO sphere of activity. Therefore, there must be some positive characterization that cognitively ties all organizations designated “NGO” together. Despite the vast differences in outcomes, intended or otherwise, of NGO work, NGOs—which bears repeating are a “Western” concept, created and defined as binary opposite to the Westphalian State—are understood as “doing good.” In order to maintain their mantle of “good,” NGOs “must perform as moral actors” by helping, advocating, mobilizing, and channeling resources for those understood as “in need” (Sampson 2017: 9). This presupposes the question, what good for whom? How is the “goodness” of the project revealed? In his analysis of Ainu organizations in Japan, Christopher Loy (this volume) uses Gayatri Spivak’s (1990) concept of strategic essentialism to explain how NGOs must continually reframe themselves using essentialist classifications in order to strategically position themselves to do their work. This can be broadly applied to the moral project of nongovernmentalism as well. It is not so much that NGOs “do good” but that they are essentially qualified as representing some kind of moral good and as such are tasked with the function of “being good,” and they strategically align themselves as such. The project of morality is not straightforward, but rather is entangled with various other actors and institutions. Briefly, these include entanglements with the State, donors, other NGOs and social activist groups, and the ostensible target populations (Sampson 2017). A plethora of ethnographic studies have cast a critical eye on the goal of “doing good” and highlight the uneasy relationship between NGOs and neoliberalism (Fisher 1997; Mertz and Timmer 2010; Sampson 2017). However, none of this critique has taken away from the association between nongovernmentalism and the moral good. Those involved in this work do so because they want to make a positive change in the world. Altman in this volume, for example, explains how and why individuals engage in volunteer work and argues that many of the women involved in humanitarian work speak of the need to be “neighborly” to support the community. Thus, they clearly position themselves as moral actors. Despite the wealth of scholarship, it is still necessary to scrutinize the perception that NGOs are “doing good.” In his introduction to the volume Cultures of Doing Good, Steven Sampson characterizes the world of NGOs as “the world of doing good” (2017: 9) in that such organizations are perceived as having humanitarian aims. Those working within NGOs believe strongly in their mission, which is often to serve

Is Female to Male as NGO Is to State? • 9

underserved populations. NGOs provide food to the hungry, wigs to children undergoing chemotherapy for cancer, and advocacy for migrants. They do work that, prior to the establishment of a formalized third sector, belonged to churches or women’s groups (Barnett 2011; Keck and Sikkink 1998). They work with invisible populations such as members of the LGBTQ+ community (Pimentel; Shirinian), the aging (Crampton), or ostracized minorities (Timmer; Wirtz). It is precisely because of their association with a moral project that NGOs are under more scrutiny than governmental and for-profit enterprises from the public, the government, and donor agencies. Donors expect their monies to go to the beneficiaries and may cry corruption when money goes to infrastructural needs like rent and salaries. Much scholarship on NGOs remains focused on this question of the inherent “goodness” of NGO interventions, or labeling those that do not accomplish their presumed “good works” as morally bankrupt or corrupt. It is not our intention to critique their claims to morality but rather to question the work that any such association is doing. Ortner’s heuristic enables us to recast this discussion away from evaluating claims of morality as such to interrogating the conceptual structures that produce binaries in the first place. Regardless of if NGOs are “doing good,” the fact that they are assumed to do so is a great salience in their conceptualization.

Gendering Governance In this volume, we argue that although the NGO/State division is as muddy as the female/male one, notions, which come from broader publics as well as researchers, practitioners, and beneficiaries, of what differentiates the two entities is profoundly gendered. To make this argument, we draw upon the foundational and important collection edited by Victoria Bernal and Inderpal Grewal (2014): Theorizing NGOs. In their introduction to the volume, Bernal and Grewal assert that although the “NGO form” is almost impossible to delimit, “the definition of what constitutes an NGO is profoundly gendered” (2014: 3). It is so gendered primarily because feminist issues are often relegated to the NGO sphere of activity and because women are greatly represented as employees, volunteers, and beneficiaries in and of the NGO form. Our focus here is on the manner in which NGOs are more often than not subordinate to states due in part to their alignment with the category of “female.”

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As the contributors to this volume show, organizations labeled “NGO” function separately from the state, even if they are doing similar work or act in “State-like” ways. Not only are they functionally and discursively distinct, but they are, in many cases, conceived of as “lesser than,” as evidenced by the general devaluation of NGO work in terms of pay, prestige, power, and the relative valorization of statists projects (Sampson 2017). Scholars of NGOs have noted that women are greatly over-represented as employees, volunteers, and beneficiaries in and of the NGO interventions in this nongovernmental sphere of activity (Bernal and Grewal 2014; Helms 2014; Stromquist 2011). The works represented in this volume explore the “femaleness” of NGOs, discuss the relative invisibility of NGO activity as a result of this association, and interrogate the convergence of State and NGO operations and the tensions between them in a variety of different geographical locations, projects, and typologies. A gendered analysis of State/non-State provides a useful lens with which to interrogate what Leve and Karim (2001) call the “privatization of the State.” Neoliberal policies that characterize the current era of governance are marked by an expansion of the “masculinized” arms of the state such as the armed forces, border patrols, and national security with a corresponding contraction of “feminized” arms such as education, health care, and social aid. When those arms that are deemed nurturing (or feminine) are reduced, nongovernmental organizations mobilize to fill the gaps, particularly in “weak” or repressive states. States’ reduced activity in these arenas indicate that they do not see such “feminized” aspects of governance as valuable, a further example of the devaluation of femininity. While NGOs and state organizations may be two sides of the same coin, a gendered analysis helps to understand how they function in distinct manners and how they are perceived differently.

Man the State, Woman the NGO The State, as we use the term in this volume, refers to administrative bodies of governance. Governance has long been gendered male as positions of power are held by, defined by, and associated with men (Conway 2008). Globally, positions of power have been primarily held by white, cisgender, heterosexual men. Although the gender balance has been shifting, the inclusion of more women into positions of power does not necessarily upset the masculinity of the state because institutions of governance are still associated with men and centered around

Is Female to Male as NGO Is to State? • 11

notions of masculinity (Heng and Devan 1995; MacKinnon 1989). That is, even as more women hold elected positions and enter governing roles, they are still held to expectations and operate in an environment centered on white masculinity. Moreover, the state is associated with masculinity in that it often takes on functions of governance that are seen as active and involve a demonstrable display of dominance. This includes maintaining armed forces, creating and maintaining civilian law enforcement and judicial systems, conferring citizenship, protecting the borders, and establishing the authority of the nation. As Ortner (1974) explains, these actions are gendered male because they are associated with culture, which is controlling, rather than nature, the controlled. The patriarchal functions of the state are largely accepted as inevitable, such that, by design, governing bodies engage in policies that favor men because they are dominated by, centered around, and defined by men or masculine ideologies (Hofstede 1998; Olufemi 2020). This hegemonic masculinity is not dependent on a static definition of masculinity, but rather that which is masculine is negotiated through the interplay and gender relations of all members in society and all genders (Connell 1995; Connell and Messerschmidt 2005). It is “simultaneously a place in gender relations, the practice through which men and women engage that place in gender, and the effects of these practices on bodily experience, personality, and culture” (Connell 1995: 71). However, even without a predetermined definition, that which is masculine occupies the seat of power and acts in a manner that maintains “sexist oppression, exposing how it helps to extend control over our bodies, a control that is relentlessly justified as necessary” (Olufemi 2020: 22–23). The authors in this volume reject the premise that NGOs’ association with femininity necessary aligns them with subservience. This is a specious notion rooted in our categories that align femininity with weakness. However, we contend that a powerful NGO no more upsets the State/non-State relationship than a woman in a position of leadership upends patriarchal institutions. We ask what aspects of governance can be revealed by extending Ortner’s metaphor (masculine/ State/powerful versus feminine/NGO/subservient)? That is, despite very fuzzy boundaries, does the same discursive work that categorically separates male and female operate to maintain a division between State and NGO? There are many examples of powerful NGOs. In places like Haiti (Schuller this vol.), NGO positions often pay higher salaries and have more prestige associated with them than government ones. Rebecca

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Warne Peters (2016) discusses the “professionalization” of NGO work in many developing countries where this work is often the only work available and is therefore highly appealing to the professional class. Similarly, Alexandra Crampton (this vol.) explains how as attention to elderly care increased globally, NGOs working with aging populations became more visible and assertive, acting in more masculine (i.e., State-like) ways. In states that are often categorized as “weak,” NGOs are doing work that has largely been abandoned by the state either because the state does not have the capacity or does not have the desire to engage in such work. NGOs that are powerful vis-à-vis the state might engage in forms of governance, but they ultimately do not have the power to create and enact legislation, deploy the military, uphold order, or enter into treaties with governments or international governing bodies. Therefore, even if they have more prestige, their ability to engage in governance is limited. This is why, for example, Schuller argues that state actors “perform drag” in Haiti in order to garner the prestige of NGOs to enforce the power of the State. The actors and labor associated with nongovernmentalism are still often deemed feminine, even as they act in more culturally assigned masculine ways. Many authors have shown that NGOs often act in “State-like” ways but are still perceived distinct from the State, and the difference is hierarchical. That is, NGOs are decidedly unequal to and lesser than the State. The title to this book and the NGO/State formulation sets up a binary, and, of course, any binary is inherently flawed and an imperfect device for understanding nuance, but dichotomies shape many cultural constructs. We do not accept this binary as a given but instead ask what cognitive processes maintain the divide between NGO and State and assign NGO efforts, which are often humanitarian, as lesser than, and what the effects are of this conceptualized dichotomy. The masculine State controls bodies, conquers, and exerts judicial and police power. As the organizations that run counter to State efforts or fill in the gaps where the State has withdrawn, nongovernmental agencies by default and design are defined more by their nurturing role. Several chapters in this volume, for example, highlight the manner in which NGOs are expected to do the nurturing work for those left out of the State project, such as the Roma (Timmer), indigenous peoples (Loy), refugees (Altman; Wirtz), and LGBTQ+ individuals (Shirinian; Pimentel). The correlation of NGOs with the feminine is made even more apparent when looking at the issues of inequity in salary, prestige, and job security with NGO work. Evidence of the devaluation of the NGO sec-

Is Female to Male as NGO Is to State? • 13

tor is apparent in the notorious low-pay, high-stress, and low-prestige work environment. It is not by accident that the work force is largely skewed female. As many authors in this volume point out, women are more likely to take up the call of humanitarian work either because they have what is seen as the necessary personality (Yang), have more time for low or unpaid work (Reinke), or because they are women serving women, who are more likely to be the recipients of NGO aid than men (Panda and Pandey; Schuller). Contributors to this volume use Ortner’s suppositions regarding the genders as a salient point to begin exploring the characteristics, function, and differential variations of States and NGOs as well as the formal and informal relationships between them.

Divisions of Labor The assumed division between the masculinity of the state and the femininity of NGOs can be explained further by delving into the pervasive notions of a gendered division of labor. The intersection of gender with labor has long been recognized and theorized in anthropology (Collins 2003; Freeman 2000; Mills 2003; Ong 1991). That said, the analytical distinction between gender and sex has not always been so clear. Once considered nearly conterminous with sex, gendered domains of labor have been characterized by spatial separation and biological imperatives (Reiter 1975; Rosaldo 1974). In Making Gender: The Politics and Erotic of Culture (1997), Ortner reflected on her own conflation of sex and gender in her original article. Gender as identity, lived experience, and performance is generally understood to be a product of discourse and power and is highly variable across cultures and histories (Butler 1990; Mills 2016). Beyond bodies, gender as a cultural formation has the potential to shape economic activity through plotting different domains of work, and even divisions of realms of human activity (public/private), along a feminine/masculine spectrum. There is a critical tradition in feminist anthropology that attends to the social production of value hierarchies that map to (equally socially produced) gender divisions, rendering a tautological relationship between low-value work and low-value people (Wright 2006). Feminized occupations, often occupied by both women and men, were once characterized by the production of inexpensive commodities—for example, food, textiles, and light manufacturing. Today they extend into various domains of knowledge work: data entry, clerical, and call center work (Freeman 2000; Patel 2010).

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As noted above, feminized labor is often invested in some form of care. Feeding, cleaning, healing, teaching, and other activities that allow for individual, household, or community reproduction are typically deemed feminized labor. Even when not explicitly “care work,” however, women are more likely to be called upon to engage in “emotional labor” (Hochschild 1983). Women’s emotional labor, argues Hochschild, is expected because “women in general have far less independent access to money, power, authority, or status in society” (1983: 163). Women are expected to show deference, be adaptive, and have a “managed heart” (Zhan this vol.). The relegation of activities such as care work and emotional labor to the women’s domain is often explained in terms of the public/private dichotomy in which women’s work occurs in the private (domestic) sphere and men’s work takes place in the public sphere. Nelly Stromquist argues that the association with the private could be of benefit to women’s NGOs in that “their sensitivity to and knowledge of the private sphere” has enabled such groups to have “expanded the view of the political, going beyond electoral politics and the politics of public office to include the power and powerlessness that exists at the micro level in intimate relationships and the household” (2011: 182–83). Many of the contributors to this volume provide compelling examples of how an association with women that leverages women’s nurturing roles can give an organization or a movement political power and might (e.g., Panda and Pandey). Still others, however, contend that due to their presumed feminine qualities, NGOs often struggle with the same fights for visibility that women do (e.g., Reinke). NGOs do highly public advocacy and activist work, but to the extent that private, household activities need to be done, they more often than not fall to the nongovernmental sector of society. Liisa Malkki asserts that many aspects of “internationalist humanitarian imagination and practice were remarkably domestic—in two senses” (2015: 3). Aid work is very often literally domestic in that it involves practices of care undertaken de facto by women and/or in the home—prototypically, nursing, cleaning, and caring for the young, the old, and the vulnerable, but also by involving the “domestic arts” such as knitting, crocheting “for the needy,” or participating in “homemade” craft projects organized by humanitarian campaigns (often for fund- and awareness-raising purposes) by aid organizations (Malkki 2015: 3–4). The value of these private, nurturing tasks is often discredited, evidenced by the fact that they are unpaid, low paid, or, as is often the case, made invisible. They are the unseen daily activities that are vital

Is Female to Male as NGO Is to State? • 15

to the production of society but go unremarked and unrewarded. For example, in her study of “feeding the family,” Marjorie DeVault (1995) found, through interviews with heteronormative couples, that when housework was done by women, it was unseen and only became visible, sometimes hypervisible, when men engaged. Similarly, NGO work is frequently underreported in the media and has been understudied in academia. This can be explained by its association with work that is unremarked upon or invisible in society. Stromquist notes that many women’s organizations did not emerge due to a departure of the State, but rather from the lack of any activity to create change emerging from the State. “So, it was,” she argues, “not a response to state ‘erosion’ but to state ‘blindness’” (2011: 183). In a similar vein, Panda and Pandey (this vol.) explain how women’s organizations formed to protest corporate overreach in the Odisha state of India when indigenous rights were not being protected by/from the State. It is problematic to assume that NGO work is naturally nurturing. Doing so reifies the categorizations of women/men, claiming that women are naturally mothers and caregivers and not well-suited for other roles, and conversely, that men are not nurturing. In the same sense, despite the association with “nurturance,” it is not fair to consign NGOs solely to the world of care. Indeed, this is erroneous as nongovernmental work is often marked by activism and policymaking—activities that arguably defy the nurturing psyche defined by Ortner as concerned with the world of concrete feelings, people, and things and interpersonal subjective experiences (Ortner 1974: 81) and occur very much in the public sphere. In other words, NGOs are often engaged in work that seeks to undo gender, reduce inherent gender division, or de-gender, eliminate, or rethink the role of gender (Butler 2004; Deutsch 2007). However, it is accurate to say that women are often perceived as being more emotional and caring than stoic men (see Hochschild 1983, and this perception extends to NGO work as well. Nongovernmental entities, by the nature of their work, are deemed responsible for the care of the humane aspects of society. That is, they are “humanitarian” institutions. Humanitarianism is “an ideology, a movement, a profession, and a compassionate endeavor to provide assistance and protection to populations as risk” (Donini 2008: 30). As many scholars of NGOs have pointed out, it is the nongovernmental organization and their affiliated workers and volunteers that take up the work of providing food to the poor, care for the destitute, education to the illiterate, and other kinds of care work necessary for the reproduction of a democratic society but

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falls out of the purview of state responsibility. There is an expectation that they will take care of the marginalized in society. Indeed, care for the “poor wretches” was Henri Dunant’s (1959) rationale for beginning the ICRC, which is still widely regarded as the model for humanitarianism (Terry 2002). NGOs take on the role of love (Timmer this vol.) or “loving heart” (Yang this vol.) and work toward rehabilitation over punishment (Reinke this vol.). This association contributes to the assumption that NGOs are in the business of “doing good,” which has been, and should be, challenged (Cooley and Ron 2002; Krause 2014; Lashaw, Vannier, and Sampson 2017), but nonetheless is a factor of NGO existence (Fisher 1997). The requirement to be moral and “good” is both a benefit and a burden (Sampson 2017: 11), but one with which NGOs must continually negotiate and contend. Being morally good in this sense is also aligned with femininity and nurturance, qualities typically depicted as noble and upright. It is important to reiterate that NGOs can and do behave in statist, “masculine” ways but still exist in a subservient position marked as female and that does not challenge the hegemonic norm. However, as the cases in this volume show, regardless of the reversed roles, the NGOs still function within the auspices of the state. Nature can have power over culture, but this power does not change the dichotomy and the culturally informed value. NGOs can be powerful, but they will be expected to withdraw from their position of power when the State, as it is expected to do, restabilizes and regains its rightful place. NGOs are not seen as legitimate forms of governance in the same way that women in positions of power do not change the discourse of patriarchy.

Deconstructing the Dichotomy While binaries and analogies are useful thought tools to explain the seemingly natural and actually unnatural divisions that exist across societies, as the authors in this volume argue, all dichotomies are false dichotomies and fail to capture the nuance and complexity of human and, in this case, political relationships. Ortner herself moved beyond her foundational text, which laid the groundwork for future feminist scholarship, certainly within anthropology. Current gender studies scholarship now queers gender, delinking it from the association with biological sex, which is also now understood as being socially constructed. Gender is now understood as a continuum rather than a binary.

Is Female to Male as NGO Is to State? • 17

Similarly, this volume deconstructs the dichotomies of State/NGO, in effect queering NGOs and the State. Contrary to the expectation of NGOs as not-for-profit and grassroots, due to a saturated market, which leads to increased uncertainty, competition, and insecurity, they must “behave in rational and rent-seeking ways” similar to their for-profit counterparts (Cooley and Ron 2002: 36). They find themselves in a double bind in that they must frame their activities in such a way that they must both highlight their intended humanitarian aims while specifically appealing to donors without whom their agency fails to exist (Timmer 2010). Similarly, they must prove that they are working effectively to improve problems while also demonstrating that such problems still exist and need funding (Wirtz 2017). As Timmer (this vol.) explains, many organizations who work on Roma issues in Hungary state that demonstrating love for the Roma, a historically hated population, is one of their main goals. However, love does not pay the bills and many organizations are finding themselves unable to continue to function. NGOs are dependent on official agencies and donors and cannot sustain their activities or remain effectual if they refuse to negotiate or otherwise adapt to dominant discourses of the political economic structure (Cooley and Ron 2002) or the “language of need” (Timmer 2010). Funding agencies limit NGOs’ ability to provide the gradual strengthening of capacities and capabilities needed to empower local communities because they are reluctant or unwilling “to support the longtime horizons, careful nurturing, and gradual qualitative results” necessary for effective civil or humanitarian change (Edwards and Hulme 1996: 7). As a result, NGOs are less non than they purport to or are expected to be. NGOs often stand in for services that weak or failed States cannot provide and do not necessarily fulfill this function in a manner consistent with the desires of the local community. Nor do they function independently from the government. It is not uncommon for Western nations to use international aid as a political tool to influence the culture and politics of other nations; the Global Gag Rule, which prevents foreign NGOs that receive US assistance from providing legal abortion services or referrals, is a perfect example. In this way, NGOs can be an avenue for spreading governmental agendas (Fassin 2011). NGO supportive agencies include Western nations, banks, and corporations and therefore are better labeled as BONGOs (business-organized NGOs) or the highly ironic GONGOs (government-organized NGOs). Tina Wallace (2009) commented that far from being independent, democratic, grassroots entities, NGOs should be considered “Trojan horses for global

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neoliberalism” because they assist in the future withdrawal of the State from social provision and, therefore, promote the expansion of the neoliberal agenda into new arenas. As Sangeeta Kamat asserts, “the agentic role prescribed to NGOs is not an innocent one but one that foretells a reworking of democracy in ways that coalesce with global capital interests” (2002: 156). The contributors to this anthology ask what about NGOs leads to their assumed devalued status in society, a status that persists despite the ubiquity and expansion of the NGO form into more parts of the globe and despite their perceived alignment with “goodness” and the moral imperative. Thus, we are asking a very similar question to the one posed by Ortner. She set out to uncover the rationale for the “secondary status of women” as “one of the true universal, a pan-cultural fact” (1974: 68). Her analysis begins with the assertion that women are universally subordinate because of their ubiquitous association with some concept or symbol also universally devalued. She thus identifies the natureculture continuum as a ready-made structure onto which sexed bodies are distributed. Ultimately, she concludes that women occupy an unruly intermediate position that, much like untamed nature, requires constant monitoring, limiting, and redefining; in short, women are kept in a subordinate position relative to men who are, oppositionally as demanded by the binary, manifestations of politics, religion, economy, and the like (Ortner 1974: 85–86). Gender and governance can be understood both as a duality and as a boundless spectrum. As such, transgressions of the dichotomy occur. Those identified as women can act in ways deemed masculine by their society in the same way that NGOs can take on roles presumed to be the domain of States; but such transgressions do not ultimately upset the culturally constructed categorization because their behaviors and actions are readily conceptualized as either outliers or subversions of categorical relationships, thus reifying dichotomous categories and the power structures on which they lay.

Structure of the Volume The contributions to this volume span the globe and represent differing forms of NGOs on the public/private continuum, types of States along a continuum of what political scientists call “strong” or “weak” States, locations within the global neoliberal economy, and degrees of pen-

Is Female to Male as NGO Is to State? • 19

etration of neoliberal policies. Methodologically, the chapters present a diverse approach, including ethnographies, case studies, participatory engagement, secondary source analysis, and theoretical inquiry. The NGOs examined within work on an array of issues, including care work, conservation, and basic social provisions. As many of the authors here argue, care work within humanitarian agencies can be understood through a gendered lens, and this comparison is fairly intuitive. The ways in which leadership, ideologies, and practices are gendered, however, do not fit neatly within rigid boundaries. Rather than simply reiterating the dichotomy of male/culture/State to female/nature/NGO, the contributors to this volume, through varied and rich ethnographic examples, demonstrate the complex and dynamic interplay of gendered narratives in the sphere of “third sector” activity in neoliberal States. To address the diversity of studies, this volume is comprised of three sections. In the first section, “Patterns of Reproduction: NGO and State Relations through a Gendered Lens,” authors speak to the manner in which, in a neoliberal context, the relationship between the State and the nongovernmental organizations and actors can be broadly understood through the lens of gender. As the authors discuss, however, the boundaries between State and NGO, much like the boundaries between male and female, are blurry and not well-defined. In the first chapter of this section, Alexandra Crampton compares NGO elder advocacy in the United States and Ghana and makes the argument that in Ghana, a “weak State” that is modernizing, NGO work is masculinized whereas in the “strong,” modern State of the United States, nonprofit elder care work is feminized. Elder advocacy work, Crampton asserts, has been constructed as universally necessary and also dominated by a particularly western cultural construction of aging as a social problem demanding State and NGO intervention. Beyond that, however, the structures of the State factor largely in the construction of elder care. Christopher Loy explains how the Ainu Association in Japan exists in an ambiguous position within the State bureaucracy and is therefore able to function both inside and outside of the State apparatus. His use of “strategic essentialism” (Spivak 1990) underscores how NGOs represent themselves in ways that strategically ignore internal differences (including connections to the State or subaltern organizations) in order to better function in different contexts to achieve defined ends. This chapter contributes to the understanding of the fuzziness of categorizations between male/ female and State/NGO. In the final chapter of this section, Amanda J. Reinke examines the gender and racial power dynamics embedded in

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alternative justice programs in the San Francisco Bay Area and northern Virginia. Using this lens, she is able to show how White women as aid providers reinforce exclusionary systems wherein people of color may be excluded from both the services and volunteer opportunities. The second section of this volume, “Care Work as Feminized Work,” specifically focuses on the feminization of NGO work. Chapters in this section discuss how the work of NGOs itself has been feminized in the sense that nurturance, for example, is associated with feminine qualities. Tess Altman examines how the work of providing aid for refugees has been largely taken up by women. She explains how and why volunteerism is inadvertently gendered female in relation to the (masculine) militarization of Australia’s border and immigration policy. In the next chapter, Smita Misha Panda and Annapurna Devi Pandey show how in the Indian State of Odisha women’s bodies become spaces of resistance. Rural women led the charge in defending the land and resources. Andria D. Timmer looks at the manner in which the Roma in Hungary are treated as a child-like population in need of nurturing care. NGOs, then, take on and act out a mothering role as opposed to the paternal role of the State. Moreover, they are single mothers as the State has largely removed itself from any responsibility for the Roma population. Analyzing NGOs in China, Yang Zhan, in the final chapter of this section, demonstrates how the gendered discourse of aixin (“loving heart”) has contributed to State control over NGOs. Aixin, a State-promoted value, generally reinforces a moral imperative among its citizens to take care of the poor and needy. By doing so, it confines the more “proper” NGO work to the feminized sectors, including service, aid, poverty alleviation, and disaster relief. The last section, “Beyond the Binary: Intersectionality and Queer Spaces in NGOs,” expands our inquiry of gender beyond the male/ female dichotomy and opens up the discussion to include alternative gender identities and queer spaces of activism. In the first chapter of this section, Mark Schuller explores feminized NGO programs in Haiti hailed “little dear mothers” in the hypermasculinized Martelly regime. Post-quake aid to Haiti has contributed to multiple boundary blurrings, as State programs have become NGO-ized and target women. Alejandra Wundram Pimentel interrogates trans identity in Guatemala and through her ethnography discusses how NGOs have defined trans identities strategically to function within the State. Tamar Shirinian explores the problem of visibility and inclusion for nonheterosexual-

Is Female to Male as NGO Is to State? • 21

identified women in feminist and lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and intersex (LGBTI) NGOs in the post-Soviet Republic of Armenia. Shirinian explains how the NGO issue of homosexuality is marked male while feminism is marked heterosexual in such a way that nonheterosexual women are excluded from both. Elizabeth Wirtz closes the volume by challenging readers to think outside of binaries, even those that frame this book. In her ethnographic inquiry of residents of Kakuma refugee camp, Wirtz questions how to analyze NGO/State relationships in the absence of the State. This collection highlights local conceptualizations as key. Shaped by regional expectations of how States should function, the reality of localized State projects as always already incomplete and/or breaking down, and culturally embedded hierarchies of value that valorize nationalist exclusions against the reality of shared human needs, NGOs mobilize under an ethos of care that is at once locally legible and immanently universal. It is precisely this intersection of regionally specific norms of care and the global extension of a generalizable mode of organization and functionality that makes NGO studies a crucial entry point to understanding the unfolding of regional political economy and universalist notions of human rights and ethical governance. The chapters in this volume represent a diversity of perspectives that explore what is profoundly gendered about the project of nongovernance. The contributors argue that despite the ambiguity of the NGO form, organizations labeled as such share certain features, namely, their association, albeit sometimes misplaced, with democratic and morally good ways of acting and being and their subordinate position relative to the State. We argue that Ortner’s male/female, culture/nature analogy helps us understand how, through institutional power and everyday practice, the blurred boundaries between NGO and State are negotiated, solidified, and made real. Andria D. Timmer is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at Christopher Newport University. Her research focuses on efforts to affect social change, and she studies this by centering her inquiry on nongovernmental and humanitarian organizations. Her work has focused on Roma rights, food justice movements, and migration policy. Her book, Educating the Hungarian Roma: Nongovernmental Organization and Minority Rights (2017), explores NGO work to desegregate the Hungarian education system for the Hungarian Roma. Current research concerns

22 • Andria D. Timmer, Christopher Loy, and Elizabeth Wirtz

border protectionist policies in Hungary and their impact on notions of citizenship. Christopher Loy is a Senior Lecturer in anthropology and is the Director of the Interdisciplinary Studies program at Christopher Newport University in southeast Virginia. His research interests focus on how local peoples negotiate life amid shifting environmental conditions. His work with the Ainu focuses on indigenous land-use issues as the Japanese state continues to “develop” the forests and waterways of northern Japan. Closer to home, he works with watermen communities on Chesapeake Bay as they struggle to adapt to the deteriorating ecology of the region. In both fieldsites the cultural assumptions about community self-determination, what should and should not be subject to regulatory oversight, and the nature of human–environment interactions shape adaptive responses to environmental change. Elizabeth Wirtz is a Qualitative Analyst in the Center for Access and Delivery Research and Evaluation at the Department of Veterans Affairs, Iowa City, IA. A cultural anthropologist, her research centers on veteran/ military health, telemedicine, refugees/forced migration, humanitarianism in relief and development, sexual and gender-based violence, reproductive/maternal health, human-centered design in technology and engineering, and STEM higher education. She serves as Senior Co-Chair of the Gender Based Violence Topical Interest Group of the Society for Applied Anthropology and as a board memeber for the Society for Medical Anthropology.

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26 • Andria D. Timmer, Christopher Loy, and Elizabeth Wirtz Malkki, Liisa. 2015. The Need to Help: The Domestic Arts of International Humanitarianism. Durham: Duke University Press. Mertz, Elizabeth, and Andria Timmer. 2010. “Introduction: Getting it Done: Ethnographic Perspectives on NGOs.” Political and Legal Anthropology Review 33(2): 171–77. Mills, Mary Beth. 2003. “Gender and Inequality in the Global Labor Force.” Annual Review of Anthropology 32: 41–62. Mills, Maura, ed. 2016. Gender and the Work-Family Experience: An Intersection of Two Domains. New York: Springer. Nanda, Serena. 1998. Neither Male Nor Female: The Hijras of India. Boston: Cengage Learning. Olufemi, Lola. 2020. Feminism, Interrupted: Disrupting Power. London: Pluto Press. Ong, Ainhwa. 1991. “The Gender and Labor Politics of Postmodernity.” Annual Review of Anthropology 20: 279–309. Ortiz-Ospina, Esteban, and Max Roser. 2018. “Economic Inequality by Gender.” Our World in Data, 21 March 2018. https://ourworldindata.org/economicinequality-by-gender. Ortner, Sherry. 1974. “Is Female to Male as Nature Is to Culture?” In Woman, Culture, and Society, edited by Michelle Rosaldo and Louise Lamphere, 68–87. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. ———. 1997. Making Gender: The Politics and Erotics of Culture. Boston: Beacon Press. Ottaway, Marina, and Thomas Carothers. 2000. Funding Virtue: Civil Society Aid and Democracy Promotion. New York: Carnegie Endowment. Patel, Reena. 2010. Working the Night Shift: Women in India’s Call Center Industry. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Peters, Rebecca Warne. 2016. “Local in Practice-Professional Distinctions in Angolan Development Work.” American Anthropologist 118(3): 495–507. Prato, Guiliana B. 2016. “The ‘Costs’ of European Citizenship: Governance and Relations of Trust in Albania.” In Citizenship and the Legitimacy of Governance: Anthropology in the Mediterranean Region, edited by Italo Pardo and Giuliana Prato, 133–52. New York: Routledge. Reiter, R. 1975. “Men and Women in the South of France: Public and Private Domains.” In Toward an Anthropology of Women, edited by R. Reiter, 252–82. New York: Monthly Review Press. Rosaldo, Michelle Z. 1974. “Woman, Culture, and Society: A Theoretical Overview.” In Women, Culture, and Society, edited by Michelle Z. Rosaldo, Louise Lamphere, and Joan Bamberger, 17–42. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Rutherford, Blair. 2004. “Desired Publics, Domestic Government, and Entangled Fears: On the Anthropology of Civil Society, Farm Workers, and White Farmers in Zimbabwe.” Cultural Anthropology 19(1): 122–53.

Is Female to Male as NGO Is to State? • 27 Sahlins, Marshall. 1981. Historical Metaphors and Mythical Realities: Structure in the Early History of the Sandwich Islands Kingdom. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Sampson, Steven. 2017. “Introduction: Engagements and Entanglements in the Anthropology of NGOs.” In Cultures of Doing Good: Anthropologists and NGOs, edited by Amanda Lashaw, Christian Vannier, and Steven Sampson, 1–20. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press. Schuller, Mark. 2012. Killing with Kindness: Haiti, International Aid and NGOs. Foreword by Paul Farmer. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. Sharifian, F. 2010. “Cultural Conceptualisations in Intercultural Communication: A Study of Aboriginal and Non-Aboriginal Australians.” Journal of Pragmatics 42(12): 3,367–76. Spivak, Gayatri. 1990. The Post-Colonial Critic: Interviews, Strategies, Dialogues. New York: Routledge. Stromquist, Nelly P. 2011. “A Social Cartography of Gender in Education: Visualizing Private and Public Spheres of Interconnecting Forces.” In Beyond the Comparative: Advancing Theory and Its Application to Practice, edited by John C. Weidman and W. James Jacob, 173–92. New York: Springer. Terry, Fiona. 2002. Condemned to Repeat? The Paradox of Humanitarian Action. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Timmer, Andria. 2010. “Constructing the ‘Needy Subject’: NGO Discourses of Roma Need.” PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review 33(2): 264–81. Vannier, Christian, and Amanda Lashaw. 2017. “Conclusion: A Second Generation of NGO Anthropology.” In Cultures of Doing Good: Anthropologists and NGOs, edited by Amanda Lashaw, Christian Vannier, and Steven Sampson, 1–20. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press. van Rooy, Alison, ed. 2013. Civil Society and the Aid Industry. New York: Routledge. Wallace, Tina. 2009. “NGO Dilemmas: Trojan Horses for Global Neoliberalism?” Socialist Register 40: 202–19. West, Candace, and Don H. Zimmerman. 1987. “Doing Gender.” Gender and Society 1(2): 125–51. Wilkie, James E. B., and Galen V. Bodenhausen. 2012. “Are Numbers Gendered?” Journal of Environmental Psychology 141(2): 206–10. Wirtz, Elizabeth. 2017. “The Inhumanity of Humanitarian Aid: Gender and Violence in a Kenyan Refugee Camp.” PhD diss., Purdue University. ProQuest. Wright, Melissa. 2006. “Differences That Matter.” In David Harvey: A Critical Reader, edited by Noel Castree and Derek Gregory, 80–101. Hoboken: Blackwell.

PART I

Patterns of Reproduction NGO and State Relations through a Gendered Lens

The chapters in this section explore how patterns of behaviors in State and nongovernmental relationships can be understood in a gendered framework. The male/female dichotomy helps to provide insight into power relations. Generally nongovernmental activities are more likely to be associated with nurturing activities, gendered female due to their association with nature, a feminine work force and compensation commiserate with a feminine work force, and a relative subservient position to the State. The dichotomy, however, is fluid and flexible. That is, NGOs can take on activities, roles, and powers often relegated to the State and vice versa. They can act in ways that are active and advocacy promoting. In the introduction, the authors argue that this blurring of boundaries or “flipping of the script” does not ultimately challenge the dichotomy nor upset the power hierarchy. However, nongovernmental organizations are continually vying for control and access to power. That is, they do not passively sit in a subservient role but seek to upset the balance and increase their visibility, access to resources, and ability to effect change. The chapters in this section each explore how NGOs challenge the male/female dichotomy. Alexandra Crampton examines elder care in the United States and Ghana in the first chapter of this section, “NGOs and States of Aging: NGOs as Male/Culture Advocates and as Female/Nature Caregivers.” Through a comparison of these two case examples, it is possible to see the flexibility of the analogy that frames this volume. Elder care is associated with nurturance, nongovernmental activity, and a female work force. As such, the work is often devalued in terms of both salary and prestige. Thus, in many ways, Crampton’s analysis maps easily onto the male/female dichotomy. This binary, however, is complicated when

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the nature/culture element is added back in. Crampton argues that in Ghana the presumed need for elder care is dictated by Western founded and funded INGOs (International NGOs). These large transnational organizations act in top down, controlling ways that seek to manage what they view as an uncontrolled situation. Therefore, in this instance, NGOs align with culture (controlling) and act in a more masculine way. The push to provide elder care came from NGOs acting in ways to establish power and dominance. Crampton’s analysis focuses on how NGOs may have more power in so-called weak states, but also shows that the dichotomy does not render nongovernmental organizations powerless. This point is further explored in the second contribution to this section. In “Surviving the State: Strategic Essentialisms and the Complexities of Indigeneity among the Ainu of Northern Japan,” Christopher Loy explores the ambiguity between State and non-State through his analysis of the Ainu Association of Hokkaido. The Ainu Association is both and neither as it is State-sponsored and often critiqued for acting in Statelike ways, but also as an NGO is able to use the ambiguity afforded to it by this designator. Loy traces the history of the Ainu Association and examines how their goals and strategies have changed over time, but “by strategically adopting essentialist positions regarding culture, language, and race,” the Ainu have been able to negotiate their relationship with the State and assert their identity as an indigenous population, unique from ethnic Japanese. As such, Loy’s analysis focuses more on the NGO/State, nature/culture aspects of the dichotomy and in so doing provides evidence for the flexibility and ambiguity of the NGO form. In the final chapter of this section, “From ‘Warm and Fuzzy’ to ‘Business Oriented’ Practices: The Politics of Exclusion and Masculinization of Alternative Justice in the United States,” Amanda J. Reinke explains the ambiguity of State/NGO relationships with an analysis of alternative justice NGOs. These NGOs fill in the vacuum left by the State as it withdrew from the provision of social aid and work to subvert State violence. They have shifted from more feminine and nurturing practices (“warm and fuzzy”) to masculine “business oriented” ones and in so doing can serve to exclude the very populations they seek to assist. The Black recipients of their programming face exclusion, and the work takes on the veneer of Whiteness. Reinke’s analysis further complicates the ambiguity of the dichotomy. The State prioritizes a masculine, punitive approach to justice and one that values Whiteness, aligned with order, homogenization, and control. In their support of alternative jus-

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tice NGOs, the State recognizes the need for more feminized and less punitive forms of conflict resolution, but these are wholly undervalued. Each of these chapters complicate and challenge the male/female dichotomy as it relates to the relationship between NGOs and the State. In each case, the NGO takes on roles, responsibilities, and identities that are more masculine. However, in none of the cases do NGOs subvert the power of the State. In fact, all these examples show how the NGO normalizes the power hierarchy. Elder care NGOs in Ghana revert to their more subservient position once the State had put into place policies for aging populations. The Ainu could act in State-like ways, but need the flexible fluidity of nongovernance to make their claims to identity. And, despite a movement away from “warm and fuzzy” alternative and restorative justice, NGOs exist primarily because they can provide alternatives to the punitive models of justice adhered to by the State. In all cases, the recipient of NGO work is under- or devalued in the eyes of the State, and, at least in the case of elder care and alternative justice, the work is literally feminized in that the work force is female, is underpaid, and receives low prestige. The next section of this volume will take up the feminine nature of NGO work by looking at the manner in which the work force, the nature of work, and, often, the care recipients are gendered female.

CHAPTER 1

NGOs and States of Aging NGOS as Male/Culture Advocates and as Female/Nature Caregivers Alexandra Crampton

Once considered a social problem only for “strong” and “wealthy” states, population aging has gone international as a global problem confronted through UN and INGO (international NGO) efforts. It is defined through demographic statistics broken down by age and gender into population pyramids (Crampton 2009). The aging problem is located through dependency ratios, which measure the number of those “aging” (or elder) relative to those of working age, which is commonly defined as ages sixteen–sixty-four. Large or rising dependency ratios signal the need for public responsibility and intervention. In this way, older adults join women and children as vulnerable populations of global and national concern. As in other NGO practices studied in this volume, those organizations that provide “age” or “elder” care on behalf of the State tend to conform to Sherry Ortner’s typology that female is to male as nature is to culture. That is, this work is constructed as necessary to support bodily states that cannot be otherwise controlled or cured. It is feminized both because of its association with nature and nurture and also because paid staff, volunteers, and care recipients tend to be women. UN conferences have constructed the burden of being female and older as a “double jeopardy” requiring State intervention (UN 1983). Given that in institutions of elder care the NGO staff and the care recipients are typically gendered female, this work is often deemed less than. This is evident in the low compensation through salary and social prestige provided for NGO staff and paid caregivers. Comparison of elder care in two locations—the United States and Ghana—illustrates the flexibility of the male/female–State/NGO dichot-

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omy. Although global discourse on population aging and intervention naturalizes an NGO role of support in relation to the State, social histories suggest a different trajectory. In the United States and Ghana, individual and NGO activism first engendered the State to assume responsibility for age (or elder) care before this became formalized through national legislation. In Ghana, NGO players have also included INGOs, particularly the American Association for Retired Persons (AARP) from the United States and HelpAge International (HAI) from the UK. Using Sherry Ortner’s distinction of female/nature to male/culture, this NGO–State interaction provides examples of how the NGO can assume a male/ culture role in relation to the State. In this dynamic, the NGO is the active agent, pressuring the State to realize public responsibility. Another gendered dimension is how the work of lobbying (or agitating) the State has been less feminized in terms of status and gender identities of leadership. Thus, in two national examples of aging as a problem to solve through State and NGO intervention, I argue that before an NGO relationship of female/nature/care has evolved, the State was prompted to “care” through NGO pressure better described as male/culture/advocate (or lobbyist). If this pattern can be found in other examples, then the female/nature to male/culture binary might serve to help analyze how NGO/State relationships vary depending on whether NGOs and INGOs are working to create (or transform) State-level change or working to serve established State interests. My work on NGOs and elder advocacy contributes to anthropological work challenging the tendency in gerontology to naturalize its presumptions (see Cohen 1994). Margaret Lock, for example, questioned the presumably clear boundary of nature/culture of aging in her work on menopause. In cross-cultural study of menopause in Japan and the United States, she finds that menopause is a culturally and biologically different experience for women in each country (Lock 1994). Turning to a presumption that the nature/culture relationship is one of subordination, Sarah Lamb (2000) has studied how age-related loss is welcomed in India as a means toward greater spiritual enlightenment, and therefore as a source of growth rather than decline. Lawrence Cohen entitled his book No Aging in India (1998) from a quote by an interlocutor who defined aging as gerontological expertise. I found a similar sentiment in Ghana as I observed elder advocacy professionals respond to the complaint that aging was, “A White man’s problem.” In the United States, there is a related kind of gerontological rejection. Sharon Kaufman found that older adults tended to define themselves as “ageless” (Kaufman 1994).

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I interviewed a gerontological social worker who complained that her first problem was often how to get older adults to accept a client role in the first place. Examining the paradox of “no aging” among older adults targeted for NGO and state intervention reveals an ongoing negotiation that is often hidden from policy and professional presentations of self-evident problems and solutions. Despite contradictions between lived experience of aging and population aging discourse, population aging has not only spread across national policy concerns of the welfare state but has also been constructed as a shared, international problem of “global aging.” That is, population aging problems have been aggregated through international networks into a global project of population management. This has been initiated and sustained primarily through UN conferences and documents. Despite pandemics such as HIV/AIDS, an aging and even “graying” world population is constructed through demographic statistics. As in national aging discourse, the prescribed role of scholars within global aging is to evaluate the problems raised by population aging and to provide suggestions on how to solve them, rather than to question whether there is a naturally occurring problem in the first place. My role as an ethnographer has been to denaturalize this prescribed role by including it as part of field research inquiry. One part of this denaturalization has been to follow the construction of aging as a problem by elder advocates in the United States and Ghana. In tracing the histories of this construction in the United States and Ghana, I find that the female/nature to male/culture typology can be useful. I argue that the NGO has been male to the State as female when examining how gerontological representations have emerged in these two countries. Male is used in the sense of conflation with a role of culture as that “which bends nature to its will” (Ortner 1974), such as the essentialized nature of the physical body or the nature of the social body (as in a population under care and control of the State). That is, NGOs have played an important role in identifying aging as a social problem and tasking the State with providing solutions. However, a subordinate and feminized NGO role has later emerged in the wake of advocacy success. This role follows from the State assuming responsibility for aging as a national problem to solve through policy and other welfare support. Responding to other discussions of privatization in this volume, age care responsibility in the United States has been followed by contracting out to feminized NGOs and providing tax credits to (typically female) family caregivers. In Ghana, State re-

NGOs and States of Aging • 35

sponsibility for aging remains an unfunded mandate. The female/nature to male/culture binaries, then, are useful not as permanent labels on NGO/State relationships but in understanding NGO/State coevolution within political–economic contexts that respond to and shape these relationships. In the next section, I provide background to the study from which my data were collected. I then, using a focus on the United States and Ghana, describe how NGO work helped create aging as a social problem for the State to solve as individual countries and in global cooperation. Overall, I argue that examination of NGO/State relationships in terms of female/nature to male/culture shows how NGOs in each country have actively worked to create the state policy context in which feminized NGOs are then identified to serve the State. To help distinguish how male and female can mark changes in NGO-State relationships, I add the tag of care/advocacy to the binary of female/nature to male/culture. This means that the NGO can be male/advocate or female/caregiver in relation to the State within culturally mediated responses to aging as inevitable and yet open to cure.

The Study The data for this analysis are taken from my research in which I seek to denaturalize gerontological intervention work by following the logic of global and national aging discourse and its practices. That is, if problems of aging can be reduced by demographic statistics to a natural and self-evident problem, then intervention benefits ought to be observable at the level of State and NGO intervention practices in any country that has been identified as “aging.” Over sixteen months during 2004–5, I followed the logic, processes, and outcomes of an elder mediation intervention project in Ghana and in the United States. The two countries were chosen as research sites given a binary distinction found in global aging discourse based on modernization theory that divides countries into those that are “developing” (and therefore have yet to fully confront population aging) and those that are “modernized” (and therefore include aging as part of welfare state policies and services). My study was conducted in one country found in each half of this binary. That is, Ghana was chosen due to its global role as a gerontology leader among “developing” countries, especially due to the career and advocacy work of Nana Apt. The United States was chosen as a leader among “modern-

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ized” countries, exporting its national policy through convening global conferences on aging. The main research site within each country was an NGO with national and international influence within gerontology. Both NGO elder mediation projects used population aging discourse to rationalize intervention, and both used the same intervention of mediation as a form of interpersonal conflict resolution. If aging is a problem and “elder mediation”1 as intervention solution were global in theory, then intervention success should have been possible to evaluate and compare in these contexts. I followed each project as a participant observer, assisting in training and mediation practice during preliminary fieldwork, and then observing and recording mediation cases and program development during sixteen months of data collection. My goal was not to prove whether mediation would work as intended as much as to understand how the underlying intervention rationale had emerged, how it was sustained, and with what effects. In other words, I was trying to understand intervention as “on the make” culturally, shaped by and actively shaping discourse and social practice. As Annelise Riles (2001) found in her study of a women’s NGO in Fiji, this required finding an “inside-out” methodology—one that would help me to get outside of the constructed logics to better understand them as cultural practice. There were two inside-out problems. One was how to get outside of a discourse in which aging is a self-evident population-level problem requiring State intervention. I asked, How is global aging as a problem also a cultural project, and whose project is this? Unpacking the social history of aging as a social problem in the United States was a largely historical project—reading social histories of critical gerontologists showing how the problem of old age was due to active effort and unintended consequences of late nineteenth- and early twentiethcentury professionals, progressives, and policymakers. In Ghana, this social history has been heavily influenced by larger international contexts of UN conferences and NGO networks. The cultural project question then expands to NGO advocacy as a global occurrence. Whether this work should expand into Ghana was openly contested during my field research in Ghana (2004–5). The main contention laid in the idea that aging is a “White man’s problem” and therefore a cultural import if not imposition. The second inside-out problem was how to get outside of the logics of elder mediation as an intervention to fix problems associated with

NGOs and States of Aging • 37

aging. My strategy for addressing the second inside-out problem was to compare the global aging construct within and outside of elder advocacy and policymaking environments. Questions included the following: Is aging experienced as a natural, embodied problem in Ghana and in the United States? If so, were NGOs or the State expected to intervene? What other experiences and interpretations were left out of narratives used by NGOs and State actors to rationalize and legitimize their work? Data were collected explicitly through semi-structured interviews, media clippings, and informal conversation both with informants who worked for NGOs (as paid staff or volunteers) and those who lived outside of them. The goal was to reality test the assertions of elder advocates about the social reality and culturally informed interpretations of aging in each country. In the study field sites, a much longer and more entrenched (institutionalized) history is found in the United States while a more recent and contested history is emerging within Ghana. The next section reviews historical and contemporary dynamics of aging, NGOs, and the State in each country. Ironically, current trends in the United States look to shrink State intervention and devolve responsibility to NGOs and families while NGOs in Ghana push for greater State responsibility given the loss of expected familial support. In both cases, the assertion of aging as a universal and natural social problem is continually contested by counter examples from the “lived experience” of aging by people in both countries. Thus, part of NGO and State intervention is to create the need for the elder advocacy and elder care work they initiate, support, and provide.

The Rise of Aging as an Intervention Problem in the United States Social histories and post structural studies of NGO work describe how old age as a social problem did not naturally emerge but was socially constructed through social activism and the rise of gerontological expertise in professions. W. Andrew Achenbaum (1982) argues that the present aging construct as a problem of old age emerged through professional and business interests. For-profit companies began retiring workers and offering pension policies before these became mainstreamed through the State. Meanwhile, late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century scientific discoveries helped develop medicine as a profession and geri-

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atrics as a medical specialization. Acting out of genuine concern and in service to the promotion of their fields, professionals convinced the public that old age was a time of incurable disease, and that long life was not necessarily the reward for living well. In this process, older adults were displaced as the primary experts of their experience. Stephen Katz identifies social activism of the Progressive Movement and subsequent social policy as unintentionally contributing to old age as a negative construct. Through reform efforts to remove and rehabilitate the able-bodied poor, the relative proportion of old people left in almshouses grew. The mainstream public then began associating old age with poverty and evidence of wasted life opportunities: “By the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the almshouse was the institutional basis for the subjective homogeneity and special status attributed to the elderly in general. They constituted the majority of its residents and justified its continued existence. In return, the institutions made visible the social presence of the elderly as poor, dependent, infirm, incapacitated, unproductive, unreformable and differentiated” (Katz 1992: 213). Both Katz and Achenbaum point out that while most people over sixty did not live in almshouses, those who did were the people defined and known publicly as old. Over time, almshouses became known as old age homes (Achenbaum 1982; Katz 1992). At the same time, older adults have neither been entirely passive, nor lacked effective advocates. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, a retired doctor named Francis Townsend penned an editorial that went (for its day) viral. His proposal that the State give every older adult $200 per month became so popular that he rose as the leader of a social movement demanding such policy (Wang 1999). The eventual passage of the old age provisions in the Social Security Act is attributed in part to State effort to respond to popular pressure by partially coopting the Townsend Movement demands. Frank Wang (1999) describes this time as the rise of the “senior movement” in the United States in which the presumed vulnerability of older adults was leveraged into demands for State support. This then led into a “second generation” senior’s movement post World War II in which this group became “senior citizens” deserving compensation for years of hard work and service as retired workers (Wang 1999). It is in this historical context that NGOs as advocacy groups became prominent. Ethel Percy Andrus, a retired teacher upset by paltry pension benefits, began the National Retired Teachers Association, and retired congress member Aime Forand started the National Council of Senior

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Citizens. Andrus eventually focused on creating a private, pooled insurance for older adults (Wang 1999). Over time, the NRTA became the AARP and rose to become a powerful lobbyist that continues to influence Washington. In fact, some scholars have described the AARP as part of an “iron triangle” of State policymaking in which powerful nonprofits as interest groups help drive policy eventually passed in Congress and implemented by federal agencies (Hudson 2009). In this process, older adults have become a presence in political campaigning as the “gray vote,” even though research shows that older adults do not tend to vote as an age-based block (Binstock 1991). The AARP enjoys a symbiotic role with the State as AARP offers assurance of a “gray vote” and enjoys the policy intervention benefits passed by congress. The AARP provides an example of NGO as male/culture in relation to the State.

Aging Goes Global NGOs have also been active in the naturalization of population aging as a problem for the State to solve individually and collectively through international effort. In 1973, the AARP founded the International Federation on Aging, which helped sponsor the UN’s first conference on aging in 1982. The reality of population aging is once again evidenced through demographic statistics. Documents from this conference prescribe roles for NGOs in support of State responsibility for aging populations. They are expected to rely on the State for learning the needs of elderly populations as well as to provide support for “dealing with all matters concerned of the elderly and the aging of the population” (UN 1983). They are also expected to help fill in for care provision abandoned by family. Gender is a special need such that States and nongovernmental organizations should pay “special attention to special needs of women and widows” as a larger proportion of older adults as well as “special responsibility to the most vulnerable among the elderly, particularly the poor, of whom many are women from rural areas” (UN 1983). How could the populations of all countries be described as sharing the same problem of aging? Not only were there differences of political, economic, and cultural context but also the demographic statistics of each country were not the same. There were many countries, such as Ghana, in which the numbers of older adults were small and the larger policy concern was fertility rates. The answer came out of an academic conference in which participants compared aging across cultures (Cowgill and Holmes 1972). David Cowgill (1974) proposed grouping varia-

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tions into two categories within modernization theory. The categories were “primitive” (or less pejoratively, one might suggest “traditional”) and “modern.” This was a stage model in which all countries undergoing development would eventually modernize along paths similar to that of the United States and other “developed” countries. In similar use to Ortner’s description of culture in contrast to nature, modernization was the natural cause of aging and the rise of old age as a social problem for the State to solve. That is, aging for those in “traditional” and not yet “modernized” societies is positive—older adults generally enjoy high social status and are cared for as necessary by family. Aging in “modern” societies, however, is a negative relegation to being “old” caused by reaching a chronological age, such as age sixty or sixty-five. This problem lies in large structural changes in which small, agrarian social groups become part of large industrialized “modern” nations. Growing older in these contexts brings loss of social status, primarily through retirement, dependency, and lack of care. Younger populations in modern societies migrate to cities and neglect previous caregiving roles. Exacerbating this trend is a general increase in the number of people living into old ages. Thus, just as naturally occurring cultural responses could no longer be relied upon, there is an uptake in need as the numbers of people surviving into older ages increases. Eventually, modernization requires the State to take over, assuming a supportive role vacated by family and local community. In this way, modernization theory paradoxically naturalizes aging as a universal problem of growing old while attributing this natural decline to the impact of its own cultural process of modern state making. Demographic statistics are theorized to provide objective data for measuring modernization progress. That is, “traditional” societies have “young” populations, shaped by high fertility and mortality rates. Modernization, however, brings population aging as fertility and mortality rates decrease. Eventually modern societies (enjoying mature, developed economies) have stable populations in terms of growth and aging. As a natural outcome of modernization as a global process, developing nations could prepare for their future by adopting the aging policies and interventions already in the United States and other countries. Deviations from discourse expectations were evidence of even greater need for policy attention rather than exceptions to modernization theory. These countries were essentially off track. A particular concern was population aging ahead of a modernization schedule, which was framed as “getting old before rich” (Crampton 2009: 5).

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Privatization as a Postmodernization Turn in the United States? Ironically, the success of modernization theory in shaping international discussion and documentation for intervention arose as a discourse shift began to take place in the United States. This was in part caused by problems of funding. By the early 1970s, policymakers had become reluctant to keep funding social security expansions. Rather than population stabilization, the aging of the population was rising and increasingly appeared to be unsustainable. In policy discourse, population aging became cause for alarm in which an impending “age-quake” threatened economic prosperity (Peterson 1999). State support would have to shrink. In the 1970s, efforts to avoid further social security program expansion led to the Older American’s Act (OAA). This policy included the creation of a national “Aging Network” of government agencies providing community-based support. Services both enable older adults to live in communities rather than State-sponsored nursing homes and also help families in caring for older adults. NGOs, such as the one in my study, were developed to provide such services. Another policy effort to reduce State support has centered on privatization. Privatization of the national social security pension program has not been successful. However, trends toward devolving care to NGOs and families has been promoted by the 2010 National Family Caregiver Support Program. A discursive turn has been to replace the largely passive role of aging citizens with identification of “successful” and “active” aging. In this paradigm, each of us assume responsibility over aging that allows us to remain active and engaged post retirement. As a logical argument for reduction in State intervention, this facilitates privatization of public responsibility and the neoliberal call for personal responsibility. It also recalls description of aging in Cowgill’s “traditional” list, in which older adults actively ensure their value through active, continuing participation, and families assume the burden of elder care that cannot be avoided. Thus, the representation of NGO-State relationships in population aging discourse may be one of linear progress to State responsibility while the social reality may be a return to historical reliance on informal care largely provided by women. In the meantime, my research shows how older adults have often avoided and rejected acceptance of old age as found in intervention discourse. Neither the State nor NGOs seem to offer services that older adults want, or, if the services are desired, potential recipients may not know about them. In asking a senior staff member of an Aging Network

42 • Alexandra Crampton

service about low usage, I was told that only about 10 percent of people aged sixty and over use services provided by the Aging Network’s senior services. A different staff person, who is a gerontological social worker, explained that she asks older adults to volunteer in the hope that they will eventually accept services if needed. The older adults where I lived developed creative strategies to allow living at home, avoid accepting formal services, and yet address any need for care. For example, an elderly woman was agoraphobic but afraid to be alone at night. She called trusted neighbors for help and fired the help offered through social services. When staff from social services called to check on her, she insisted that she was fine in fear that she would be moved to a nursing home. She then turned to neighbors, church members, and her therapist. She also started placing newspaper ads seeking people who would spend the night. These examples show how Lawrence Cohen’s finding of “no aging” in India was also a popular sentiment in the United States; that is, a general refusal to accept that turning sixty or sixty-five meant that one was vulnerable and in need of intervention. At the same time, the creative options for managing dependency among my interlocutors do not map neatly onto current discourse of successful and active aging.

The Rise of Aging as Intervention Problem in Ghana In Ghana, international and national NGOs rather than the State have been the leaders in aging and intervention work. As anthropologist Albert K. Awedoba explained to me during the study period, State reluctance to provide social welfare dates back to British policy during colonial rule, when colonial officials took little interest in private family needs and presumed that Africans naturally took care of their own. In the process of identifying how this was accomplished, colonial officers identified the “village elder,” who was typically a family head (Owusu 1970). While it was true that those who became local leaders were often older in age, a specific chronological age was not necessarily the key factor. In other words, the natural family support system later “discovered” by scholars of “traditional cultures” was in part based on colonial State policy effects of indirect rule in which it was presumed that the status of elderhood was conferred in part simply by chronological age. In the postcolonial State, aging as a social problem for the State to solve has been brought into Ghana through Ghanaian professionals and NGO activism. As she explained to me, Nana Araba Apt was hired by the

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UN during the time of the Vienna conference to conduct early research on aging in developing countries. After completing social work training in North America, she had conducted research on aging in Ghana (early 1970s) and was shocked by how older adults were not necessarily respected nor looked after (see Apt 1996). However, she complicated the modernization narrative by arguing that cultural values and elder respect had not simply eroded but that families were strained by circumstance of postcolonial political economy (Apt 1993, 1999). She and other scholars, such as Christine Oppong (2004), have documented the persistence of aging as part of intergenerational relationships of interdependence rather than separate categories of productive adults and elderly dependents. Nevertheless, aging as a social problem has come to Ghana with heavy oversight by Western donors. It is due to this top-down, Western-influenced approached to elder care that many NGOs in Ghana can be portrayed as taking on the more masculine functions of elder care in that they were involved in creating elder care as a problem and shaping social response. HelpAge International (HAI) is an INGO that was founded at Oxford University and has sponsored NGOs focused on aging across the global South. HAI founded HelpAge Ghana. Located in the capital city Accra, this NGO has been a national leader in promoting aging policy and intervention work. As explained by Ebenezer Blavo and Nana Apt, this means local NGO work is often in the shadow of international networks and expertise: Helping organizations have had similar exposure and orientation to foreign standards of practice. Thus, collaboration of professions in decision making and in social policy formulation tends to have shared foreign biases. As much as foreign influence is in support of national development, and indeed as much as it has helped achieve significant progress in raising the quality of life of Ghanaians, it has also contributed to the alteration of Ghanaian cultural values and practices and has accelerated the breakdown of the traditional social order. . . . New social problems do arise as foreign influence reshapes societal values and attitudes. Any such emerging problem is widely discussed and dramatized in the mass media. It also becomes the central theme at workshops where a cross-section of professionals and the lay public provides active participation. Manpower and material resources from various contributors or donors to social work programs are mobilized and directed at meeting the needs of the nation. (Blavo and Apt 1997: 331–32)

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Given the extent of foreign influence on social intervention in Ghana, it may not be surprising that proposed remedies to old age as a social problem are quite similar to (if not based on) those found globally. In Ghana, State intervention has been driven by interest in promoting Ghana’s “progress” as part of global policy and intervention, and thus responds to UN conferences and international INGO networks. Following the Vienna conference, a National Commission on the Aged was formed “to advise on all matters related to the welfare of the aged” (Brown 1994). A pension plan was implemented in 1991, and a national health insurance plan in 2003. The latter includes free health care for anyone seventy years and older (although it seems important to note that average life expectancy is sixty). The Department of Social Welfare is supposed to provide help for older adults. However, it is typically underresourced and relies on local organizations through religious institutions, NGOs, and self-help associations, such as the Veterans’ Association of Ghana (VAG) and the Ghana Government Pensioners’ Association (Brown 1994). In this way, there is a welfare state in Ghana patterned after aging policy in other countries, along with an expectation that others, such as NGOs, will carry out the work. As such, once again, it is the more feminized NGO that takes up the work of care. There may be funding reasons for why NGOs play such an important role. During my research, it was clear that NGO work provided a potentially more lucrative income than the public (for low-level civil servants) or private sector, particularly for those lacking good connections. Among entrepreneurs, small shops stocked with goods paid for through help from overseas relatives often lacked customers. By contrast, an NGO with a name and a website could begin soliciting funds for whatever category of need was current in the global marketplace of helping. There emerges, then, the self-serving potential of NGOs that are publicly working on behalf of older adults. This criticism is also found in large NGOs in the United States, such as the AARP (Lynch 2011). During my research, I followed the foreign influence noted by Blavo and Apt (1997) by attending an African regional conference hosted in Ghana but legitimated and indirectly funded through HelpAge International. A clear HAI goal was to continue mentoring country-based NGOs to lobby for State policies on aging and pensions. In Ghana, such legislation eventually passed in 2010. The policy, titled “Follow Up to the Second World Assembly on Aging,” includes the usual rationale of population aging statistics and reference to past UN conferences for legitimacy. As noted in the official document, “It is mandatory for all UN

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member states which Ghana is a reputable member to develop national plans and strategies that aim at adding quality life to the years of older persons in conformity with the millennium declaration of a society for all ages and through that ensure that specific budgetary provisions and other sources of funds are made to facilitate the implementation of programmes for older persons” (Government of Ghana 2010). However, the policy has largely remained dormant without funding (GhanaWeb 2011). For example, in 2012 the World Health Organization convened a meeting at the State’s request (WHO 2013). The result included NGOs and focused on research collaboration that provided necessary statistics. Today, Ghana remains an important State within global accounting of population aging. It provides statistics that are taken to represent not only Ghana but the entire African region in ongoing effort to document and address the challenges of global aging. At a more local, ethnographic level, however, the critique that aging is really a “White man’s problem” has persisted. During my research, for example, a lawyer who was supposed to train paralegals to defend the rights of older adults began by stating that there were no laws specifically upholding the rights of older adults for him to defend (this was in 2004, before passage of the national policy on aging). On the other hand, he continued, there was no need for such policy due to local social norms of care. He quoted a popular proverb—“Just as the elder helped you as you cut your first teeth, so must you help them as they lose theirs”—and then used the rest of his time to expand on that point. Similar to the “no aging” resistance by older adults in the United States site, a follow-up report by the State regarding its policy complained that implementation was delayed due in part to “the apparent lack of ownership by older persons” who had not yet assumed their role as “primary stakeholders” (Government of Ghana 2010). This lack of engagement was again noted four years later (Yiranbon et al. 2014). At the same time, the import of aging as a social problem through internationally networked NGOs is bringing interesting unintended effects. One example is a complaint from an elder advocacy NGO about older adults who unfairly take advantage of NGO resources. This was phrased as a problem of older adults who are “crafty” and are only pretending to need financial help. Another example of unintended effects is the work of a woman who would be characterized as “old” through demographic statistics but who identifies herself as an elder advocate for others. Invoking the name of HelpAge International and HelpAge Ghana, she referred to her work as “doing helpage” as she visited older

46 • Alexandra Crampton

adults, counseled family to take care, and identified need for resources. This work also fits the description of how adults in “traditional societies” become respected elders through counseling and conflict resolution. Therefore, her intervention is both modern and traditional, providing an example of how the traditional/modern binary of modernization theory is artificially imposed. At the same time, her work does not deny the conflation of growing older with physical and social dependency. Overall, the resistance of “no aging” in response to State and NGO work in both countries is not necessarily about whether people need help as they grow older as much as how this is determined, by whom, and what help is truly accepted.

Conclusion Sherry Ortner’s binary of female/nature to male/culture provides a way to examine the gendered power dynamics and interdependent relationships of NGOs and States within the discourse and practice of population aging. Demographic statistics and dependency ratios mark the landscape of human bodies that individually and collectively create national and global populations to manage. In the official documents of this intervention work, the State is in a role of male/culture because it is given responsibility to collect statistics, track trends, and act to ensure demographic balance and population level care. The NGO is subordinate in that it should work with and serve the State, which includes caring for bodies that have not been able to avoid the natural decline and loss of aging. However, a closer look at social histories in the United States and Ghana shows how NGOs have played important roles in pushing the State to assume this responsibility in the care of populations. A snapshot view can help identify when NGOs and States play male/culture roles of influence and when they enact female/care responsibilities in response to the other. Observed over time, there is less of a clear binary of superiority and inferiority than there are relationships of mutual and shifting influence. This interdependence is mediated in Ghana by international networks of aid and development. In both countries, the people who embody population aging also speak; sometimes to push the State for greater change, and sometimes to challenge NGOs and States that aging as lived experience does not fit the aging discourse, demographic statistics, and modernization theories used by professionals, NGO entrepreneurs, and bureaucrats who construct it. Another layer to the

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male/culture to female/nature binaries, then, is how official discourse and policy may presume a dominance of formalized intervention over problems of nature that cannot fully account for the lived realities of those who are “naturally” and culturally engaged. Alexandra Crampton is an Associate Professor in the Department of Social and Cultural Sciences at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She earned a joint PhD in Anthropology and Social Work, a master’s degree in Social Work, and a master’s degree in Anthropology from the University of Michigan. Her research and policy engagement center on interventions to improve the lives of people constructed as vulnerable due to age—both older adults and children. Past projects examined international development of mediation as an alternative dispute resolution and elder advocacy tool through ethnographic study in the United States and Ghana. Current projects in family law turn to international use of mediation as a court alternative for parents in disputes over children through ethnographic study in the United States and Australia.

Note 1. The stated purpose in each project was to use mediation as a means of resolving conflicts among family members who were caring for older adults.

References Achenbaum, W. Andrew. 1982. “Further Perspectives on Modernization and Aging: A (P)review of the Historical Literature.” Social Science History 6(3): 347–68. Apt, Nana. 1993. “Care of the Elderly in Ghana: An Emerging Issue.” Journal of Cross-Cultural Gerontology, 8: 310–312. ———. 1996. Coping with Old Age in a Changing Africa. Aldershot, UK: Avebury. ———. 1999. “Hard Choices for the Third World.” The UNESCP Courier 52(1): 23–25. Binstock, Robert. 1991. “Aging, Politics, and Public Policy.” In Growing Old in America, edited by Beth B. Hess and Elizabeth W. Markson, 325–40. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers. Blavo, Ebenezer Q., and Nana Apt. 1997. “Ghana.” In International Handbook on Social Work Theory and Practice, edited by Mayadas, Nazneen, Watts, Thomas D., and Doreen Elliott, 320–43. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Brown, Charles. K. 1994. “Ghana.” In International Handbook on Services for the Elderly, edited by Jordan Kosberg, 139–53. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.

48 • Alexandra Crampton Cohen, Lawrence. 1994. “Old Age: Cultural and Critical Perspectives.” Annual Review of Anthropology 23(1): 137–58. ———. 1998. No Aging in India. Berkeley: University of California Press. Cowgill, Donald. 1974. “The Aging of Populations and Societies.” The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 415(1): 1–18. Cowgill, Donald, and David Holmes. 1972. Aging and Modernization. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts. Crampton, Alexandra. 2009. “Global Aging.” In The Pardee Papers, 6 August 2009. GhanaWeb. 2011. “HelpAge Urges Govt. to Implement National Ageing Policy.” Ghana News Agency. http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/ NewsArchive/HelpAge-urges-govt-to-implement-National-Ageing-Poli cy-220493. Government of Ghana and the Ministry of Employment and Social Welfare. 2010. “National Ageing Policy of Ghana.” July 2010. http://www.ohchr.org/ Documents/Issues/OlderPersons/Submissions/Ghana.pdf. Hudson, Robert. 2009. “From Industrialism to Institutionalization: Theoretical Accounts of Aging Policy Development.” In Handbook of Theories of Aging, edited by Vern Bengston, 539–54. New York: Springer. Katz, Stephen. 1992. “Alarmist Demography: Power, Knowledge and the Elderly.” Journal of Aging Studies 6(3): 203–25. Kaufman, Sharon. 1994. The Ageless Self: Sources of Meaning in Late Life. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Lamb, Sarah. (2000). White Saris and Sweet Mangoes. Oakland: University of California Press. Lock, Margaret. 1994. “Menopause in Cultural Context.” Experimental Gerontology 29(3): 307–17. Lynch, Frederick R. 2011. “How AARP Can Get Its Groove Back.” New York Times, 23 June 2011. https://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/24/opinion/24lynch.html. Oppong, Christine. 2004. “Gendered Family Strategies and Responsibilities of Grandparents in Sub-Saharan Africa.” University of Ghana Institute for African Studies Occasional Research Paper Series 2004 6: 1–51. Ortner, Sherry. 1974. “Is Female to Male as Nature is to Culture?” In Woman, Culture, and Society, edited by Michelle Rosaldo and Louise Lamphere, 68–87. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Owusu, Maxwell. 1970. Uses and Abuses of Political Power: A Case Study of Continuity and Change in the Politics of Ghana. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Peterson, Peter. 1999. Gray Dawn. New York: Times Books. Riles, Annelise. 2001. The Network Inside Out. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. United Nations. 1983. Vienna International Action Plan on Aging. http://www .monitoringris.org/documents/norm_glob/vipaa.pdf.

NGOs and States of Aging • 49 Wang, Frank. 1999. “Resistance and Old Age: The Subject Behind the American Seniors’ Movement.” In Reading Foucault for Social Work, edited by Adrienne S. Chambon, Allan Irving, and Laura Epstein. New York: Columbia University Press. World Health Organization. 2013. “Ghana: Looking After Its Older People.” Features, July 2013. http://www.who.int/features/2013/ghana-living-longer/ en/. Yiranbon, Ethel, Zhou Lulin, Henry Asante Antwi, Emmanuel Opoku Marfo, Kwame Oduro Amoako, and Daniel Kwame Offin. 2014. “A Qualitative Review of Ghana’s Elderly Care Policy: A Grounded Theory Approach Using EU’s ‘CARMEN’ Model.” International Journal of Academic Research in Public Policy and Governance 1(1): 93–119.

CHAPTER 2

Surviving the State Strategic Essentialisms and the Complexities of Indigeneity among the Ainu of Northern Japan Christopher Loy

When I arrived in Sapporo in 2005 to study indigenous land rights among the Ainu in northern Japan, my first fieldsite was at the Ainu Association of Hokkaido. Then called the Hokkaido Utari Association, the association was described variously as a State-sponsored Ainu welfare organization, an indigenous rights NGO, or an organization promoting Ainu culture and handicrafts. In fact, it has been at one time or another all these things, and it continues to juggle an array of responsibilities, functions, and competing obligations among disparate interest groups. Surprisingly, the organization was largely dependent on funds from the Hokkaido prefectural government and the Japanese national government, yet it continued to spearhead efforts to reappropriate Ainu lands, increase Ainu access to the natural resources of Hokkaido, and to oblige the Japanese government to recognize the Ainu as an indigenous people within Japan—all moves that would problematize conventional ideas of Japanese sovereignty in the North and could pose uncomfortable questions regarding the isomorphic relationship between ethnic Japanese, or Wajin, and the nation-space of the Japanese archipelago. The term “Ainu” means “human” and is used by different groups that trace their ancestry to the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido, the Russian island of Sakhalin, or the Russian Kuril Islands.1 Having occupied many different geographical regions in the North, the generic term “Ainu” obscures the cultural and linguistic diversity that exists within the group (Chiri 1942; Hattori and Chiri 1964; Tamura 2000). That said, most who identify as Ainu recognize their shared cultural, linguistic, and

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racial heritage, as well as the shared experience of dispossession and discrimination in both Russia and Japan. Despite decades of effort, the Ainu were not officially recognized as an indigenous group by the Japanese government until 2008. Many Ainu represent themselves as deriving from the first peoples of the Japanese archipelago, tracing their ancestry to the paleolithic Jomon culture, which appears in the archaeological record at 14,000 BCE (Hudson 1999). Their northern ancestral lands, culture, language, and mode of subsistence are invoked to mark an ethnic difference from those of their Wajin counterparts to the south. For example, the Ainu were hunter-gatherers and fishers, whereas the Wajin practiced agriculture. With anthropological and genetic studies highlighting physiological differences between Ainu and Wajin populations, racial markers are routinely emphasized in contemporary discourse. From skin color and body hair to blood type and haplotypes, many of the Ainu with whom I spoke were keen to highlight physiological differences between themselves and Wajin Japanese. One of my interlocutors, beaming with pride, described his newborn son’s appearance as “Ainu-like” (Ainurashii). When asked what that meant, he referred to his light skin, round eyes, and thick hair. The different evaluations of these cultural and racial differences have resulted in systematic discrimination against people of Ainu ancestry. The Ainu themselves have, at various times, debated whether the path to empowerment lay in assimilating to mainstream Japanese culture or in fighting for recognition as an indigenous people. If we look at the history of the Ainu Association, recognition has not always been a goal of the Ainu or their association. In fact, the organization has been remarkably flexible at shifting functions depending on the social and political contingencies of the moment. At each turn in its history, the association endeavored to render the Ainu legible to State and international institutions in a way so as to diminish risk to the Ainu community. Established in 1930, a time when nationalism in Japan was especially virulent, the association originally worked to facilitate Ainu assimilation in Japan. By the 1970s, the organization sought to alleviate poverty and promote education in the community. It was responsible for disbursing Ainu welfare in the form of scholarships and low-interest mortgages to Ainu families. Under the leadership of Nomura Giichi, the association became involved in the international indigenous peoples’ movement in the late 1970s. In 1987, the association started working intensively with the Working Group on Indigenous Populations at the United Nations. The institution’s participation in the formalization of in-

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digenous rights internationally contributed to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in 2007. The Ainu were granted official recognition by Japan the following year. One might ask how an institution made the transition from promoting the assimilation of the Ainu to forging a path toward a liberation of sorts from official expectations of cultural and linguistic integration (importantly, questions of social and economic self-determination have yet to be adequately addressed in Japan). In this chapter, I argue that the interdependencies between States and NGOs often make clean analytic categorization problematic; NGOs can find themselves at once carrying out functions on behalf of the nation-state while simultaneously pushing for social change that challenges the State’s legitimacy as the arbiter of national belonging. Given the ambiguous relationship between many NGOs and the State, their technocratic methods and organization, and their aesthetics of officialdom, some anthropologists have been quick to critique or dismiss their usefulness as institutions capable of ameliorating the deleterious impacts of nation-states on marginal populations or effecting social change (Escobar 1995; Ferguson and Gupta 2002; Timmer 2010). The Ainu Association has, in fact, been criticized by some of its more progressive members as moving too slow at times—appearing reluctant to press demands with the Japanese State. It is far from a vanguard organization; yet its success in the push for recognition for the indigenous status of the Ainu people was largely due to the flexibility and durability of the institutional structure itself. In short, the association was able to adopt strategic positions at various times, enabling a shift in function and eventually the adoption of another vision regarding what the organization was to accomplish. Its ambiguity as NGO or GONGO (government-organized NGO) or State institution facilitated at various times a jumping of technocratic tracks, arguably increasing its efficacy as an organ responsible for representing the Ainu to State and supranational organizations. I borrow Gayatri Spivak’s concept “strategic essentialism” in this chapter to make sense of the symbolic and functional transformations that the Ainu Association of Hokkaido underwent in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. In her original formulation, Spivak acknowledges the destructive potential for positivist essentialisms (e.g., “woman,” “Indian,” or “immigrant”) to define large, heterogeneous groups of people in ways that are useful for hegemonic control over those groups; yet the strategic use of a conditional or temporary mode of representation

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can be deployed to critique and challenge dominant ideologies and practices by presenting a legible subject. Spivak says: “In deconstructive critical practices, you have to be aware that you are going to essentialize anyway. So then strategically you can look at essentialism, not as descriptions of the way things are, but as something that one must adopt to produce a critique of anything” (Spivak 1990: 51). Spivak’s use of the term was originally used to consider the possibility of a feminist politics that could be collective and multiple by strategically engaging essentialist representation (1990: 11–12). The Ainu, as an indigenous group, are crosscut by geographical, linguistic, cultural, gendered, and generational differences; however, in recent decades they have been able to mount a politically effective response to the universalizing discourses of the Japanese nation-state—a discourse that sought at various times to define the Ainu as a problem to be eliminated, as a problem to be rehabilitated, as one variant of the rich multicultural fabric of Japan, or as an ethnic minority that would receive protections from the State. For the last forty years, the State has been resistant to the idea that the Ainu are indigenous to the North because that would cast the Japanese as interlopers in a nation-space that has been considered to be isomorphic to the distribution of ethnic Japanese on the archipelago. Taking in the historical sweep of institutional change at the association, I argue that by strategically adopting essentialist positions regarding culture, language, and race, the Ainu have been able to outmaneuver the Japanese State’s continued attempts to define the Ainu as ethnically Japanese. In the process, the association has used the productive ambiguity of its position vis-à-vis the State to further Ainu social, political, and economic interests. Before looking at the institution’s history, we must confront the fact that the deconstructionist critical theorists with whom Spivak once aligned herself would likely look askance at applying her critical method to an institution, let alone an institution that has for decades resided well within the administrative apparatus of the State. It could be argued that indigenous people, all people really, require a mode of representation that interfaces with other institutions, promotes their interests in broader political arenas, and, ideally, acts in good faith on their behalf. Implicit in this effort is the production of an essentialized subject that is used to represent a multitude characterized by a range of shared circumstances (historical, economic, social, etc.); it is difficult to identify a social policy that does not rely on clearly defined categories of people. The critique of NGOs by anthropologists and other commentators is surely apt, as many NGOs clearly do not act in good faith and

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promote policies that are inimical to the people they purport to serve (e.g., Banks, Hulme, and Edwards 2015; Wallace 2009); yet the critical reflex can obscure the usefulness and even necessity of NGOs working on behalf of marginalized populations. For the Ainu, the Ainu Association continues to be an institutional means by which the Ainu community in Hokkaido can negotiate with the Japanese State. It currently possesses the technocratic expertise to produce the minutiae of officialdom that allows for State largess to flow into the Ainu community, enabling educational opportunities for Ainu youth, various financial services, and funding that supports traditional Ainu handicrafts. In addition, it serves as a clearinghouse of information regarding the Ainu. From binders full of newspaper clippings to academic and popular works on the Ainu, this is the place where state officials, academics, curious tourists, and the Ainu themselves come to learn about Ainu culture and history. The association has been involved in the language revitalization effort and continues to support cultural events around the island. Perhaps most importantly, it served as the institutional liaison between the Ainu and indigenous rights groups at the United Nations—a union that played a major role in pressuring the Japanese government to finally recognize the Ainu as an indigenous group in Japan (the only one, so far). There is a kind of institutional memory there that transcends the lifetime of any one member of the staff. A historical look at the institution illustrates that at various junctures, the association has come to adopt new visions for itself and for the Ainu people as a whole. The characterization of the Ainu by the association has never been unproblematic—essentialisms never are— but it has always been strategic, with the goal of recuperating a kind of self-determination that the Ainu lost in colonization and the annexation of their ancestral territories. Modern nation-states operate through the production of supplementary meanings. In order for the signifier of the nation to be compelling enough to garner legitimacy, its fables need to be clear and uncomplicated by diversity and moral ambivalence. From the point of view of the State, indigenous peoples occupy a “savage slot,” constituting a social category that requires remediation, ideologically justifying the annexations and settling of indigenous peoples’ lands (Trouillot 2003). Often this remediation takes the form of education, economic development, resettlement, and other measures that seek to transform native peoples into nation-state citizens. In the case of the Ainu, the Japanese State was, until recently, reluctant to recognize their indige-

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nous status; therefore, assimilation efforts were initially taken on by the Ainu Association—an association that came to be largely funded by the State but always held at a remove from the government itself. To have a State-run Bureau of Ainu Affairs, for example, would make clear an ethnic division within the nation, which would in turn lead inexorably to questions about homelands, resources, and special rights for native peoples. Instead, the Ainu Association has taken on State-like functions, but under the aegis of a nongovernmental organization. As such, the State is able to promote the assimilation of the Ainu through its funding of various welfare measures, thus retaining its “civilizing” function vis-à-vis a colonized people, while at the same time forestalling any formal recognition that Japan’s resource-rich, second largest island did not “belong” to the Japanese nation itself until fairly recently (it was annexed in 1868). In Ortner’s terms, the Ainu Association mediates between the facticity of State power (shall we call this “nature,” red in tooth and claw?)— the annexation of Ainu lands was fait accompli due to a gross imbalance of power between the Ainu and the ascendant Japanese State—and the ideology of the State as a system governed by rule of law and motivated by an ethos of justice. This ethos became an imperative in the mid-twentieth century as supranational organizations began to articulate a separate regime of rights that would transform native peoples from marginalized citizens of settler States to legitimate counterparts in negotiating the restoration of indigenous nationhood. This process of mediating between a state of fundamental inequality and the construction of a more egalitarian ideal is germane to the world’s historical struggle of women and all minority populations. As participants in this protracted endeavor, the Ainu Association has had to transform itself in response to evolving social norms and the emergence of new opportunity structures within State and supranational institutions. In this chapter, I view the transformations in the Ainu Association through the lens of Spivak’s theory. In the first two sections I account for the sociohistorical context of which the institution was a product and consider the mode of representation it employed as a response to social and political currents by using essentialist referents: Ainu-as-loyalcitizen and Ainu-as-oppressed-minority. In the third section, I take up the association’s participation in the global indigenous rights movement, where their efforts are less engaged with representing the Ainu vis-à-vis the national context and more concerned with building a pathway to a future where their indigeneity is less a liability in what is still reflexively

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thought of as an ethnically homogeneous nation (Ono and Ono 2015). In the end, I argue that NGOs, difficult to classify though they are, are tools that may need to be altered from time to time based the contingencies of the moment. In the case of the Ainu Association, changes in function have always flowed from an attempt to mediate between a State interested in producing good citizens and the more progressive elements of its constituency: Ainu who have, since the mid-twentieth century, developed an interest in increased autonomy.

The Malleable Subject: The Ainu Association and the Prewar Desire to Assimilate The dovetailing of progressive civic associations with conservative State bureaucracies was facilitated in part through a shared commitment to the ideals of modernity: scientific rationality, technological progress, and a strong State. Although a marginalized people, the Ainu were not immune to the seductiveness of this discourse. In 1930, at the height of Showa nationalism, the Ainu Association of Hokkaido was created in conjunction with the Hokkaido prefectural administration for the purpose of addressing the problems of poverty and social integration. The organization published Ezo no Hikari (蝦夷の光—The Light of Ezo), a periodical containing information about Ainu history and social policy along with essays by association members. Many of the essays, informed by the rhetoric of temperance movements, moral suasion campaigns, and a discourse characterized by a pernicious social Darwinism that had gained currency by the 1930s, were often severely self-critical. While a shared history of privation and dislocaFigure 2.1. The cover of the tion is often acknowledged in the essays, first edition of Ezo no Hikari many writers found blood to be the rea(Hokkaido Utaro Kyōkai son behind the poverty, alcoholism, and 1990a). Used with permission low educational attainment in the Ainu from the Ainu Association.

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community. For some contributors the solution was simple: the Ainu should assimilate with “the glorious Japanese race” (idai naru nihon minzoku—偉大なる日本民族) as quickly as possible. In the introduction to the Ainu Association’s first issue, the author outlines the history of injustice that had been visited upon the Ainu during the feudal era; however, for him, the tragedy of history lies not in the appropriation of Ainu lands or the legacy of coerced labor, rather it exists in the antiassimilation measures enforced by the Matsumae-han in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He especially regrets the fact that, because of the 1899 Former Aborigines Protection Act, the Ainu have been negatively labeled hogojin (保護人) or “welfare people.” In fine oratory fashion, he exhorts his audience to become loyal subjects of the Japanese empire: Look! In all areas of modern life disturbing things arise—murder, robbery, infidelity and the proliferation of leftist groups. According to many people, the Ainu have a special monopoly on drunkenness and stupidity—and this is regrettable. Who can really believe that all Ainu habitually drink and are dim-witted? The Ainu people, rather than joining leftist groups, are becoming one with the Japanese nation. From a single family a beggar’s voice is heard; yet, we can be proud of the great progress we have made toward unity [with the Japanese]. Trapped by feelings of the past, the new spirit of the modern Ainu is hidden from most of society. In point of fact, for many the word “Ainu” suggests “savageness” and “inability”—these old sentiments only do harm to us. In reality, the word “Ainu” originated [quoting from unknown source] “among the ancient people of Ezo, a heroic person was given this word as an honorific title; after much time passed the people of Ezo as a whole took on this name.” People’s negative viewpoints come from old ideas; we must work to remove these prejudices. Of course, we should exert our efforts with sincerity, but first we must make society aware of the actual conditions of our people and our real values must be demonstrated in public. This journal is published for this very reason. . . . We hope that we might become loyal subjects and contributing members of society—we can begin by repaying the benevolent policies of the past. (Hokkaido Ainu Association 1930: 1–2)

Facing a wave of rightwing nationalism, the move to portray the Ainu as a member, albeit a poor one, within the larger “family” of Japan can be read as an attempt to conform and appear as innocuous as possible. At this time, so-called leftist groups were routinely rounded up by the military police, so it is entirely plausible that this first large-scale orga-

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nization of Ainu would find itself under the scrutiny of any number of militant organizations. The author’s repeated attempts to distance the new association from leftist groups indicate an anxiety about the political climate of the day. According to the author, the Ainu were not fundamentally lacking by dint of their perceived race as many Japanese and even Ainu believed at the time. While recognizing the social ills affecting Ainu communities at the time, he provides the insight that “social problems afflict people from every nation.” More at issue here is the idea that differences in education, economics, and relative social status could be addressed through their own efforts, rather than through the paternalist legislation of 1899 that branded all Hokkaido Ainu as “former aborigines.” This attitude, an odd mixture of ethnic pride and the desire to assimilate into Japanese society, can be understood in light of a peculiar form of multiculturalist discourse that gained currency in the early Showa era (1925–89). Japanese historians, like Kita Sadakichi, were looking for commonalities between the Japanese and other peoples in East Asia that at once challenged the racial purity discourse that legitimized Japanese military expansion into Korea and China, while extolling the virtues of assimilating to Japanese cultural, political, and linguistic norms (Oguma 2002: 95–109). In the first issue of the Ainu Association’s Ezo no Hikari (1930), a more extreme idea was expressed by the Ainu delegate from the Hidaka region, Tairamura Yukio. Citing the social Darwinist nature of society, Tairamura argues that the Ainu should assimilate through intermarriage and the adoption of Japanese language and customs. The title of the essay is “Will the Ainu Endure or Shall We Assimilate with the Shamo?” Aside from demonstrating the general concern, illustrated time and again in Ezo no Hikari, over where the Ainu stand as a people within the empire, Tairamura fames his argument in eugenic terms and goes so far as to suggest a kind of cultural and racial annihilation by “merging” with the Japanese. Tairamura’s essay evokes a eugenic sensibility that was becoming widespread in early twentieth-century Japan. Beginning in the 1920s, there was a proliferation of eugenics associations and periodicals. The Japanese Racial Hygiene Association (JRHA) was established the same year as the Ainu Association. One of the more aggressive groups, the JRHA advocated for eugenic marriages and the compulsory sterilization of so-called inferior individuals. In its publication Racial Hygiene (Minzoku Eisei), Nazi eugenics policies were praised for their effective-

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ness in improving Germany. By 1939 important members of the JRHA were moving on to posts in the government. Most notably, Vice President Furuya Yoshio, an outspoken proponent of Nazi racial policies, took a post in the newly created Ministry of Health and Welfare, where he was instrumental in the development of the National Eugenics Act (Oguma 2002: 216–18). It was in this climate of imperialist expansion, fervent nationalism, and anxiety over the intermingling of essences that the Ainu Association was established. These same themes are approached in the pages of Ezo no Hikari, but with a sense of immediacy that highlights the precarious situation of the Ainu. Suffering from poverty, widespread alcoholism, and discrimination based on their racial identity, many Ainu, unlike Taiwanese and Korean colonials on the periphery of the State, were seen as potential contaminants within Japan proper. The ambiguity expressed over how Ainu should respond, collectively or individually, to social pressures to become good Japanese citizens is one reason the current incarnation of the association distances itself from its origins in the 1930s. Indeed, from the views expressed in the association’s periodical one could conclude that if the organization was involved in promoting a notional subject, it was a de-essentialized or pliable one. The Ainu are portrayed as a viable social entity by dint of their willingness to be absorbed, biologically and culturally, into the Japanese (or more specifically, Wajin) nation. This incarnation of the Ainu Association disbanded in 1946.

The Oppressed Subject: The Ainu Association and the Cultural Revitalization Movement In 1960, due to the interest of some remaining members, the Ainu Association of Hokkaido was rechristened the Hokkaido Utari Association (Hokkaido Utari Kyōkai—北海道ウタリ協会). Replacing “Ainu” with “Utari,” the Ainu word for comrade or compatriot, was significant on several levels. First, as the word “Ainu” had long been saddled with derogatory connotations, members thought the association would encounter less resistance in official circles with a name change. Second, using an Ainu word was an intentional gesture toward the recuperative role that the association was beginning to play in representing the Ainu as something other than reformed or “Japanized” savages. Finally, the word “utari” indicates that one is part of a larger community, of a nation,

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whereas “Ainu” was thought to be a specious designation applied by Japanese administrators to a large and diverse group of peoples that historically inhabited Hokkaido and the Kuril Islands. This new phase of the organization included many of the same proassimilation members that tended to dominate the agenda during the Pacific War; however, at this time a number of younger members became involved. Arguing against assimilation, younger members began advocating for special land, civil, and cultural rights, positioning themselves at the forefront of what would become the indigenous rights movement of the 1970s and beyond. At the age of twenty-two, Yuki Shoji participated in the 1960 reorganization meeting. It is thought that he was among the supporters of the name change, although later in life he advocated for the appellation “Ainu” over “utari.” He was appointed director of the organization in 1968 and remained until 1976. In the intervening years he became radicalized and participated in direct action against scholars and publications that promoted inaccurate or discriminatory representations of the Ainu people. In 1972 he organized the Ainu Liberation League (Ainu Kaihō Dōmei—アイヌ解放同盟), which functioned as a cultural and political organization that sought to recover Ainu traditions, language, and, most importantly, dignity. Rather than asking how they might overcome the social problems endemic to the Ainu community through assimilation, this new generation of Ainu sought to combat discrimination in all its social and economic dimensions by valorizing their shared history and culture. Yuki Shoji and others recognized that a deep sense of shame had haunted Ainu communities since at least the nineteenth century. This produced a general malaise that contributed to the social degradation of Ainu households and communities; thus, the efforts of this generation of Ainu leaders were directed toward confronting discriminatory practices while rehabilitating their cultural heritage. In an effort to reappropriate the tropes woven into a generally accepted historical narrative that represented the Ainu as beneficiaries of a munificent colonization program, a group of fifty Ainu students sought to end the town of Shizunai’s annual commemoration of the Ainu warrior Shakushain in 1962. While unsuccessful that year, the association negotiated with the town’s tourist board to discontinue the festival the next year. Ainu from all over Hokkaido began donating money to erect a statue in honor of Shakushain. The statue was built in Shizunai in 1970 and an annual festival, sponsored in part by the association, has been held annually in subsequent years (Siddle 1996: 162). Yuki Shoji,

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however, was unsatisfied with the inscription on the base of the statue, which included the name of the governor of Hokkaido. He considered it inappropriate to engrave the name of a Wajin invader onto a statue commemorating the legendary Ainu warrior who resisted Wajin encroachment in the seventeenth century and was treacherously murdered during peace negotiations. In 1972 he removed the name of the governor, an act for which he was arrested in 1974. The association weathered a series of schisms in the 1970s by promoting Ainu culture in broader Japanese society, organizing Ainu events, and facilitating the communication between the many Ainu communities throughout Hokkaido. The bureau maintained some thirty field offices around the island and kept rural members apprised of political developments in Tokyo and Sapporo that might affect what was becoming a cultural revitalization movement. In spite of its reach, the association could not contain the scope of political positions active at the time. Many smaller groups formed to enunciate various configurations of cultural, racial, political, regional, gender, or generational concerns. For example, the Asahikawa Ainu Conference (Asahikawa Ainu Kyougikai) formed in 1972 to stake out a position on the maintenance of the Former Aborigines Act of 1899 that, contrary to the association’s stance, sought to abolish the legislation on the grounds that Ainu dignity could not be recovered as long as they required what amounted to special State subsidies (Monbetsu 1973: 1–2). The Ainu living in the Kanto region, excluded from the government programs intended to assuage the social and economic inequalities faced by Hokkaido Ainu, formed the Tokyo Utari Kyōkai in 1972 to contend with a different set of circumstances. Ainu students, attuned to the political currents of the day, formed the Young Ainu Society (Puere Utari no Kai) in 1965. The Yai Yukara Ainu Research Institute (Yai Yukara Ainu Minzoku Gakkai) formed in 1972 to study Ainu culture and history from an emic perspective. The same year the Ainu author and folklorist Kayano Shigeru opened the renowned Nibutani Ainu Cultural Museum. In June 1973 the Ainu newspaper Anutari Ainu was launched to track emerging issues of interest to the community of activists involved in Ainu cultural and political revitalization. This level of activity was historically unprecedented and uncontainable by the association. However, the geographic dispersion and degree of radicalism found within some of these groups strengthened the association’s position as the one legitimate intermediary between the government and this diverse community of social and political interests.

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The association remained conservative enough to stay safely ensconced within the network of national and prefectural ministries, yet, due to many of the younger members’ leftist politics, the bureau sought to shake the critique that it was simply an Ainu-staffed arm of the State. Thus, in 1974 it moved out of the colonial era Douchou and into an independent office. Despite this change in location, it remained largely supported by government largess and, in the same year as the move, acquired additional responsibilities in distributing the economic aid prescribed by the new Hokkaido Ainu Welfare Countermeasures (Hokkaido Utari Fukushi Taisaku). Both the resurgence of Ainu activism and the public funds being made available to individuals and families of Ainu descent led to a dramatic increase in the membership rolls of the association during the 1970s (Siddle 1996: 168). At this time, there were two distinguishable fronts emerging out of this welter of Ainu activism. The first included a set of organizations that advocated for strictly political and social issues (e.g., antidiscrimination efforts, concerns related to economic equality and the construction of alternative histories). The second coalesced around cultural recuperation efforts that sought to restore regional Ainu cultural traditions and languages. The cultural revitalization movement ran parallel to the more politically charged liberation movement; consequently, many Ainu tended to operate in both arenas. Kayano Shigeru was a key figure in the movement for cultural revitalization. His museum in Nibutani was filled with artifacts collected from many different Ainu groups during the 1950s and 1960s. In addition, he recorded interviews, stories, and Ainu sagas (Yukar) from elderly Ainu who were still fluent with their regional dialects—recordings that currently inform Ainu language classes that have sprung up all over Hokkaido since the 1990s. The establishment of community centers (seikatsukan—生活管) throughout Hokkaido in the 1960s provided a place where Ainu could meet in large groups and practice traditional craft, ritual, and language in spaces that were separated from dictates of the tourist economy. The political and cultural movements became more tightly intertwined in terms of their institutional organization and funding as Ainu began to interact with participants in the burgeoning international indigenous rights movement of the late 1970s. In moving from its role in promoting assimilation to supporting the Ainu cultural revitalization movement, the Ainu Association ushered in the return of the repressed. The Ainu were represented not as inherently deficient, needing to catch up and merge with ethnic Japanese; rather,

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the association’s discourse shifted and began to define the Ainu as the indigenous inhabitants of Japan’s second largest island—wrongfully dispossessed, coerced to labor in the forests and fisheries that were once their customary territories, and, finally, socially and economically marginalized inhabitants of modern Japan. During the 1960s and 1970s, the Ainu, despite a diversity of old ethnic identities and new political ideologies, transitioned from a social problem (hogojin or “welfare people”) that needed to be managed to a wronged people who deserve redress from the State responsible for their marginalized position in Japan.

The Autochthonous Subject: The Ainu Association Becomes Indigenous The movement to politicize Ainu history was, in part, an attempt to rethink the relation between minority groups and the State. Within Japan, activists took cues from organizations like the Buraku Kaihō Dōmei (The Buraku Liberation League) that were engaged in confronting discriminatory practices. Representing the feudal era Eta caste, the goal of Buraku (i.e., “low caste”) activists was to achieve social and economic parity with the majority Japanese. To this end they fought discrimination through their highly public and occasionally violent denunciation sessions, a technique later borrowed by Ainu activists. In fact, the Japanese government began to treat the two groups similarly in terms of the kinds of welfare packages assembled to alleviate poverty endemic to Ainu and Buraku areas. The 1974 Hokkaido Utari Welfare Countermeasures is a scaled down replica of the 1969 Dōwa Countermeasures extended to the Burakumin. As far as the State was concerned, both were historically disadvantaged segments of the general population of Japan, but due to the pervasive sense of ethnic homogeneity in the postwar period, neither the Ainu nor the Burakumin were considered a minority group (Befu 2001)—a designation that would have entitled them to special protections under domestic and international law. By the 1970s, assimilation as a Japanese minority was no longer a desirable outcome for many Ainu. The leaders of the association, drawing on sojourns abroad to meet with indigenous groups in North America and Taiwan, began to reframe their experiences at home not as a minority group struggling for social equality but as an indigenous group seeking a degree of legal and even physical separation from the Japanese government and the majority Yamato Japanese—relationships

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increasingly viewed from a postcolonial sensibility. This new trajectory was largely influenced by the association’s involvement with international organizations that promoted indigenous rights throughout the world such as the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC). Indigenous rights discourse was gaining some currency internationally by the mid-1970s, but the recognition of indigeneity as a specific social problematic, separate from that of minority populations within the nation-state, was not nearly as well developed as it is presently. Early examples of international activity include the first conference of the World Council of Indigenous Peoples, which was held in British Columbia in 1975; the 1977 UN International NGO Conference on Discrimination against Indigenous Populations in the Americas; and the influential Working Group on Indigenous Populations, which initially convened in 1982 under the auspices of the United Nations SubCommission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights. To be sure, indigeneity is not simply a social construction, as it refers to a specific set of social and historical circumstances shared by many peoples the world over; however, as a social and legal category that has gained a degree of political expediency in some countries, it is very much the product of national and international bureaucracies. It is not enough to simply “be indigenous,” in the process of negotiating myriad social, political, and legal obstacles, a group must be able to communicate its claims in the terms and forms of discourse that State technocrats readily understand. It is worth pointing out that only through the mechanisms of modernity (esp. national laws and bureaucracies) were indigenous people construed as objects comprehensible to State governments. Insofar as there is yet no agreed upon legal definition of “indigenous peoples,” their existence is a “becoming” in the fullest sense of the word. A contributing factor to the gradual proliferation of organizations and conferences dealing with indigenous issues was the United Nations’ passage of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). The ICCPR was opened for ratification by the UN General Assembly in 1966 and came into force in 1976. It was ratified by Japan in 1979. While making no explicit reference to indigenous peoples, the covenant refers to the autonomy and self-determination of all peoples and emphasizes that provisions must be made so that groups within nations can enjoy their political, economic, social, and cultural rights. The covenant also introduces the legal category of group rights, which

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has since problematized the legal relationship between the State and its indigenous populations. Many constitutional democracies frame rights discourse in terms of one citizen vis-à-vis another, or, alternatively, between the State and the citizen—in any case, all citizens, by dint of their membership in the national body, are putatively equally endowed with the same series of rights. For example, within the US constitution and its close cousin the Constitution of Japan, there are no provisions for group rights—in fact, both documents explicitly reject the possibility. Under the ICCPR, “Indigenous People,” a category created to encompass the particular set of problems faced by autochthonous groups marginalized and dispossessed in the course of nation-building, suddenly had a legal means to oppose the individuating forces of modernity that would further erode their ability to exist as a group with unique social, linguistic, and cultural traditions. The cause was subsequently picked up by the United Nations. Since the early 1980s indigenous peoples have had, through various UN organs, some form of representation vis-à-vis their respective State governments within these international forums. Nomura Giichi was a key figure involved in transforming the functions of the association from a bureaucracy that was primarily responsible for distributing the benefits of Ainu welfare programs and, for many Ainu, uncomfortably close to the State into an organization that sought to acquire for all Ainu the kinds of rights and protections that were being accorded indigenous populations in other countries. He was one of the first leaders of the association to embrace what could be called “bureaucratic indigenism,” a marriage of cultural revitalization activities with organizational techniques typical of bureaucratic systems that seek to obtain ultimately some degree of sovereignty from the nation-state. Becoming indigenous appears to be as much about positing a specific kind of legal, political, and cultural relationship to the State as it is about uncovering or perpetuating certain cultural practices over others. As indigenes, as opposed to minorities, the Ainu could demand not welfare for their members but reparations. Rather than the unfortunate subjects of social discrimination, they could reframe the relative disparities in their income and social prospects as a legacy of the systematic manipulations of their bodies, their culture, and their land since at least the eighteenth century. To better understand the methods and challenges of other indigenous groups, Nomura and other leaders of the association developed connections in the mid-1970s with the nascent international indigenous rights movement and began reorganizing the

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efforts of the association toward reproducing Ainu-ness via the articulation of a specific cluster of historical, territorial, cultural, and linguistic differences. According to Richard Siddle, the awareness of the broader political implications of indigeneity, as it was being configured internationally, began during the first dialogue between Ainu leaders and North American indigenous groups. This event occurred in 1977 during a meeting between Ainu author and folklorist Kayano Shigeru and two Inupiats from Barrow, Alaska, who came to Kayano’s village of Nibutani. The next year Nomura Giichi led a delegation of Ainu to Alaska, which was followed up by Narita Tokuhei’s visit with several Native American groups in Canada and the United States. In 1981, Narita also attended the third World Council of Indigenous Peoples in Canberra, Australia (Siddle 1996: 177). It became apparent to leaders of the association that international covenants and conventions that sought to guarantee the rights of indigenous peoples could be effective in pressing the Japanese government to grant the Ainu some degree of sovereignty as an indigenous group. To pursue issues pertinent to socioeconomic equality and tribal autonomy, the association began assembling the “Ainu New Law” (Ainu Shinpō) that would replace both the outdated and increasingly imprecise 1899 Former Aborigines Protection Law and the Ainu welfare countermeasures that were set to expire—this in spite of the nominal progress toward social and economic parity that had been achieved since their enactment in 1974. The Ainu New Law, as it was adopted by the 1984 Hokkaido Utari Kyōkai General Meeting, focused on human rights (Section 1), political representation (Section 2), the promotion of education and culture (Section 3), increased access to the natural resources of Hokkaido (Section 4), and the creation of a self-reliance fund (Section 5) that would be managed exclusively by the Ainu people, presumably through the association. Significantly, this legislation sought governmental recognition of the “ethnic autonomy” (minzoku toshite no jishusei) of the Ainu people in the face of aggressive assimilation policies of the preceding two centuries (Hokkaido Utari Kyōkai 1984: 4–6). Such a concession by the government would ensure constitutional protections that would amount to group rights for the Ainu people. Additionally, official recognition of the Ainu as an ethnic minority would represent an intermediate step on the way toward acquiring the status of an indigenous minority.

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In addition to advocating passage of the “New Law,” from the mid1980s onward, the association increasingly occupied itself with securing for the Ainu similar social, economic, and territorial rights as those claimed by indigenous populations in other countries. The organization pursued this tack through international collaborations with international groups like the UN Working Group on Indigenous Populations (UNWGIP) and, later, with the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII). While I was working with the association, the organization was occupied with developing and promoting the Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples—subsequently passed by the UN General Assembly in 2007. Due, in part, to the association’s decades-long involvement with the UN, the Japanese government officially recognized the Ainu as an indigenous people in 2008. The fact that the Ainu Association had existed as a bureau since the 1930s meant they possessed the organizational structure, methods, and aesthetic capacity of officialdom that readily linked up with the norms and procedures of myriad smaller NGOs as well as vast supranational organizations like the United Nations. Always treading carefully to promote Ainu interests without jeopardizing its ties to bureaus and ministries within the national and prefectural governments, the association tends to vacillate in its claims: openly considering independence from Japan in international circles (which, incidentally, appeases its more radical critics at home), while employing more mollifying statements when interacting with government officials. While I was there in 2005– 6, the staff at the association was discursively representing the organization as an NGO, distancing itself, rhetorically, from its connection with the prefectural and national governments. Today, the association clearly proclaims its NGO status within internationally circulated documents.

Strategic Essentialisms The kind of technocratic knowledge, ability, and institutional memory possessed by the association allowed the Ainu of Hokkaido to articulate with the Hokkaido prefectural government, the Japanese national government, and various supranational organizations that arose in the 1980s and 1990s that were attempting to assemble a unified rights discourse for indigenous people. Without the institution and the specialized knowledge of those who work full time at its main office, the Ainu

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may very well have remained a marginalized community in Japan without recognition of their indigenous status and the special rights that attend that designation. Indeed, it is through the association’s ability to speak the rational-legal language of the State, to produce the reports and spreadsheets in a way that is legible by bureaucrats in other agencies, and to provide input to policy decisions that has kept the Ainu visible to the Japanese State. In short, the mastery of statist technologies by the association allowed it to disrupt consensus regarding ethnic belonging within the Japanese nation, weakening the always problematic hyphen within “nation-state.” By pivoting to embrace the vision and goals of a nascent indigenous rights movement in the 1970s, the organization began to put pressure on the contradictions embedded in Japanese discourse on the nation. Yet institutions, bureaucracies especially, are supposed to be resistant to change. A bureau’s authority, according to Weber (1978), rests on its ability to maintain and follow consistently the rules that regulate activity within the organization. Bureaus do not easily “pivot.” In thinking through this change in function, moving from, essentially, an organ of social reform and assimilation to a State welfare redistribution bureau to an organization that challenges the State’s authority in how it governs peoples and places within its borders, I draw on insights developed by Gayatri Spivak, especially “strategic essentialisms.” Spivak, along with other feminist theorists in the 1980s, was thinking through the problems of universalist discourse in culture writ large and more specifically in feminist thought. In an interview with Elizabeth Grosz in 1984, she argues that essentializing discourse in feminism does a disservice to women who are not White, middleclass, and living in the West; however, the problems of extreme heterogeneity could threaten the political efficacy and global vision of the movement. She suggests that essentialist discourse could be deployed strategically if “[we] become vigilant about our own practice and use it as much as we can, rather than make the totally counterproductive gesture of repudiating it” (Spivak 1990: 11). She later uses the concept in making sense of the Subaltern Studies Group’s efforts in articulating an essentialist peasant consciousness. She finds that this group’s production of a unitary notion of peasant consciousness is an inherently political attempt to “write the subaltern as the subject of history” (Spivak 1990: 206). That is, eliding differences in favor of producing a legible political subject can, in effect, provide both visibility and agency to those who, for example, might be divisible by race, caste, region, language, and so on, yet face the same sort of subjugation.

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While certainly sacrificing some of the nuance of Spivak’s thinking in the service of my interests in her concept, I contend that Spivak advances two interrelated ideas under the rubric of “strategic essentialism.” First, the act of representation is always multiple. It could be argued, for instance, that there is a universal indigenous subject, created from the crucible of suffering known as modernity. That said, the indigenous peoples’ movement has been careful to avoid strict definitions. The most forceful and universally recognized document setting forth a statement on the rights of indigenous people, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, has been criticized for not including a succinct definition of an “indigenous people.” Yet the term is politically very powerful at the moment. While an indigenous group must work to address the specificities of their particular situation (e.g., issues of discrimination or natural resources access within their particular national context), they can march under the banner of a global indigenous rights movement—situating their struggle in terms of a world history of colonialism and nation-state development. Second, strategic essentialisms are deployed in specific contexts. That is, there is always the audience to consider. For example, when confronting the Japanese government or working with the United Nations, the Ainu have no problem with positing “Ainu” as an essentializing term that belies their cultural, geographic, and linguistic heterogeneity. When the Ainu gather together for the various Ainu-only ceremonies, memorials, or celebrations, they wear the attire of their tribe and identify as Samani Ainu, Chitose Ainu, or Kushiro Ainu. Within the somber icharpa rituals, these demarcations even break down along gender lines, as men and women sit separately around the hearth. These differences define negotiations over resources and representation within the group, yet when in discussions with a prefectural, State, or supranational institution, tribal differences are subsumed under the broader appellation: “Ainu.” The Ainu Association was able to multiply its functions using a similar tactic. During my field research, on any given day the association staff would hold meetings with staff from Hokkaido’s prefectural government, meet with Ainu visitors from distant parts of the island, call households about delinquent loan repayments, and/or host an Ainu crafts fair. I was surprised one day when, instead of his usual business attire, Mr. Kaizawa walked into the office with a woodworker’s apron on, covered in saw dust. He had been providing a mukkuri (a traditional Ainu mouth harp) making demonstration in the lobby of the office building.

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When I asked for the head secretary to give me an idea of the official functions of the eight office workers in the association’s headquarters, he brought me a list that was quite extensive. He looked at me almost apologetically as each person was responsible for a widely diverse set of responsibilities. The realization dawned on me that the association seemed to rarely delete a function; rather more were added over time. The association appeared to have bifurcated in the 1970s. Still responsible for disbursing Ainu welfare, the association began to absorb the more politically progressive functions that were in demand by its members. So, what first appears to be a pivot in functionality turns out to be a layering of multiple functions. Indeed, bureaus can be inflexible and resistant to change, but, as Weber also noted, their functions tend to multiply over time. The intriguing observation about the Ainu Association is that its functions could be seen as diametrically opposed to one another. Working as a State bureau to bring the Ainu’s socioeconomic profile more in line with the general population of Japanese was both an attempt to ameliorate a legacy of discrimination as well as an attempt to assimilate the population more seamlessly into the Japanese nation. Beginning in the 1980s, the association began working with the UN to bolster Ainu claims as an indigenous people and to participate in the building of the international movement of indigenous people. When I asked the head secretary of the bureau how he managed to work both as an agent of the Japanese government and as an opponent of the Japanese government’s policy on the Ainu, he replied: “Very carefully. We must always proceed by taking small steps and eventually we will reach our vision (mokuteki).” He said the association could be very effective by both promoting awareness of the Ainu within Japan and by working to pressure the Japanese government in international circles. By strategically essentializing as both, depending on context, an indigenous rights organization or as an extension of the Japanese government, the association worked to increase Ainu access to State resources, natural resources, and rational-legal resources in the sense of an increasingly coherent subject that required a separate regime of rights based on their historical relationship to the Japanese nation. In deploying different representational strategies, the association was able to draw on the largess of the State apparatus and challenge the national imaginary of an ethnically homogeneous Japan, thereby drawing attention to the contradictions central to the story of national belonging in Japan.

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Understanding how NGOs operate through harnessing the power (and danger!) of essentializing discourse may provide some insight into why it can be so difficult to categorize them as either operating as an agent of the State, operating at a critical remove from the State, or operating against the State. As intermediaries, they are engaged in the process of transformation, and this requires an ability to function within multiple institutional frameworks. This is the conundrum of mediating institutions like NGOs; agents engaged in transformative activities are always responding to different constituencies, different audiences, and shifting social and institutional norms. Harkening back to Ortner’s structuralism, women take on the labor of mediation by transforming nature into culture (Ortner refers to this as socalled “women’s work”—e.g., food preparation and child rearing). The Ainu Association has similarly been engaged in acts of material and symbolic transformation: transforming a “problem minority” into a recognized indigenous group; transforming an institution bent on assimilation into one dedicated to guarding ethnic, racial, and linguistic difference; transforming Japan into a multiethnic settler State (this last point cannot be overstated). I argue here that the Ainu Association’s movement from an institution implicated in pushing the Ainu to assimilate as good Japanese citizens to an organization that allied with supranational institutions to pressure the Japanese government into recognizing the Ainu as Japan’s first indigenous people is the result of the association’s ability to strategically represent itself and its constituency in ways that are consonant with evolving norms both within the community and internationally. Christopher Loy is a Senior Lecturer in anthropology and is the director of the Interdisciplinary Studies program at Christopher Newport University in southeast Virginia. His research interests focus on how local peoples negotiate life amid shifting environmental conditions. His work with the Ainu focuses on indigenous land-use issues as the Japanese State continues to “develop” the forests and waterways of northern Japan. Closer to home, he works with watermen communities on Chesapeake Bay as they struggle to adapt to the deteriorating ecology of the region. In both fieldsites the cultural assumptions about community selfdetermination, what should and should not be subject to regulatory oversight, and the nature of human–environment interactions shape adaptive responses to environmental change.

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Note 1. The Japanese call the Kuril archipelago the Chishima rettō. It consists of fifty-six islands that lead from just offshore of northeast Hokkaido northward to Russia’s Kamchatka region. The Japanese have historically governed parts of the archipelago and Sakhalin. In Japan, the southern islands of the archipelago are referred to as the Northern Territories (Hoppō Ryōdo). Japan disputes Russia’s ownership of the islands and works to have them returned. The Ainu view Hokkaido, Sakhalin, and the Kuril Islands as “Ainu territory” (Ainu Ryōdo). (Hokkaido Ainu Kyōkai 1983).

References Banks, Nicola, David Hulme, and Michael Edwards. 2015. “NGOs, States, and Donors Revisited: Still Too Close for Comfort?” World Development 66: 707–18. Befu, Harumi. 2001. Hegemony of Homogeneity: An Anthropological Analysis of Nihonjinron. Melbourne: Trans Pacific Press. Chiri, Mashio. 1942. “Ainu Goho Kenkyuu—Karafuto Hogen o Chushin to shite [Research on the Ainu Language—with a focus on the Sakhalin Dialects].” Karafuto Hakubutsukan Hokoku 4(4): 51–172. Escobar, Arturo. 1995. Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Ferguson, James, and Akhil Gupta. 2002. “Spatializing States: Toward an Ethnography of Neoliberal Governmentality.” American Ethnologist 29(4): 981–1,002. Hattori, Shirō, and Mashio Chiri, eds. 1964. Bunrui Ainugo hōgen jiten [An Ainu Dialect Dictionary with Ainu, Japanese, and English Indexes]. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten. Hokkaido Ainu Association. 1930. “Ezo no Hikari [The Light of Ezo].” Hokkaido Ainu Association 1(1). Hokkaido Utari Kyōkai. 1983. Chishima Rettō no Ainu Minzoku Senjū ni kan suru Shiryō [The Indigenous Ainu of the Chishima Archipelago]. Sapporo: Shadan Hōjin Hokkaido Utari Kyōkai. ———. 1984. “Ainu Shinpō [Ainu New Law].” Senkusha no Tsudoi 37: 4–6. ———. 1990a. Ainu-shi [Ainu History]. Sapporo: Hokkaido Utari Kyōkai. ———. 1990b. “Seifu wa Ainu Shinpo ni tai suru Kento Iinkai o Setchi [The Government Establishes an Exploratory Committee for the Ainu New Law].” In Senkusha no Tsudoi. Sapporo: Hokkaido Utari Kyōkai. Hudson, Mark. 1999. Ruins of Identity: Ethnogenesis in the Japanese Islands. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. Monbetsu, Kaoru. 1973. “Kenryoku to Gyōsei wa Nan o Shite Kita ka? [What Has the Government Done?]” Ainutari Ainu 4: 1–2.

Surviving the State • 73 Ono, Hiroshi and Hiromi Ono. Race and ethnic relations in contemporary Japan. In The International Handbook of the Demography of Race and Ethnicity, edited by Rogelio Sáenz, David G. Embrick, and Néstor Rodriguez, 219-237. Dordrecht: Springer, 2015. Oguma, Eiji. 2002. A Genealogy of Japanese Self-Images. Victoria, AU: Trans Pacific Press. Siddle, Richard. 1996. Race, Resistance and the Ainu of Japan. New York: Routledge. Spivak, Gayatri. 1990. The Post-Colonial Critic: Interviews, Strategies, Dialogues. New York: Routledge. Tamura, Suzuko. 2000. The Ainu Language. Tokyo: Sanseido. Timmer, Andria. 2010. “Constructing the ‘Needy Subject’: NGO Discourses of Roma Need.” PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review 33 (2): 264–81. Trouillot, Michel-Rolph. 2003. Global Transformations. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Wallace, Tina. 2009. “NGO Dilemmas: Trojan Horses for Global Neoliberalism?” Socialist Register 40: 202–19. Weber, Max. 1978. Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology. Berkeley: University of California Press.

CHAPTER 3

From “Warm and Fuzzy” to “Business Oriented” Practices The Politics of Exclusion and Masculinization of Alternative Justice in the United States Amanda J. Reinke

As debates about the scope, purpose, and purview of the federal government continue in the United States, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) increasingly take on social service and social justice roles (see Leve and Karim 2001). As others in this volume have highlighted, NGOs are often motivated by social justice values and tackle important social needs, but their work is frequently devalued by the governments and bureaucrats who rely upon their services (Timmer; Loy; Wirtz this vol.). NGOs have stepped up to fill in social service roles that are increasingly reduced by the State, leading to what Leve and Karim (2001) call the “privatization of the state.” While the “masculine” roles of the State, such as prison and military spending, are increasing over time, “feminine” roles of the State, such as social service provisioning that includes nurturing citizen needs, are reduced and taken over by NGOs. Simultaneously, these organizations continue to gain a strong and dynamic presence in communities and play an important role in mediating, mitigating, or contributing to State power (Lewis and Schuller 2017; Mertz and Timmer 2010). Thus, in lieu of examining NGOs as monolithic entities, recent NGO scholarship in anthropology recognizes the challenges in defining these organizations and their complex relationship to the State (Bernal and Grewal 2014; Brass 2012; Fisher 1997; Leve and Karim 2001; Lewis and Schuller 2017; Schuller 2007; Timmer and DockaFilipek 2018).

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“NGO-graphers”—ethnographic researchers embedded within NGO contexts—also analyze NGO workers and volunteers as part of an often underfunded and contingent workforce who live and work in precarity (Vannier and Lashaw 2017). The NGO workers from my fieldsites operate within organizations offering alternative justice—informal justice mechanisms customarily outside the purview of formal law. These organizations are not officially affiliated with the government but have written agreements with State agencies and generate funding from the State as well. NGO workers are predominantly women. Although some practitioners are retirees who have the time to dedicate to community service work, many others are contingent labor and live in precarious economic situations. Some are volunteers while others are significantly underpaid with minimal benefits. Akin to other social justice endeavors (see Baines 2011; Lewis 2005; Lopez 2006 for examples), alternative justice work relies on empathy, compassion, care, and strong relationships to reach its goals. Justice practitioners’ work is often underpaid and devalued by the State, which continues to prioritize masculine “tough on crime” policies over alternative justice’s conventionally feminized focus on care for individuals in conflict with the law. However, as alternative justice NGOs connect and entwine their programs and services into the formal legal system, their interest in feminized approaches to justice, characterized by one interviewee as “warm and fuzzy,” begins to wane as interest in masculinized methods, referred to by the same participant as “business oriented,” increases. The preference for masculinized methods and approaches to justice reflects DiMaggio and Powell’s (1983) arguments for the overwhelming homogeneity in organizational forms and practices that develops as those forms and practices establish themselves. From the alternative justice practitioners’ perspective, mirroring the State’s masculinized bureaucratic and business-like structure, processes, and requirements has material gain; however, in practice, alternative justice and its practitioners begin to resemble and imitate the State and its violence. This gendered shift in NGO practices from feminized foci on care and healing toward masculinized foci on bureaucracy and business is coupled with a veneer of whiteness within the organizations and, thus, their processes. Although alternative justice initially began as a promise for community-based justice that would be representative of all community members, it is now predominately White female NGO workers who populate alternative justice offices and offer alternative justice ser-

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vices to marginalized communities, many of whom are people of color. Alternative justice NGOs continue to take over nurturing aspects of justice from the State, such as rehabilitation and community service, and as these shifts in roles and responsibilities occur, so too do the requirements for practitioners. Alternative justice practitioners must update ID cards, undergo regular background checks, and work through seemingly endless streams of paperwork to maintain their role as employees or as volunteers. This has contributed to the construction of bureaucratic and business-focused masculinized forms that replicate the State. As these policies and procedures gain traction within the alternative justice sector, individuals from disempowered communities are often systematically excluded from participation as practitioners. The politics of exclusion, in this case, is an inadvertent side effect of masculinizing alternative justice and the bureaucratization of form and process it entails. In this chapter, I bring four years of ethnographic research on and within alternative justice conflict resolution NGOs in the United States to examine the gendered and racial power dynamics between the State and NGOs offering community-level justice programs. The research presented in this chapter follows other NGO-graphies in blurring the boundaries between the “field” and “home” (Lawhead 2020; Sampson 2017). As a fieldworker investigating communities in my own country, the fieldwork itself is multisited and messy, requiring a reciprocal ethnographic approach with participants (Lawless 2000), in which my role in and with the NGO is consistently negotiated on equitable terms. I volunteered or interned with the alternative justice organizations under study, working closely with paid and unpaid practitioners, board members, and the communities these organizations seek to serve. This methodological approach illuminates the challenges and benefits of justice work from the emic perspective but also generated new frictions and messy interactions that blur the lines between work and personal life and my role in this project (see Vannier and Lashaw 2017). However, the insights resulting from this research reveal the dynamics of practitioners who simultaneously offer services to groups normatively marginalized by the legal system (e.g., racial/ethnic minorities, non-native English speakers, LGBTQI+ community), yet who also determine what types of justice are offered to these communities and, in that sense, govern their access to justice. Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted within NGOs in the San Francisco Bay Area (2014–15) and northern Virginia (2016–17), I argue that alternative justice NGOs are increasingly turning away from

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“feminized” justice practices that are based on flexibility, empathy, and a qualitative ethos of care in favor of “masculinized” practices that prioritize bureaucratization and quantitative data, aligning with formal law and the legal system organizational forms, processes, and interests. Work within these organizations is predominantly done by White women, and while their value-driven time and effort are considered worthy of low monetary value, it is ostensibly of high social value. Furthermore, their efforts are part of a primarily White infrastructure that determines inclusion and exclusion within justice processes, mirroring the State itself. Following Ortner’s classic depiction of women and women’s relationship to men (1974) and Leve and Karim’s concept of privatizing the state (2001), feminized care in the NGO context in contrast to the State’s emphasis on tough-on-crime policies reflects broader sociocultural gender dynamics. This shift from feminized approaches to care to a masculinized conceptualization of alternative justice occurs as NGOs work toward closer relationships with the formal legal system and the resulting bureaucratization this collaborative process engenders. The result is a potentially exclusionary process that promotes bureaucratic approaches to justice and replicates the systemic exclusion inherent within the State itself. Thus, as alternative justice continues to proliferate within the United States, an examination of shifting cultures within justice NGOs and the practitioners that inhabit them is crucial to understanding and analyzing the gendered power dynamics between these organizations and the State.

Alternative Justice in the United States Alternative justice mechanisms gained popularity in the United States during the 1970s amid persistent concerns that the formal legal system’s “tough on crime” policies disproportionately harm particular social groups, undermine communities, are overly professionalized, and are financially inaccessible (Alexander 2012; Calkins 2010; Enslen 1988; Galanter 1985; Peffley and Hurwitz 2002). Defined in opposition to the formal legal system, the goal of alternative justice is to provide a socially just form of conflict resolution that does not disproportionately punish certain groups. By emphasizing healing, the active participation of all parties in conflict, and the community’s role in dispute resolution, these mechanisms seek to redress harm, fulfill obligations, and provide for the

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needs of the offender(s), victim(s), and their communities. These resolution mechanisms and their practitioners see conflict as a normative and generative part of life that can reveal difference, illuminate underlying issues, and provide an opportunity to strengthen and build individuals and communities by transmitting values and conflict resolution skills. In this context, practitioners attempt to humanize individuals in conflict, promote their active participation in conflict resolution, and support the development of values and skills, such as empathy, active listening, service, and accountability. Alternative justice is an umbrella term that encompasses a diverse array of conflict resolution mechanisms and practices. In the United States, victim-offender mediation (VOM), restorative justice (RJ), and community mediation are common practices. VOM brings together the victim(s) and offender(s) with trained facilitators to resolve their conflict and construct an agreement that addresses harms created by conflict. RJ was popularized by Howard Zehr’s Changing Lenses (1990), in which he proposes that to reach meaningful justice for all parties in conflict, relationships between the parties and their community must be restored. RJ is thus principles- and values-based, emphasizing healing, empathy, and accountability, while addressing the harms, needs, and obligations of those in conflict (Zehr 2002). Lastly, community mediation was first implemented in the US by Raymond Shonholtz, who created San Francisco Community Boards in which each neighborhood or community within the city could provide accessible and community-based justice for their residents. Justice was redefined as of, by, and for the people rather than the State; and conflict imagined as a generative opportunity to restore relationship and build conflict resolution skills toward broader goals of individual and community empowerment (Reinke 2016). Regardless of the framework used, alternative justice practitioners generally seek to subvert the State’s violence against marginalized groups, especially mass incarceration, poor reintegration into society after incarceration, and the school-to-prison pipeline. Since initial popularity, alternative justice mechanisms have been included in state penal codes as legitimate forms of legal redress. Virginia has codified the use of RJ during community-based probation for nonviolent offenders (§ 9.1–174); as part of a suspended sentence (§ 19.2–303); for juveniles (when not tried as adults) (§16.1–278); as part of victim impact statements (§ 19.2–299.1; §16.1–273); and for victimoffender reconciliation programs (§ 19.2–11.4) (see Senate of Virginia

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2009). In these contexts, judges, lawyers, and officers of the law are responsible for diverting cases from the formal legal system to recognized NGOs that offer RJ. NGOs thus lead the charge in offering these services to communities. In many cases, these organizations offer their services in collusion with the State in an attempt to mitigate State violence, such as the school-to-prison pipeline and mass incarceration, within normatively marginalized communities (Reinke 2016, 2018a). In this sense, alternative justice NGOs have “emerged to fill the vacuum left by state’s withdrawal from providing social provisions” (Harvey 2005: 177) such as appropriate justice mechanisms that meet individual and community needs, privatizing justice services and programs. These organizations often collude with the State to market their conflict resolution mechanisms to the police, lawyers, and judges who are responsible for diverting cases away from civil and criminal proceedings and toward alternative conflict resolution mechanisms. This has created a protocooperative and simultaneously parasitic relationship between alternative justice and the legal system that is mired within political and economic complexity and blurs the line between the “government” and “nongovernment” in the relationship between the State and NGOs.

Alternative Justice NGOs and the State Nongovernmental organizations are increasingly considered a normative and mundane part of the community, entities that we often encounter in the field and engage with analytically (Lewis and Schuller 2017; Sampson 2017). However, the lines between nongovernmental organizations and government entities remain blurred, presenting a challenge in defining exactly what an NGO is, how it operates, and what its relationship to the State is or should be (Bernal and Grewal 2014; Fisher 1997; Lewis and Schuller 2017; Sampson 2017). This is particularly true when we examine alternative justice NGOs. These organizations aim to offer accessible, affordable, and less harmful justice mechanisms for individuals in conflict with the law. From the perspective of practitioners, alternative justice organizations combat systemic violence embedded in the legal system, such as mass incarceration and the school-to-prison pipeline. However, these organizations are also increasingly politically and economically connected to and intertwined with the State (Lawhead 2020; Reinke 2016, 2018b).

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Alternative-justice NGOs, seeking at once to subvert State violence while also seeking legitimacy and recognition from the State, often model the bureaucratic structures and processes of formal legal systems (Reinke 2018b, 2020). However, much like the relationship of female to male, they simultaneously continue to inhabit an undervalued and submissive position in relation to the State. For many of the organizations with which I work, this complex political economic relationship with the State is constructed by choice. Closer relations with the State may entail significant tradeoffs by the NGO. They may lose flexibility in defining goals and markers of success but may also benefit from greater access to particular resources (see Sharma 2008 for examples). Economically, NGOs often benefit from collusion with the State. Many organizations are beholden to private donors and board members to increase (or at least renew) their annual funds. They may host fundraising events to support their work, making money through ticket and alcohol sales or silent auctions. However, fundraising events rarely make a significant contribution to an NGO’s available funds. A practitioner working for an NGO and nonprofit in Virginia reflects on their recent fundraising event in an interview in 2017: “We lost money. . . . it was free and we just asked for donations. . . . it wasn’t classy enough to raise money.” To make up for the lack of funds and the difficulty of how much funding will flow in and when, many organizations turn to the formal legal system for support. Alternative justice organizations, such as San Francisco Community Boards, may derive over 50 percent of their annual budgets from government funding sources (Reinke 2016). For example, in the 2014–15 fiscal year, SFCB received 55 percent of their revenue from government grants, while donations through their annual Peacemaker Awards fundraiser and private donations accounted for only 17 percent of their revenue (SFCB 2015). Government programs, such as California’s Dispute Resolution Protection Act that supports many alternative justice organizations throughout the state, may provide funding for which justice organizations can apply to support their work. The resulting relationship puts alternative justice NGOs in an awkward position to simultaneously undermine State power and control in marginalized communities while becoming reliant upon State funding to support their work. This positionality has influenced the relationship of alternative justice NGOs to the State as they replicate State infrastructures (e.g., bureaucratization, quantitative data) to gain legitimacy from the State for their cause.

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From “Warm and Fuzzy” to “Business Oriented” “She is all business. There’s no warm and fuzzy about her . . . and I, personally, I believe that’s one reason she’s been more successful. . . . She’s a lawyer downtown, known, and she walks in and it’s not smiley huggy, and I think people take her seriously!” (Interview 2017). Organizations and their practitioners actively seek recognition and legitimacy from the State, because of the perceived and actual political and economic benefits of close State-NGO relationships. According to one practitioner in 2017, “I think RJ’s got a long way to go into being accepted by the policy makers. But we’re not going to be deemed legitimate if we’re homemakers and retired chaplains coming for free” (Reinke 2020). From her perspective, “one of our shortfalls is that we tend to be too warm and fuzzy and not business oriented” (Reinke 2020). Being “too warm and fuzzy” is a prohibitive factor preventing their organization from being taken seriously by policy makers and, therefore, restricts their ability to gain legitimacy. Practitioners often look to their organization’s executive director to set this standard. The quotation at the beginning of this section is a reflection on another organization’s executive director. She perceives this leader as efficient, all-business, and lacking in the emotional qualities she has seen in other directors. Taken together, she believes this approach makes this director more effective at her job. Alternative justice is emotional labor that is disproportionately done by women. Most of the practitioners, including volunteers and paid employees, with whom I have worked are women. The work entails a profound involvement in challenging and dynamic conflicts that may involve adults, youth, families, lawyers, police officers, educational institutions, or judges who often have divergent priorities, needs, goals, and understandings of the conflict. However, as alternative justice organizations increasingly build collaborative relationships with the State via codifying their work and accepting financial support from government agencies and grants, justice practitioners must concurrently shift their foci and ethos of care in ways that meet these external actors’ needs and priorities. The foci and ethos of care for alternative justice in the United States has generally been considered social justice oriented with emphases of values and principles such as empathy, accountability, healing, and active participation. Such “feminized” approaches to care support a col-

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laborative and participatory justice process that involves the offender(s), victim(s), and community(ies) addressing harms, needs, and obligations created by conflict. This is often done via open dialogues that are facilitated by a volunteer justice practitioner with minimal training. Thus, alternative conflict resolution processes have traditionally been predicated upon the inherent flexibility of practices that are based in values and principles. Beyond this basis, there are often limited rules within the conflict resolution space that exist solely to mediate the interactions of the parties and to promote healthy dialogue. However, such feminized perspectives and approaches to alternative justice are diminishing as NGOs seek State support. The shift to masculinized business-oriented approaches is in line with many practitioners’ desires to implement alternative justice within existing formal law and judicial systems. Stemming from an ideological belief grounded in transforming the judicial system from within, practitioners believe that to successfully collaborate with the formal legal system, they must be considered legitimate in its eyes. Legitimacy is imagined by these practitioners to derive from efficiency (in terms of time and money), paperwork and extensive documentation (e.g., memoranda of understanding, files), and quantitative data. Data in this “business oriented” atmosphere is reshaped, redefined, and remade. Qualitative and case-based data diminishes in its importance, while quantitative data becomes increasingly seductive. Practitioners need quantitative data to guide their new ethos, foci, and State relationship. According to one Virginia interviewee in 2017, “I can’t ask for money for some warm and fuzzy thing. I mean, I need a more defined business plan. . . . I need more than anecdotal evidence” (Reinke 2020). This practitioner is reflecting upon the use of narratives to drive donations and to “prove” the efficacy of alternative justice. Narratives express the success of a particular case from the perspective of the parties and/or the practitioner, often pointing to the transformative potential of alternative justice in their own or others’ lives. Such success narratives are presented as human-interest stories, leveraged to garner financial support from donors. These stories are often in annual reports—such as the following, which is featured in the Virginia Center for Restorative Justice’s 2016 report: Bobby1 kept getting in fights at school and suspended. His teacher said, “I don’t think there is any hope for Bobby. He has simply given up! We don’t know what else to do for him. He seems destined to fail!” Ac-

From “Warm and Fuzzy” to “Business Oriented” Practices • 83 cording to Bobby, everyone wanted to pick on him. Of course, the person Bobby harmed told a different story. Bobby’s younger brother and older sister were separated from him when his parents abandoned the three children. He found his happiness at the Vet Clinic where he went to fulfill his hours of Community Service. Bobby’s grades improved as he began to work hard. He now wants to go to Vet School! (Clarke and Reinke 2016).

The narrative of “Bobby,” presumably written by the executive director and based on a real story, emphasizes his transformation from a hopeless juvenile in constant conflict with the schoolteachers, staff, and other students to a child who has goals and hope for his future. In this narrative, it is unclear exactly how alternative justice helped, although the reader could deduce that community service was mandated through a conflict resolution proceeding between the child and the school. Here, the reader can see the role of alternative justice values, including accountability (to the community through service) and service (community service hours), in reshaping the child’s behavior and attitude. But narratives such as these often leave out or neglect important components of the parties’ stories, while overemphasizing those points the organization might want to propagate in the readers’ minds. Simultaneously, NGOs fail to extrapolate beyond the individual case to examine how these individual social justice efforts contribute to the community in broader and more sustainable ways. Although these narratives are used in reports for directors, volunteers, and donors, they are also presented to policymakers and other legal stakeholders as evidence to attest to the effectiveness of alternative justice. Some practitioners, such as the one quoted earlier in this section, are frustrated at what they perceive as an overreliance on such “anecdotal evidence,” which does not prove a causal relationship between alternative justice and social justice goals or broader impacts. According to one informant speaking about narratives, “I don’t think that’s good enough data.” Instead, this practitioner identifies a need for quantitative data that will be considered “legitimate” by policymakers, grant organizations, and big private donors. While narratives such as Bobby’s are potentially powerful in generating revenue and interest among donors and in the communities they serve, the lack of numerical data to prove a causal relationship and to demonstrate a business-oriented approach is considered a weakness among practitioners seeking to legitimize their work to policymakers and legal actors.

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Whiteness and the Politics of Exclusion Organizations continue to become bureaucratic, State-like, and business-minded not because it is more efficient, but because homogenization is created and necessitated through and by relationships with the State and the need to become well-established in the field (see DiMaggio and Powell 1983; Reinke 2018b). This process of streamlining, professionalizing, standardizing, and quantifying alternative justice to be more in line with business practices and State interests has implications for racial justice and the politics of exclusion within nonprofits as well. Following research on the politics of exclusion embedded within social, political, and economic societal institutions (Bonilla-Silva 2003; Feagin 2006; Feagin and Vera 1995), in this section I examine the systemic politics of exclusion within alternative justice NGO practices. Some alternative justice scholars have asked whether such justice practices will be “compromised and co-opted by the overwhelming dominant cultural ethos (and corresponding power structures) . . . it seeks to transform” (Schiff 2013: 163). Despite this interest in power dynamics and cooptation more generally, there is little literature within alternative justice philosophy or theory that specifically applies to race. Where there is some mention of race, it is ordinarily a general reference to “the other” with implications for the conflict resolution process between the disputing parties. For example, Vlaemynck (2008) states that the goal of restorative justice is to cultivate self-awareness and relations with others, as well as to enhance social integration for harmonious living. Because, according to practitioners, alternative justice is ostensibly based upon universally shared values, such as empathy and respect, race and racial difference are not considered impediments in this context but opportunities for conflict resolution as a social liaison (Gavrielides 2005, 2014) that bridges social boundaries. For others, however, the very discursive process of such conflict resolution mechanisms can be inhibiting through its discourse, values, symbols, and the normative conventions within the conflict resolution process for marginalized racial groups (Davidheiser 2008). Although others have focused on race within the context of a discrete conflict resolution event, I instead consider how the masculinization of alternative justice and NGO service provision work to make these programs inaccessible to the very marginalized and disempowered groups they ostensibly benefit. Although the practitioners with

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whom I work discursively champion diversity, inclusion, and crosscultural communication, and believe themselves to be race neutral and unbiased, their work is embedded within the State’s extant politics of exclusion (see Saito 2009 for a discussion of the politics of exclusion). Most of the alternative justice practitioners I have had the pleasure of observing, interviewing, and befriending are White women from privileged socioeconomic backgrounds. Most of them have never spent time in prison or been racially profiled. They do this work to better their communities and provide an opportunity for conflict resolution and redress without contributing to entrenched and pervasive social justice issues, such as the school-to-prison pipeline or mass incarceration. Thus, they seek to build a culture of doing good by leveraging their socioeconomic and racial privileges for the betterment of marginalized and disempowered groups normatively targeted for State violence. They recognize and celebrate diversity in one another and between themselves and the individuals they serve. According to a practitioner in Virginia reflecting on diversity: “One of the things that I know we recognize is the diversity and I don’t mean just Black/White, I mean just the diversity of skills and social differences and where we are, where we live, and where we come from. It’s recognized and appreciated. It’s just wild, the different backgrounds that we have!” Practitioners support diverse representation among their workers not just for the variety of skills, but also because the workers should ideally be a reflection of the communities with whom they work. In part this mirrors longstanding racial dynamics whereby White people have historically been the owners of justice and social justice processes. According to one practitioner, “I don’t think it needs to be all Black people in the community, but I do think, you know, you don’t want a bunch of White people coming in there.” In the schools, racial diversity among the justice facilitators as they transmit values (e.g., empathy, honesty, accountability) and skills (e.g., anger management, conflict resolution) to children is also considered key. Another RJ practitioner reflects on this issue: “When you have . . . a Black teacher and a White teacher in class . . . we play off each other and I learn from her and she learns from me and we learn, they [the students] learn from us. . . . I think that has to be the way it has to go, because I couldn’t see it any other way.” Another practitioner in Virginia sums up the dynamics and need to have racial diversity among practitioners working within the school setting:

86 • Amanda J. Reinke I’m just going to lay it right on the line. These kids, 100 percent are Black, boys and girls. There is not one White child in there. There is not one Spanish child in there. All Black. So if you have a, umm, a program such as that, which it’s a great program, it really is, you’ve got to make sure that you have Black representatives there. You have to, because if you put White representatives in there and you don’t have a Black representative, you’re going to defeat the purpose because they’re going to say, “Here’s another White person trying to tell me what to do.” That’s plain and simple.

However, providing diversity in practitioners offering services to diverse schools is often problematic. In Virginia, the counties in which I work are up to 49 percent African American and have up to a 26 percent poverty rate (Census 2018). Ideally then, the practitioners working within these communities should reflect these statistics; there should be an even split between racial groups and some practitioners who have experienced poverty. However, there are a number of structural barriers for the participation of marginalized groups as alternative justice practitioners. Although practitioners may discursively support diverse representation in their practices and champion their work as part of a broader racial justice movement in the United States, the bureaucratic processes constructed from the transition to business-orientated approaches modeled on the State are problematic to achieving this goal. For example, the time and effort required for applying for and receiving the necessary identification to meet with clients in the justice system or work with children in the schools are themselves a potentially inhibiting barrier for marginalized groups. The background checks, time, and money required for these processes in addition to the time and money for training in alternative justice to meet the qualifications for the work all come together to create an elitist class of educated justice practitioners who do not reflect the communities they serve. According to one female practitioner who self-identifies as African American, she spent hours of her time to apply for a new ID after changes were made to their memoranda of understanding with the county and city: “I mean, I actually don’t work that far from there but, that is a major thing because . . . what you may know, all of us who volunteer, I mean you have a snippet who are retirees, but then a lot of us have full-time jobs. And that’s the thing, like my loyalty is always with the cause but it’s like I always told you, I have bills to pay” (Reinke 2020). The time required to run around town to update identification information because of cleri-

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cal errors and politics occurring above the volunteer level are frustrating for this practitioner who needs to spend time at her full-time job. While she is loyal to their cause—offering accessible and noncriminalizing justice outside the State—she also wonders whether the time and effort spent on bureaucratic tasks are a good use of her energies. This interviewee’s experience is not unique. Throughout four years of ethnographic research in this field, it has become clear that there are few practitioners who are also members of the communities they serve. Those who do reflect the community demographics (e.g., racially, socioeconomically) share concerns about the role bureaucratic processes play in limiting their ability to become deeply and actively involved in this social justice project. Most practitioners I encounter in the field are volunteers burdened with using their own vehicles, energies, and money to support the daily operations of the NGO. They are required to pay fees and spend an extraordinary amount of time attending trainings to stay up-to-date in their field and meet the necessary certifications for practice. As RJ becomes more bureaucratized, practitioners must spend more time filing cases, getting requisite badges and clearances, and performing other activities that do not necessarily directly benefit their clients. The result of the time and energy required by the masculinization of restorative justice has been the creation of an elite class of conflict resolvers. Only those that have the time, energy, and resources, as well as the requisite knowledge of bureaucratic processes, are able to effectively volunteer and work in this sector. This marginalization mirrors the politics of exclusion that pervades the legal system and which has created elite classes of professionals, such as lawyers and judges.

Conclusion Collaboration (or collusion) with the State reshapes alternative justice within the State’s extant politics of exclusion. Although alternative justice initially gained traction in the United States as a promise for community-based noncriminalizing justice for communities ordinarily marginalized and targeted by the State, it has often failed to serve or represent those communities. Background checks, ID cards, and the time and energy spent managing the business-like and bureaucratic infrastructure of these NGOs are necessitated by the masculinization of these organizations, which often makes them inaccessible for marginalized groups to participate as practitioners. The result is nonprofits

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staffed with predominantly White women who bear the burden of social provision in the State’s absence, but who also attempt to collude with the State to buttress and support their work politically and economically. Such support is provisioned only to “legitimate” NGOs—those that have successfully bureaucratized their work and can present quantitative data attesting to their successes. Part of the widespread shifting of care from the State’s purview to civil society (Leve and Karim 2001), which is simultaneously surveilled by the State, means feminized approaches to care within the NGO context have thus also been homogenized and shaped to fit a masculine State. Alternative justice nonprofits and practitioners have embraced collusion with the State in their provision of conflict resolution for marginalized communities by continued professionalization and standardization of their work. This shift from “warm and fuzzy” approaches to “business-oriented” approaches is an attempt to gain political legitimacy from the State to implement alternative justice within formal law itself but may also be used to support their quest for funding from the State. However, this shifting culture within alternative justice NGOs may also be exclusionary for many practitioners. Practitioners who are from the marginalized communities they serve—an idyllic situation for alternative justice organizations—often cannot take the time or money to go through lengthy bureaucratic processes, such as background checks. As the political landscape shifts, so too do the requirements for practitioners, meaning they must consistently renegotiate their positioning within the State, update ID cards, and undergo regular background checks. This creates exclusionary barriers for many who might like to be practitioners. Thus, the politics of exclusion operating within the State, which produces an elite class of lawyers and judges, is replicated within alternative justice to create and elite class of conflict resolvers. Although the research presented herein is based on NGO-graphic research in the United States, the transformation of alternative justice from community-based and informal to State and business-like in form and process is evident elsewhere. In New Zealand, the State has integrated ostensibly Indigenous values and forms of justice into formal legal processes with varying results (Fox 2015; McMullan 2011). The integration of justice processes such as RJ that focus on care and healing into State legal processes that are highly bureaucratized has raised similar concerns in New Zealand. Bureaucratic impediments that pervade these processes and infrastructures make the creation and implementa-

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tion of a truly representative and inclusive form of justice for Indigenous peoples elusive. Sherry Ortner’s 1974 classic depiction of female to male provides a useful philosophical starting point from which to examine care within NGOs and social provisioning more generally. Ortner’s theory mirrors the feminization of care in the alternative justice NGO context. Women are to men as NGO is to State insofar as social care work is distributed from the State to NGOs but is also undervalued. In the context of alternative justice NGOs, the State increasingly relies on these organizations and their practitioners to offer less punitive (“feminized”) forms of conflict resolution, such as in Virginia, that are incorporated into the penal code. Clearly the State believes alternative justice to be a useful tool in combatting its historically overly punitive (“masculinized”) approach to justice; however, it simultaneously undervalues this contribution. NGOs and their practitioners are rarely paid for their labor, and when they do receive compensation for their work, it is often too little or involves laborious bureaucratic processes that take time and energy from underpaid or unpaid female laborers. Within this context, some practitioners believe “we cannot change the world,” although they can at least change one individual at a time, one conflict at a time.

Acknowledgments Many thanks to Andria Timmer and Elizabeth Wirtz for organizing this volume and providing thoughtful feedback on this chapter. Generous support for research presented herein was provided by Georgia College and State University’s Paul D. Coverdell Public Policy Fellowship and College of Arts and Sciences Faculty Development Fund, and the University of Tennessee’s Yates Dissertation and Thomas Family Foundation Fellowships. Finally, I thank Anna Phillips for transcribing the interviews used in this chapter. Amanda J. Reinke is Assistant Professor of Conflict Management at Kennesaw State University’s School of Conflict Management, Peacebuilding, and Development. Amanda is an applied legal anthropologist specializing in violence that pervades community peacebuilding, conflict resolution, and disaster recovery efforts in the United States and African Great Lakes Region, especially amid displacement. She is a trained community mediator and conflict coach and has conducted pro bono

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research for conflict resolution NGOs and nonprofits. She can be contacted via email ([email protected]) or on Twitter @LegalAnthro.

Note 1. Not his real name.

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From “Warm and Fuzzy” to “Business Oriented” Practices • 91 national Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology 59(5): 519–38. Galanter, Marc. 1985. “‘. . . A Settlement Judge, not a Trial Judge’: Judicial Mediation in the United States.” Journal of Law and Society 12(1): 263–323. Gavrielides, Theo. 2005. “Some Meta-Theoretical Questions for Restorative Justice.” Ratio Juris 18: 84–106. ———. 2014. “Bringing Race Relations into the Restorative Justice Debate: An Alternative and Personalized Vision of ‘the Other.’” Journal of Black Studies 45(3): 216–46. Harvey, David. 2005. A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lawhead, Austin. 2020. Dispute and Dissent: Community Mediation in the Bay Area. PhD diss., California Institute of Integral Studies. Lawless, Elaine J. 2000. “‘Reciprocal Ethnography: No One Said It Was Easy.” Journal of Folklore Research 37(2/3): 197–205. Leve, Lauren, and Lamia Karim. 2001. “Privatizing the State: Ethnography of Development, Transnational Capital, and NGOs.” Political and Legal Anthropology Review 24(1): 53–58. Lewis, David, and Mark Schuller. 2017. “Engagements with a Productively Unstable Category: Anthropologists and Nongovernmental Organizations.” Current Anthropology 58(5): 634–51. Lewis, Patricia. 2005. “Suppression or Expression: An Exploration of Emotion Management in a Special Care Baby Unit.” Work, Employment and Society 19(3): 565–81. Lopez, S. 2006. “Emotional Labor and Organized Emotional Care: Conceptualizing Nursing Home Care Work. Work and Occupations 33(2): 133–60. McMullan, Sam. 2011. “Maori Self-Determination and the Pakeha Criminal Justice Process: The Missing Link.” Indigenous Law Journal 10(1): 73–100. Mertz, Elizabeth, and Andria Timmer. 2010. “Introduction: Getting it Done: Ethnographic Perspectives on NGOs.” Political and Legal Anthropology Review 33(2): 171–77. Ortner, Sherry B. 1974. “Is Female to Male as Nature Is to Culture?” In Woman, Culture, and Society, edited by M. Z. Rosaldo and L. Lamphere, 68–87. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Peffley, Mark, and Jon Hurwitz. 2002. “Racial Components of ‘Race Neutral’ Crime Policy Attitudes.” Political Psychology 23(1): 59–75. Reinke, Amanda J. 2016. “Advancing Social Justice Through Conflict Resolution Amid Rapid Urban Transformation of the San Francisco Bay Area.” PhD diss., University of Tennessee. ———. 2018a. “Childhood and Restorative Justice in the United States.” Neos 10(1): 7–8. ———. 2018b. “The Bureaucratic Violence of Alternative Justice.” Conflict and Society 4(1): 135–50.

92 • Amanda J. Reinke ———. 2020. “Documents and the Bureaucratisation of Alternative Dispute Resolution in the United States.” Journal of Legal Anthropology 4(1): 1–22. Saito, Leland T. 2009. The Politics of Exclusion: The Failure of Race-Neutral Policies in Urban America. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Sampson, Steven. 2017. “Introduction: Engagements and Entanglements in the Anthropology of NGOs.” In Cultures of Doing Good: Anthropologists and NGOs, edited by Amanda Lashaw, Christian Vannier, and Steven Sampson, 1–20. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press. San Francisco Community Boards. 2015. “Share. Support. Sustain. Community Boards’ Annual Report.” Schiff, M. 2013. “Institutionalizing Restorative Justice: Paradoxes of Power, Restoration, and Rights.” In Reconstructing Restorative Justice Philosophy, edited by Theo Gavrielides and V. Artinopoulou, 153–79. Furnham, UK: Ashgate. Schuller, Mark. 2007. “Seeing Like a ‘Failed’ NGO: Globalization’s Impacts on State and Civil Society in Haiti.” Political and Legal Anthropology Review 30(1): 67–89. Senate of Virginia. 2009. Senate Joint Resolution No. 362. Richmond, VA. Sharma, Ardhana. 2008. Logics of Empowerment: Development, Gender, and Governance in Neoliberal India. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Timmer, Andria D., and Danielle Docka-Filipek. 2018. “Enemies of the Nation: Understanding the Hungarian State’s Relationship to Humanitarian NGOs.” Journal of International and Global Studies 9(2): 40–57. Vannier, Christian, and Amanda Lashaw. 2017. “Conclusion: A Second Generation of NGO Anthropology.” In Cultures of Doing Good: Anthropologists and NGOs, edited by Amanda Lashaw, Christian Vannier, and Steven Sampson, 230–36. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press. Vlaemynck, M. 2008. “Peacebuilding Seen Through the Lens of Peacemaking Criminology.” Paper presented at the IPRA 22nd Global Conference Building Sustainable Futures—Enacting Peace and Development, University of Leuven, Belgium. Zehr, Howard. 1990. Changing Lenses: A New Focus for Crime and Justice. Scottdale: Herald Press. ———. 2002. The Little Book of Restorative Justice. New York: Good Books.

PART II

Care Work as Feminized Work There is inherent ambiguity and “fuzziness” within the division between the categorizations of the analogy that frames this volume. However, even when the dichotomy is subverted or roles reversed, the power dynamic remains relatively stable with the State in a more dominant, masculine role whereas nongovernmental organizations exist in a more subversive, feminine space. The institution of nongovernance is ideologically gendered female, but it is literally feminine as well, as the work and volunteer force predominately comprise of individuals who identify as women. The work they do is often characterized as feminine in nature (that is, nurturance and care provision), and the compensation and prestige often associated with this work indicates its devaluation. Finally, the recipients of aid are also gendered female because they are in need of assistance and have been left out of or left behind by the State project. The chapters in this section explore the femininization of care work. They do not, however, make the argument that the feminization of and devaluation of nongovernmental work renders the work and the actors within in it powerless. On the contrary, the ethnographies in this section show how NGOs provide counter narratives to the State. Through strategic and subversive action, they work to fill the vacuum left by State abandonment of social aid provision. In chapter four, “From Stranger to Neighbor: Women’s Voluntarism as Feminist Caring Politics against Australia’s Hostile Borders,” Tess Altman explains the contrast between the Australian State’s punitive border policy and volunteers’ compassionate efforts to aid those seeking asylum. In Australia, as is common globally, much of the humanitarian and development work is done by women. Altman asserts that the gendered nature of humanitarianism is perceived as being nonpolitical, but, in actuality, it has a number of political effects that serve to foster an

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ethics of care, manifest a community of care, provide a sense of home to aid recipients, and transform “strangers” into “neighbors.” Thus, these volunteers provide “powerful counter narratives to the masculinized, militarized discourses of the State” (Altman this vol.). While Altman speaks to the gendered nature of volunteering, Smita Mishra Panda and Annapurna Devi Pandey explain how women’s bodies are used as powerful sites of resistance in chapter five, “Rural Women’s Self-Determination and Grassroots Resistance Movement: Reclaiming Land and Traditional Livelihoods in Odisha.” The Odisha region of India is a land rich area and also an area of great rural poverty. In response to State-backed corporate efforts to gain control of the land for mining and timbering, the local rural residents formed nongovernmental organizations. Panda and Pandey provide insight into one aspect of power utilized by these NGOs: the power of protest. Women were the main drivers in these protests as they put their bodies in the middle of the land and the corporations, thus subjecting themselves to violence and scorn. Women’s bodies, usually seen as vulnerable and, using Ortner’s analogy, closer to nature, can become very powerful sites of resistance because they destabilize the expected hierarchy. In chapter six, “Neglectful Fathers and Mothers Who Mean Well: Love and Hate of Hungarian Roma ‘Children,’” Andria D. Timmer examines the way NGOs are often aligned with nurturance and care. Within Hungary, Roma are at best seen as unruly children in need of civilizing care and at worst as criminal elements in need of imprisonment, expulsion, or execution. While State policies directed toward Roma tend to assume criminality, NGOs take on the task of care work, especially as it relates to education for Roma youth. This chapter focuses on how NGOs, in their feminine role, often frame their interventions in terms of love. In so doing, they challenge the dominant ideology that professes hate and fear of the Roma. However, as Timmer argues, the contrasting views of State and NGO serve to maintain the vast rift between Roma and non-Roma in society. Thus, the Roma who are gendered feminine and positioned outside of society remain the “ward” of NGO interventions, largely neglected by State entities. In the final chapter of this section, “En/gendering Aixin: Philanthropy and Gendered Practice of Compassion in Postsocialist China,” Yang Zhan explains the concept of aixin in Chinese philanthropy. Aixin, which best translates to “loving care,” provides the philosophy behind social aid and charity in China and is a uniquely gendered concept. As Zhan explains using the ethnographic case example of a grassroots

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NGO named the Rural Development and Education Association (RDEA), women are ideologically associated with aixin, are more likely to do the work of loving care, and are most likely to be the beneficiaries of such care. Thus, the work of philanthropy is gendered female and subordinated to the work of the masculine State. As the examples in this section illustrate, NGO work is aligned with women both ideologically, as it relates to nurturance and maternal care, and literally, as the benefactors and beneficiaries are often likely to be women. Women and men, however, are not closed categories, but exist on a spectrum. The final section of this volume explores how nongovernmentality works to subvert the gendered binary.

CHAPTER 4

From Stranger to Neighbor Gendered Voluntarism as Feminist Caring Politics against Australia’s Hostile Borders Tess Altman

Volunteers have emerged as frontline providers in the outsourcing of welfare accompanying the “privatization of the state” (Leve and Karim 2001) in many advanced liberal countries (Rose 1996). Understanding gendered dynamics between NGOs and States must therefore include a gendered analysis of the volunteers at the core of the NGO workforce.1 Unpaid labor and care work has historically been undertaken by women, much of it hidden in the “private sphere” of the home.2 Global volunteer data similarly indicates that although the majority of volunteers are women3 (UN Volunteers 2018), their contributions are undervalued due to being informal or care-based (OECD 2015; UN Volunteers 2019), and anthropological research shows that humanitarian domains are commonly feminized (Malkki 2015). Drawing on fieldwork from 2015–16 with the Australian civil society movement for refugees and people seeking asylum,4 this chapter considers the intersecting trends of increased reliance on volunteers, and women’s prevalence in feminized humanitarian volunteering. I argue that this confluence reinforces the historical devaluation of women’s labor and reproduces gender norms while also opening up potential for accessible opportunities to participate in civil society (Bojar 1998) and political alternatives. The primary case is a neighborhood organization that delivered material and food aid to people seeking asylum in Melbourne, whose volunteers predominantly identified as women. I find that although the demographic was not intentional nor emphasized, it suffused volunteer activities with a “feminine” ethos practiced through the domestic arts (e.g., sewing, baking). Gendered voluntarism reproduced the invisible

From Stranger to Neighbor • 97

labor of the private sphere and displayed potentially “femonationalist” (Farris 2017) domesticating tendencies toward culturally different recipients (Hage 2016). However, it also had productive political effects. First, volunteering provided flexible opportunities for sociality, political participation and recognition. Second, by publicly associating positive qualities of the private sphere with people seeking asylum—such as intimacy, familiarity and harmony—volunteers challenged stereotypes of the racialized, threatening “other”. In this way, the domestic arts presented a form of “caring integration” (Schmid 2019) and a powerful counternarrative to the masculinized, militarized discourses of the Australian government’s hostile border regime.5

The Hostile State as Protector: Operation Sovereign Borders With global numbers of forcibly displaced people at record highs (UNHCR 2021), government responses of “host countries” range on a continuum from hospitality to hostility.6 The Australian government’s approach is bifurcated, accepting those deemed “deserving” (through official channels such as UNHCR) and deterring the “undeserving” (Peterie 2017). Following the introduction of mandatory detention in the 1990s, successive Australian governments have pursued deterrence toward those termed “unauthorized boat arrivals” (Pickering and Lambert 2002). Since 2013, the punitive policy approach Operation Sovereign Borders (OSB) threatens potential boat arrivals that they will “never settle in Australia” (Department of Home Affairs 2021). OSB criminalizes attempts to reach Australia by boat (van Berlo 2015; Hodge 2015) through measures such as boat turn-backs by the Australian Navy, indefinite detention, and the issuing of temporary visas to keep people from pathways to citizenship (McAdam 2013; Refugee Council of Australia 2021). OSB has been condemned by the United Nations, human rights groups, lawyers, and medical professionals as inhumane and damaging to health (Davidson 2019; Doherty 2019; Human Rights Watch 2021; Reilly 2019). An Australian Border Deaths Database recorded 2,030 deaths since 2000 (Monash University 2021), and Behrouz Boochani (2018), a former long-term detainee, documented firsthand a brutal system of oppression, surveillance, and violence. At the time of research, OSB affected nearly thirty thousand people seeking asylum (Department of Home Affairs 2016b). As Andria Timmer, Christopher Loy, and Elizabeth Wirtz note in the introduction to this volume, there has been a latent gendering of the

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functions of States. Military, border control, and security dimensions fall into the “masculine arm”—paternalistic or disciplinary functions. Education, health care, and social aid constitute the “feminine arm”—maternal, reproductive, or nurturing functions (see also Leve and Karim 2001). In the context of forced migration, this observation is complemented by feminist analyses that note border regimes have been masculinized, in opposition with feminized forcibly displaced populations (Hyndman and Giles 2011), and that sexuality forms a method of bordering bound up with racialized histories of colonialism and containment, where anything outside the heteronormative frame is classified as a polluting threat (Holzberg, Madörin, and Pfeifer 2021). OSB represents an instantiation of masculinized border rhetoric. At the macro level, this constitutes a legitimization of violence in the name of protecting the nation-state from harm and “saving” feminized populations. At the micro level, detention practices are gendered and sexualized, with male guards instructed to be disciplinary and female guards to be compassionate (No to G4S 2012), and sexual violence forming a normative component of detainee experiences (Perera and Pugliese 2018). At first glance, the hostile, masculinized OSB stands in stark contrast to “feminized” humanitarian arms of Australian migration policy—such as being a signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention, having an official multicultural policy since the 1970s supported by a majority of Australians (Markus 2020), and one of the largest humanitarian intakes of refugees (Mountz 2011). Yet this paradox is not uncommon. Alison Mountz (2011: 119) notes that Australia, Canada, and the United States, the countries with the largest per capita refugee resettlement programs, also display the harshest border enforcement toward those who arrive without their permission, performing a “right to sovereign assertion.” In humanitarian contexts, actors deliberately blur boundaries between “masculinized” force and “feminized” compassion. Anthropologists illustrate how compassion has been harnessed in the service of militarized regimes, softening and disguising their brutality (Fassin 2012; Bornstein and Redfield 2010; Fassin and Pandolfi 2010; Ticktin 2014). This tension is encompassed in the coining of oxymoronic terms such as “compassionate borderwork” (Little and Vaughan-Williams 2016) and “armed love” (Ticktin 2011). As Didier Fassin highlights, logics of “humanitarian reason” that appeal to moral sentiments become a technique of “governing precarious lives” (Fassin 2012: 2). Part of the success of OSB with Australian voters lies in governmental mobilization of humanitarian reason, positioning the State as heroic

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protector and savior. Fear-mongering rhetoric mobilizes discourses of protecting both the Australian public and vulnerable people seeking asylum. The Australian government claims that by turning back boats, they are “saving lives at sea” in the long term by deterring people smugglers (Little and Vaughan-Williams 2016). The person seeking asylum in this picture occupies an ambivalent position: sometimes criminalized, sometimes the victim of smuggling, they nevertheless remain the “other” outside the national frame of Australian-ness. The racialized undertones of this “other” speak to the continuation of a White “paranoid nationalism” (Hage 2003) grounded in insecurities attached to settler colonialism (Martin 2015; McMaster 2002). Australia’s approach is thus characteristic of border regimes in the Global North, while its specific history as a settler colonial State forms a point of continuity for the legitimization of violence in the name of sovereignty.

Zone of Abandonment: Neoliberal Outsourcing Meets Deterrence Despite OSB’s success, there was a sense of outrage manifesting in a passionate grassroots civil society movement. Volunteers have been central to global humanitarian responses to forced migration, as witnessed in the recent European “long summer of migration” (Feischmidt, Pries, and Cantat 2019; Vandevoordt and Verschraegen 2019). In Germany between 2011 to 2014, the rate of volunteering to support migrants increased by 70 percent; in 2015, this figure doubled as part of the new “wilkommenskultur,” or “welcome culture” (Fleischmann and Steinhilper 2017: 3). In contrast to being a “niche” activist activity, German welcome culture was branded “apolitical” and attracted “ordinary citizens”; yet Larissa Fleischmann and Elias Steinhilper term this a “myth” (2017: 8), questioning the extent to which such voluntarism can actually be separated from political realms. Similarly, in Australia there was no shortage of “ordinary citizens” wanting to help. The largest NGO providing services independently from the government had 1,200 volunteers (compared with 80 staff), with a waiting list of 2,500 more. Australian volunteers exhibited a diversity of motivation: some volunteered to show welcome, and others as a “fuck you” to the government. Volunteering was most commonly linked to a critique of the moral failures of the State, a means to “do the right thing” (see Altman 2020). Whether volunteers permit the continuation of hostile border regimes or offer the possibility of political alternatives remains a topic of

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intense debate (Vandevoordt and Verschraegen 2019), echoing wider arguments positioning volunteers as depoliticized neoliberal, (neo)colonial, and heteronormative subjects (Holzberg, Madörin, and Pfeifer 2021; Hyatt 2001; Muehlebach 2012; Prince and Brown 2016; Rozakou 2016). Volunteers as frontline service providers fit into a wider neoliberal outsourcing of welfare (Fyfe and Milligan 2003). As this volume demonstrates, outsourcing creates a gendered binary between States and NGOs, where NGOs take on devalued social and caring responsibilities. This was certainly the case in Australia, with the introduction of a “mixed economy of welfare” (Murphy 2006) in the 1980s creating marketized, flexibilized, and short-termist welfare models (Oppenheimer 2014), a pared-back level of service provision, and limited political advocacy by NGOs (Sampson 2015). The case of NGO/State relations in the hostile environment of OSB was, however, more complex. Little known by the Australian public was that over 80 percent of those affected were not in detention but rather living precariously in Australia. They waited for their asylum claims to be processed while on temporary bridging visas with meager government support less than the lowest welfare benefit, and inconsistent work and study rights (Refugee Council of Australia 2021; Doherty 2018). This fostered a state of “permanent temporariness” (Bailey et al. 2002), heightened anxiety, and fear (Hartley and Fleay 2014; Procter et al. 2018). As Georgina Ramsay (2017) has noted, control over people’s time is a way States flex their sovereignty. Here was an intersection of neoliberal and deterrence objectives: government-contracted NGOs provided minimal services as a deliberate tactic of State abandonment (Biehl 2005). Arguably this was to make conditions so unbearable that people seeking asylum returned to their countries of origin, a point confirmed by generous governmental remuneration for “voluntary repatriation.” Deterrence hence intensified neoliberal service cuts. Due to these dire conditions, a second tier of primarily volunteer-run NGOs and local community groups who did not take government funding emerged, filling the service gaps left by those already filling the gaps (McNevin and Correa-Velez 2006). Some distinguished themselves from government-contracted NGOs, considering them part of the hostile border regime. Data for this chapter is drawn from sixteen months of fieldwork and fifty-four semistructured interviews I conducted among this humanitarian sector and civil society movement in 2015–16 in Melbourne, a city hosting over a third of people seeking asylum in Australia (Department of Home Affairs 2016a).

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During this time, I was a researcher, pro bono consultant, and volunteer in humanitarian NGOs, local community groups, and activist contexts. My own positionality should be noted as a White Australian woman against OSB.

Private/Public Binaries and Feminist Care Ethics Cognizant of the debate over whether volunteers are a depoliticizing or politicizing force, this chapter focuses on the transformative political potential of gendered voluntarism among women volunteers.7 This has been an underexplored avenue of inquiry, though it is gaining traction (see Malkki 2015; Schmid 2019; Stivens 2018; Stock 2019; Wearing et al. 2018). Although humanitarian volunteering is largely delivered by women (UN Volunteers 2018, 2019), part of the tendency to underestimate political potential appears to rest on the association between women volunteers, caring roles, and sentiments. Anne-Meike Fechter (2015: 552) has noted that in ethnographies of aid, women aid workers are linked to sentiments of morality and charity rather than professional careers. Men are more likely to be found in “active,” publicly lauded “life and death” search and rescue volunteering, which relegates those unable to perform hypermasculinity to the backstage (Weller, Clarke, and Brown 2021). Mary Mostafanezhad attributes the ubiquity of young White women in childcare-focused volunteer tourism initiatives in the Global South to the role modeling of “gendered generosity” by celebrity humanitarians such as Angelina Jolie, arguing that female volun-tourists perpetuate Western gender norms and a “sentimental colonial encounter” where individualized emotions replace the political with the personal (2013: 496). There has been a public backlash against women’s volun-tourism, captured by the satirical Instagram account @BarbieSavior that depicts White Barbie in Africa—on safaris, posing for selfies, holding African children, straightening her hair, or doing yoga. Critiques such as these draw attention to the global politics and commoditization of care and the privilege wielded by White women. Yet, Stephen Wearing et al. (2018: 501–2) have taken a feminist political economy approach to argue that the vilification of female volun-tourists simplistically obscures wider structural forces such as the neoliberalization of international development. They point out such critiques reinforce “binary hierarchies of racial, ethnic, class and gender [that] reproduce the distribution of

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political and economic power,” mediate new forms of oppression, and ignore the transformative potential of embodied sentimental encounters (2018: 507–8). Taking an intersectional perspective that is cognizant of multiple and overlapping structural and identity factors such as gender, race and class, I instead argue that the humanitarian subject—characterized by a “need” (Malkki 2015) or “imperative” (Heron 2007) to help, an “impulse to give” (Bornstein 2012) to distant strangers—is both a privileged (powerful) and feminized (subordinate) subject. Jennifer Hyndman and Wenona Giles make the important point that while “the feminization of a phenomenon refers to a shift in gender relations towards those considered female or feminine,” it does not apply exclusively to women (2011: 363). Positioning “feminization” as a wider process of marginalization avoids reproducing binary thinking. Feminization is rather a process through which a phenomenon is rendered “passive, static or helpless” and hence devalued or depoliticized (Hyndman and Giles 2011: 363). Liisa Malkki (2015: 106) posits that the entire humanitarian domain has been feminized in contrast to a masculinized domain of “real politics.” She further argues that international humanitarian roles are valorized compared with volunteer work in the comfort of one’s own society and home. Humanitarianism “at home,” mostly undertaken by women, is “made mere” in contrast to high-stakes humanitarian work (Malkki 2015: 15). It is not only the domain but the type of work that consigns it to dismissal. Volunteers in Finland sewed trauma teddies, knitted aid bunnies, and made blankets within their own homes. These practices of domestic arts were relegated as “less than” when contrasted with the “real” world of urgent humanitarian aid such as food, clothes, medical care, and shelter (Malkki 2015: 117). One reason for these dismissals is the continuation of gendered associations that attach political value to masculinized public rather than feminized private spheres. Dominant discourses of voluntarism in western countries reproduce these distinctions. Historically, women’s unpaid labor was hidden in the private realm, while men received recognition for activating political life in the public sphere. Public civic participation was linked to volunteering in the nineteenth century by Alexis de Tocqueville (1838), who saw it as a key ingredient of democracy. As volunteering became formalized over the twentieth century, it retained this public/private division. Official definitions of volunteering prioritize formal volunteering outside the home for the “common good,” reinforcing that volunteering and political participation are activities that occur

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in the “public sphere” as opposed to informal care work that is provided in the—by default nonpolitical—“private sphere” to friends or kin. Recently this association between volunteering and the public sphere has been perpetuated by neoliberal policies promoting “active citizenship” through civic participation (Rose 1996; Hyatt 2001; Rozakou 2016). As Sylvia Fuller, Kershaw, and Pulkingham illustrate, the “active citizen” is a masculinized figure that “demands for all adults [that citizenship entail the role of] the autonomous and self-sufficient breadwinner” (2008: 157). The invisibility of women’s political contributions in discourses of voluntarism extends to conceptualizations of hospitality. Although women clearly undertake much of the domestic work of hosting, there are power asymmetries, with men assumed to be head of the house (Stivens 2018: 87). Maila Stivens follows feminist philosophers in seeking to “gender hospitality.” She illustrates that in philosophical thought, there is a “maternal cultural imaginary of hospitality” (2018: 87), and that women’s place at the forefront of the global response to forced migration establishes them as cosmopolitan political subjects (2018: 91). Her example is of exceptional relevance to my case, conducted among women in the Australian social movement for refugees. These women tapped into a history of “motherist politics” in the suffragette movement to “politically deploy specifically feminine imaginaries within the public against the often equally gendered counter-cosmopolitanisms of state, nationalism and xenophobic politics” (Stivens 2018: 86). Using maternal kinship terms in their organizational names, such as “Grandmothers Against Detention” and “Mums 4 Refugees,” they invoked “a fiercely protective maternal and grandmaternal rage” against the hostile policies of the Australian government (Stivens 2018: 89). Apart from gendering hospitality, another way in which scholars have recently illustrated the political potential of women’s voluntarism for migrants is through the notion of a political ethics of care. Sophia Schmid argues that a feminist “political care ethics”—a form of relating centering on respect, empathy, and responsibility—can be a powerful framework for negotiating difference, replacing multiculturalism with “caring integration” (2019: 119). Caring integration, based on Joan Claire Tronto’s (1993) interdependent notion of “caring with” rather than “caring for,” includes attentiveness to the other, context-dependent and respectful dialogue, responsiveness, and including marginalized voices. By mobilizing care to achieve structural transformation, it presents an alternative to xenophobic politics (Schmid 2019: 124). However, Inka

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Stock notes in her study of volunteer-refugee “buddy systems” that although caring relations can have politically transformative effects, they can also reinforce unequal power dynamics (2019: 129). In the example that follows, I consider how women volunteers politically mobilized domestic and private space. Unlike Stivens’ case, they steered away from gendered framing and outraged emotion. Indeed, they deliberately chose to portray their activities through the inclusive and harmonious frame of neighborliness. Yet despite hesitance toward gendering, I argue that their utilization of domestic arts combined with their demographic suffused volunteer activities with an intimate feminist political care ethics. I consider three effects of this intimate politics: the reproduction of invisible labor, the opening up of new socialities and political spaces, and a domesticating effect of socializing the racialized “other.”

The Support of a Neighbor to a Neighbor The local community organization I am analyzing was completely volunteer run and received referrals from under resourced governmentcontracted NGOs. They began on social media when their founder, Simone,8 posted a request for donations because her asylum-seeking next-door neighbors had no furniture. She remembered, “This was at 10 p.m., and at 6 a.m. the porch was full of donations!” Simone was overwhelmed by the “outpouring of goodwill” from her local community, who “resonated my distress that there was no government service providing people with beds, no obligation to help them; people were really concerned and wanted to offer them a hand of friendship too— not just stuff.” The idea was simple and grew from there: the support of a neighbor to a neighbor. This included not only material aid, but also friendship: welcoming them into the community. Emphasizing neighborliness in relation to a highly politicized issue in Australian public debate enabled volunteers to be deliberately centered on building caring relationships with people seeking asylum. “We want to put the people above the politics of it,” Donna (current CEO) decisively stated in the 2015 Annual General Meeting. Many of the more established volunteers had developed close-knit, long-term dynamics with the houses they visited. Neighborliness was inclusive, tapping into a powerful mainstream Australian trope evoked by the government, where policymakers pro-

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moted neighborhoods as sites of social cohesion; the police force, who entreated neighbors to “watch out for each other” (Neighbourhood Watch 2021); the humanitarian sector, where neighborhood support was suggested to orient newcomers; and Australian television, where the popular show Neighbours is one of the most long-running primetime soap dramas (coincidentally set in Melbourne). Neighborliness built on an “Australian way of volunteering” based on a spirit of mateship and mutual aid (Oppenheimer 2008). Citizens had not relied upon government investment in social infrastructure, particularly in rural areas with histories of community involvement in emergency service provisions such as firefighting, which continued to record higher volunteering levels compared to cities (Winterton 2014). Like other settler colonial societies, there were vestiges of a frontier mentality of “just getting on with it” and relying on one another through hard times (Oppenheimer 2008). Neighborliness hence plugged into an existing cultural framework for the Australian public that appealed to the duty to lend a hand to one’s neighbor. This vision was one in which all could participate, regardless of political persuasion, age, gender, class, or cultural background. Indeed, it was even one in which people seeking asylum were invited to participate through the equalizing notion of them not as recipients but neighbors receiving support from their fellow neighbors. Involving the whole community through neighborliness also downplayed the gendered nature of the existing volunteers. For example, when discussing their values at their Annual General Meeting, the term “motherhood” came up. The group were quick to shy away, associating motherhood with excluding volunteers who were not mothers and with “mothering” (i.e., patronizing) their clients.9 They sought to distance themselves from being defined through this lens to avoid essentialist stereotypes attached to femininity, to eschew the unequal power relations associated with a “mothering” caring dynamic, and to attract a broader volunteer demographic.

Invisible and Flexible Labor Despite these attempts, the volunteers remained women.10 One sunny afternoon at a local café, Nina (former Deputy CEO) reflected that only around 5 percent were men.11 They were usually older and did “traditional male roles”—Information Technology, driving, refurbishing, mowing lawns.12 She became animated:

106 • Tess Altman Which is great, but you never see a man folding a towel or packing nappies. I reckon you could do a whole sociological study on who volunteers in caring organizations. The thing that [made me annoyed] is I would present at [recruitment] events and someone would ask me what’s the demographic. I would say it’s all women. And a man would be smirking like, “I find that hard to believe.” And I’m [thinking,] Excuse me? Where are all the men in our community?!?!

Nina illustrates that not only were women doing the volunteer work, but that men were dismissing her when she pointed this out. After such presentations, men would approach Nina to express interest, specifically because she had said there were not enough men. However, they would only be interested in the “least feminine” role, delivery driving, and did not want to make a regular commitment. The volunteers had different theories as to why the organization attracted younger (twenty to forty-year-old) women, particularly new mothers. Some felt that women had an innate sense of compassion. Simone laughed when I asked why—this was seen to be obvious, and she commented tonguein-cheek that “baking a casserole” was a woman’s response whereas “men aren’t really sure how to help.” She also thought like attracted like— as founder, she was a mom and a self-identified overachieving woman. Laura (former CEO) thought professional women on maternity leave wanted to stay busy and were good at multitasking. Genevieve (delivery manager) thought the online component of organizational activity facilitated volunteering from home. Volunteers with older children suggested that women were acclimatized to volunteering through participating in their children’s school volunteer activities. Others posited from a practical perspective that women had more flexible time. Donna connected volunteering directly to motherhood: As a mom you can get quite isolated and yearn to be involved—that’s one reason I joined: I want to connect. [Also] your perspective changes, what do you want your kids to see you doing? What do you want them to do when they’re older, and what sort of world do you want them to grow up in? I want to tell my son, if you were born in a different situation, you could be in an offshore detention center.

It should be noted that although volunteers’ theories play somewhat into heteronormative notions of caring qualities, they were averse to gender stereotyping, and some identified as queer. I suggest that they were seeking less to reproduce gender binaries and more to put their finger on what it was about being a woman in a neoliberal society

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that led so many of them to volunteer. Their answers reveal a gendered sense of kinship, a “privileged motherhood” (Stivens 2018: 90), with references to professionalism and wanting children to understand how lucky they are. However, they also speak to the complex conditions of “postmodern motherhood” (Stivens 2018: 90), with the juggling of multiple commitments, the need for flexible time, and the desire to stay active and connected. The fact was that volunteers contributed immense amounts of effort and time. A common volunteer analogy was a duck: calm on the surface, but franticly paddling underneath the water. Examples of backstage work included clothing bees where volunteers screened for quality, washed, ironed, and sorted clothing; bake sales where they shopped for ingredients, packaged goods according to stringent health guidelines, and dropped them off; and social media, where internal coordination happened over multiple organizing groups. After a weekend away, Nina came back to over 280 Facebook notifications. Her immediate thought was “What’s happened—did someone die? No, we’d just had a particularly busy weekend.” Deliveries were particularly time-consuming. Simone, standing on a picnic rug concluding her end-of-year speech to around twenty volunteers gathered with their children and families, acknowledged that “for every four-hour delivery, around one hundred volunteer hours happen behind the scenes.” Simone was referring to the excel spreadsheet coordinating donations—involving Google mapping addresses, calling donors and recipients, triaging priority items, and accounting for the trailer’s capacity (likened to a “game of Tetris”). Donna told me, “I was on holiday sitting in the hotel room moving around addresses while my son and husband were at the pool.” Genevieve stayed up past midnight after her full-time job. To my shocked response, she responded, “But you can’t say ‘wow’ because that’s normal in this group.” Sustainability was an issue, and the Board found that volunteers resigned—as Nina explained: [Especially] new moms, professionals struggling with being at home for the first time, and they’re amazing, but the burn out is so fast. We get them for about six months. And then, this is just my speculation, the husband/partner says, “You’re doing as much work as you would for a job; we need the money; keep volunteering a little, go back to work, we’ll put the kid in childcare.” So they do, everyone gets sick, and that’s when they say, “I can’t cope”—and they’re gone. Before we can help, which is really frustrating.

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A concern was the amount of pressure volunteering placed on home life. Volunteers spoke about “drowning” in donations, joking: “See this mountain of clothes? It used to be an office space!” A challenge was the inability to monitor work levels because so much occurred isolated in the space of the home. Two years into the organization’s life, a solution came in the form of a warehouse. The warehouse would provide a headquarters, space for working bees and socializing, and storage for donations. Most volunteers were pleased; however, some longer-term volunteers ended up resigning. Nina expressed frustration that the very people who complained about donations filling their houses were the ones leaving. Reasons centered around the changing nature of the organization as it became larger and more professionalized, allowing volunteers less personal stake and less connection with clients, combined with the logistical trouble of going to a warehouse regularly. Volunteering here mirrored the invisible quality of feminized domestic housework. Because of the hidden, isolated nature, it was hard to keep track of and publicly value. Moreover, an organizational culture of “over-volunteering” combined with an Australian cultural aversion to taking credit or appearing to think one was better than others—“tall poppy syndrome”—meant volunteers did not want to draw attention to the work they were undertaking. As Genevieve said, “You can’t say ‘wow.’” This was considered normal, not extraordinary. Men also contributed to the dismissal, such as the disbelieving strangers Nina encountered. An additional factor was that volunteers knew there was no one else to do it—they were filling gaps in an under resourced system. Yet the mixed reactions to the warehouse revealed that home-based volunteering also presented opportunities to those with limited mobility and fixed schedules—such as new moms stuck at home, or full-time workers—to participate in their community. Most importantly, this was enabled in a flexible manner that did not require too much logistical hassle. Volunteering from home presented a way to juggle the postmodern multiple obligations of work, motherhood, and volunteering. It was not ideal, as the cases of burnout confirmed, but more tenable than the fixity of time and space imposed by the new warehouse.

Political Effects of Domestic Arts The most “feminine” part of the organization’s activities was their engagement in the domestic arts: practices associated with homemak-

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ing traditionally undertaken by women such as sewing and baking. Though these practices are no longer prescribed to a “female” domain, they still contain this historical association that has led to their devaluation (Malkki 2015). In this case, the fact that the volunteers were mainly women and mobilized the domestic arts reinforced established gendered tropes. More “politically engaged” NGOs dismissed their ability to contribute to systemic change. I instead focus on the productive power inherent in such practices: through fostering caring socialities and symbolically associating people seeking asylum with positive, nonthreatening qualities of domestic space.

Caring Socialities Emily sits on the floor of Frannie’s living room cutting swathes of material; Frannie is stationed behind one of three sewing machines. We are sewing bags out of brightly colored donated fabric. I am the only one who cannot sew. Laughing at my trepidation, Emily teaches me while we swap opinions on current affairs: how despite hopes, the new Prime Minister is terrible; Emily’s backpacking around Syria and Turkey; theories on why conflict is happening there (Frannie says it’s all oil interests). More women arrive, and Frannie offers tea and baklava. Emily explains the bags will be used to deliver toys, food, and toiletries. Neve says, “This is by women, for women; that’s what I like.” Emily adds, “It’s nice for them to get something pretty instead of plastic IKEA bags, given the environment they’re in.” I agree: “It’s a nice homemade touch.” The bags are used to pack donated children’s clothes, toys, and books into “hampers” with cellophane and ribbon at an evening working bee—a popular timeslot as many have full-time work or children.13 Meredith organizes it in her church foyer. Things go quickly with four new moms and three older women; the younger ones bring out refreshments. The moms advise on age-appropriate clothing: “Onesies are gold to new mothers.” It’s important to make the bundles look attractive too, because, as Meredith tells us, “Sometimes the houses don’t like to get secondhand clothes. We have to make it look nice, or they won’t want it.” Volunteers coalesced as a community of caring women, hosting one another as they offered advice, speculated about clients’ needs, and shared theories about global politics. Caring sociality combined with the domestic arts animated already existing relationships between volunteers and recipients, who in this case were women and children. Volunteers related to these recipients. One volunteer said she always

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Figure 4.1. Children’s hampers. Photo taken by author with permission. © Tess Altman, 2016.

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focused on including something for the woman—like a shaving razor or sanitary pads—because “she would never ask; she always puts herself last after the husband and children.” Participating in activities “by women for women,” the volunteers used their knowledge as mothers to imagine what a child might wear or play with. This extended to the home-sewn bags and curated bundles becoming “power objects” of the humanitarian imagination (Malkki 2015: 127). The power objects did the symbolic work of transforming potentially discarded, dirty, and valueless secondhand goods. Recognizing their shameful associations, volunteers sought to re-enchant them into dignified gifts by encasing them within homemade objects made with care.

Stranger to Neighbor Arriving at a local street festival wearing a sundress and brimmed hat, I inadvertently match other volunteers’ outfits. Home-sewn bunting spells out “BAKE SALE.” After a scorching day, the stall is littered with the remains of half-melting baked goods. Four women take cash payments for cake and tea towel merchandise. I am tasked to sell raffle tickets with the grand prize of a weekend away, and the second prize of a vacuum cleaner. The “sales pitch” that works best with the local crowd is to lead with the prize incentive, engage in friendly banter, and then casually throw in that we help local people seeking asylum. Many have heard of the organization. Belinda has been asked where the donations are going, and she responds, “They’re asylum seekers in our neighborhood who have absolutely nothing, so your donations will be really appreciated.” Public fundraising activities such as these mapped onto spatial zones of the home. The bake sale represented the kitchen, while at other events sausage sizzles [barbeques] signified the backyard, and garage sales symbolized the carport. In the bake sale, the domestic arts appeared in the form of cooking, sewed bunting, and domestic paraphernalia such as tea towels. Combined with the local emphasis on lending a hand to one’s own community, this created a peaceful sense of domesticity that had two latent political effects. First, it brought the private sphere into the public domain, inviting public recognition of the invisible domestic work of volunteers. Second, it promoted a vision of people seeking asylum that was proximate, relatable, and familiar. Debunking myths that all people seeking asylum were in far-off detention centers, eschewing common humanitarian portray-

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als of suffering strangers experiencing famine or war (Chouliaraki 2010), volunteers instead promoted the imaginary of home. Their tea towel design showcased domestic items of material aid, such as fridges and toys, rather than images of people in need. In doing so, positive aspects of home—family, safety, harmony—became publicly associated with people seeking asylum. By downplaying distance and foregrounding domestic items and spaces, distant strangers were reconfigured into familiar neighbors.

Domestication Although the focus on home and neighborliness had the potential to shift the stigmatizing perception of people seeking asylum as dangerous or undeserving “others,” structural inequalities could limit this potential. At the organization’s inception, asylum-seeking clients had volunteered enthusiastically alongside regular volunteers, often helping out with deliveries in a fluid and informal manner. Yet their precarious position in Australian society eventually led to the decision not to involve them in volunteering activities. A primary reason stemmed from an awareness of the power imbalance.14 The CEO was concerned that it could be exploitative, as their position as clients may give way to feelings of indebtedness. Ironically, this awareness of inequality could manifest in the inadvertent reproduction of dominant discourses of vulnerable people “in need” that anthropologists have noted can be both disempowering and homogenizing (Robbins 2013; Ticktin 2014; Timmer 2010). Here the caring relation included an assumption of recipients’ circumstances, as Belinda told the public: “They have absolutely nothing.” There were some organic opportunities for reciprocity when volunteers made deliveries, such as accepting the ubiquitous offer of tea, but drivers often had to refuse because of time constraints, with the urgent temporality of need taking priority over neighborliness. Birgitte Romme Larsen (2011) has noted in relation to the settlement of refugees in Denmark that domestic spaces are powerful sites for the integration of new arrivals. Volunteers’ access to client’s domestic spaces similarly became an informal avenue to educate them about Australian society. Volunteers would assist with assembling appliances or furniture, teach English language, offer local orientation, and even give gentle guidance on cultural norms. Here, they played the role of socializing new members of society, which is a feminized role focused

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on reproducing citizenry. This could have a moralizing tone when recipients did not play the role of the grateful recipient or good neighbor, displaying behavior some volunteers experienced as “rude”: being late or absent for deliveries, treating goods badly (e.g., leaving them outside), turning goods away because they weren’t “good enough,” wanting items beyond the “essentials,” or asking for items conforming to a particular aesthetic (e.g., a leather couch). Reasons why this was considered “rude” stemmed from conflating lateness with disrespect and an aforementioned aversion to “tall poppy syndrome”—“if it’s good enough for me, it should be good enough for them!” There were also frustrations that people did not understand they were volunteers and that there were limits on what they could source and deliver. These accounts call us to be attendant to power dynamics in domestic spaces. Home can be a place of safety, but also danger and discord—for example, for those experiencing domestic violence. Ghassan Hage (2000) has argued that the dominant White population in Australia takes on the role of “governors” who decide what is “normal” and seek to manage, contain, and limit “otherness.” This governing role can be even more potent when attached to notions of home. As Mary Douglas has noted (1991), home is a place of care, but also control; while it bestows membership and belonging, it also imposes synchrony and order and makes delinquency visible, such as being late to the dinner table. Some volunteers perhaps undertook similar work domesticating and socializing a subordinate “other” into the national “home.” To throw off the mantle of criminalized stranger, people seeking asylum could be expected to perform certain behavior as a grateful recipient or good neighbor. Here, volunteers could display nationalist tendencies by demanding conformity, a xenophobic condition Sara Farris (2017) has termed “femonationalism.” Yet those with more established relations with clients critiqued such reactions, displaying the mutual understanding Schmid (2019) associates with political care ethics. For example, people with a refugee background had married into Nina’s family, and she explained that for them accepting secondhand goods was considered shameful; it was a matter of pride as they had come from high-status jobs in their country of origin. She said, “I have a lot of empathy for them, but I know there’s volunteers who are like [puts on pompous voice], ‘They didn’t take that couch. How rude.’” Long-term volunteers were conscious when inducting new volunteers to emphasize the need to be respectful of cultural difference and to debunk harmful stereotypes of clients. They

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thus sought to practice and encourage an ethos of “caring integration” based on accepting difference as a starting point for a process of mutual learning and understanding. Regardless, these dynamics highlight the need for an intersectional perspective when it comes to gender relations and power. Although women volunteers’ contributions have been devalued, White women volunteers govern racially “subordinate” male and female recipients. Silke Roth (2015) has noted these dynamics in development contexts, where White women occupy positions of power compared to men and women from the Global South. An intersectional lens acknowledges the wider racialized global political economy of care work, which most greatly impacts marginalized populations—evident in the exploitation of women as underpaid migrant care workers in the Global North and community health volunteers in the Global South (Glenton et al. 2010; Kofman and Raghuram 2012; Maes et al. 2018; Razavi and Staab 2010).

Intimate Politics Focusing on women volunteers supporting people seeking asylum in Australia, this chapter has considered both the invisible labor of volunteering and the political power of the feminized “domestic arts.” This topic is of importance to any discussions of gendered dynamics between NGOs and States because the volunteer workforce is at the heart of most NGOs, and women volunteers undertaking feminized humanitarian work make up a significant proportion of the demographic. In the case discussed, women’s voluntarism reproduced the invisible labor of domestic housework, enabled by the private homebased nature of much voluntary activity. However, it was this same home-based nature that made volunteering flexible, inclusive, and appealing to volunteers who were restricted in time and mobility, such as new mothers. The domestic nature of volunteering hence enabled opportunities for accessible participation and connection with the community. Similarly, the domestic arts, dismissed as nonpolitical (Malkki 2015), functioned to do three political things. First, they enabled sociality among volunteers and the development of a political care ethics toward recipients (Schmid 2019). This manifested in a caring community

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of women supporting one another, sharing social time, and imbuing secondhand objects with dignity and solidarity. Second, they publicly promoted associations with the home that both publicized invisible labor and appealed to a sense of domestic harmony. In doing so, they made the stranger familiar, reconfiguring the “other” into a neighbor. Third, they domesticated people seeking asylum into the national space. This involved processes of socializing people seeking asylum that could require them to conform to dominant cultural norms, pointing to the need for intersectional analyses of gendered power dynamics in humanitarian spaces. Malkki posits that the domestic arts should be accorded value and power as a form of “imaginative politics” (2015: 205). This requires “a more expansive and less dismissive notion of the political,” acknowledging that “imaginative practices can have political effects” (Malkki 2015: 205). For example, childhood practices in Finland such as writing letters and drawing pictures for “needy others” in far-off places could lead to a strong sense of international responsibility and solidarity with distant strangers. These imaginative affective formations could have political consequences when children grew up to vote, directing Finnish foreign policy and determining recipients of aid (Malkki 2015: 202). Women’s volunteering for people seeking asylum in Australia can similarly be viewed as a form of intimate politics linked to a feminist care ethics. This requires rethinking the assumptions placed on feminized activities and domestic, private spaces. These “invisible,” “nonpolitical” spaces present political alternatives. In domestic spaces, political discussions and acts of solidarity occurred with a comfort and ease facilitated by the home-based nature. In contrast with the political discussions I witnessed in formalized, public NGO spaces, they took place in a more intimate, caring register. Recreating this home space in their fundraising activities brought this familiar, nonthreatening quality into the public sphere. In the process, tropes of the caring home were associated with people seeking asylum, offering a powerful counterpoint to governmental discourses of threat and fear. If the domestic backyard, symbol of the Australian dream, is what ordinary Australians are trying to defend from invasion by racialized “others,” symbolically associating these “others” with domestic spaces is a clever counter move. Foregrounding intimate spaces and caring relations positions people seeking asylum as members of the Australian community, reducing stigma and providing an alternative to hostile, masculinized border policy.

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Acknowledgments I thank the research participants in this study and pay my respects to the people of the Wurundjeri and Kulin nations, traditional custodians of the land where fieldwork was conducted. I gratefully acknowledge input from Andria Timmer and Elizabeth Wirtz, Katerina Rozakou, Anne-Meike Fechter, and panelists at the 2018 Oxford ASA Conference, Ruth Mandel, Kimberly Chong, Francesca Baas Becking, Ignacia Arteaga, and anonymous reviewers. Fieldwork was supported through the UCL Graduate and Overseas Research Scholarships. Tess Altman is Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Southampton, where she was previously ESRC Postdoctoral Fellow. She has a doctorate from University College London in Anthropology, and her research focuses on volunteer humanitarianism. She has conducted research in the Netherlands, Europe, New Zealand, and Australia, and worked in multicultural policy, volunteer management, and consultancy. Tess is committed to the Sanctuary movement and to developing collaborative pedagogical methods. Her work has been published in Social Analysis and The Australian Journal of Anthropology.

Notes 1. Although this chapter focuses on women volunteers, gender is not a “women’s issue.” Following feminist scholars such as Judith Butler (1988), I define gendering as a socially constructed interactive processual performance that inscribes gender identities onto bodies through repetitive acts that can be “done” and “undone.” 2. See Federici 2012 for a feminist history of the devaluation of housework; Martin, Wig, and Yanagisako 2021 for a discussion of gender, kinship, and labor; and Gorman-Murray 2007 for a study on broadening gendered associations by queering domestic spaces. 3. A gender binary approach to volunteering data has led to contributions of LGBTIQA+ volunteers being systematically underreported. In Australia, LBGTIQA+ contributions are higher than average volunteer rates (Gates and Hughes 2021), and institutions are moving to make reporting more inclusive (Volunteering Australia 2021). 4. I use the term “people seeking asylum” to support best practice in the civil society movement, where “asylum seeker” is being eschewed as an essentializing marker of identity.

From Stranger to Neighbor • 117 5. References to the State and the government in this chapter pertain to the Federal/Commonwealth Government, and do not include other tiers of government in Australia (state governments and local councils)—some of which take more welcoming stances toward people seeking asylum. 6. The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic is beyond the scope of this chapter. 7. Queer solidarity movements for migrants are also an active part of civil society spaces, but remain outside the focus of this chapter on women’s voluntarism. 8. Names have been changed to preserve anonymity. 9. They were particularly conscious of this given that most clients were men. For gender demographics of people seeking asylum, see Department of Home Affairs 2016a. 10. This mirrored broader trends in humanitarian volunteering in Australia; for example, volunteers in the largest NGO supporting people seeking asylum identified as three-quarters female (Altman and Demetriou 2016). Around 30 percent of women and men volunteer in Australia; however, female volunteers contribute more hours, longer-term, and undertake more care and unpaid work (ABS 2019). 11. When I conducted a follow-up interview with the CEO in 2020, she said there had been an increase in male volunteers, but the organization was still mostly women. 12. The men who volunteered were active and committed: I did weekly fourhour deliveries with them for over a year. 13. Some working bees attracted a mixed demographic, but ones focused on domestic arts tended to be all women, reinforcing gender stereotypes. 14. Another reason given by volunteers was tensions between some clients.

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120 • Tess Altman Hodge, Paul. 2015. “A Grievable Life? The Criminalisation and Securing of Asylum Seeker Bodies in the ‘Violent Frames’ of Australia’s Operation Sovereign Borders.” Geoforum 58: 122–31. Holzberg, Billy, Anouk Madörin, and Michelle Pfeifer. 2021. “The Sexual Politics of Border Control: An Introduction.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 44(9): 1,485–506. Hyatt, Susan Brin. 2001. “Service Learning, Applied Anthropology and the Production of Neo-liberal Citizens.” Anthropology in Action 8(1): 6–15. Hyndman, Jennifer, and Wenona Giles. 2011. “Waiting for What? The Feminization of Asylum in Protracted Situations.” Gender, Place and Culture 18(3): 361–79. Human Rights Watch. 2021. “World Report 2021: Australia.” https://www.hrw .org/world-report/2021/country-chapters/australia#. Kofman, Eleonore, and Parvati Raghuram. 2012. “Women, Migration, and Care: Explorations of Diversity and Dynamism in the Global South.” Social Politics 19(3): 408–32. Larsen, Birgitte Romme. 2011. “Drawing Back the Curtains: The Role of Domestic Space in the Social Inclusion and Exclusion of Refugees in Rural Denmark.” Social Analysis 55(2): 142–58. Leve, Lauren, and Lamia Karim. 2001. “Privatizing the State: Ethnography of Development, Transnational Capital, and NGOs.” Political and Legal Anthropology Review 24(1): 53–58. Little, Andrew, and Nicholas Vaughan-Williams. 2016. “Stopping Boats, Saving Lives, Securing Subjects: Humanitarian Borders in Europe and Australia.” European Journal of International Relations 23(3): 533–56. Maes, Kenneth, Svea Closser, Yihenew Tesfaye, Yasmine Gilbert, and Roza Abesha. 2018. “Volunteers in Ethiopia’s Women’s Development Army Are More Deprived and Distressed than Their Neighbors: Cross-Sectional Survey Data from Rural Ethiopia.” BMC Public Health 18: 258. Malkki, Liisa. 2015. The Need to Help: The Domestic Arts of International Humanitarianism. Durham: Duke University Press. Markus, Andrew. 2020. Mapping Social Cohesion Survey. Melbourne: Scanlon Foundation and Monash University. Martin, Greg. 2015. “Stop the Boats! Moral Panic in Australia over Asylum Seekers.” Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies 29(3): 304–22. Martin, Keir, Ståle Wig, and Sylvia Yanagisako, eds. 2021. “Special Issue: Generating Dependence: New Configurations of Gender, Kinship, and Labor.” Focaal 90: 1–73. McAdam, Jane. 2013. “Australia and Asylum Seekers.” International Journal of Refugee Law 25(3): 435–48. McMaster, Don. 2002. “Asylum-Seekers and the Insecurity of a Nation.” Australian Journal of International Affairs 56(2): 279–90.

From Stranger to Neighbor • 121 McNevin, Anne, and Ignacio Correa-Velez. 2006. “Asylum Seekers Living in the Community on Bridging Visa E: Community Sector’s Response to Detrimental Policies.” Australian Journal of Social Issues 41(1): 125. Monash University. 2021. “Australian Border Deaths Database.” https://arts.mon ash.edu/border-crossing-observatory/research-agenda/australian-bor der-deaths-database. Mostafanezhad, Mary. 2013. “‘Getting in Touch with Your Inner Angelina’: Celebrity Humanitarianism and the Cultural Politics of Gendered Generosity in Volunteer Tourism.” Third World Quarterly 34(3): 485–99. Mountz, Alison. 2011. “The Enforcement Archipelago: Detention, Haunting and Asylum on Islands.” Political Geography 30: 118–28. Muehlebach, Andrea. 2012. The Moral Neoliberal: Welfare and Citizenship in Italy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Murphy, John. 2006. “The Other Welfare State: Non-Government Agencies and the Mixed Economy of Welfare in Australia.” History Australia 3(2): 44.41–44.15. Neighbourhood Watch. 2021. http://nhw.com.au/. No to G4S. 2012. “Dehumanising, Not Dignified: SERCO’s Training Manuals for Detention Centre Guards.” http://notog4s.blogspot.com/2012/03/dehuman ising-not-dignified-sercos.html. OECD. 2015. “Women Are Catching Up to Men, and They Engage in More Altruistic Activities.” http://www.oecd.org/gender/data/women-are-catchingup-to-men-in-volunteering-and-they-engage-in-more-altruistic-volunta ry-activities.htm. Oppenheimer, Melanie. 2008. Volunteering: Why We Can’t Survive Without It. Sydney: UNSW Press. ———. 2014. “A Short History of Volunteering in Australia.” In Volunteering in Australia, edited by Melanie Oppenheimer and Jeni Warburton, 13–26. Annandale: Federation Press. Perera, Suvendrini, and Joseph Pugliese. 2018. “Sexual Violence and the Border: Colonial Genealogies of US and Australian Immigration Detention Regimes.” Social and Legal Studies 30(1): 66–79. Peterie, Michelle. 2017. “Docility and Desert: Government Discourses of Compassion in Australia’s Asylum Seeker Debate.” Journal of Sociology 53(2): 351–66. Pickering, Sharon, and Caroline Lambert. 2002. “Deterrence: Australia’s Refugee Policy.” Current Issues in Criminal Justice 14(1): 65–86. Prince, Ruth, and Hannah Brown, eds. 2016. Volunteer Economies: The Politics and Ethics of Voluntary Labour in Africa. Suffolk: Boydell and Brewer Press. Procter, Nicholas, Mary Kenny, Heather Eaton, and Carol Grech. 2018. “Lethal Hopelessness: Understanding and Responding to Asylum Seeker Distress and Mental Deterioration.” International Journal of Mental Health Nursing 27(1): 448–54.

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CHAPTER 5

Rural Women’s Self-Determination and Grassroots Resistance Movement Reclaiming Land and Traditional Livelihoods in Odisha Smita Mishra Panda and Annapurna Devi Pandey

Rural women, particularly those belonging to adivasi1 communities in India, protesting the State in the last decade and a half have been widely reported in the media and have been the focus of a few, limited, academic studies (Arnopoulos 2010; Fontanella-Khan 2014; Shah 2010). “Rural women” is a generic phrase used in this chapter to refer to populations living in different regions using natural resources in a particular manner typical to that region. The majority of those dependent on land, forest, and water are from adivasi (indigenous) communities. This chapter addresses the voices of poor rural women represented by two NGOs in the Indian state of Odisha, namely POSCO Pratirodh Sangram Samiti (PPSS) and Visthapan Virodh Jan Manch (VVJM), which emerged as protest movements in response to the industrial development initiatives taken up by the State. What is that voice? Does it have any relevance in the context of the current approach to development that we see in India and more specifically in Odisha? Why are the rural women coming together as grassroot collectives to resist the State? What is the role of the NGO vis-à-vis the State, and how do women as members of the NGOs transcend their gender roles to protect their land and livelihoods? What is most striking in the struggles and movements of rural women in the last decade in Odisha is their visibility in the public domain, and how they have successfully mobilized their bodies as a weapon of collective

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resistance. Within the framework of division of labor, women are mostly engaged in household and care work that has remained invisible. However, with the depletion of natural resources and livelihoods, women have made themselves visible and mobilized into resistance groups against the corporate power and the State through NGO platforms. Problems faced by rural indigenous peoples are largely universal. Regardless of where they live, they suffer from the consequences of historic injustice, including colonization; dispossession of lands, territories, and resources; oppression; and discrimination, as well as lack of control over their ways of life. Their right to development has been largely denied by colonial and modern States in the pursuit of economic growth. Economic growth does not necessarily lead to development in all sections of the society, and in India, the benefits of growth are not equally distributed. For example, in the case of extraction-based industrialization, the benefits are siphoned out of the area and are not used to benefit local communities. Consequently, local actors often lose out to more powerful actors. As a result, in India, indigenous peoples are one of the most impoverished groups in the country. As such, several laws have been put in place to protect the adivasis and their habitats, such as Schedule V, PESA (Panchayat Extension to Scheduled Areas 1996), FRA (Forest Rights Act 2006), and Land Alienation Act (nontransfer of adivasi lands to nonadivasis), but all have been systematically violated and encroached upon by mega and multinational companies for the extraction of minerals and other natural resources available on their land. By failing to uphold the laws, the State is responsible for allowing corporate encroachment on indigenous lands. The profits made by the corporate sector are siphoned out of the area, leaving the indigenous population resource-poor and impoverished. In the process, indigenous communities who live largely in rural areas are exposed to a whole range of development-induced changes to their lives. Indigenous women living in rural areas are worse off compared to their male counterparts in such communities. Within the framework of gender-based division of labor, women are largely responsible for provision of household resources (food, fodder, fuel wood, and water), raising children, and taking care of the elderly and sick. Resources women depend on are derived from the natural environment and are under threat for the reasons described above. Additionally, men tend to migrate out of their home communities, leaving women, children, the elderly, and the infirm living in fragile environments, deprived of critical natural resources (Ajeevika Bureau 2014; Jetley 1987; Lingam 1998). Women are

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left to take the entire burden of looking after the household against the backdrop of depleting resources. This chapter focuses on women’s struggles and resistance through organized platforms provided by grassroots organizations and NGOs against corporate and State power to save their livelihoods in the state of Odisha. Although both women and men are part of the resistance movements, the focus of this chapter is on women as their visibility in the public domain is changing, due to both increasing numbers of women and the nature of their participation. Moreover, rural women have been able to effect change in their regions in the state of Odisha. We first explain the justification for using Odisha as a case example. This is followed by a section on the conceptual underpinnings and analytical framework of the study. Next, we examine the significance of women’s struggle and resistance against the State and corporate power to protect their land and livelihoods. Finally, we discuss two movements and women’s agency and emerging political voice in the State in which the local grassroots NGO plays a significant role. Our main focus is the manner in which women’s bodies become loci of collective resistance and how the NGO form provides the space for this collective resistance. Our analysis highlights the significance of women’s bodies. In the case of Odisha, both men and women are losing their livelihoods, but it is women who have been able to mobilize their selves and their bodies. The female body is characterized as vulnerable and submissive, thus without power. It is primarily through their bodies that they can resist the power of the State. In this chapter, we provide two examples illustrating how disenfranchised peoples, namely rural women, can organize through nongovernmental organizations and use the structure of the NGO to collectively organize bodies as resistance.

Why Odisha? The state of Odisha is one of the poorest in the country, with around 36 percent of the population living below the poverty line (GOO 2015). Consider the case of the adivasis, who live largely in poverty in Odisha and are primarily dependent on forest gathering, swidden cultivation, and wage labor for their livelihoods. Ironically, the wealth of the forest and minerals is concentrated in the same region of Odisha as the poverty of the adivasis. Table 5.1 provides data on the forests and their per capita availability to adivasis over the years. As this table shows, the

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poverty of adivasis has been exacerbated by declining forest resources, from 0.84 ha per capita in 1961 to 0.61 ha per capita in 2011. From the time of independence in 1947, deforestation and displacement has led to increasing impoverishment among the tribals and other communities dependent on natural resources for their sustenance. Manoranjan Mohanty (2014) very aptly describes Odisha as a case that presents a crisis of democracy with upper caste and patriarchal domination that has been consolidated through the formation and expansion of the middle class, which provides services to the capitalist extractive economy while vast sections of the population, especially adivasis, Dalits, and agricultural workers, remain marginalized. This process has been accentuated by neoliberal policies through which the scale and magnitude of mining-based industries and procorporate mafias have grown to a great extent. In Odisha, industrialization is based on the extraction of natural resources, specifically minerals. At present, mining operations may decrease for various reasons; however, the sector has been vibrant in the state of Odisha, particularly compared to agriculture (Mishra 2010). As of December 2014, the government of Odisha had signed ninety-three memorandums of understandings (MOUs) to the tune of 2.15 lakh crores (30.7 billion USD) with industries to set up forty-eight steel factories, twenty-eight power plants, three aluminum operations, and several other plants in different parts of the state (Business Standard 2014). Industrialization and growth of the economy is being promoted in Odisha where poverty and unemployment continues unabated. But the question remains whether the local rural and indigenous communities are Table 5.1. Forest area and adivasis in the state of Odisha. Forest Department of Odisha (2011). Recorded Forest Area (x1,000 ha)

Percent of Forest Area to Total Geog. Area

1961

3,566

22.95

4,224

0.84

17,549

0.20

1971

6,088

39.18

5,072

1.20

21,945

0.28

1981

6,640

42.73

5,915

1.12

26,370

0.25

Year

ST Forest Area Population Per Capita (x1,000) (ST) in ha

Total Per Capita Population Forest Area (x1,000) in ha

1991

5,476

35.24

7,032

0.78

31,660

0.17

2001

5,814

37.34

8,145

0.71

36,707

0.15

2011

5,814

37.34

9,591

0.61

41,974

0.14

128 • Smita Mishra Panda and Annapurna Devi Pandey

benefitting from such development efforts. Minerals (mainly iron ore and bauxite) are by and large concentrated in areas inhabited by adivasi communities. The extraction of minerals has led either to displacement of local communities or drastic reduction in the natural resource base (land, water, and forests), leaving the inhabitants homeless, resourceless, and pauperized (Padel and Das 2010; Padel 2011). Local communities depend on forests for collection of Non-Timber Forest Produce (NTFP) and fuel wood, swidden cultivation on cleared slopes of the hills, as well as hunting small animals. Forest land has mostly been diverted for mining rather than infrastructure and human habitation. This diversification of the economy, leading to a structural shift from agriculture to industry and service-oriented economy, has adversely impacted rural indigenous women (Hans 2014: 32). Mining-based industrialization has had a differential impact on women and men. Within the framework of division of labor, women are responsible for provision of household resources in the form of water, forest products, fodder, and fuel wood. With increasing mining activities, there is a decline in the natural resource base of the local communities, which dramatically affects women’s work. The rural and indigenous communities have neither the education nor the necessary skills to obtain alternative means of employment outside of their home environments. At best they can migrate to urban centers to find jobs in the labor market as unskilled workers. Men are more likely to migrate to urban areas to engage in these menial jobs, while women are left behind to care for children, the elderly, and the sick. There is a clear division of labor that maps onto Ortner’s female/male, nature/culture dichotomy that frames this volume. To assess the differential way women are affected, the authors collected information from rural women leaders and their activist groups, primarily through civil society and nongovernmental organizations. Intensive individual and group discussions were held in those locations where the struggles and resistance movements took place in 2015 and 2016. Media reports provided another source of information. Secondary sources of information included relevant published literature and documents available from the government, civil society, and other agencies. The first author has been engaged in research on adivasi women’s struggles and participation in movements (Lund and Panda 2011, 2015; Panda 2014). The second author has done research on indigenous people’s movements against Vedanta Mining Corporation, especially women’s activism and leadership (A. Pandey 2008, 2017). Our combined

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insights, captured over five years of research, forms the basis for this chapter.

Conceptual Underpinnings Ortner, in her seminal work, asserts that gender inequality is culturally constructed in that women are associated with nature and men with culture (1974). Studies show that gender disparities in political and economic power continue to exist globally (Ortiz-Ospina and Roser 2018). Women’s grassroots struggles and resistances have been researched by several feminist scholars. One of the earlier works on the subject, Cartographies of Struggle (Mohanty 2003), raised pertinent and critical questions of political consciousness and self-identity that are crucial to defining the engagement of women from the Global South with feminism. A feminist reading of antiglobalization is aptly described by Mohanty (2003), who argues for a more intimate, closer alliance between women’s movements, feminist pedagogy, and cross-cultural feminist theorizing, inter-twinning questions of subjectivity, agency, and identity with political economy and the State. She strongly puts forth that community politics can be regarded as an empowering process, particularly when women organize on the basis of collective identity (Panda 2014). Such spaces of resistance are becoming increasingly visible in the context of depleting livelihood resources—land, forests, and water. Women are losing control over such resources, which is becoming a central point of conflict. The analytical approach of this chapter draws on feminist ideas regarding the effects of class and ethnicity on gender and how women’s experiences of oppressive power relate to their bodies and their ability to act. We draw on studies that emphasize how human experience and consciousness take on material, spatial, and symbolic form in embodied spaces (Harcourt 2012; Low 2013: 9). In our case, indigenous women are at the outset poor, marginalized, and threatened. Deprived of their land and resources, women mobilize their bodies in acts of resistance for survival. In these embodied spaces indigenous women are actively resisting and struggling against the State and the corporate sector (adapted from Lund and Panda 2015). In her article on “embodied spaces,” Setha Low (2013) investigates a broad range of theories of body and space that are related to people’s lived realities but, at the same time, can link with larger social and cultural processes. Low defined the body as a physical and biological

130 • Smita Mishra Panda and Annapurna Devi Pandey

entity, lived experience, and a center of agency—a location for speaking and acting in the world (2013: 10). She referred to feminist discourses on body space and, of particular relevance here, the body as situated and “colonized” (Harcourt 2009). She also makes references to Haraway’s (1991) thesis that personal and social bodies cannot be seen as natural but only as part of a self-creating process of human labor. Low writes that Haraway’s “emphasis on location, a position in a web of social connections, eliminates passivity of the female (and human) body and replaces it with a site of action and of agency” (1991: 11—emphasis added). Indigenous women’s activism is about how women individually and collectively mobilize their agency. Such acts are context specific. In our study areas, indigenous women have no other choice than to expose their bodies physically in political acts. Their struggles are about survival at places that are presently changing to their disfavor (adapted from Lund and Panda 2015). Indigenous women live in a subsistence economy where their everyday labor is important to meet their household livelihood needs. With their survival at stake, their resistance is against those powerful forces that have destroyed their natural resource base, be it land, forests, or water. Thus, in their struggle, their bodies are used as agents of protest against the State. To facilitate understanding women’s struggles, Harcourt and Escobar (2002) have provided a framework called “Women and the Politics of Place” (WPP). An outcome of second wave feminism, WPP argues that women’s diverse experiences of their lived bodies, the local economy, and the environment are critical factors for a politics of place that offers the hope of challenging the inequalities of neoliberal globalization. It is particularly concerned with the political struggles around place that link minority voices with collective action against inequality and repression. It is body, home, local environs, and community, the arenas that women are motivated to defend, define, and own politically. In rethinking political responses to modernity and global capitalism it is important to build on the creativity, knowledge and experience of women’s groups engaged in place-based politics (Harcourt and Escobar 2002:13). WPP reiterates the feminist dictum that the personal is political. In this chapter, we focus on the protests and struggles of two NGOs—PPSS and VVJM—located in different regions of Odisha that are known for the leadership roles of their women. These NGOs emerged as protest movements, and both have challenged the State’s working hand in hand with corporations. Both have created oppositional space that helped empower women to protest the State in order to protect

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their land, livelihood, and identity. These examples also exhibit NGO engagement with the people against corporate encroachment of their sources of livelihood. To incite change, NGOs must put pressure on the State through activist efforts, which can take on a variety of different forms from signing petitions to boycotts to protests in public spaces. In a protest, bodies are the sites of resistance, and they mobilize their cause through their voice and sound (Kunreuther 2018), visual representation of suffering bodies (Stone 2015), and emotional displays of bodily violence (Siméant and Traïni 2016). As Karina Eileraas explains, “When bodies hit the streets en masse to oppose the status quo, their power can appear either infinitesimal or so spectacular as to arrest onlookers in their tracks” (2014: 40). In Odisha, protest has taken the form of marginalized female bodies physically positioning themselves in opposition to corporate-backed State overreach. Women’s movements have been most successful when they have engaged with the State, through contestation and collaboration, without abdicating their own identities and constituencies. In our study, women have come forward to join the NGOs in order to fight for their cause. Women’s movements have been best served by forging strong linkages with other social movements and groups within civil society without relinquishing their own objectives and identities (Basu 2010: 3). They can be both practical and strategic—what begins as struggles to achieve women’s practical interests can turn into struggles to defend their strategic interests, and vice versa (Basu 2010: 4). These movements differ from feminism because feminism is activism to challenge and change women’s gender subordination, whereas women’s movements entail women organizing to achieve social change (Ferree and Trippe 2006). Basu argues that women’s movements can address a variety of goals, unlike feminism, but their constituencies are only women; whereas for feminism, its constituency can be both women and men. There is, however, an interconnection between women’s movements and feminism, as the latter is expressed in women’s agency, their self-expression, consciousness of their identity, and awareness. Further, it is tied to women’s organizing to advance their own interests. Ray (1999) argues women’s movements are shaped and influenced by political fields, which include such actors as the State, political parties, social movements, and broader actors within civil society. Long drawn struggles of NGOs are influenced by external forces, as seen in PPSS and VVJM in Odisha. Nongovernmental organizations in India, as in other locales, have been largely associated with the feminine institutionally due to the slot

132 • Smita Mishra Panda and Annapurna Devi Pandey

they fill in society, but also literally in that they have served, since the mid-1980s, to promote women’s development and empowerment. Though the NGOs had varied objectives and visions, they nevertheless provided rural women avenues to collectively voice their concerns in several ways. First, during this time the women mobilized, and they showed great potential, receptiveness, and ability to build capacities (Banerjee and Ray 1991). Second, media attention and coverage of women’s active participation in the public domain, especially in movements, increased. Third, large scale devastation of natural resources due to the current paradigm of development (which began in the early 1990s in India) compelled women to come out of their homes in large numbers and participate in resistance movements and struggles in organized forms. The NGOs provided the impetus for women’s collective action in such movements against the State and corporate power. The tensions existing between the State and the NGOs pose challenges for the NGOs in their efforts to address poverty, particularly among marginalized women in rural areas (Kilby 2011). The State is comfortable if the NGOs are engaged in delivering services approved by them. However, if the NGOs are engaged in empowering the marginalized to seek out and ask for their rights, the State views NGOs as oppositional and thus does not want to acknowledge their presence. By controlling the discourse, the State has the power to make excuses as to why non-State actors, in this case the NGOs, have no role to play in supporting and encouraging self-determination. Thus, NGOs can resist State power by encouraging local protest and resistance. While the State demands subservience, the feminine NGO and the women within are “unruly” and work to subvert the power of the (corporate) State.

Livelihood Is Larger than Life: Formation of Voices of Resistance of Women In this section, we describe and analyze two resistance NGO movements—POSCO Pratirodh Sangram Samiti (PPSS: Association for the Struggle Resisting POSCO) and Visthapan Virodh Jan Manch (VVJM: People’s Collective Resisting Displacement)—in which rural women are fighting to save their land and livelihoods in Odisha. The first NGO (PPSS) emerged in Dhinkia in the Jagatsinghpur district where POSCO, a South Korean Company, was to set up a steel plant.2 The second NGO (VVJM) emerged in Kalinganagar in the Jajpur district where a

Rural Women’s Self-Determination and Grassroots Resistance Movement • 133

conglomeration of Iron Ore extraction companies have set up their plants.

Dhinkia: The Nerve Center of the Movement The State’s development model based on the extraction economy is in opposition to local people’s knowledge of their natural resources and tied to their economy, which is linked with the sustenance of the region. The State, on the one hand, has been very paternalistic in promoting various development models to provide employment to the youth. On the other hand, the State’s development model disconnects people from their own environment and forces them out of their own land; “But in so doing, it established the fact of people’s capacity, including the hidden strength of youth, women and children” (Padhi and Panigrahi 2011: 46). The grassroots level organizations have come together to fight for people’s right to their land and livelihood, thus creating an oppositional space for local NGOs and community-based organizations. The government of Odisha signed a MOU with Pohang Steel Company (POSCO) on 22 June 2005 to allow for the establishment of an integrated steel plant. So far, the attempts by the district administration to acquire land to establish the plant have been thwarted by strong local opposition starting in early 2006, primarily by the POSCO Pratirodh Sangram Samiti (PPSS), a people’s community-based organization that spearheads the movement against POSCO. If the plant were to open, it would be in an area that would affect eight villages in three panchayats of the Jagatsinghpur district in Kujang Tahsil: Dhinkia, Gadakunjanga, and Nuagaon. The 12 billion USD project would potentially displace 22,000 people and acquire 2,700 acres of land for the production of 8 million tons of steel per annum (Mining Zone Peoples’ Solidarity Group 2010). After the signing of MOU in 2005, the Communist Party of India, which has a presence in the area, consistently facilitated the organization of villagers in PPSS (Mishra and Nayak 2011). In response to the resistance, the Odisha government has been actively filing numerous false criminal complaints against all persons resisting the project, including members of the PPSS, leading to threats of arrest perpetually hanging over them. According to a government source, 435 acres of private land were to be acquired for the steel plant, which would lead to the displacement of 20,000 to 25,000 people (Jaysawal and Saha 2014: 50). A huge displacement drive by these companies was expected to devastate the

134 • Smita Mishra Panda and Annapurna Devi Pandey

lives of thousands of indigenous tribes of these areas who are still living in harmony with nature. In the last decade, women in Dhinkia have been the most active in their struggle against the State’s decision to acquire land for POSCO. PPSS received overwhelming support from women as well as from a number of NGOs across the state and country working on people’s issues in the civil society space. PPSS started with a handful of women, and the number has reached almost five thousand from all three panchayats, says Sulochana Devi,3 leader of the women’s wing of PPSS. There are approximately three thousand women actively participating in the movement from Dhinkia panchayat alone. Sulochana Devi, a young woman local activist, mobilized the women and children of her village. She led women and children to guard the barricades at the entry points to these villages to prevent the entry of government and POSCO officials. Women were attracted to the objective of PPSS and came together as a collective to fight against the corporate power and the State in large numbers. The male leaders of PPSS encouraged women to join, as they were less likely to be attacked by the police and would attract national and international media attention. Thus, women’s bodies became the main sites of resistance as they physically positioned themselves to block POSCO activities. From the start, women in the villages played a significant role in the PPSS movement against the company, as they have a stake in the outcome as coproducers for their livelihood. Women have been successful in stalling the activities of the company by physically plugging all the entry points to the area. According to Sulochana, “POSCO has rolled back because of the rural women and their tenacity to fight the corporate forces” Women came out of their homes in large numbers to support the movement. Their single point agenda was “POSCO hatao, bitamati banchao” (Remove POSCO, save your lands), or, alternatively, “Ame Pana, Mina, and Dhana Chadibunahin” (We will not give up our Betel Vines, Fish, and Paddy). Sulochana spearheaded the movement along with the village women belonging to different castes and tribes and put constant pressure on the State and POSCO. “Women sat on the roads and did not allow anyone to go inside the area which was cordoned off by the police for POSCO’s activities. They have been consistent in their efforts to stop POSCO,” says Sulochana. They formed a circle and sat together resisting the entry of any outsider into the area. The police were initially hesitant to use any force to disperse the crowd. While discussing this aspect with women, what we found is that if men were sitting in protest, the police would have easily dispersed them by

Rural Women’s Self-Determination and Grassroots Resistance Movement • 135

using force and “lathi-charge” (police baton). However, after a few days of women’s protest, their gender no longer served as protection when police began using force on them as well. Women continued to be adamant and refused to move. The police fired rubber bullets and lathicharged women sitting peacefully in dharna (protest). “Children also came forward and asked the police to kill them as their mothers were always protesting,” said Gauri, a female protester from Dhinkia village. Children went out with their mothers and were active in cordoning off the area along with the adults. “Men have supported but women have been most active in the movement,” said Laksmi, another female protester from the same village. “We will not give up our pana baraja [betel vines] as it is our livelihood. Besides old people are not able to work under the sun for government provided Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), which is the most popular employment program initiated by the government for the rural poor. However, they can work in the betel vines, which grow in the shade.” As Sulochana said, “Our biggest struggle besides protecting our lands was also not to allow the Paradip road that would have passed through our village (Gobindpur) to be constructed. The road was very important for POSCO to make progress in its activities.” Sulochana has taken rubber bullets from the police firing on her chest, which are still lodged inside. She has emerged as a strong leader in the area who at a young age has taken a vow to oust POSCO. She was threatened by the police and state ministers but refused to bow down before them. There are forty-two criminal and civil cases against her, including that of rape. This violence against her shows how far the State can go to intimidate grassroots women leaders. During the early part of the women’s struggle in PPSS when they came together in large numbers and collected small amounts of money to buy a microphone in 2006–7, men did not support them wholeheartedly. Pro-POSCO people at that time were greater in number and taunted the women and asked them to “shave their heads as they will never be able to win against POSCO.” There were 1500 women at that time who drove away the land acquisition officer. After a few meetings with villagers (both women and men), Sulochana was accepted by PPSS as a leader of the group resisting against POSCO. She made enemies with POSCO people as well as the State political leaders. Their slogan about saving lands and ousting POSCO became even stronger. For four years (2006–10) the PPSS movement continued in full swing with women playing a significant role in guarding the village and all their lands. The

136 • Smita Mishra Panda and Annapurna Devi Pandey

government stopped food supply to the village. That is the time, according to Sulochana, the women broke Section 144 and stepped out in large numbers.4 “Mahila Durga rupa dharana kale” (Women took up the role of Durga Goddess, who fights against the evil). They became even more aggressive and took to the streets; they were not afraid of the police and the pro-POSCO mafia. It was like a do or die situation for them. The presence of PPSS was pronounced with the strong participation of women in the movement. Women kept vigil all night and woke up very early to keep the police away. Police attacked the women many times by throwing stones. Women from PPSS in Dhinkia were most courageous on the streets and even undressed themselves in public as a mark of protest against police atrocities (see Eileraas 2014). They fought with cow and buffalo bones in their hands as weapons. Pro-POSCO mafia (hired goons of POSCO contractors) threw hand bombs at the women when they were sleeping near the barricade. Over the last eight or nine years, the government has made several attempts to break the struggle against POSCO by resorting to different arm-twisting tactics. “This is the greatest betrayal of the State against its own people to use the power of the criminal system to implicate villagers in a large number of fabricated cases to intimidate them, instill fear in them and finally break their collective strength against POSCO” (Alternative Law Forum 2013: 21). This is a clear example of the State abusing its own people. One strategy used by the State of Odisha has been to bring fabricated legal cases against the protestors, which were undertaken to remove them from the protest space. Between 2006 and 2010, 230 such cases were registered against 1,200 people, out of which around 300 were women (personal communication with Sulochana). As Sulochana explained, typically thirty to fifty cases were filed against one person, so that bail would be impossible to obtain. “With so many cases against a single person, it is a kind of house arrest as they are unable to move out of the village.” She herself has not been able to move out of the village for the past eight years in the fear that she would be arrested. Sulochana has severe joint pains and is unable to seek medical support from outside. All her movements are tracked. The president of PPSS was arrested twice and has obtained bail, but Sulochana feels that in order to get bail she has to allow herself to be arrested first, which is a dangerous proposition. She also shares that being a woman, she has not been able to get much support from the male leaders of the movement, especially with respect to her bail against the false cases. So even though women have

Rural Women’s Self-Determination and Grassroots Resistance Movement • 137

been very active in this protest movement, the decision making of PPSS clearly lies in the hands of a few men. In one instance, on 15 May 2010, the government of Odisha sent thirty-two battalions (one battalion has thirty police officers) to Balilutha in the Jagatsinghpur district, the entry point for the proposed POSCO project. Thousands of villagers were sitting in peaceful demonstration against POSCO. Police attacked them with tear gas, lathis, and rubber bullets. They set on fire one temporary shelter in the same site as it was being used by the villagers. Police beat up and injured two hundred people, the majority being women. They implicated five people on different cases, of which two were women, all belonging to SC (Scheduled Caste) and other backward castes.5 All of them were seriously injured and put in jail for one month. Similarly, on 14 December 2011, villagers were attacked by police while they were peacefully protesting road construction on the coast connecting Paradip to the proposed POSCO site. A large number of women, children, and men were attacked by the police, and charges were arbitrarily slapped on them (Alternative Law Forum 2013). When we asked about how they participated in the movement (andolan) one of the woman activists from the village remarked, “This is not an andolan. We are protecting our livelihood.” Sulochana said, “Some families were pro-POSCO, and I feel the women did not want to support POSCO but had to because their husbands forced them to do so.” People protesting against the company and the relentless struggle by the women has prevented POSCO from functioning and making any headway in the area. Fifty-two families who were resettled by POSCO in another place; however, they decided to return after seven years. The people of Patana village accepted them and helped in their resettlement. Sulochana was extremely pleased that day and says ,“It was my last encounter with POSCO in 2014, as I was convinced that the entire population of the area is against the company.” Currently, political parties of all shades and intelligentsia are coming together in support of the POSCO movement (Mishra and Nayak 2011).

Kalinganagar: Struggle Faded but Not in Spirit The struggle in Kalinganagar has a long history. Considered a black day in the area, 2 January 2006 is when twelve adivasis were shot dead by police while they were protesting with several others against the TATA Steel Limited6 that had started construction of its plant. The people were

138 • Smita Mishra Panda and Annapurna Devi Pandey

protesting mining and industry. According to various sources, the local people of this region had migrated from Mayurbhanj and Keonjhar in Odisha and from Ranchi and Singbhum in Jharkhand at different times in the nineteenth century (Taylor and Maddox 1899). Despite their long history in the region, they did not have a legal claim to the land. “The last official land record of settlement during 1928 did not give a land entitlement to the people of the region, despite their having lived there for generations” (Padhi and Panigrahi 2011: 51). As a result, it has become a prime location for corporate enterprise. Since the 1990s, the State has opened up Kalinganagar, the industrial hub of the region. Twelve mining corporations have already established their complexes, among which the TATA has the largest share of land and resources. “Of the total land (13,000 acres) acquired by the Industrial Development Corporation of Odisha (IDCO), around 6,900 acres are privately owned. Lack of legal entitlement over the land deprived many tribal people of compensation for the loss of their land” (Padhi and Panigrahi 2011: 51). Lack of access to land has been the main reason for the formation of VVJA as people’s protest movement against the State and corporations. The longstanding agitation of the indigenous people was further aggravated when they came to know that TATA would start construction of a boundary wall on 2 January 2006 without the consent of the local people. The resistance to the establishment of different plants, including TATA, has been going on for a long time. The main agenda of the VVJA struggle is against displacement of the adivasis from their traditional habitats. Table 5.2 gives an idea of the amount of land allocated to different industries in Kalinganagar. Among the different industries, TATA is the biggest, with 2,500 to 3,000 employees. Kalinganagar has a locational advantage of not only being close to the chromite mines in Jajpur district, but also having two national highways (connecting Kolkata and Chennai) and a railway line. Additionally, the largest river of the state, Brahmani, flows through that region that provides fish and all kinds of sustenance to the local people. Kalinganagar is about 100 kilometers from the state capital, Bhubaneswar. People cultivate rice and pulses and use the hundreds of acres of connection grazing land of sprawling hills and jungles. This area has a high population concentration of Scheduled Tribes (ST) and Scheduled Caste (SC).7 The populations of the two blocks—Sukinda and Danagadi—where Kalinganagar is situated are comprised of 36.06 percent and 28.19 percent Scheduled Tribes and 11.89 percent and 22.31 percent Scheduled Caste respectively. Of the tribes, people belonging to Ho community

Rural Women’s Self-Determination and Grassroots Resistance Movement • 139 Table 5.2. Land allocated to industries in Kalinganagar. Source: Office of ADM, Kalinganagar (Dash and Samal 2008). S.N.

Industry

Land in Acres

1

MESCO

530

2

Orion

150

3

Maithan Ispat

100

4

Uttam Galva

370

5

NINL

2,500

6

Maharashtra Seamless

500

7

TISCO (TATA)

2,400

8

Rohit Ferrotech

50

9

Jindal Stainless

678

10

Visa Steel

390

11

Dinabandhu Steel

100

12

K. J. Ispat

50

Total

7,818

constitute nearly 80 percent of the population and the rest belong to Munda and Santal communities (B. Pandey 2008). The Odisha government wanted to turn this area into an industrial hub, disregarding the interests and wellbeing of the rural people who depend on the abundant land reserve. Such actions have attracted a host of industries—such as TISCO, VISA industries, Jindal Stainless, Maharashtra Seamless, MAL Industries, AML Steel and Power, national Steel and Power, National Steel and Agro Industries, Tube Investment Industry, Dinabandhu Steel, and Uttam Galva Steels—to sign MOUs with the State government. The government has acquired 12,000 acres extending over eighty-three revenue villages and ten-gram panchayats of Sukinda and Danagadi blocks where there is high a concentration of STs and SCs. Compensation was paid to those who had the titles (patta) at the rate of 529 USD per acre. However, most of the people in this area did not have titles and were cultivating the land with usufruct rights. The government paid 378 USD per acre to pacify them. The same land was sold to companies like TATA Steel and others at a rate of 5,000 USD per acre (almost five times as much), which further agitated the local communities. Agriculture was the only means of livelihood in the area and with that being threatened, the indigenous people had nothing to live on. Those who have received compensation money mentioned

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that it was spent within a short period of time. With hardly any skills and education, the local communities soon found themselves helpless in an impoverished condition. Women’s protests gained momentum in 2004–06 when the companies laid foundations to set up plants. The indigenous people in the area have successfully come together and created a platform called “Visthanpan Virodhi Jan Manch” (VVJM), an NGO with an active women’s wing. Between 2006 and 2010, VVJM mobilized three thousand women from the Kalinganagar area who were actively participating in the movement. A tribal (Munda) woman leader, Sabari, played a significant role by providing leadership for these women to take the Kalinganagar movement forward. She was the sarpanch (village leader) of Gobarghati panchayat (1997–98) and was a selfless leader according to social activists and media people working in the Kalinganagar area. Her eldest son was killed in the 2006 police firing. She was not deterred by her son’s death. Instead, she plunged into the movement wholeheartedly. Her strong activism led to the police arresting her as a Maoist (left-wing extremist), and she was jailed for about two years. The media reported that she was a confirmed Maoist to justify keeping her in jail. It was one of the most sensationalized news stories of the time. Both women and men were at the forefront in a road blockade in Kalinganagar in 2007 that ensued for over a year on the National Highway, but women’s activism led by Sabari was critical to VVJM, and they were exceptionally important to furthering the cause. Her son’s life was sacrificed, and her family became dysfunctional. Yet she did not give up the struggle to protect land and livelihood. In one of the events, five thousand rural women came together from not only Odisha, but also the adjoining states of Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh on 23 May 2007 to block the highway unless their seven-point charter of demands was met (Meher 2009). Sabari spearheaded the movement and refused to move out of the road for almost one and half years along with her supporters. They used their bodies as sites of resistance to stop the normal movement of vehicles on the highway. At that time, the government announced a compensation of 7,143 USD for all those who died in the police firing. Sabari initially refused the compensation for her son who was killed; but after a lot of persuasion by her own people, she accepted with reluctance. As she was the main leader behind the blockade and responsible for large-scale mobilization of adivasi women, fifteen false cases were fabricated against her by the police. She was arrested from her cousin’s house, taken to jail, and declared a Maoist. When asked why

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Sabari did not protest, she said, “How does it matter whether I said yes I am a Maoist or no I am not? The police has [sic] killed my son.” Sabari insisted that she would accompany the police only if a woman police officer came along. While in jail, Sabari was asked all sorts of odd questions and she told the police that the cases against her were fabricated. She became ill and could not eat and so was shifted to a hospital where her name was registered as Basanti Munda. Sabari asked the police why her name was changed, to which she received no answer. When she became very ill, media came to meet with her, and she gave the police two options: “kill me or arrest me.” She was arrested and put back in jail in Keonjhar. She was released in 2012 and has been confined to her village ever since. During our fieldwork, we visited the burial ground of her son. After Sabari’s arrest, the women’s group among the protestors was disheartened, and the group eventually dismantled. Police were brutal and threatened to either kill them or put them in jail. Many surrendered and moved to the resettlement colony out of fear. Such arrests create paranoia among people, of which the government takes advantage. Many men in the Kalinganagar area have been co-opted by the companies with the promise of job offers and short-term contracts. Sabari currently lives in her village and has the support of only twenty-five to thirty families. There is a resettlement colony in Kalinganagar that has around 1,200 households from the Gobarghati panchayat. Sabari still considers herself as leader and is hopeful the movement will come alive one day. That Sabari was an adivasi woman leader who opposed the corporate giants of Kalinganagar and was never swayed by monetary attractions will be etched in the history of industrial development in Odisha. In both cases, it is women’s resistance that made the groups so powerful. PPSS and VVJM provide the space for resistance.—The NGOs emerge as the people’s voice. The community use their bodies and even face lathis (caning), rubber bullets, and losing their family members (case of Sabari who lost her son and still did not give up her resolve) to oppose the development of a conglomerate industrial complex known as Kalinganagar. The NGOs were constantly under scrutiny and were under pressure to compromise their position in relation to the State.

Reclaiming Livelihoods: Women’s Voice as Agency The above accounts of two NGO movements and women’s activism demonstrate their persistent agency in reclaiming their lands and liveli-

142 • Smita Mishra Panda and Annapurna Devi Pandey

hoods. Women belonging to different castes and tribal groups came together to join the NGOs in the struggle for a common cause. They were part of those organizations that were formed for resisting corporate intrusion into the area. Media highlighted the collective actions of women as they refused to leave their sites of resistance. By being visible in large numbers and obstructing roads, these women established the first signs of oppositional space. Women used their bodies to create spaces of resistance in large numbers. Participation of women (outnumbering men by a huge margin) represents a feminization of public space, which is against traditional gender norms in the villages. Women have broken the cultural barriers and made their voices heard. Men who always had public visibility and connections with the media and other outsiders have long received public attention. Some male leaders have been coopted by the State and corporations for small gains. However, with the turn of events and women’s activism in the past eight years, media has begun to report on the significant role of women in the PPSS and VVJM. Although they continue to work in the agricultural fields and betel vines but, with women’s persistent presence in the outer public domain for activism, there has been a reorganization of space.8 This, however, does not suggest that men are relegated to the private domain. Visibility of women and their contributions to the anti-POSCO movement were recognized by the community. Similarly, in the Kalinganagar case, despite the fact that industries have been successful in establishing themselves, women’s prominent roles in the movement against the State and companies is significant in the history of the place. Women’s presence on the highway in the road blockade in Kalinganagar for almost a year itself shows the tenacity of women in their protest against the corporate power. Had Sabari not been arrested, the women’s wing in VVJM would have continued with their struggle. Whereas, in case of PPSS, women’s collective action moved from strength to strength and fueled the role of the NGO to greater heights. Rural women are traditionally known to be very active, working side-by-side with men in maintaining their household economy. They are a vital force, working as producers in agriculture and forest gathering. Their contribution to the grassroots movement has brought them to the limelight and attracted attention of print and television media, thus making them a thorn against the State and corporations. There have been other movements in which women have come together to fight against the ruling class, establishment, or others. The second author, Pandey, worked among the Kutia Kondh adivasis in Phulbani, Odisha,

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and has written on the emergence in 1979 of an indigenous women’s NGO known as Ghumusar Mahila Sangathan (GMS), led by Maka Naik, a Kondh woman. With support of various activist groups and student organizations, GMS challenged the State and business officials who were abusing the tribal women in the name of marriage and later abandoning them. With their protest and political activism, GMS not only was able to stop this unjust practice, but also made the State acknowledge the situation of these women and provide adequate compensation for them and their children’s rehabilitation (Pandey 2008). What is significant to note is that the nature of protests and struggles both against POSCO and in the Kalinganagar areas discussed, where a large number of women collectivize for a common cause over a long period, was not commonly seen in the history of people’s movement in Odisha. Creation of oppositional spaces of resistance through local NGOs has the potential to bring about transformation in the lives of the rural indigenous women and their households. It is through such spaces that women have been able to carve a niche for themselves. Men have accepted women as leaders and change makers. It is this newfound space for women, who had no such recognition earlier, that has transformed their gender and public roles. Furthermore, resistance by women in the case of POSCO prevented the company from moving ahead further with its plan. In Kalinganagar, even though women were subdued because of the arrest of their leader, they were able to prove a crucial point in that had they continued with their struggle collectively, the spaces of resistance would have been stronger and perhaps the industries would not have been able to make their foothold in the area. In many cases of activism by women researched by the first author, Panda, there was strong support from NGOs and other organizations to take their struggles forward (Lund and Panda 2015). However, in the cases of POSCO and Kalinganagar, the presence and activism of women as part of the movements strengthened the very grassroots NGOs they had formed for the struggle against the State and corporate power. This oppositional space also provided a platform for possible dialogues, both good and confrontational, among the women, the State, and corporate strength. Our findings on rural and indigenous women’s activism enhancing the role of the NGOs they have been a part of, resonate with those of other researchers who have provided insight into the activism of local NGOs, particularly women against the State and corporate power (Harcourt 2012; Lund and Panda 2011, 2015; Nagar 2000, 2012; Nagar and Writers 2006; Padel and Das 2010; Rai 2008; Staheli, Kofman, and Peake 2004).

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Concluding Remarks Women’s bodies and both PPSS and VVJM are sites for resistance because they have transcended their invisibility from being in the private domain. In both POSCO and the Kalinganagar industrial complex, it is women’s resistance that made the NGOs so powerful. PPSS and VVJM also provided the spaces for resistance. Women as protesters strategize from marginalized positions and combine their body space with broader aspects of social change in their respective contexts. The oppositional spaces created by women have given them a strong political voice to protect their livelihoods. Although the movement in both cases is gendered, there is no apparent conflict between genders that would affect the outcome of women’s struggles to protect their livelihoods. Differences have occurred where men tend to get co-opted by the company, but that did not distract women from their main goal—the struggle to save the sources of their ways of life and livelihoods. Body space and spaces of resistance are used as metonymy for social and cultural transformations, and for challenging and pushing new boundaries, practices, and autonomy over their livelihood sources. Such an interpretation draws on the analysis of intersections between the body and body politics, which we refer to as body space, indicating how women activists in both PPSS and VVJM occupy and shape their trajectories of change through their own bodies, and further combine them with broader aspects of negotiation and possible social transformation. The concept of spaces of resistance or oppositional spaces illustrates how women activists may use tacit support from media, intelligentsia, and civil society groups in their struggle against corporate power. Women have moved from an excluded private space to a more included public space, which is also politically assertive and strong enough to bring about change and seek justice. We have analyzed the “femaleness” of NGOs and interrogated the constant friction between the NGOs and the State. The active participation of women in movements against the State and corporations shows the need to recognize the importance of representation of marginalized voices in challenging development. The voices of rural women are generally not heard and are often subdued, depriving them of their basic needs and rights and moving them away from any form of decision making. In this, the civil society (PPSS and VVJM) has increasingly played an instrumental role in opposing this narrow view of development. The

Rural Women’s Self-Determination and Grassroots Resistance Movement • 145

alternative view of development proposes critical scholarship in development research, in which the researcher is close to the field and research subjects, focusing on issues such as participation, local communities, poverty, gender and the environment, globalization, rightsbased approach, climate change, and so on. Such an alternative view might result in a changed ethics of development studies and practice. This alternative space is where NGOs and other people’s organizations have a significant role to play. NGOs’ (PPSS and VVJM) resistance indicates how they have engaged with the State as an opposition through advocacy to protect the interests of grassroots, rural women. NGOs have been able to go beyond women’s empowerment and bring them center-stage of action, where they can assert their rights and livelihoods. The PPSS and VVJM resistance movements we have discussed here clearly demonstrate the power of rural women’s voices in subverting the top-down model of development promoted by the State and multinational corporations, which has been very destructive to people’s lands and livelihoods. The gendered nature of the NGO/State relationship is challenged in this chapter, where we find that the resistance movement is a manifestation of an enhanced macrolevel action by rural women in the public domain.

Acknowledgments The authors would like to acknowledge the Norwegian Research Council and Centurion University of Technology and Management, Odisha, for providing funding support for the study. Smita Mishra Panda is currently based at the Centurion University of Technology and Management, Odisha, as Professor and Director of Research. She is trained in Social Anthropology and Development Studies (University of Delhi and Asian Institute of Technology, Bangkok). Dr. Panda has more than thirty years of teaching and research experience in the broad areas of gender and development, natural resource management, local governance, rural development, and transgender issues. She has published widely in the above areas. She has several consulting assignments (national and international) in South and Southeast Asian countries to her credit. Dr. Panda has worked in the School of Planning and Architecture (New Delhi), Asian Institute of Technology (Bangkok), United Nations Centre for Regional Development (Japan), and Institute

146 • Smita Mishra Panda and Annapurna Devi Pandey

of Rural Management, Anand (Gujarat). She has been a visiting faculty with the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (Norway), Monash University (Australia), and Curtin University (Australia). Annapurna Devi Pandey teaches Cultural Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Dr. Pandey holds a PhD in Sociology from Jawaharlal Nehru University and was a Postdoctoral fellow in Social Anthropology at Cambridge. Her research interests are women’s activism and leadership in the context of State and Multinational Corporations, their economic and political empowerment in rural and tribal India, and women’s identity-making in the Odia Diaspora in California. She is the author of numerous essays on Indian women’s activism, agency, entrepreneurship, and empowerment in India and Indian diaspora. Currently she is a senior Fulbright US Scholar working in Odisha, India. Her research project focuses on the impact of skills training on rural and tribal women in Odisha. She is an accomplished filmmaker (Homeland in the Heart: The Myth of Buddha’s Birthplace [with Prof. James Freeman] and Road to Zuni). She was president of the Orissa Society of the Americas (2011–13), the oldest sociocultural organization of diasporic Odias in North America.

Notes 1. “Adivasi” is an umbrella term for a heterogeneous set of ethnic and tribal groups considered as the aboriginal population of South Asia including India. The Constitution has, however, named them as tribe or Scheduled Tribes (ST). 2. POSCO decided to move out of Jagatsinghpur on 15 July 2015. However, the long-drawn struggle by villagers (2006–15) in the three panchayats against POSCO has been discussed in the chapter at hand. 3. All names have been changed for anonymity. 4. Section 144 of Criminal Procedure Code of 1973 empowers the magistrate to prohibit assembly of more than ten persons in an area. Ignoring the order will be considered an offence and liable for punishment. 5. “Other Backward Class” (OBC) is a collective term used by the Indian government to refer to castes that are educationally and socially disadvantaged. 6. TATA is a family name of an industrial magnate in India. They have businesses in different sectors of India and abroad. 7. “Scheduled Tribe” (ST) and “Scheduled Caste” (SC) are legal terms first introduced by the British in 1873 to protect the rights of communities targeted for benefits to improve their socioeconomic condition. The terminology has been continued by the postindependent State of India by successive

Rural Women’s Self-Determination and Grassroots Resistance Movement • 147 governments. As a result, many castes and tribes have organized themselves to be included in that category to enjoy the benefits guaranteed by the State. 8. Public domain is represented as space outside the confines of the home (private domain). In this case, however, outer public domain refers to space outside the home as well as beyond the village boundary.

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148 • Smita Mishra Panda and Annapurna Devi Pandey Harcourt, W., and Arturo Escobar. 2002. “Women and the Politics of Place.” Development 45(1): 7–14. Jaysawal, Neelmani, and Sudeshna Saha. 2014. “Marginalisation of Tribal Communities Due to Globalization.” Indian Journal of Dalit and Tribal Studies (IJDTS) 2(2): 37–54. Jetley, Surinder. 1987. “Impact of Male Migration on Rural Females.” Economic and Political Weekly 22(44): 47–53. Kilby, Patrick. 2011. NGOs in India: The Challenge of Women’s Empowerment and Accountability. London: Routledge. Kunreuther, Laura. 2018. “Sounds of Democracy: Performance, Protest, and Political Subjectivity.” Cultural Anthropology 33(1): 1–31. Lingam, L. 1998. “Locating Women in Migration Studies: An Overview.” The Indian Journal of Social Work 59(3): 715–22. Low, Setha M. 2013. “Embodied Space(s): Anthropological Theories of Body, Space, and Culture.” Space and Culture 6(1): 9–18. Lund, R., and S. M. Panda. 2011. “New Activism for Political Recognition: Creation and Expansion of Spaces by Tribal Women in Odisha.” Gender, Technology and Development 15(1): 75–99. ———. 2015. “Struggling Bodies and Spaces of Resistance—Adivasi Women Activists in Odisha, India.” In Gendered Entanglements: Revisiting Gender in Rapidly Changing Asia, edited by Ragnhild Lund, Philippe Doneys, and B. P. Resurreccion, 147–76. Denmark: Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS). Meher, Rajkishore. 2009. “Globalization, Displacement and the Livelihood Issues of Tribal and Agriculture Dependent Poor People: The Case of MineralBased Industries in India.” Journal of Developing Societies 25: 457–80. Mining Zone Peoples’ Solidarity Group. 2010. “Iron and Steel: The POSCO India Story.” http://sanhati.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/iron-and-steal _25_oct_2010.pdf. Mishra, Banikanta. 2010. “Agriculture, Industry and Mining in Orissa in the PostLiberalization Era: An Inter-District and Inter-State Panel Analysis.” Economic and Political Weekly 45(20): 49–68. Mishra, Banikanta, and B. K. Nayak. 2011. “Paan or POSCO.” Economic and Political Weekly 46(26/27): 12–13. Mohanty, C. T. 2003. Feminism Without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity. Durham: Duke University Press. Mohanty, Manoranjan. 2014. “Persisting Dominance: Crisis of Democracy in a Resource-Rich Region.” Economic and Political Weekly 49(14): 30–47. Nagar, R. 2000. “‘Muje Jawab Do!’ [Answer Me!]: Women’s Grassroots Activism and Social Spaces in Chitrakoot (India).” Gender Place and Culture 7(7): 341–62. ———. 2012. “Mapping Feminisms and Difference.” In Mapping Women, Making Politics. Feminist Perspectives on Political Geography, edited by L. A. Staheli, E. Kofman, and L. Peake, 31–48. London: Routledge.

Rural Women’s Self-Determination and Grassroots Resistance Movement • 149 Nagar, R., and S. Writers. 2006. Playing with Fire: Feminist Thought and Action through Seven Lives in India. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Ortiz-Ospina, Esteban, and Max Roser. 2018. “Economic Inequality by Gender.” Our World in Data, March 21, 2018. https://ourworldindata.org/eco nomic-inequality-by-gender. Ortner, Sherry. 1974. “Is Female to Male as Nature Is to Culture?” In Woman, Culture, and Society, edited by Michelle Rosaldo and Louise Lamphere, 68–87. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Padel, Felix. 2011. Sacrificing People: Invasions of a Tribal Landscape. New Delhi: Orient Blackswan. Padel, Felix, and S. Das. 2010. Out of This Earth: East India Adivasis and the Aluminium Cartel. New Delhi: Orient Blackswan. Padhi, Sakti, and Nilakantha Panigrahi. 2011. “Tribal Movements and Livelihoods: Recent Developments.” In Orissa, Working Paper 51. Delhi: Indian Institute of Public Administration. Panda, Smita Mishra. 2014. “Right to Rights: Adivasi [Tribal] Women in the Context of a Not-So-Silent Revolution in Odisha, India.” In Alternative Development: Unraveling Marginalization, Voicing Change, edited by Catthrine Brun, Piers Blaikie, and Michael Jones, 191–206. Farnham: Ashgate. Pandey, Annapurna D. 2008. “Globalization, Swadeshi and Women’s Movement in Orissa, India.” In The Gender of Globalization: Women Navigating Cultural and Economic Marginalization, edited by Nandini Gunewardena and Ann Kingsolver. Santa Fe: School of American Research Press. ———. 2017. “The Challenges of Neoliberal Policies and the Indigenous People’s Resistance Movement in Odisha, India.” e-cadernos CES. DOI:10.4000/ eces.2340. Pandey, Balaji. 2008. “The Kalinganagar Tragedy, Development Goal or Development Malise.” Social Change 38(4):609–26. Rai, S. M. 2008. The Gender Politics of Development: Essays in Hope and Despair. New Delhi and New York: Zubaan/Zed Books. Ray, Raka. 1999. Fields of Protest: Women’s Movements in India. New Delhi: Kali for Women. Shah, Alpa. 2010. In the Shadows of the State Indigenous Politics, Environmentalism and Insurgency in Jharkhand, India. Durham: Duke University Press. Siméant, Johanna, and Christophe Traïni. 2016. Bodies in Protest: Hunger Strikes and Angry Music. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Staheli, L. A., E. Kofman, and L. Peake, eds. 2004. Mapping Women, Making Politics: Feminist Perspectives on Political Geography. London: Routledge. Stone, Livia K. 2015. “Suffering Bodies and Scenes of Confrontation: The Art and Politics of Representing structural Violence.” Visual Anthropology Review 31(2): 177–89. Taylor, J.H, and SL Maddox. 1899. “Puri: Report on the Khurda settlement of 189798.” British Library: Asian and African Studies.

CHAPTER 6

Neglectful Fathers and Mothers Who Mean Well Love and Hate of Hungarian Roma “Children” Andria D. Timmer

As many scholars of nongovernmental organizations have pointed out, the NGO form is highly ambiguous, and it is difficult, if not impossible, to satisfactorily determine what constitutes an NGO and what does not (Lewis and Schuller 2017; Timmer, Loy, and Wirtz this vol.). The nonprefix of NGO indicates that it is something altogether distinct from governmental organizations. Again, scholars have pointed out that this distinction is more discursive than actual, and the independent-ness of NGOs should be questioned (Kamat 2004; Vakil 1997). Thus, the NGO/ State division is maintained discursively. In this chapter, I examine one form of this discursive division looking at NGOs in Hungary attempting to address the segregation of Roma youth in the education system. I argue that the State has largely absolved themselves from “Roma problems” and instead turn to the nongovernmental sphere of society. NGOs, then, are tasked with addressing issues of exclusion, poverty, and violence faced by those identified as Roma, but they lack the power to put in place enforceable policy or action. The tool they are most likely to wield is empathy, compassion, or, as I heard most often from my interlocutors, love. This chapter uses Ortner’s analogy very literally and posits that, in the case of interventions for the Hungarian Roma (also known as the Gypsies), NGO is to State as nurturing mother is to passive (or perhaps even neglectful) father. In Hungary, as in much of Central and Eastern Europe, the Roma are viewed as a “problem population.” That

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is, due to their perceived difference in terms of race, ethnicity, culture, and socioeconomic status, they are seen as being too different to successfully integrate. Therefore, they are an unruly population in need of management. As a “father figure” the State actors enact policies that are presumably data-driven and enforceable. They are meant to protect the citizenry at all costs. The NGOs, on the other hand, are the nurturing mothers whose role is to care and do the emotional labor required to aid a disadvantaged population (Hochschild 1989). In the case of the Roma, then, the State devises policies that are in the interest of the nonminority Hungarians and are designed to protect this citizenry. Such policies posit Roma as a dangerous criminal element that should be imprisoned, expelled, or even exterminated. NGOs, on the other hand, are tasked with considering the specific needs of Roma, which include shelter, nutrition, education, access to employment, and so on. In this metaphor, the State is, at best, a neglectful, absentee father and, at worst, an abusive one. NGOs are, then, single mothers tasked with the sole responsibility of providing care for an excluded population. Roma, of course, are the children. This characterization is not unique to my analysis, as many scholars have pointed out that Roma are often portrayed as or perceived to be childlike (see, for example, Hancock 2003; Lemon 2000). On the one hand, this imaginary positions them as more innocent, vulnerable, and “deserving” of love. Unable to care for themselves, they need loving care. On the other hand, children are also perceived as being wild, free, and untamable and in need of civilizing influence and discipline. Either way, Roma are rarely considered to be fully functioning adults with agency. In the dichotomy I have presented, NGOs, as the mothers, are responsible for the loving care, and State for discipline. In theory, the two entities work together. Nongovernmental action provides nurturance and governmental action opens a space in society for Roma to inhabit by ensuring there is equal access to schooling and employment. I argue in this chapter, however, that neither entity accomplishes their task well. The State is all but absent except in their role of doling out punishment, and NGOs reify the Roma as a homogenous, childlike population. Thus, the situation functions more like a dysfunctional family with both sides failing to address the root problems: a long history of isolation and discrimination, a failure to recognize that Roma are not a people in need of a civilizing influence, and a dependence on the desire to help and to love a “despised” population to fix deep-seated structural inequalities.

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At this point, it is important to note that there is no one standardized group known as “the Roma.” Rather, those who identify or are identified as Roma represent an extremely diverse category of people and not a bounded ethnic group (Brubaker 2004). In Hungary, there are three identified ethnic groups: Romungro, Oláh, and Beás. However, there is internal diversity among these groupings as well. “Roma” defy easy categorization. Rather, they are grouped together as a political project.1 Those who are identified as Roma either because of the color of their skin or their living conditions have historically been viewed as one group and as a result have been excluded from the larger society and from necessary resources. Failure to account for the heterogeneity is another reason why nongovernmental projects, despite being delivered with care and an ethos of love, ultimately do little to address the real needs of those identified as Roma. The Roma in Hungary, as in much of Europe, exist in a marginalized position and are thus rendered a “humanitarian subject.” NGO work that seeks to provide relief for immediate needs as well as access to necessary resources and even empowerment through education is care work, and, as I will show through this chapter, is imparted with an ethos of love. As commendable as that sounds, however, I argue that in many cases, because it is not coupled with much-needed rigorous antidiscrimination efforts, love is confused for action and does little to span the divide between Roma and non-Roma.

Is Love All You Need? I had been living in Hungary for several months researching the segregated education of the Hungarian Roma when I met Lilla,2 a humanitarian who runs an NGO dedicated to providing teachers with cultural sensitivity training. Her job is to “teach teachers” how to address diversity in the classroom and, more specifically, recognize the specific needs of Roma (also known as Gypsy) children. Her work is important because Roma, for the most part, live separately and are perceived to be culturally different from majority Hungarians. Because segregation continues to be widespread and pervasive, I asked Lilla, just as I asked all my interlocutors, “What needs to be done to help Roma?” In response to my question, she quickly answered, “First, love the children. Don’t differentiate. Love the children.” She went on to give more practical advice, but she stressed that love was first and foremost. Love, in her estimation, is

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what provided revolutionary power to span this divide between Roma and non-Roma. This quotation made it into my dissertation, but beyond that I did not think much of the interchange until a reader of my work noted this conversation and other references to love in my manuscript.3 Her comments sent me back to my field notes, and a quick search revealed several instances in which my informants spoke of love. Repeatedly, humanitarian actors in Hungary spoke of love for their beneficiaries. Lilla called on activists to “love the children.” Others claimed that their interventions worked because “we love them.” Still others cited love as the reason they were able to continue to do their work despite the many challenges. This was especially true for those working to provide educational opportunities for Roma youth. Educational programs receive the most funding and recognition of all interventions targeting Roma because children are considered more reachable and deserving. It is telling that Lilla bequests us to “love the children” not “love the Roma.” All Roma are perceived as being childlike, but only actual children are seen as deserving and with the potential to grow into functional adulthood. I spoke with many educators who used loving or familial terms to characterize their students or their relationships with students, and their young beneficiaries often echoed these sentiments. For example, when showing me around a high school for disadvantaged students with a high proportion of Roma attendees, the headmaster put his arms around a couple of young men and explained to me, “You see, we are like a family. We love them.” At another school a young Roma student explained to me that living at school away from his family is not too difficult because, “Everyone loves me. . . . And I love everyone. It’s like a big family!” As I visited other schools and programs dedicated to providing education for the Roma, I came to see these as the exact responses interventionists wanted from their beneficiaries, and, as such, I heard such statements repeated often. The school is the home, which makes sense given that many schools run by NGOs or charitable organizations included dormitory programs. One school’s headmaster explained the rationale behind this using a gardening metaphor. Students with the most potential were removed from their home environment in which they could not thrive and were “replanted” in the rich and nurturing “soil” of the school environment. Therefore, the teachers are the good parents, the school the good home, and the love of the interventionists the love that is strong enough to overcome centuries of discrimination.

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Love is a significant and powerful emotion experienced by those working with and for the Roma population because in a region where hate is the norm, to express love for Roma can almost be seen as a revolutionary act; but because it is largely performative, it is not an act that necessarily leads to measurable improvement in the lives of Roma. I am not arguing that all aid workers who professed love for their beneficiaries felt genuine feelings of love. To make this claim, it would be necessary to do the impossible—define what it means to love. I do, however, assert that the performance and profession of love for a hated population is in and of itself a humanitarian action, albeit with questionable outcomes.

Epistemology of Love While in Hungary, I conducted interviews in both Hungarian and English. The Hungarian word for love (szeretet) is not used except to describe feelings of deep emotional connection. Love is used more liberally in English, as in “I love this song!” While my informants mentioned love while conversing in English, the Hungarian speakers were more likely to use terms referring to care (gondoskodás) or nurturing (nevéles). It is, therefore, somewhat overly simplistic to rely exclusively on the English word “love,” but I maintain this usage because it is significant that this was how my informants chose to translate their feelings. However, it is fairly evident that the feelings they described as love (or care or nurturance) are better translated as “reciprocity.” Thus, their actions are inspired by a sense of obligation to give rather than a feeling of love. Loving a despised group may set one apart as a revolutionary, but it does not necessarily, nor frequently, result in discernible resources or quality of life for the members of said group. It is beyond the scope of this chapter to fully explore the many meanings and usages of love—an undertaking better left to philosophers (see, for example, Silverman 2010). My focus is specifically on love as a motivating factor for those engaged in humanitarian action. Love, like hope, is an expression or emotion that can drive action. It can inspire, motivate, explain, and encourage. Its power to motivate and incite action explains why love is so central to the humanitarian cause. Take, for example, the words of Henri Durant (1959), founder of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC): “The humane desire to lighten a little the torments of all these poor wretches . . . creates a kind of energy

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which gives one a positive craving to relieve as many as one can.” The ICRC promotes a policy of neutrality, meaning aid should be provided regardless of the caprices of love, hope, or any other such unquantifiable emotion. However, as Fiona Terry points out, a position of neutrality inadvertently supports the dominant class. She asserts: “Refusing to make a judgment about who is right and who is wrong assumes a legal and moral equality between oppressors and their victims. Moreover, neutrality ratifies the law of the strongest” (2002: 22). Therefore, in order to be effective, aid must prioritize the inferior, repressed, “poor wretches.” This means that, at the very least, effective humanitarianism is about compassion for the suffering. Compassion is not the same as love; compassion can also be conflated with sympathy or even pity. That being said, when compassion is driven by an empathetic desire to understand, the emotion of love may be invoked. bell hooks posits, “All great movements for social justice in our society have strongly emphasized a love ethic” (2000: xix). For hooks, “embracing a love ethic means that we utilize all the dimensions of love—‘care, commitment, trust, responsibility, respect, and knowledge’—in our everyday lives” (2000: 94). Thus, social justice is a loving act. In her own manifesto on love, to ground her analysis, hooks cites M. Scott Peck’s definition of love, who defines love as “the will to extend one’s self for the purposes of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth” (2002: 81). As is evident in Peck’s definition, loving action is often aligned with religion or spirituality (Lewis 1960; Symonds and Pudsey 2006). However, as Johannes Ries explains, love in the context of religion may be confused with obligation. For Pentecostal missionaries working with Roma, “love is the most dominant discourse in the converts, congregation, and the emic explanation for all their actions” (Ries 2007: 138). In his analysis, Ries quotes one informant who claimed, “If God had asked me if he should create the Gypsies, I don’t know what I would have answered. But if God created them without asking me, I must love them with all my heart” (2007: 132). In this example, the speaker must love the Gypsies but does not do so because of any feelings of compassion or solidarity but rather because, as a Christian, he is obligated. No one I met in Hungary made such a claim, but I did meet several missionaries who expressed some ambivalence toward their work with the Roma. One missionary from the United States complained: “If we give Gypsies something, they just expect more. They expect everything to be done for them.” Another, a Christian aid worker from Holland, explained: “One of the main problems is that there is no mental stimulation. No feeling

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of accomplishment. There are no ‘thank yous’ for the work we do.” In these cases, aid is provided out of a feeling of Christian obligation, and the givers are frustrated and disheartened when there is not a return on their love. The beneficiaries then are not correctly “performing gratitude.” Love as reciprocity demands a hierarchical relationship in which care is given and gratefully received. Conversely, love as used by Peck and hooks is about solidarity, not obligation or reciprocity. Peck insists, “Love is as love does. Love is an act of will—namely, both an intention and an action. Will also implies choice. We do not have to love. We choose to love” (quoted in hooks 2000: 4). While still spiritual in nature, this conceptualization focuses on the transformative power of love for both the lover and the loved. Love is given without expectation of return. Instead, it is given because of its potential to be a force for social change. Love as solidarity creates a space in which true activism can occur. In Methodology of the Oppressed (2000), Chela Sandoval argues that traditional forms of resistance and activism do not work because they form false demarcations between oppressed and oppressor. What is both necessary and representative of a number of influential thinkers, scholars, and activists is an apparatus that reconciles boundaries and tensions—namely, love. Love is a way of transcending binary oppositional thinking and working beyond stereotypes. It is “where political weapons of consciousness are available in a constant tumult of possibility” (Sandoval 2000: 141). Many scholars recognize that love is an important tool in social justice; but as it is without definition, it can be rendered almost meaningless. The expression of love is bandied about among Roma activists and their beneficiaries without context. The NGO workers, in the maternal role, take up the duty of loving care (see also Yang this vol.), but their expressions of love rarely result in measurable results. A strategic use of love, such as the one proposed by Michael Hardt (2011), could lead to a conceptualization of love that can be put into action. Hardt identifies a number of obstacles that stand in the way of making useful the ideology of love as social justice. First, there are different scales of love. Private love, for example, differs from public love. Second, love is often understood as a process of unification or, in other words, a love of sameness. Love that forms the basis for social justice must be a love that is based on respect for difference and openness to transformation (see also Berlant 2011: 684). Given these obstacles, a political conceptualization of love, according to Hardt, would first have to: “extend across social scales and create bonds that are at once intimate and social, destroying con-

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ventional divisions between public and private. Second, it would have to operate in the field of multiplicity and function not through unification but the encounter and interactions of differences. Finally, a political love must transform us, that is, it must designate a becoming such that in love, in our encounter with others we constantly become different” (2011: 678). Love for Roma from humanitarian actors should adhere to this definition. That is, it should be a political love, one that exists across many scales, is based on respect for difference, and is a reciprocal and transformative experience to all parties involved. Love performed and enacted in such a manner could result in a marked improvement in material and immaterial support for Roma. This, however, is not what is occurring.

Love to Hate Despite the many professions of love I heard while conducting field research in schools and NGOs throughout the country, I paid only cursory attention to them at the time because I was more interested in examples of hate. When working with the Roma in Europe, one does not have to look too hard to find examples of hate and hateful speech, and my field notes reflect this disdain. I came to expect proclamations of derision when people learned why I was in Hungary. Some expressed outright hatred, such as a young man who, upon learning that my Englishspeaking colleagues and I were in town for a workshop on Romani studies, scornfully exclaimed, “The Gypsies? I hate them!” Someone who helped me with translations accused me of wanting to be trendy. “It seems like everyone is working on Gypsy issues,” she said, “and it is important; but if they have not changed in a thousand years, how can we expect they will change now?” And still others expressed fear. One Hungarian acquaintance asked if I was afraid when I went into the Gypsy villages. He explained, “They are very aggressive, and they will attack you.” I tried to explain that in all my interactions with the Roma, I had never feared for my safety, and, on the contrary, had felt quite welcomed. He shook his head in disbelief and said that he was worried for me. “You are brave,” he said. “I wouldn’t do it.” Fear and hate are, of course, different, but they are interrelated concepts, and it is beyond the scope of this inquiry to get into the nuances of these emotions. Suffice it to say here that both emerge from lack of knowledge about and contact with this excluded population.

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Given the frequency with which I heard expressions of hate and fear while in the field, I came to agree with the oft-quoted statement made by Edward Said: “Gypsies are the only group about which anything could be said without challenge or demurral” (as quoted in Nicolae 2006: 137). Friends, who in all other regards I found to be open-minded critical thinkers, did not hesitate to dismiss Hungarian Roma as loud, criminal, lazy, or any other host of negative epithets. Throughout my time in the country, I heard so many statements of hate, fear, and distrust that they ceased to be data and became disturbing annoyances (see also Tidrick 2010). Much of the hatred or fear emerges from deep segregation between Roma and non-Roma in Hungary. However, the country has not always been divided by ethnicity in this manner. During the period of Sovietism, Roma and non-Roma often worked side-by-side in factories and lived in close proximity. Many of my interviewees were middle-aged adults who were children at the end of the Communist period, and a number of them recalled living near or playing with Roma children; but living patterns quickly changed following the end of Sovietism, and since this time non-Roma contact with Roma has been relatively nonexistent. Factories, once responsible for ensuring universal employment necessary for the survival of the Soviet regime, closed. Shortly thereafter, latent tensions hidden beneath the veil of solidarity in work were uncovered. Non-Roma Hungarians fled to the cities to fill new employment positions, whereas the Roma were virtually eliminated from the new economy. Roma stayed in or migrated to the abandoned industrial centers. The result is a sharply divided and deeply segregated society.4 Throughout the country, Roma are more likely to be living in rural settlements, isolated from non-Roma Hungarians and, more importantly, city services (Kósa, Daragó, and Ádány 2011). Even in the capital city of Budapest, those who are identified as Roma live in the poorest districts, which are isolated from the majority society. Roma live with Roma, a pattern which ensures that non-Roma Hungarian experiences with their Roma neighbors are limited. When interactions occur, they tend to reinforce deeply held stereotypes because they come in the form of the random encounter with the beggar on the bridge, the young pickpocket, or the fiddler on the street corner. Because of segregated living, most Roma, who are neither beggars nor thieves, are hidden from view. Negative interactions form the framework through which most perceptions of the Roma are constructed and maintained.

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As a result of discrimination and isolated living, the education system is highly segregated, with the Roma youth receiving their education in substandard classrooms and schools (McDonald, Kovács, and Fényes 2001; Rekosh and Sleeper 2004). The problem of segregated education begins in early childhood, at which time Roma children are less likely to attend preschool. According to the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA),5 while almost 100 percent of non-Roma Hungarian children attend preschool, only 80 percent of Roma children do. This disadvantage compounds in secondary school. Again, according to FRA, 53 percent of Roma leave school before the age of sixteen, and only 13 percent complete secondary or higher education. Among non-Roma Hungarians living in similar geographical locations, only 32 percent leave school before the age of sixteen, and 45 percent complete secondary or higher education. Of most concern is the reality that Roma and non-Roma are not educated together. According to the European Commission, 45 percent of Roma youth are educated in segregated schools, and this proportion has increased from 30 percent in 2013 (Rorke 2016). The increase is particularly troubling since desegregation has been a primary goal of a number of civil sector organizations since the launch of the Decade for Roma Inclusion in 2005. Education was one of the pillars of the Roma decade, and it was the only one to have its own fund: the Roma Education Fund (REF). However, despite nongovernmental activity, segregated education in Hungary is a real and worsening problem, which creates a vicious circle. Roma youth are educated separately and receive substandard education, which does not provide them with the tools to break the cycle of poverty. Thus, they remain isolated from non-Roma Hungarians and the societal division remains. This societal division feeds anti-Roma sentiment. This inferior access to quality education was the focus of my research. Over the course of four years, I spent a total of eighteen months in Hungary researching the nature of the educational divide and the desegregation efforts of NGOs (Timmer 2017). I conducted interviews at local, national, and international NGO offices and observed humanitarian activities throughout the country. The bulk of my data comes from interviews and observations conducted in Budapest and five months of participant observation completed while working as an English teacher at a school, considered to be run by an NGO, for disadvantaged youth, located in a village with a very large Roma population where almost all the students self-identified as Roma.

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Establishing and maintaining an educational system is usually seen as the domain of the State. The State, in Western nations, defines the educational priorities, sets the funding levels and establishes a schematic for collecting taxes for school funding, and provides oversight for institutions of higher education. While there are alternatives to this State-directed, top-down model (private and charter schools, for example), the public education system is just that—public. It is for this reason that schools are often critiqued for the role they play in creating welldisciplined, governable, docile bodies (Foucault 1977). In Hungary, however, the State has largely absolved itself from the education of Roma, opting instead to punt responsibility to humanitarian and charitable nongovernmental organizations. Stand-alone schools meant to provide education for a largely Roma student body are run by NGOs or nonprofit church groups. Even when Roma youth attend public, mixed schools, their education, such that it is, is more likely to come in the form of afterschool tutoring run by NGOs. The analogy that frames this volume can be expanded to explain this dichotomy as well. The State, the masculine, through government-backed public schooling, works to create a well-disciplined citizenry who will work to promote and better the State and, in turn, will benefit from State provisions. Conversely, the NGO-run educational program, the feminine, strives to provide resources to the marginalized and devalued who are deemed as being subsidiary, subservient, or excluded from society. It is beyond the scope of this analysis to explore how this dichotomy explains the widespread devaluation of the education of girls and women, but linkages are evident. The goals of the NGOs I visited—which included teacher training programs, after school tutoring programs, village schools (like the one at which I worked), and scholarship programs—were to make investments in motivated students with potential and provide them with the support they needed to continue their education. Ostensibly, once equipped with a solid education, Roma graduates would have the confidence and skills needed to (1) enter and complete tertiary education, (2) enter the workforce, and (3) be empowered to fight discrimination and stand up for Roma rights. Humanitarians were stymied in their efforts to reach these goals due to deeply rooted societal discrimination. The broader Hungarian society has not allowed for the inclusion of educated Roma youth. That is, regardless of the education they receive, they still are unable to find employment and remain targets of hatred and violence. It is for this reason that love is one of the most powerful tools in the humanitarian arsenal. In demonstrating love for a hated population, NGO

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workers strive to span the divide, but can love succeed where education has failed?

NGO Action Prior to the fall of Sovietism, there was a limited and weak sphere of civic engagement within Hungary, since the perception was that the State was responsible for taking care of societal needs (Haney 2002). The civil sector began to emerge as a separate entity in the 1990s, and while it proliferated quickly (Kuti 1996), it is still relatively new with the oldest nongovernmental and nonprofit organizations dating back only about twenty-five or thirty years. The first NGOs focused on building a democratic society (such as Open Society Institute founded by George Soros in 1993), providing support for those who lost their safety net when the Soviet era came to an end (e.g., elderly pensioners), and making visible those whom Communism had made invisible (e.g., the mentally and physically handicapped). It was not until Hungary began to look forward to European Union admittance that the concerns and needs of Roma came to the forefront. Prior to EU accession, Hungary was prospering on a number of measures but falling behind in terms of their treatment of Roma. Their Roma policy, then, became an important indicator on which they could be judged for admission to the European Union (Jenkins 1995). Thus, social programs for the Roma were necessary to ensure Hungary’s smooth transition into the EU. The Act of 1993 on the Rights of National and Ethnic Minorities (Minorities Act) prohibits the government from collecting data on ethnicity and targeting programs to specific minority groups (for an explanation of the Act, see Kovats 2001). As such, the government has attempted to “catch” the Roma through programs aimed at meeting the needs of the disadvantaged and severely disadvantaged. Disadvantaged youth (hátrányos helyzetű) come from families in which one or more of the parents are unemployed and receive some kind of social support from the State. Severely disadvantaged youth (harmazott hátrányos helyzetű) suffer multiple disadvantages and come from families in which neither of the parents finished secondary school and they receive social welfare. Government programs assume Roma fall into this latter category and profess to meet their needs by having programs that target the severely disadvantaged. Because government programs cannot directly target the Roma and governmental officials appear to be unwilling to

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include Roma in their policymaking, NGOs are doing much of the work of addressing the specific needs of the Roma. Again, the State as disciplinarian and father does not engage in work that is aimed at providing for a disempowered group. Beginning in the early 2000s, funders, humanitarians, and government officials placed emphasis on Roma education as this was seen as the best first inroad to alleviating inequalities because it is focused on reaching the youth, a malleable and reachable population. The pressure to create programs for Roma students came not from the Hungarian State but from external funders and European Union accession protocols. According to an employee of the Roma Participation Program (RPP), empowering youth is a goal that is translatable to the broader public because it speaks to a “less entrenched prejudice” (personal communication). To this end, there are numerous educational programs working in the country; however, success has been relatively minimal. While the number of Roma with secondary school diplomas has increased, there has not been any discernible trickle-up effect. The dismal rates of enrollment in higher education and stagnant employment rates attest to this lack of progress. Communities remain segregated, and, contrary to anticipated outcomes, discrimination is increasing. Violent attacks against Roma have been on the rise since 2008 and correspond with increasing economic and political instability (Halasz 2009). A contributory factor to the lack of success is the overwhelming failure to counter hate directed toward the Roma. During my time in the field, I did not come across any interventions that sought to address negative societal perceptions of the Roma. When I asked about the lack of such interventions, I constantly received one of two responses: Some explained that such efforts were unnecessary because the fault lay with Roma. Others admitted that antidiscrimination programs would be useful but a waste of time and money since the majority public would not be receptive to them. For example, I asked about this when speaking to the director of an NGO focused on empowerment through theatre. She answered, “You know, the question is kind of weird because why would you do such a thing? Nobody cares about it. Who cares about educating the Roma?” She went on to explain that the focus of her organization is not the mainstream, but those who “disturb” the mainstream: “Roma people [to the majority] are very ‘disturbing’ people.” The director’s point is understandable. It is the people living on the outskirts of society who are in need. However, as long as antidiscrimination is not taken up as an issue, it remains true that “nobody loves the gypsies (with

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the extraordinary exception of those who have never had contact with them)” (Duca 2007). The NGO workers I observed and interviewed, however, defied this all-too-common sentiment. Most were inspired by a love ethic—a commitment to social justice that rested on a love for all broadly and a love for oppressed peoples specifically (hooks 2000; Sandoval 2000). It is the love of or at least compassion for Roma that inspired them to act despite a lack of funding and recognition. Institutional discrimination makes it exceedingly difficult for interventionists to continue their work. Over the course of my time in Hungary, I saw many programs and organizations close due to lack of funding and support. In many of the cases, the people who ran these programs went on to start new projects. For example, when the headmaster of a school learned that his donors had pulled out and he would have to shut the doors, he, together with several of the other workers at the school, started a new program that provides trainings at low-income, ethnic minority schools. I asked how they were able to keep going, and most responded that they could not see themselves doing anything else. They spoke of love for their beneficiaries and love for the work. Said one: “I like my work; I like the kids. . . . I like it . . . I don’t know how to do another work.” Another explained: “We have to take care of them. We have to love them, and we have to give them the best education we can.” This is not to say all humanitarians working in Hungary were motivated by love. Funding made available for Roma issues in the 2000s meant that many were motivated by money or power. However, money and power in the nonprofit sector is fleeting and often hard to come by, so I heard of these individuals only in passing. The great majority with whom I worked were passionate and committed to fighting injustices against oppressed peoples and expressed love for a hated population, Roma. They often framed their commitment in terms of “love.” Words of love do not always indicate feelings of love, but the statement itself stands out among so many professions of hate.

Love Is a Battlefield As I have argued elsewhere, aid is not given indiscriminately to those in need (Timmer 2010). Rather, it is given to those who can prove themselves “savable.” That is, those who are best able to articulate the goals of a humanitarian organization (which typically reflect the language

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and ideals of the majority) are the most likely to receive aid. In other words, Roma will be worthy of love only when their ways of being unify with ours. Take, for example, the case of the young student quoted in the introduction, whom I call Balázs. I do not question his love for his teachers or fellow students. Nor do I question the teachers’ love for him. I question, however, the consideration given to the love between him and his family. The school he attended was a boarding school, and he was one of many boarders. This practice arguably removes the student from an impoverished or toxic home environment and allows them to focus on their studies. Many teachers and headmasters claimed that in order to thrive, Roma youth needed to be taken out of their home environment to be nurtured and fostered because they cannot adequately develop in their home environment. According to the plant metaphor I heard several times, student “seedlings” like Balázs cannot thrive in the soil of their family life and will only flower when fertilized by the “right” ideas spread by loving beneficiaries. As a result, Balázs, like many others, must spend a majority of the year removed from his family and prioritizing relationships with his teachers and fellow students over those with his family. The ideology that a Roma student should sever, or at least weaken, ties with their home community in order to prosper and benefit from the intervention is a common one among educational NGOs. The love for the family is devalued and seen as a hindrance; whereas the love for outsiders (e.g., the teachers, very few of whom are Roma) is seen as productive and is therefore valued. The NGO by design is meant to take on the role of loving mother, and a single mother at that. They are the sole care providers. The story of Timi, a young Roma woman working on her PhD at the time I met her, also illustrates this point well. Timi traveled far from her home to receive her education. She lived in a boarding house for Roma students in a city located hours from her home so she could attend a high-level secondary school. Upon graduation, she went to college in Budapest and then continued her studies in graduate school. To achieve her goals, she had to apply for several scholarships and grants to cover her tuition as well as other related expenses, such as the fare for the bus that took her several hours to and from school. To be worthy of the aid, she had to be willing to break ties with her family, move into the dormitories, and take up the goals of the school. Timi sacrificed her relationship with her family and time spent with friends to receive her education.

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The village school model has arisen in recent years to foster student development without requiring students to leave their homes. Presumably the village school endeavors to work from a love of difference by bringing high-quality education to disadvantaged youth in their home communities, rather than remove them. To do this, high schools are built in rural regions with a high proportion of Roma residents. I worked at one such school teaching English and conducting research. Whether or not to leave the village to pursue additional education opportunities was a major point of contention between the school headmaster, Miklós, and the religious leader of the community, a Catholic priest whom I call Attila. Both men were non-Roma and both had served the community for several years, but Attila had a much more longstanding connection with the community. Attila’s goal was to get kids out of the village and to interact with other Hungarians by going to school in the city either in the public school in the closest big town or at one of the boarding schools in the region. In response to this goal, Miklós replied, “[Attila] says he is for integration, but for the whole time he is working in the village he only has got twelve students to high school. That’s 1 percent of the population. We have 120 students [in our school], so we have 10 percent; so we are already doing better.” The fight between these two leaders could be interpreted as a quality over quantity argument, but it could also been seen as the conflict between a love of sameness (unification) versus a love of difference (tolerance). Attila rightly argues that motivated students can receive a better education if they leave their village. However, in so doing, he is reasserting the commonly held notion that marginalized people must change in order to be worthy of loving care. Miklós, on the other hand, rightly asserts that his model provides education to more youth regardless of their ability to meet outsiders’ standards. In this model the students are valued for who they are. I am an advocate for the village school model, but it is not without its flaws. Opponents rightly assert that given the starting point of the majority of the student body, the school will never be able to meet its goal of college readiness. However, what the village school has successfully done is make education a real possibility. It comes the closest to demonstrating the political conceptualization of love called for by Hardt (2011). This is evidenced by the manner in which the school has connected to the broader community, an accomplishment not possible for other educational interventions. By having the school nearby, all

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community members come to see education as a laudable goal. That is, the NGO is not the sole parent, but instead a collaborator in nurturance. Parents are able to watch their children progress and engender pride in their accomplishments. Parental support is more likely to occur when the parents see the work that is involved with schooling. Ildikó, for example, had two children in the school when I worked there. After her eldest received her vocational diploma, Ildikó insisted that she must continue her education: “She can’t stop there. She needs to get her erettségi.”6 Ildikó only had an eighth-grade education and had married young, having her first child while she was still a teenager. She expressed regret at having children so young and did not want the same for her daughter. Ildikó could not see education as a possibility for herself but can for her children because it was brought to her and her community. The school offered classes to students regardless of ability. Youth entering with limited reading skills were put into a preliminary ninth grade class to build language and literacy skills. Adults who had not had the opportunity to complete their education could take classes after the school day had ended. My evening English class, for example, consisted of Jancsi Bácsi, a barely literate grandfather who wanted to complete his primary school education to be a good role model for his grandchildren and great grandchildren; Tibi, a young man who had suffered an accident and was slightly brain damaged as a result; and Anikó, who had been wrongly placed in a school for the mentally disabled as a child and welcomed the opportunity to study in a supportive environment. Therefore, at least on the surface, the village school model seems to meet the goal of being open to difference. They strive to meet the students where they are instead of expecting them to adhere to an externally defined ideal. Thus, they are not asking students to negate their love for community nor, by extension, their love of self. Within the school, being Roma is something to be proud of. The village school had some success and was gaining popularity in Hungary while I was there, but the boarding schools were still preferred by government funders and donors. The prevailing idea was that the only way to help youth would be to remove them from poverty and bad influences. However, in these interventions, love is love for a few “highly motivated students,” a love of sameness. Roma who would best integrate into majority society are privileged by the interventions. There is no expectation that broader society will open up to Roma who do not use the language and uphold the standards of the majority. Simply put, love of a few Roma youth is not the same as love for “the Roma.”

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Love, and more specifically love of sameness rather than of difference, has been confused with action. This confusion was made perfectly clear for me one day when I acted as mediator between a group of non-Roma scholars and Miklós. They asked him, “How do you get [the Roma students] to come to class?” and “How do you get them to do their work?” They had all worked with disadvantaged Roma students and were skeptical of the claim Miklós made that he was preparing students for university. “We love them,” was his answer. They pushed him on this, but he stood his ground. His point is valid. Many of these students had been overlooked in the back of the classroom for much of their educational lives and had never had a teacher, much less a non-Roma one, express love or care for them. Feeling loved is powerful. However, the scholars had a valid point as well. Expecting that love alone will carry a student from illiteracy to university in just a few years is naïve. And try as they might, they could not get a more satisfactory answer from Miklós. There was a great deal of love and mutual respect between the students and teachers. Teachers genuinely enjoyed spending time with students and would often stay after hours to go on a bike ride with the youth or join them for sodas at the local bar. However, this love did not translate into a mutually beneficial teaching environment. My own self-reflection illustrates this point well. After one particularly grueling day in the classroom, I wrote in my field notes, “I love them outside of the classroom. I just don’t know how to teach them.” Yes, we loved them. The other teachers and I loved joking with the students, hanging out with them after class, singing and dancing with them in between (and often during) classes. That does not mean we knew what to do with them when we had them in class. The students came to the high school with minimal reading skills, little motivation to excel in classes, and little hope that a high school diploma would change their futures. What would love get them? Without a concentrated effort to change the real causes of oppression—very little. Love has its limits. Love is not simply beneficence of the will to do good for others. Love is not sympathy or even empathy. Being sympathetic to oppressed people can blind us to the real underlying causes of oppression. Love as sympathy can lead one to treat the oppressed with “kid gloves and in doing so elide conflict, violence, or debate” (Domínguez 2000: 366). Finally, love is not a stand-in for action. The act of loving does not itself lead to social change. While it may be a powerful tool for social justice, love of a hated people (no matter how revolutionary an act this is) is not enough to incite widespread changes.

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Love can be empowering. Balász will most likely stay in school and receive his diploma since he feels like his teachers are his family members. The same is true for the students at the school I worked. A number of the students I taught did receive their high school diplomas. At the same time, however, they are struggling to reach the next step: college admittance or gainful employment. Love can only get one so far. When I returned to the school in 2008, many of the students had dropped out to get work at a factory that had opened in the nearby town. Those who had stayed in school still had their eyes on the goal touted by the school’s administrators: college education. However, as far as I can tell, not one student has gone on to higher education. A good number of the students with whom I am still in contact have gotten married and started families and not continued their education. This represents success in their village, but not to the school and the overall goals of integration.

Conclusion I have argued that many nongovernmental organizations working in the field of Roma education in Hungary are guided by a love ethic. Thus, the nongovernmental sector of society comes to be associated with nurturance and femininity and stands in sharp contrast with the masculine, disciplinarian focus of the State. This is not to say that NGO work is done primarily by women. Indeed, although the majority of the NGO workers with whom I spoke were women, they were not an overwhelming majority, and many of the dedicated people I quote in this chapter are men. However, in day-to-day practice, these loving interventions are devalued, and the association with nurturance perpetuates this devaluation. In Hungary, as elsewhere, the NGOs step in when the State cannot or will not function, but they are limited in their ability to work. NGO work, especially work done with and for a marginalized population, remains underfunded and unsupported because donors are unwilling “to support the longtime horizons, careful nurturing, and gradual qualitative results” (Edwards and Hulme 1996: 7). Love becomes alluring as an intervention because it is cheaper to perform the emotion than to resource the marginalized, especially in a neoliberal era where funding for humanitarian action is limited. Love is a performance that is enacted to “do the work” of aid in the absence of enforceable policy. Love is not a stand-in for policy and cannot change

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a system of oppression. Rather, the nurturing, feminized nongovernmental space is more likely to reinforce a segregated system. Thus, ultimately, Roma are left to their own devices, receiving support from neither mother nor father. Andria D. Timmer is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at Christopher Newport University. Her research focuses on efforts to effect social change, and she studies this by centering her inquiry on nongovernmental and humanitarian organizations. Her work has focused on Roma rights, food justice movements, and migration policy. Her book, Educating the Hungarian Roma: Nongovernmental Organization and Minority Rights (2017), explores NGO work to desegregate the Hungarian education system for the Hungarian Roma. Current research concerns border protectionist policies in Hungary and their impact on notions of citizenship.

Notes 1. Throughout this chapter, when I refer to Roma, I mean individuals who identify as or are identified as Roma. 2. All identifying information has been changed. 3. Thanks to Erica Prussing for this insight. 4. For a more complete overview of the Roma during and after Sovietism, see Marushiakova and Popov (2001). Stewart (1997) and Virág (2006) provide excellent anthropological and sociological overviews of the effect of segregation on the Roma following the decline of Communism. 5. This and other data can be found on FRA’s interactive website presenting 2011 survey data: http://fra.europa.eu/en/publications-and-resources/ data-and-maps/survey-data-explorer-results-2011-roma-survey. 6. High school diploma.

References Berlant, Lauren. 2011. “A Properly Political Concept of Love: Three Approaches in Ten Pages.” Cultural Anthropology 26(4): 683–91. Brubaker, Rogers. 2004. Ethnicity without Groups. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Domínguez, Virginia. 2000. “For a Politics of Love and Rescue.” Cultural Anthropology 15(3): 361–93. Duca, Alexandru Bogdan. 2007. “Eterna Tiganiada?” [Eternally Gypsy?] Cultura Politica 87. Accessed on 11 September 2007. www.revista cultura.ro.

170 • Andria D. Timmer Durant, Henri. 1959. A Memory of Solferino. Geneva, Switzerland: International Committee of the Red Cross. Edwards, Michael, and David Hulme. 1996. Beyond the Magic Bullet: NGO Performance and Accountability in the Post-Cold War World. West Hartford: Kumarian Press. Foucault, Michel. 1977. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Vintage Books. Halasz, Katalin. 2009. “The Rise of the Radical Right in Europe and the Case of Hungary: ‘Gypsy Crime’ Defines National Identity?” Development 52(4): 490–94. Hancock, Ian. 2003. We Are the Romani People. Hertfordshire: University of Hertfordshire Press. Haney, Lynne. 2002. Inventing the Needy: Gender and the Politics of Welfare in Hungary. Berkeley: University of California Press. Hardt, Michael. 2011. “For Love or Money.” Cultural Anthropology 26(4): 676–82. Hochschild, Arlie Russell. 1989. The Second Shift: Working Parents and the Revolution at Home. New York: Viking. hooks, bell. 2000. All About Love: New Visions. New York: William Morrow and Company. Jenkins, Robert. 1995. “Politics and the Development of the Hungarian Nonprofit Sector.” Voluntas: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations 6(2): 183–201. Kamat, Sangeeta. 2004. “The Privatization of Public Interest: Theorizing NGO Discourse in the Neoliberal Era.” Review of International Political Economy 11(1): 155–76. Kósa, Karolina, László Daragó, and Róza Ádány. 2011. “Environmental Survey of Segregated Habitats of Roma in Hungary: A Way to Be Empowering and Reliable in Minority Research.” European Journal of Public Health 21(4): 463–68. Kovats, Martin. 2001. “The Political Significance of the National Gypsy Minority-Self Government (Országos Cigány Kisebbségi Önkormányazat).” Journal of Ethnopolitics and Minority Issues in Europe. Accessed 13 May 2015. http://www.ecmi.de/fileadmin/downloads/publications/JEMIE/2001/Foc us11–2001Kovats.pdf. Kuti, Éva. 1996. The Nonprofit Sector in Hungary. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Lemon, Alaina. 2000. Between Two Fires: Gypsy Performance and Romani Memory from Pushkin to Post-Socialism. Durham: Duke University Press. Lewis, C. S. 1960. The Four Loves. New York: Harcourt Books. Lewis, David, and Mark Schuller. 2017. “Engagements with a Productively Unstable Category: Anthropologists and Nongovernmental Organizations.” Current Anthropology 58(5): 634–51.

Neglectful Fathers and Mothers Who Mean Well • 171 Marushiakova, Elena, and Vesselin Popov. 2001. “Historical and Ethnographic Background: Gypsies, Roma, and Sinti.” In Between Past and Future: The Roma of Central and Eastern Europe, edited by Will Guy. Hertfordshire: University of Hertfordshire Press. McDonald, Christina, Judit Kovács, and Csaba Fényes, eds. 2001. The Roma Education Resource Book. Budapest: Open Society Institute. Nicolae, Valeriu. 2006. “Words That Kill.” Index on Censorship 35(1): 137–41. Peck, M. Scott. 2002. Abounding Love: A Treasury of Wisdom. Kansas City: Ariel Books. Rekosh, Edwin, and Maxine Sleeper, eds. 2004. Separate and Unequal: Combating Discrimination against Roma in Education, A Source Book. Budapest: Public Interest Law Initiative. Ries, Johannes. 2007. “‘I Must Love Them with All My Heart’: Pentecostal Mission and the Romani Other.” Anthropology of Eastern Europe Review 25(2): 132–42. Rorke, Bernard. 2016. “Segregation in Hungary: The Long Road to Infringement.” European Roma Rights Centre (blog). http://www.errc.org/blog/segregationin-hungary-the-long-road-to-infringement/106. Sandoval, Chela. 2000. Methodology of the Oppressed. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Silverman, Eric. 2010. The Prudence of Love: How Possessing the Virtue of Love Benefits the Lover. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Stewart, Michael. 1997. The Time of the Gypsies. Boulder: Westview Press. Symonds. Michael, and Jason Pudsey. 2006. “The Forms of Brotherly Love in Max Weber’s Sociology of Religion.” Sociological Theory 24(2): 133–49. Terry, Fiona. 2002. Condemned to Repeat? The Paradox of Humanitarian Action. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Tidrick, Heather. 2010. “‘Gadžology’ as Activism: What I Would Have Ethnography Do for East European Roma.” Collaborative Anthropologies 3: 121–31. Timmer, Andria D. 2010. “Constructing the ‘Needy Subject’: NGO Discourses of the Roma.” PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review 33(2): 264–81. ———. 2017. Educating the Hungarian Roma: Nongovernmental Organizations and Minority Rights. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Vakil, Anna C. 1997. “Confronting the Classification Problem: Toward a Taxonomy of NGOs.” World Development 25(12): 2,057–70. Virág, Tünde. 2006. “The Regional Ghetto.” Review of Sociology 12(1): 51–70.

CHAPTER 7

En/gendering Aixin Philanthropy and Gendered Practice of Compassion in Postsocialist China Yang Zhan

Since the 1980s, a phenomenal growth of philanthropic activities has occurred in China in areas of education, disaster relief, environmental protection, and poverty alleviation (Jacka 2010; Manning 2010). According to official statistics, cash donations to charities in China has increased from 12.7 billion RMB to 81.7 billion RMB from 2006 to 2016 (NBS 2016). Meanwhile, philanthropic organizations have proliferated. From 2005 to 2017, the number of registered social organizations1 increased from 310,000 to 702,405 (NBS 2017). The number of private charity foundations has increased from 975 to 5,559 (NBS 2017). Because many active grassroots organizations have not registered with government agencies, many argue that the actual number of charitable NGOs in China is much larger (Deng 2010). The primary theoretical approach in understanding the fast development of philanthropy attributes its rise to the changing State-society relationship in postreform China after the 1980s. For instance, Zhang Ye (2003) considers the expansion of the philanthropy sector a result of relaxed State control over “civil society.” Within this framework, Vivienne Shue (2011) explores the possibility of “mutual empowerment” of State and society in contemporary China. However, there is inconclusive evidence to support the attribution of the fast expansion of the philanthropy sector in China simply to the State retreating from control of civil society. Outi Luova (2017) and Carolyn Hsu (2008) both stress that State policies still have played a significant role in a “paradigm change” in philanthropy in postreform China after the 1980s. In other words, the key transformation may not lie in the shifted State-society relationship

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per se, as many would assume. It is worthwhile to examine a highly gendered process through which the State itself (as well as society) has been reorganized. In this process, the State has refined its social responsibility by separating the culturally femininized work, such as caregiving, poverty alleviation, and public services, from State agencies and giving it to the NGO sector. Thus, the culturally pervasive logic that assumes the subordination of women, as pointed out by Sherry Ortner (1974), is mapped onto the transformation of nongovernmentality in postsocialist China. This chapter unpacks the gendered practice of compassion promoted by the State within the philanthropy sector of postsocialist China through the examination of aixin (loving heart), a culturally specific notion that is used to explain self-sacrifice and motivation in doing philanthropy. I argue that there are at least three ways in which women have been implicated in the practice of aixin: (1) Women serve as the symbolic signifiers of the virtue of aixin; (2) due to the gendered division of labor, women are more likely to be channeled to the domain of charity and the nongovernmental sector; and (3) women, especially those in rural areas, have been constructed as victims who are oppressed by men and therefore deserve to be given aixin. To elaborate my argument, in the following sections, I will first introduce the socialist culture of self-sacrifice, which serves as a cultural background of the expansion of philanthropy after China’s market reform in the postsocialist era. Next, I will discuss the unique cultural concept of aixin that is central and prevalent to contemporary philanthropy practices in China and explore its relation to postsocialism. I argue that Chinese civil society, at least the part associated with philanthropy, is structured on the dichotomy of self versus other, and the self is often gendered. To make this argument, I discuss the feminization of “self-sacrifice” in the history of the People’s Republic of China and how the value of aixin is gendered in its representation. Due to such historical processes, the notion of aixin is increasingly associated with the feminized characteristics of loving, giving, and care. In the final sections I provide an ethnographic account of women in the field of NGOmediated philanthropy in contemporary China. The ethnographic data used in this chapter was collected in Beijing from May 2013 to December 2014. Most of the informants mentioned in this chapter are from a grassroots NGO named Rural Development and Education Association (RDEA hereafter). RDEA was registered with the Chinese government in 1996. In the beginning, most of its programs

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were located in Guizhou, a southeastern province in China. RDEA later expanded its programs to Shanxi, Hebei, Yunnan, and Beijing. Its programs have also diversified in recent years. Other than conventional scholarship programs for impoverished students, it also provides free tutorship and afterschool programs to migrant workers and their children in Beijing. It has also designed various training programs for rural teachers and village leaders. As a typical NGO working in the field of education and development, RDEA serves as a case to probe the role of gender in the formation of philanthropy in contemporary China.

Historical Context of Contemporary Chinese Philanthropy “The Social” in Socialist China The fast growth of philanthropy in contemporary China is a recent development. Before the 1980s, NGO-mediated philanthropy was banned and largely unseen. In 1950, Dong Biwu, the former vice president, made a statement in his official governmental report shortly after the establishment of People’s Republic of China, claiming that “charity and philanthropy have acquired new meanings and new contents in the new China.” They are “no longer the tool for controlling and anesthetizing the Chinese people” (Dong 1950). Since then, the majority of social organizations were deemed as “reactionary” and “feudalistic” and thus banned by the socialist State. Others were transformed into “democratic parties” or absorbed into the political advisory body named Political Consultative Conference and lost their independence (Zhang 2003: 7). During the socialist period (more precisely from the 1950s to 1970s), without a strong civil society in place, the Chinese State relied extensively on the totalizing work units, namely danwei (which literally means “work unit,” but mostly refers to the workplace in the urban settings) and the rural communes, to govern its populace (Lu 1989; Shue 1990) and provide social services. Urban danwei, especially State-owned enterprises, also ran a variety of social services, such as schools, hospitals, and entertainment. It was also these danwei that were responsible for the financing of labor insurance schemes, pension systems, and retirement funds (Aspalter 2002: 75–77). Accordingly, the model gained its characterization of “enterprise managing the society” (qiye ban shehui). The members of a danwei were considered to have the socialist “iron rice bowl” (Hanser 2005) because their access to social welfare was secured.

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To some extent, the totalizing work units and communes reshaped the gendered division of labor. So-called “iron girls” who could compete with men in production were valued and praised in Mao’s era. Women were encouraged to enter the production field rather than simply take care of the household work or engage in service work. Even though some scholars have argued that many women experienced a “double burden” in such arrangements, the traditional gendered division of labor was questioned and challenged at a large scale.

Socialist Culture of Self-Sacrifice Even though active civil society and philanthropic activities were largely banned and discouraged in the socialist era, a socialist culture of selfsacrifice, which later turned out to be central in Chinese philanthropy, was a key communist value and always present and encouraged by the communist party and socialist State. For instance, China’s former leader Mao Tse-tung was explicit about the communist quality of devotion. In one of his famous speeches Mao extolled the spirit of “utter devotion to others without any thought of oneself,” and “great warm-heartedness towards all comrades and the people” (1939: 78). In the socialist era, self-sacrifice went beyond the “principle of love”; rather, it was considered the manifestation of the “principle of justice” (Pateman 1989: 5–10). Being altruistic and ready to sacrifice self-interest is much more than just a civic virtue. When a person starts to be altruistic, he or she is believed to have expressed an “unambiguous love and hate based on the proletarian class point of view” (from speech by Zhou Enlai in 1961). It is through this “utter devotion to others without thinking about oneself” (Mao 1939: 78) that a person can cultivate a communist style, raise individual consciousness, and achieve class solidarity. Since the virtue of self-sacrifice and compassion for others was so closely related to the communist principle and at the center of the socialist State, it was often represented and perceived as a masculine virtue; and one’s devotion and passion for others were often evaluated by how much discomfort and pain one could endure. In 1963, the Communist Party started a campaign of “learning from Lei Feng.” Without a doubt, Lei Feng was the most well-known “communist soldier” in the history of modern China. Though considered a hero, Lei Feng was, in fact, an ordinary young man, quiet and shy. His good deeds included helping an old lady to get back home and buying a train ticket for a woman who lost her wallet. He once shared his food

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with a hungry little girl and used his vacation time to work. It was the persistence of these small, good deeds that made him a great “communist soldier.” After his sudden death in an accident on the job in 1962, the party officially launched the “learning from Lei Feng” campaign and made 5 March of every year “learning from Lei Feng day,” a holiday still celebrated nationwide. On this day, schools and employers organize people to provide free services for others: haircuts, car washes, floor cleaning, and so on. Even today, many Chinese citizens still associate charity and philanthropic work with Lei Feng. Another example is Jiao Yulu, a communist official who worked closely with people at the grassroots level and, as official tribute had it, “had always had people’s interest in mind.” At a later stage in his life, Jiao Yulu suffered from liver cancer. When he realized his illness was untreatable, he asked his doctor to save the medicine for others. After his death in 1964, the communist party committee in Henan province started a campaign to call for all the cadres to learn from Jiao Yulu. These examples show how the communist virtue of self-sacrifice is at the heart of the “the social” in socialist China.

Aixin Discourse and China’s Philanthropy Transformation In the 1990s, in the light of the pursuit of efficiency and profit in the context of market reform, China started an urban reform that gradually dismantled the danwei system in urban areas. On the one hand, people have more chance to form networks across workplaces as the regime of danwei was no longer in place. On the other hand, the market reform has produced income disparity unseen in the socialist era, which has prompted calls for social intervention. In this context, the State started multiple measures to encourage NGOs to shoulder some of the social responsibilities renounced by the State-led work unit system. Since the 1990s, the Chinese State began to reform its legislation and regulations to encourage the development of NGOs of various kinds. In 1998, the State released Regulations on Registration and Management of Social Organizations to carve out new space for NGO activities in China. In the following year, a stipulation of higher order, the Welfare Donations Law of the People’s Republic of China, was released to regulate donations by ordinary Chinese people to NGOs and other charitable organizations. In 2004, the Regulations on the Management of Foundations took effect and started to allow the legal formation of private founda-

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tions for the first time. In 2016, the State finally passed the Charity Law that gives charitable organizations more freedom in financial matters. Equally as important as reforming the legal system, the State also started multiple campaigns to educate the public about compassion and promote the culture of self-sacrifice so the public would actively engage in the development of the philanthropic sector. At the center of the education of compassion is a cultural and moral discourse of aixin. In the following sections, I will elaborate on the aixin discourse and its role in China’s philanthropy transformation in postsocialist China.

The Education of Compassion The most well-known and successful case of the governmental effort to education the public about compassion started in the mid-1980s when the Communist Youth League launched a nationwide campaign called “The Project Hope” (xiwang gongcheng). The major goal of The Project Hope was to raise money for rural children who were deprived of educational opportunities due to economic hardship. This project soon became a nationwide success. The Project Hope has had a formative impact on NGO activities and volunteerism in reformed China. It has raised more than 5.3 billion RMB2 and supported more than 3.38 million rural students. Following this campaign, many NGOs modeled their activities on this project. More importantly, it has educated the Chinese public about the action of compassion. Since the launch of The Project Hope, Chinese people have started to use the concept of aixin to explain why they donate to people in need. National and local media, as an indispensable component of the Chinese State, have continued to advocate aixin as a State-sponsored virtue through various TV programs and cultural events. In 2002, Chinese Central TV (CCTV) started the “Moving China Awards” program, praising individuals who have sacrificed their own interests for the sake of other people. This program soon became a national success and many ordinary Chinese citizens have been recognized for their virtues and good deeds. Inspired by CCTV, local television stations, newspapers, and weekly journals started their own copycat programs to honor moral figures at provincial, district, or even community levels. Other than “Moving China Awards” winners, people who have done good deeds are honored with regional and local awards, such as “Moving Henan Province Awards,”3 “Moving Xicheng District Awards,” or even “Moving Beijing Normal University Awards.”

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In 2005, the award for moral citizens ceased to be just a media fever. Rather, it has been further institutionalized by the central State. The Ministry of Civil Affairs of the People’s Republic of China has set up the “China Charity Award” to praise individuals and agencies who are dedicated to charity and philanthropy in China. Each year, philanthropic activities are divided into three categories for competition, namely aixin donation, voluntary services, and charity projects. Each year, the winners will be honored with titles of “the individual with the most aixin,” “the most influential charity project,” and “the role model with the most aixin.” Currently, “China Charity Award” is the most prestigious award in the field of philanthropy in contemporary China.

The State-Sanctioned Discourse of Aixin Due to the fervent promotion of aixin by State agencies, NGO work in the Chinese context is less about right-defending, activism, or resistance and more about the art of organized gifting and the management of compassionate aixin. Since the 1980s, this notion has become prevalent and been commonly used to explain altruistic deeds and self-sacrifice for the sake of the larger good. Aixin is intangible, mercurial, and ubiquitous. Occasionally it takes the form of a one-time donation mobilized by the State in response to disasters (e.g., Sichuan earthquake in 2008, Qinghai earthquake in 2010, and the Gansu mudslide in 2010). More often, it is incarnated in many NGOs. Donors wish they could pass on their aixin through the establishment of the reciprocal relationship with their recipients. NGOs are often the ones that facilitate people’s aixin actions on a routine basis. In other words, as the major locale for the mass production of aixin, NGOs mediate between donors and recipients and make organized gifting possible on a large scale. For leaders of Chinese grassroots organizations, aixin no longer means a one-time spontaneous donation, but rather a routinized lifestyle. By entering the charity industry, they choose a life of low wages, uncomfortable working conditions, and modest social prestige, which allows them to acquire noble personhood and evolve into aixin renshi (“loving heart” person). Aixin functions as an organizing principle in the third sector4 in contemporary China. Even though the concept of aixin appears to be a universal virtue, it has never been evenly distributed among Chinese citizens. Rather, it is a class-based attribute that often motivates the urban middle class to “hand down” their aixin to the poor and the disadvantaged. In other

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words, NGO-mediated philanthropy in postsocialist China has been largely preconditioned on the social stratification between the rich and the poor. As market reform has widened social disparities, the State has taken new measures to address the rising problem of social inequality. One of these measures is to encourage citizens to take on more responsibilities for their fellows. Based on their ability to give, donate, and care for the disadvantaged, Chinese people are categorized either as those who can afford to give or those who are forced to receive. Those who can afford to shoulder more social responsibilities have been held up as moral citizens and praised by the State agencies. Those who are positioned to take are considered lacking, vulnerable, and in need of remediation. The mutual obligations between these two groups have generated new forms of governance that are not based on coercion but indebtedness (Zhan 2019).

The Moral Structure of Aixin Aixin became prominent and popular in Chinese people’s everyday speech starting in the 1980s. However, the social relations implicated in this concept are not strange to the Chinese public at all. For most Chinese people, aixin means the willingness to forgo personal enjoyment, wealth, and even well-being for the sake of other people’s benefit. A person who is willing to make self-sacrifice and be altruistic is a person of aixin. At the philosophical level, the action of aixin is about negotiating and redefining the relationship between self and others. Xiongtong Fei ([1947] 2013), in his widely cited work on the social structure of China, proposes the notion of “pattern of difference sequence” to describe traditional Chinese society, based on a comparison between Chinese and Western social structures. According to Fei, the “pattern of difference sequence” is like the concentric circle waves that become bigger and bigger after a stone is thrown into the water; every person is in the centric of his own circle. And the waves correspond to his social influences. A person’s inner circle often includes family and intimate friends. The outer circle includes acquaintances. This pattern is reflected in Chinese people’s cultural and political lives, including gift exchange, patronage, and so forth (Kipnis 1997; Yan 1996; Yang 1997). Despite radical social transformation in the socialist era, the spatial imagination of the relationship between self and other continued. For people who lived and worked in a big State-owned enterprise, the

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enterprise-operated childcare facilities, schools, medical facilities, housing, shopping malls, and supermarkets provided a totalizing social world for all who belonged to it. For danwei members and their families, there was no separate “society” other than the total social relations the Stateowned enterprise had offered. Within such social structure, Chinese people have developed a social and moral structure that is based on self versus other. The mediating role of danwei and commune is perfectly visualized by the concentric square below (Figure 7.1). By mediating State and individuals (and their families), danwei and commune had functioned as “civil society.” Being the most inclusive entity at the outskirt of the concentric square, the State was imagined as a “larger self” (da wo) while individuals and their families were “smaller selves” (xiao wo). To resolve the conflict between “smaller self” and “larger self” in favor of the latter, the “communist spirit” and altruistic deeds are encouraged and even re-




 
 
  



 


Figure 7.1. Mediating role of danwei and commune. Image created by author. © Yang Zhang.

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quired. Sacrificing the interests of “smaller self” for the benefit of “larger self” embodies communist values of collectivism and the common good. Privatization and liberalization processes that began in the 1980s challenged established social structure. Communes were dissolved and many danwei were privatized. The State began to centralize the managerial power of the welfare scheme from the enterprise level to the local government level. Danwei stopped being a total social institution and transformed into economic actors in the market. Other institutions, including schools, hospitals, families, and the media, have been privatized and gained relatively greater autonomy. All these measures of economic reform accelerated the birth and development of an NGO-mediated field of philanthropy in China. In the absence of totalizing entities like danwei and communes, aixin has become an organizing principle that motivates people to participate in civil society. Many GONGOs (government-organized NGOs) and NGOs step in to shoulder more welfare responsibilities and provide services to the marginalized groups in both rural and urban environments. Similar to the communist culture of self-sacrifice, aixin is structured on the binaries of self versus other, egoism versus altruism, and individual versus collective. To acquire the virtue of aixin, people must reach out to those further away in their concentric circles. The further they reach, the more aixin they prove to possess in their heart. For instance, a person who helps a stranger is considered to have much more aixin than those who help their own relatives or neighbors.

Gendered Representation of Compassion Even though the use of “self-sacrifice” by the State is not intentionally gendered, in reality, the traditional thinking of the “self” is rooted in Chinese patriarchal society. The unmarked “self” placed at the center is often an adult male. In the socialist era, self-sacrifice pertained to the masculine image of “socialist new men” who showed devotion to the larger good by overcoming selfishness. The valorizing of “communist soldiers” in the socialist era, including Lei Feng and Jiao Yulu mentioned above, demonstrates how notions of self-sacrifice were deeply gendered and assumed masculine. In contemporary China, the notion of aixin retains the “self versus other” structure that was at the center of socialist culture of self-sacrifice. It is still a gendered representation, but

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compared the masculine notion of “socialist soldier,” aixin has been to some extent feminized for several reasons. First, since the market reform in China, self-sacrifice and compassion for others have gradually moved away from the socialist era focus on the realm of production and formal politics. Rather, they manifest themselves in the virtue of aixin and are largely confined to the third sector. Second, as a much more feminized virtue, aixin is often perceived as an individual quality that is apolitical. It is often understood as the extension of love within families. For instance, on many occasions where philanthropy is practiced, NGOs and volunteers often use slogans such as “we are brothers and sisters” and “we are one big family” to stress the shared identity or social relations between the giver and the receiver (see also Timmer this vol.). Third, the virtue of aixin, since it has been considered as a form of love and care in the postsocialist era, has less to do with self-cultivation or professional training. Instead, it is often understood as a product of the natural instinct of love and compassion for others. As a result, philanthropy is perceived to be the occupation of love and compassion, a field that is closer to nature and thus perfect for women. In short, the masculinized image of “communist soldier” has been transformed into a feminized image of NGO worker or volunteer. The gendered representation of virtue has reconfigured the landscape of philanthropy. Compared to other careers, those in aixin are considered much less attractive, especially for men. This does not necessarily mean women have a monopoly on philanthropy because men are engaged in different ways. Unlike women who are expected to participate in philanthropy with their aixin, men often participate in philanthropy with their skills and money. That is, men are expected to spend their valuable time in their “real” careers where they create values and profits in the market. In the following section, I will further elaborate on how the gendered labor scheme unfolds in China’s philanthropy.

Gendered Labor Scheme Due to the gendered division of labor, women are more likely to be channeled into the domain of charity and the nongovernmental sector. Some of them might be upper-class housewives who wish to spend their money in a more “meaningful way,” while others might be disadvantaged female college graduates who have experienced difficulties

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finding a job in the male-dominated job market and have taken NGO jobs as a last resort. Jobs in philanthropy are often disparaged as “not real jobs” in the context of contemporary China for two reasons. First, a career in philanthropy is more associated with the virtue of aixin, rather than professional skills. The common perception of aixin careers is that they do not require any competitive talent or specialized skills. All it takes to do this work is an altruistic temperament. Second, since the public perception is that people working in philanthropy should be driven by their compassion for others, they should not anticipate too much personal financial gain from doing philanthropy. As a result, the pay in philanthropy is often quite low. For college graduates, it might be a good opportunity for an internship. It is quite common for both men and women to gain some work experience in the field of philanthropy. However, since it is not a “real” career, men are often under pressure to quit these jobs. According to a 2015 report released by China Development Brief based on their research on thirty-seven NGOs, women employees make up about 70 percent of the total NGO workforce. Thirty of these organizations have more women than men employees (CDB 2015). RDEA is among those NGOs that have women as the major contributors. The founder, who still participates in day-to-day work, is a seventyyear-old woman. Among the twenty-five paid workers, eighteen are women. In this section, I will take RDEA as an example and demonstrate how the gendered labor scheme affects people’s job preferences and expectations.

Men Who Finally Quit Pei volunteered at RDEA starting in 2009. He loved his experience at RDEA, and when he graduated from college in 2011, he took a full-time job there and began to manage a migrant workers’ community center in one of the migrant communities in Beijing. Everyone at RDEA found Pei full of energy and passion, and soon he became assistant director of the community center. However, after working at RDEA for four years, Pei Pei submitted his letter of resignation. When asked why he was quitting, he told me: I’m under a lot of pressure from my parents, and I will have to leave RDEA next month. My parents do not want me to work in an NGO. They believe NGO workers should be wealthy people who have ful-

184 • Yang Zhan filled their everyday needs and only do philanthropy in their spare time for fun. They think that I am wasting my time and my skills here. They will never accept me working in an organization like RDEA. This is not a hopeful job. I enjoyed working in NGOs, and I believe NGOs will change China. But I do not have the option of working for one of these organizations now.5

Similar to Pei Pei, Xiao Li has been working in philanthropy for four years. RDEA was his second job, which he very much enjoyed. At the age of thirty, Xiao Li decided to quit his job at RDEA. He knew it was time to quit when his girlfriend asked him when they could purchase an apartment of their own and get married. RDEA’s salary would not support him to pay for the expensive mortgage and raise a kid. He had to find a “real job” for his future. Xiao Li quit his job in 2014. In his words, he finally became “a responsible man who was not just doing his job for fun anymore.” As social expectations are gendered, men are often expected to be the providers for their families. In the past ten years, six male employees have quit their low-salary NGO work at RDEA. They had taken NGO jobs as a springboard to jobs with better pay or more potential for promotion (i.e., “real” jobs). Nevertheless, it is important to note that the pressure to take a “real job” is not unique to men. In some cases, women feel that pressure too. Wu Dan is one of those women who stepped into philanthropy after her graduation from a college in Beijing. She worked at RDEA for three years until she became pregnant. Feeling the pressure to prepare a better future for her unborn child, Wu Dan decided to quit her job at RDEA and take a job offer in an advertising company. Her salary nearly doubled. As Wu Dan explained, “I wish I could continue my work in NGO. But you know, aixin won’t allow me to feed my family. My husband and I have to raise our child in the near future. We need to bring cash home.”6

Women as Flexible Labor Xiao Yu was the supervisor of Pei Pei and Xiao Li at RDEA. Unlike them, Xiao Yu has worked for RDEA for over ten years. Xiao Yu stayed for the flexibility it allows her. In other words, a “fake job” for men can be the perfect job for women because women are not expected to support a household financially and so a woman’s income is seen as “extra” and not vital to the economic security of the household. Also, women are responsible for the majority of domestic labor, which requires flexibility.

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During her ten years at RDEA, Xiao Yu has switched from full-time to part-time and back again many times. Whenever her family needs her, she works from home or takes on fewer responsibilities. For instance, during her pregnancy, she worked at home part-time—three days a week at half of her regular salary. Once her daughter reached school age, she returned as a full-time staff member. When her mother-in-law got sick in 2014, she switched to be a part-time staff again, so that she could cook food for her mother-in-law. She is pleased that this NGO job has allowed her such flexibility. When I met Xiao Yu in 2016, she was a full-time worker busy with office administration and project management. She was thinking about having a second child and working parttime again. Even for upper-class women, NGO-mediated philanthropy is a field of flexibility. Zhang Jing was a successful businesswoman who managed transnational companies with her husband. After her pregnancy, she resigned to take care of her children and family. When Zhang Jing discovered RDEA, she started to donate 10,000 USD to them once a year. Zhang was responsible for the donations and interactions with NGOs. Doing philanthropy, according to Zhang Jing, gives her a sense of fulfillment after retiring from her work in business. As Zhang Jing explained her decision to me: “There must be someone taking care of the children and the house. My husband is great with business, and I am not comfortable handing my children to some nanny. I think this works best for us. My husband brings home the money, and I find a meaningful way to spend it.”7

Women as the Subjects of Philanthropy Women in Need of Aixin Women are often the subject of NGO aid programs and philanthropic actions. One of the reasons for women being the target of NGO programs and humanitarian aid is that women are often in a more disadvantaged position compared to men who require assistance. For instance, due to the culture of preference for male offspring in rural China, girls suffer a much higher drop-out rate in school. It is more common to see women being victims of domestic violence and abuse. As a result, NGO programs targeting women are quite common. RDEA started with programs that aim to help women. In the early years, the major task of RDEA was to provide scholarships for girls who

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were not able to attend elementary school in Guizhou province in southwest China. Due to economic hardship and gender discrimination, many parents in Guizhou area chose to send only their sons to school. Many girls either never had the chance to attend school or had to drop out of school at a very young age. Since the 1980s, RDEA has specifically targeted girls, to the exclusion of boys, for its scholarship and tuition subsidy programs. Their logic driving this gendered target of recipients stems from the disproportionate rate of girls’ and boys’ school attendance and attrition rates. Because boys’ education is culturally favored in China, families without enough money to send all their children to school often choose to focus on boys’ education rather than that of girls. Since 2014, many incidents of sexual assault on teenage girls have been reported in the mainstream Chinese media, sparking heated discussions of school safety in rural China. RDEA quickly responded to this outcry and started to design programs that address this issue. The original investigation into several rural boarding schools concluded that many factors contribute to the high risk of sexual assault. First, these boarding schools in rural China remove teenagers from their parents’ protection. Second, as the head of RDEA stressed, many boarding schools assign middle-aged men with no training or background checks as their janitors and guards.

Women as the Easy Targets In addition to differential levels of need between men and women, another critical reason NGOs target women as beneficiaries is because women’s vulnerabilities render them more easily incorporated into NGO programs. For instance, after providing tuition subsidy for young girls for ten years, the project director at RDEA tried to implement more comprehensive projects in rural villages. The original idea was for RDEA to involve more local people in NGO programs instead of simply handing out money. On a hot summer day in 1995, the RDEA staff sat down with five village committee members to explore their possibilities. After learning that the RDEA might require intensive involvement on their part, the village head showed his disappointment. They rejected RDEA’s proposal of initiating a training program for village leaders, stating that a program like this requires too much time from them. After several rounds of discussion, the village committee sent their director of women, the only woman on the village committee, to participate in

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the on-going discussion, assuming the director or women would have more available time than men to fulfill the NGO’s requirements. Similarly, in the implementation of the programs against sexual harassment, RDEA encountered obstacles from both the government and the schools. First, the transfer of teenage students to boarding schools was a nationwide policy. They would not change their management solely on the advice of an NGO. Second, many would assume that an anti-sexual harassment program itself implies there was misconduct in the school, which carries a lot of shame. In this context, the school would not cooperate with a training program. In the end, RDEA had no choice but to focus their program on teenage girls instead of school staff. The program involves teaching girls about sex and their bodies, raising their awareness of self-protection, and improving their standard of personal hygiene. A program with the initial intention of anti-sexual harassment failed to break into the men’s world and shifted the responsibility, once again, on the victims.

Conclusion As one of the State-promoted virtues since the late 1980s, the notion of aixin has become the widely recognized symbol and virtue that explains altruistic good deeds and has been central to the State’s evaluation of desirable citizens. As presented in this chapter, the rise of the discourse of aixin to a large extent epitomizes itself in the feminization of NGO work in postsocialist China. There are at least three ways in which women have been implicated in the practice of aixin: (1) Women serve as the symbolic signifier of the virtue of aixin. A benevolent, innocent, and dignified image of women has been associated with the moralizing discourse of love, care, and self-devotion. In many circumstances, the idealized image of motherhood is also used to explain the exigency of selfless love toward others. (2) Due to the gender division of labor, women are more likely to be channeled into the domain of charity and the nongovernmental sector. Some of them might be upper-class housewives who wish to spend their money in a more “meaningful way,” while others might be disadvantaged female college graduates who have experienced difficulties finding a job in the male-dominated job market and have taken NGO jobs as a last resort. (3) Women, especially those of struggling rural areas, have been construed as permanent victims who are oppressed by men and therefore deserve to be given

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aixin. Ironically, following the same logic, these “victims” retain a subversive force to the capitalist system since they are romanticized as closer to nature (Ortner 1974). These three seemingly distinct aspects of gendered incorporation of women can actually be folded into one point of logic: the secondary position of women. Despite their various class backgrounds, women continue to be channeled into the subordinate position when they are incorporated into the field of philanthropy. Even many philanthropic programs that claim to counter the disadvantaged social position of women often serve as another element of the regime that relies on women’s subordination. Sherry Ortner (1974) points out that the common conception of women as “closer to nature than men” contributes to the universal subordination of women. In the case of postsocialist China, this gendered scheme of nongovernmentality echoes this human to nature metaphor. Informed by the culturally specific notion of aixin, NGO operations are subordinate to and subject to State control in the same way women are subordinate to men. Yang Zhan is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Applied Social Sciences at Hong Kong Polytechnic University. She holds a PhD from the State University of New York at Binghamton. She is a cultural anthropologist by training. Her research interests include urbanization, rural-urban relations, informality, and governance. Her articles have appeared in Urban Studies, Dialectical Anthropology, Culture, Mind and Activity, Urban Anthropology, Anthropological Forum, China Information, and Journal of Tsinghua University.

Notes 1. In China, government agencies avoid the use of “NGO” because the terminology stems from Western concepts of democracy, State, and civil society. In official language, “social organization” or “popular organization” are more commonly used. However, those who work within these organizations employ the term “NGO.” In this chapter I use NGO to refer to both registered and unregistered social organizations in China. 2. About 0.79 billion USD. 3. Henan province is located in central China. 4. “The third sector” often refers to the voluntary sector. It consists of NGOs and other nonprofit organizations. 5. Fieldwork notes, with Pei Pei, Beijing, 2009.

En/gendering Aixin • 189 6. Fieldwork notes, with Wu Dan, Beijing, 2013. 7. Fieldwork notes, with Zhang Jing, Beijing, 2013.

References Aspalter, Christain. 2002. Discovering the Welfare State in East Asia. New York: Praeger. China Developmental Brief. 2015. Gongyi hangye zhong xingbie xianzhuang he tiaozhan. http://www.chinadevelopmentbrief.org.cn/news-17957.html. “China Launches Village-level Poverty Alleviation Project with NGO’s Participation.” Xinhua Economic News, 19 December 2005. Deng, Guosheng. 2010. “The Hidden Rules Governing China’s Unregistered NGOs: Management and Consequences.” China Review 10(1): 183–206. Dong, Biwu. 1950. “Xinzhongguo de jiuji fuli shiye.” People’s Daily, 5 May 1950. Fei, Xiaotong. [1947] 2013. Earthbound China: A Study of the Rural Economy of Yunnan. New York: Routledge. Hanser, Amy. 2005. “The Gendered Rice Bowl: The Sexual Politics of Service Work in Urban China.” Gender & Society 19(5): 581–600. Hsu, Carolyn L. 2008. “‘Rehabilitating Charity’ in China: The Case of Project Hope and the Rise of Non-Profit Organizations.” Journal of Civil Society 4(2): 81–96. Jacka, Tamara. 2010. “Women’s Activism, Overseas Funded Participatory Development, and Governance: A Case Study from China.” Women’s Studies International Forum 33(2): 99–112. Kipnis, Andrew. 1997. Producing Guanxi. Durham: Duke University Press. Lu, Feng. 1989. “Danwei: yizhong teshu de shehui zuzhi xingshi.” The Journal of Chinese Social Sciences 1: 71–88. Luova, Outi. 2017. “Charity Paradigm Change in Contemporary China: From Anti-Socialist Activity to Civic Duty.” China Information 31(2): 137–54. Manning, Kimberley Ens. 2010. “Embodied Activisms: The Case of the Mu Guiying Brigade.” The China Quarterly 204: 850–69. Mao, Tse-tung. 1939. “In Memory of Dr. Norman Bethune (Bai Qiu En).” In Selected Works of Mao Zse-Tung. Peking: Foreign Languages Press. National Bureau of Statistics (NBS). 2017. China Statistical Yearbook 2017. http:// www.stats.gov.cn/tjsj/ndsj/2017/indexch.htm. Ortner, Sherry. 1974. “Is Female to Male as Nature Is to Culture?” In Woman, Culture, and Society, edited by Michelle Rosaldo and Louise Lamphere, 68–87. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Pateman, Carole. 1989. The Disorder of Women. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press. Shue, Vivienne. 1990. The Reach of the State: Sketches of the Chinese Body Politics. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press.

190 • Yang Zhan ———. 2011. “The Political Economy of Compassion: China’s ‘Charity Supermarket’ Saga.” Journal of Contemporary China 20(72): 751–72. Yan, Yunxiang. 1996. The Flow of Gifts. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press. Yang, Mayfair. 1997. Gifts, Favors, and Banquets: The Art of Social Relationships in China. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Zhan, Yang. 2019. “Gifting as Governance: NGO Service Projects and Disciplinary Power in Rural Migrant Settlement in China.” Anthropological Forum 29(2): 153–71. Zhang, Ye. 2003. China’s Emerging Civil Society. https://www.brookings.edu/ wp-content/uploads/2016/06/ye2003.pdf.

PART III

Beyond the Binary Intersectionality and Queer Spaces in NGOs

While binaries and analogies are useful thought tools to explain the seemingly natural but actually unnatural divisions that exist across societies, as the authors in this volume have shown, all dichotomies are false dichotomies and fail to capture the nuance and complexity of human and, in this case, political relationships. The contributors in this final section of the volume queer the binary by applying the Ortner analogy to scenarios in which the State/NGO or the male/female associations are blurred. Ultimately, however, all authors conclude that nongovernmentality comes to be aligned with that which is gendered female, more often devalued and less powerful. Mark Schuller opens this section with an analysis of NGO/State relations in postearthquake Haiti in chapter 8, “‘Little Dear Mothers’: Governing the ‘Republic of NGOs.’” Haiti has been paradigmatically characterized as a “weak State” and, accordingly, is one in which the NGO form is prolific and seemingly powerful. Schuller argues that the flexibility (which could also be interpreted as instability) of NGO funding ensures that nongovernmental organizations are more able to adapt, and it is for this reason that the Martelly regime “performed drag” as an NGO by promoting the “project form,” working on issues usually relegated to the NGO sphere of activity, and even donning feminine performance styles. This drag performance draws upon the higher moral status of women as they are held up as the central pillars of the family, and thus society. However, the rhetorical position of women as “high status” works to obscure their relative low position in society in much the same way that Martelly’s adoption of the feminine, NGO form does not upset the divergent roles of NGOs and the State. In chapter 9, “Identity and the Construction of Trans Citizenship in Guatemala,” Alejandra Wundrum Pimentel explores trans identity and

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citizenship in the framework of the NGO form in Guatemala. The NGO profiled in this chapter, like many, exists in a double bind in that, on the one hand, they are working to empower people to embrace gender nonconforming people into the category of trans, despite its rejection by the Guatemalan State. On the other hand, however, they must adhere to a static notion of trans identity in order to promote themselves as a unified front. This analysis provides an example of the manner in which NGOs can provide spaces for queer identity, expression, and empowerment but still sharply govern the manner in which self-identity can be realized. In the next chapter, “To Foresee the Unforeseeable: LGBT and Feminist Civil Society and the Question of Feminine Desire,” Tamar Shirinian explains how two LGBT-advocacy NGOs upend the masculinity of civil society in postsocialist Armenia through feminist action. In a rigid, male, and heteronormative State, nongovernmental organizations may be one of the few open spaces for queerness, and through these bodies activists can subvert the sacrosanct categories of male and female, and also the public and private. As Shirinian asserts, the public is gendered male, but the participants in these NGOs engage in visible displays of feminist activist art to disturb the masculine and phallic influence of the State. This ethnography provides an example of the manner in which NGOs can provide a safe space for those who identify as queer; but through the actions of the participants, the NGO may be positioned as queer as well. This volume concludes with a summative chapter, “Queering the NGO/State Binary: On Governing Stateless Peoples,” from Elizabeth Wirtz who aptly ties all the chapters together by using ethnographic data from a refugee camp in Kenya, where refugees existing in liminality are dependent on UNHCR and a patchwork of NGO aid to provide for their needs. Thus, the NGOs do the work of both the State and humanitarian endeavors. In this example, the binaries break down because NGOs serve as both State and non-State, father and mother. The chapter concludes with insight into how the chapters in this volume have interrogated not only how categorical binary categorizations work, but also how this work is both reproduced and resisted in varying ways. Ortner’s metaphor is a useful one to think about how, despite slippages and fuzziness between boundaries, male and female, State and NGO are conceptualized as different along with the power relations embedded within this assumption of difference. Thus, the nuance provided by the scholars within represent a “queering” of the binary.

CHAPTER 8

“Little Dear Mothers” Governing the “Republic of NGOs” Mark Schuller

A major theme within NGO studies concerns the State-NGO relationship. During the initial wave of scholarship that celebrated the “NGO form” (Bernal and Grewal 2014) in the middle of the “NGO boom” (Agg 2006; Edwards and Hulme 1992, 1996), NGOs and States were often theorized within a “zero sum” relationship: one is powerful while the other is weak. Drawing on a critical anthropology of development that was inspired by Foucauldian conceptions of power (e.g., Crush 1992; Escobar 1995; Ferguson 1990), a special issue of Political and Legal Anthropology Review (Karim and Leve 2001) theorized NGOs as “privatization of the state.” Neoliberal policies enforced by international financial institutions such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund weakened “state systems” (Abrams 1988) through privatization and austerity measures that limited government funds. My own ethnographic engagement in Haiti has documented and theorized this (Schuller 2012, 2016, 2017). Haiti has been portrayed as a paradigmatic “weak state” (Rotberg 1997), and donor flows encouraging NGOs led to Haiti being portrayed as the “Republic of NGOs” (Klaerrich and Polman 2012; Kristof and Panerelli 2010). The 2010 earthquake exacerbated these tendencies, and even the United Nations (UN) Special Envoy Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton openly questioned the model of “weak state, strong NGO.” Bill Clinton’s “Lessons from Haiti” led the UN to embrace roles for strengthening States in their “transformative agenda.” While charting this theoretical course, even before it became widely acceptable, I overlooked the ways in which the State adapted to the neoliberal order. I was unwittingly reproducing the dichotomy of State and NGO by privileging State systems while missing what Abrams (1988) called “state effects.” More recent ethnographic data in postearthquake

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Haiti, which was propped up and infused with cash by both the Clintons and the United States’ regional nemesis, Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela, portrays a decidedly more complex, nuanced picture. In order to understand the nuances of the NGO-State relationship, this chapter draws on gender theory, particularly performativity. Rather than discrete categories of “NGO” and “state” (like “female” to “male”), or even “blurring boundaries” (Bernal and Grewal 2014), a continuum recognizing and affirming interstitial categories and subjectivities is useful. This chapter discusses the ways in which the State performs in “drag,” adopting the form and logic of the NGO project while maintaining its subject position as a State. The tips are far more than dollar bills: the State under President Michel Martelly (2011–16) was the recipient of billions in aid. Just like in drag, the makeup of projects and marketing worked to exaggerate NGO features. Similarly, the performance was understood as such: the State did not give up its “masculinized” identity or sovereignty but put on a temporary dichotomy-bending show for donors. For a while, it worked.

Privatizing the State? Rethinking a Thesis Claims of States being diminished or eroded, privatized or liquidated because of neoliberal globalization have been critiqued on ethnographic grounds (e.g., Chalfin 2006). Feminist scholars have engaged a gendered analysis of the State (e.g., Brown 1992; Heng and Devan 1995; MacKinnon 1989), which would be a useful way to interrogate what Leve and Karim (2001) called the “privatization of the state.” For example, “masculinized” arms of the State (e.g., militaries, border patrols, customs) have often been increased with neoliberal policies, whereas “feminized” arms (e.g., education, health care) have been reduced, with NGOs often playing roles as “gap fillers.” Haiti is often used as a primary example of this tendency, particularly after the 2010 earthquake. Donors, international agencies, and scholars—particularly political scientists—often portray Haiti as the paradigmatic “weak state” and, since the earthquake, call it the “Republic of NGOs” (see, for example, Klarreich and Polman 2012; Kristoff and Panarelli 2010; Schuller 2017). This discussion is usually couched in moral terms, and it usually rests on a “zero-sum” calculus: the stronger the State, the fewer NGOs. The botched and disappointing international response to Haiti’s earthquake offers a critique of this logic, and of donors’

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policies that prioritized NGOs to the detriment of the State. Like many other postcolonial States within the Global South, the Haitian State lost its ability to control or regulate the many NGOs working in the country, its role as “papa” in the words of some commentators. Donor policies favoring NGOs in effect “emasculated” the State. An ethnographic look encourages us to call into question the boundaries of State and NGO. In their provocative introduction to their pivotal collection of essays, Victoria Bernal and Inderpal Grewal argue that a feminist lens encourages scholars to “blur” boundaries between States and NGOs (Bernal and Grewal 2014). In an influential case study reprinted in the volume, anthropologist Aradhana Sharma (2006) analyzes the logic of a “shape-shifting” institution that exists within the liminal space between State and NGO, claiming both identities depending on context and strategic considerations. This chapter continues this line of analysis. Rather than the NGO being the “shape shifter” as it were, I discuss the ways in which the State responds to international reward structures that encouraged the “NGO boom” (Agg 2006). In effect, the Haitian State performs being an NGO, reproducing the project form. The complex and contradictory performance of the project form by the Haitian State calls into question the boundaries, however blurred, between State and NGO. The State’s ability to provide for its citizens, being the “father,” was eroded by conscious donor policies; by crossdressing as an NGO, the project form allowed for some resources to go to citizen-subjects. It is not by accident that recipients are overwhelmingly women. Following queer theory, it might be best to think of States and NGOs as a continuum, like the gender spectrum (see, for example, Shirinian this vol.). I have worked in and on NGOs in Haiti since my first visit in 2001. My dissertation was a comparative analysis of two women’s NGOs, attempting to understand the impact of funding on relationships on the ground. I have spoken with over two hundred Haitian NGO professionals and activists since this time; many are colleagues or comrades. I also have taught a course on NGOs at the State University seven times. Some former students have maintained contact, a few work for NGOs and others government ministries or even as elected members of parliament. Data for this chapter include informal conversations, archival information from several organizations, as well as publicly available information about the State-run programs discussed below. Since the data are public, and the figures government officials, full names used in the chapter are not pseudonyms.

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Creating the “Republic of NGOs” One year before Haiti’s 2010 earthquake, newly minted UN Special Envoy Bill Clinton declared there to be ten thousand NGOs in Haiti. How he arrived at this number has never been clear; he cited World Bank data, but the methodology was not specified. Nonetheless, repeating this figure unquestioningly and uncritically, foreign commentators often incorrectly assumed that it represented the highest per capita NGO population in the world (India has 3.3 million for a population of around a billion). The rhetorical tag of “the Republic of NGOs” was thus born, putting into words the realities of 90 percent of schools and 80 percent of clinics being run by private agencies. Commentators within Haiti had a more nuanced and specific phrase: a “non-governmental government.” It is beyond the scope in this short chapter to offer ethnographic grounding to how Haiti became the “Republic of NGOs” (see Schuller 2017 for a further discussion), but it is clear that Haiti has played a strategically important role as laboratory for what Arturo Escobar (1995) termed the “development encounter.” In 1948, a team of UN experts, led by anthropologist Alfred Métraux, conducted one of the first UN missions to Haiti and indeed one of the first applied anthropological research projects in the Marbial valley (Benedicty-Kokken 2016; Verna 2005). This first UN mission to Haiti offered tools for a strong central government, empowering François Duvalier, a country doctor employed in this effort, to assume greater control. Much has been written about the official development assistance going to the totalitarian Duvalier apparatus.1 Among the most appalling is that the International Monetary Fund’s own accounting revealed that their resources were going toward the feared paramilitary organization the tonton makout (Ferguson 1987: 70). Explaining this unwavering support to me in a 2005 interview, one Washington insider described the close ties to the Duvalier regime in Cold War terms: “he may have been a son-of-a-bitch, but at least he’s our son-of-a-bitch.” Later, the US and other international institutions found that the State was too “strong,” and thus they favored NGOs. The 1971 transfer of power from Duvalier to his playboy nineteen-year-old son, Jean-Claude (“Baby Doc”), was facilitated by the US Marines, patrolling the waters to keep dissidents out of Haiti. In exchange, Nixon’s envoy and future vice president, Nelson Rockefeller, negotiated for the Haitian government’s acceptance of US-based evangelical NGOs in his 2 July 1969 visit (Lwijis

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2009). While some NGOs such as CARE, Catholic Relief Services, and the Red Cross—which the Haitian government identifies as an NGO—had been around for quite some time, what Sauveur Pierre Étienne (1997) termed the “invasion” of NGOs began at this time. According to Haiti’s official database, eighteen NGOs were founded during “Papa Doc” Duvalier’s presidency, from 1957 to 1971, compared with thirty-four during the following fifteen years of his son’s presidency. In the three years that followed the ouster of “Baby Doc” in 1986, twenty-six NGOs set up shop in Haiti. This “invasion” was to deepen following periods of political instability, including the 1986 ousting of Jean-Claude Duvalier, the 1991–94 coup against Haiti’s first democratically elected president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and again in 2004, when Aristide was again forced out. Seen in this light, the 2010 earthquake thus differed primarily in scale. While not as high as ten thousand, the NGO Administration and Coordination Unit at the Ministry of Planning (UCAONG in the original French)—the entity officially charged with NGO registry—counted eight hundred NGOs in 2010. On 7 February 1986, faced with growing opposition, the United States facilitated an exit for Jean-Claude Duvalier. This opening coincided with the apogee of what has been called the “NGO Boom” (Agg 2006; Macdonald 1995). During the decade before 1996, the number of NGOs working in more than one country more than doubled to thirty-eight thousand (Scholte and Schnabel 2002: 250). By the first decade of the twenty-first century there were so many NGOs that we cannot even guess at their number (Riddell 2007: 53). According to development studies scholars Michael Edwards and David Hulme, who coedited a series of volumes in the 1990s, establishing a canon in NGO studies, donors at the time treated NGOs as a “magic bullet” (Edwards and Hulme 1996). Haiti’s proximity to the United States reflected realities of the Monroe Doctrine: the United States wielded hegemonic power in the region. Downsizing the State in Haiti also coincided with the ascendancy of neoliberalism in the United States, known locally at the time as “Reaganomics.”

Projects and Nongovernmentality Scholarship, especially within anthropology, has grappled with the term nongovernmental organization, arguing that it is defined as what-it-isnot (Bernal and Grewal 2014: 7; Fisher 1997: 441). The term has positive

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valences within political sciences and management. It is also generally considered positive when describing “activist” organizations. What, if anything, is in common between local neighborhood or women’s organizations and multinational, billion-dollar annual budget institutions? Is there anything that humanitarian, development, and activist agencies all do to warrant the same moniker? Radical Haitian activist/scholar Janil Lwijis, who was assassinated minutes before the devastating earthquake, had an answer. He discussed the role NGOs have in promoting pwoje—projects (Lwijis 2009). Projects are discrete, short-term interventions that, according to Lwijis, are aimed at implanting foreign capital in local communities. Scott Freeman (2017) discusses how the project form was what NGOs produced—in effect a commodity for sale to foreign donor agencies or intermediary NGOs. Projects tend to be announced to the community via road signs, billboards, radio spots, or T-shirts, always identifying the donor. In the case of road signage, the project often identifies the project number and duration. To many in Haiti, these signs are “marking territory,” identifying which NGO has been given responsibility in a given area, reflecting a reality of donors “cutting the cake” of Haiti and giving various slices to NGOs. NGOs represent a “parallel government,” and these signs are visible reminders of Haiti’s violated sovereignty. Outside Haiti, Monika Krause (2014) discussed the ways in which humanitarian agencies’ fealty to the project form shapes their actions and outcomes, and Erin Beck (2017) wrote about how this set of relations reproduces itself despite well-documented inefficiencies. These road signs also highlight a key component to projects: the centrality of visibility. The project is also characterized by attention to particular outputs, which can be documented and thus shared with donor agencies and contractors. “Outputs” are not the same as “outcomes”—the number of bags of rice or hygiene kits delivered does not and cannot measure whether a community became food secure or healthy. But these are the measures that “can be counted,” to borrow William Bruce Cameron’s phrase. These measures can then be broadcast to account for success, or at least effort, and so constitute pressure toward these discrete, short-term outputs. This project form and documentation have become ubiquitous in Haiti, much to the consternation of Haitian NGO professionals and government officials. Professionals in Haiti have been critical of this trend. “The project logic doesn’t work for us,” said Geralda, a Haitian director of an INGO. “We know addressing long term poverty, gender equality, edu-

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cation, and food sovereignty within national production isn’t measured in six-month increments.” So why do many NGOs continue this trend? Jill, a US citizen working in a large INGO after the earthquake, argued that it is because of donor funding: “Remember how your salaries are being paid.” Despite its inherent ambiguities and inconsistent long-term impacts, the project form has come to dominate international aid. Given the official attachment to projects, the State itself was forced to adapt.

Emasculating the “Papa” State Donor policies favoring NGOs in effect “emasculated” the State. Gradually, the Haitian State lost its ability to control or regulate the many NGOs working in the country—its role as “papa,” in the words of some commentators. Some argued that this was deliberate, as Duvalier’s hypermasculine military and paramilitary apparatus was too “strong” a State (Diederich 2011; Fatton 2004; Ferguson 1988; Organisation des travailleurs revolutionnaires 2005; Rotberg 1988, 1997). That said, neoliberal economic policies and donor flows fashioned Haiti into a paradigmatically “weak state” (Buss and Gardiner 2006; Rotberg 2003; Zanotti 2011). Decisions from the Haitian government contributed to this weakening—for example, citing its role in human rights abuses, Aristide disbanded the Army. NGOs also contributed to the weakening of the State. First, by offering salaries many times greater than the Haitian government, NGOs fed a public sector “brain drain” (Morton 1997: 25). In addition, many NGOs skirted Haitian law regarding official registry as foreign guest workers, which Geralda acknowledged as widespread and costing the Haitian government for each foreign NGO employee who did not register. Finally, only 10–20 percent of NGOs working in Haiti submitted their annual report in any given year, according to UCAONG staff.

The State’s New Clothes Bernard Hours (2003) argued that NGOs are pedagogical tools, diffusing what he called “Western” ideologies, in this case, the project form and notions of accountability. Learning from NGOs and in fact responding to some of the same pressures, government agencies began to act like

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NGOs, particularly in the promotion of projects. In effect, the State had to perform in drag as an NGO. While this drag performance, donning projects, was most visible during the postquake administration of Michel Martelly, boundaries began blurring earlier. The Social and Economic Assistance Fund (FAES) was created in 1990 by presidential decree before Haiti’s first democratic election to become a “public-private” entity, in effect, a GONGO, or a government-organized NGO in which foreign donors could have some degree of control and confidence. In 2009, bringing Bill Clinton to the table as Special Envoy, celebrated British economist Paul Collier published a report from a days-long mission to Haiti, outlining “public-private partnerships” as the solution to Haiti’s development challenges (Collier 2009). An early application of this, also in 2009, the water utility formally renamed itself to include sanitation as part of its mission and gained quasi autonomous status. The new entity, DINEPA, was unveiled just before the earthquake and played an active coordination role that many people in Haiti thought of it as an NGO. The Martelly administration in many ways invigorated the masculine face of the State. Martelly was a popular performer before the earthquake, known then as “Sweet Micky,” infamous for his bawdy lyrics and stage antics which included drag. He called supporters of deposed president Aristide, as well as Aristide himself, masisi—a derogatory term used against queer men, conflating sexual orientation and gender identity, later reclaimed—and key posts of his administration were staffed by former Duvalier supporters, including Duvalier’s son as head of security. He made pledges to reinstate the army, and former makout—Duvalier’s secret police—came out of hiding and were among the visible supporters and/or members of the government. Martelly also embodied the worst elements of machismo in some of his public addresses. In a campaign stop in Miragoane in August 2015, Martelly hurled sexually charged, misogynist insults at a woman who had asked a question about electricity provision. Three government ministers resigned as a result of the incident. Between Aristide and Martelly was soft-spoken technocrat, agronomist René Garcia Préval. At a donor’s conference on 25 July 2006, a little more than two months after taking office, Préval outlined a survival strategy. The Nouvelliste, Haiti’s largest daily newspaper, reported that the Inter-American Development Bank president Luis Moreno, from Argentina, noted that it takes two to tango. Préval replied that they prefer to dance to their own rhythm, konpa. As Wikileaked documents revealed, the United States was uncomfortable with Préval’s visible support from

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Cuba, which until 2015 had no formal diplomatic ties with the world’s sole superpower, and certainly from Hugo Chávez’ Venezuela. At issue was Chávez’s regional cooperation, notably PetroCaribe, offering lowcost oil and low-interest loans that generated a cashflow to the Haitian government, significant since the so-called “friends of Haiti” (including the United States, France, and Canada) had long since stopped financing budgetary support to the government, giving instead to NGOs. Joining PetroCaribe was one of Préval’s first acts upon taking office in May 2006. Préval himself had been to Cuba for medical treatment; his administration set up a formal medical exchange program with Cuba. Préval was set to step down in 2011, a year after the earthquake. Foreign agencies demanded that Haiti hold elections in 2010 with rubble still uncleared and a million people living under tents facing a cholera epidemic brought to Haiti via infected UN troops and defective sewage at a UN base (Hendriksen, Price, and Shupp 2011; Piarroux et al. 2011). Before visiting the Arab Spring, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited Haiti in January 2011 to strong-arm President Préval to reverse the election results in favor of Martelly (Peck 2013; Seitenfus 2015). The documentary Fatal Assistance (Peck 2013) also strongly implied that Bill Clinton backed Martelly in the elections, showing a familiarity and support, a point made more succinct by the Organization of American States Special Representative Ricardo Seitenfus (2015). Ever the performer, Martelly was able to continue the dance Préval started, paradoxically maintaining support from both the neoliberal troika and Chávez. Institutionally he created new cabinet-level positions with the title “secretary of state” rather than “minister.” This created a parallel structure wherein legally mandated ministries were set in competition with these ad-hoc secretaries of state, who did not have to be ratified by parliament. This parallel structure was pioneered and normalized by unelected NGOs that nonetheless have much larger resources than the elected government. One such high-level Secretary of State appointment was Rose-Anne Auguste as the Minister Delegate for Human Rights and the Struggle against Extreme Poverty. Auguste had been given a seat at the Interim Haitian Reconstruction Commission, co-chaired by Bill Clinton, as representative for Haitian “civil society.” She was chosen in this post because of her decades of experience in NGO management in the public health sector, especially HIV/AIDS, in a low-income neighborhood. The women’s NGO she managed was a multiyear recipient of USAID funding and a convener of an NGO platform to remake the urban neighborhood. Given Auguste’s multiple ties,

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mirroring the dance Martelly was engaging in, she was a controversial figure within the Haitian NGO community, even before her nomination to the Haitian government. She served as the government’s spokesperson on numerous occasions. Once working for the government, Auguste was called upon to attack critics of the Martelly administration, be they coming from NGOs, social movements, or universities. The country’s largest human rights organizations criticized Auguste’s report to the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights in Geneva on 9 October 2014. The war of words escalated. Possibly as a result of Auguste’s experience with projects as an NGO director, the new office sponsored multiple projects targeting lowincome women, the traditional constituency of Auguste’s NGO and also an important demographic for gaining legitimacy, as Martelly consolidated his own political power. Banners were hung all over Port-auPrince and several cities across the country about one program, “Ede Pèp,” declaring that “for the first time, ‘the people’ [Haiti’s poor majority] have received support from the government.” Dozens of YouTube videos were posted, most with barely one hundred views, about the program. Ede Pèp functioned much like an NGO, with a logo, institutional identity, vehicles, radio spots, and T-shirts. Ede Pèp was decked out in pink, the color of Martelly’s political party. Interestingly some segments of Haiti’s populist left, criticizing Martelly, wrote graffiti saying, “Down with Martelly, masisi,” in part referring to his wearing a “feminine” color. Ede Pèp was a food and rations assistance program, launched as “baskets of solidarity.” At once neoliberal and populist, Ede Pèp was funded by PetroCaribe thanks to an openly socialist, highly visible challenger to US hegemony. Many people wore rubber pink bracelets, including those whose visible allegiance had been to Aristide, first elected on a leftist, anti-imperialist platform and twice deposed. Arguably Ede Pèp’s success resulted from its indistinguishability from an NGO project. Food assistance became generalized in the internally displaced persons (IDP) camps following the 2010 earthquake. Ede Pèp spawned other NGO-like projects, like Resto Pèp, a mobile canteen serving free and drastically reduced-price cooked meals. Like distributions from humanitarian enstans (“instance” or agency, the vague language of the population that nonetheless avoids the entanglement of conflating everything as an “NGO”) before them, Ede Pèp and Resto Pèp were perfectly staged photo ops, and images of happy women recipients both standing and emerging from lines were shared on the programs’ Facebook pages, either to counter or to compete with foreign

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agencies. Tellingly, FAES, one of Haiti’s first State agencies in NGO drag, managed the funds.

Women as “Poto Mitan” As an additional irony, the State not only has to dress itself in project garb; it has to perform “feminism” by supporting organizations that provide both aid and opportunity for women. The introduction and other chapters in this volume argue that NGOs provide culturally and socially sanctioned professional opportunities for women given the ways in which care work is gendered. Haitian women are often said to be poto mitan, central pillars of the family and society, referring to the central pillar in traditional religious spaces (N’Zengou-Tayo 1998). On the one hand this offers women a higher moral status, and at least gestures toward women’s value within society. It is also interesting that the metaphor is based on Vodou, African-derived Creole ancestor worship. Reflecting on a recent scholarly interrogation of exceptionalism, is this belief exceptional within the Caribbean context? Since at least Edith Clarke (1957), scholars and particularly anthropologists have discussed women’s roles as heads of households, fixing a “matrifocal” thesis. Hortense Spillers (1987) termed these violent seeds of plantation kinship “Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe”; and Christine Sharpe (2010), “Monstrous Intimacies.” To wit, white male slaveholders raped some of “their” slave women and girls, and plantation slavery disrupted the family unit as it laid claim to ownership of not just women’s bodies but their children. On the other hand, valuing women as poto mitan papers over inequalities along a range of axes: access to education, health care, reproductive autonomy, income, and gender-based violence. Sabine Lamour (2017) has acknowledged the ways in which the term in effect fixes this stereotype of women-as-head-of-household. Offering lip service to the “brave” or “valiant” single mother normalizes this social fact and also offers the State an excuse to opt out of providing resources and other support (Lamour 2019), and can even silence women (Dubuisson and Schuller 2021). In Haiti, just like nearly all (or possibly all) societies studied by anthropologists, women are subjected to multiple forms of patriarchy, from daily harassment to systemic discrimination from grade school to employment. In Haiti, 29 percent of women aged fifteen to forty-nine have not had any formal education, compared to 15 percent of men

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(Cayemittes et al. 2001: 15). This inequality grows as children do, with girls not matriculating at the same rate as boys: girls and women constitute about 40 percent of sixth graders, 33 percent of philo (seniors), and 10 percent of science students at the public university (Anglade 1995: 62, 68). As factory worker and activist leader Marquise underscores, “Poverty is linked with discrimination because if the parents have girls and boys, they push the boys farther in school than the girls. My mother and father had eight children. And when I got to third grade my father said that he couldn’t pay for me to continue in school. Instead, I had to work to help raise the others, so they could go to school” (quoted in Bergan and Schuller 2009). This educational discrimination in turn shapes access to jobs, which spells economic discrimination against women. Women contribute 70 percent of the national economy but receive only 38 percent of the goods (MCFDF 2004). As in other export-processing zones such as the maquiladoras in Mexico (Churchill 2004; Collins 2003), women are overrepresented in low-paying factory jobs, constituting between 70 and 80 percent of the frontline workers. Gender inequality shapes, and is structured by, economic exploitation, as women workers are seen as more docile, and therefore easier to control, than their male counterparts (Enloe 2000; Sassen 1998). Even within the same strata of workers, Haitian women earn less than their male counterparts. As prefigured by the gendering of games and social roles in childhood, work is also gender segregated. Given women’s traditional role in the household, women formally employed as wage laborers work a “second shift” at home (Hochschild 1989), exacerbated by the fact that many women are heads of household, “the mother and the father” (Clarke 1957). According to a presentation by the Ministry of Women’s Condition and Rights, 59 percent of Pòtoprens households are headed by single women. In part a response to this systemic inequality, in Haiti, like elsewhere, particular forms of aid are targeted to women. As a result of conscious shifts in donor policies and years of tireless advocacy from feminists working within aid agencies (Porter and Judd 1999), donors have made policy decisions to favor women, for example in microcredit and food aid. Reflecting this, a male USAID/Haiti employee said, “You give money to a man and he’s as likely to spend it on beer or a lover as on his family. But if you give to a woman, you’re guaranteed that she will prioritize feeding herself and her children.” Since the earthquake, donors and large NGOs have adopted the World Food Program’s guidelines to give food aid exclusively to women, using a system of ration cards whereby

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camp committees give food cards to women the night before the food distribution by the NGO and UN troops. In theory, these policies are advantageous to women. However, the practice is more complicated, as women are not isolated individuals disarticulated from men in their families and communities (Bhavnani, Foran, and Kurian 2003), some of whom understandably seek to use this distribution system to their advantage. Additionally, in some cases, declaring women to be heads of household actively discouraged men’s responsibility and reproduced a stereotype of matrifocality (Spillers 1987). And, as I have argued elsewhere (Schuller 2015), well-intentioned policies targeting women in food aid had the consequence of increasing violence against women and “transactional sex.” Given official promotion of women in development coupled with traditional valorization of women’s role as poto mitan, as pillars of the household and society, the NGO sector offers Haitian women employment in a professional setting at high rates. Many NGOs employ women at higher rates than men, and roughly two-thirds of the NGOs I have surveyed since 2001 have women as national director or executive director. Several high-level NGO directors have family ties, either by birth or through marriage, to Haiti’s upper status groups, representing industry and merchants.

Ti Manman Cheri These contradictions—particularly considering the official promotion of women as recipients—were most expressed in the Ti Manman Cheri program. Haitian Creole for “Dear Little Mothers,” this program began as a project targeting school children. Managed by Martelly’s wife, Sophia, and claimed by her foundation, Ti Manman Cheri was a cash assistance program targeting mothers of school age children. Another government program, loudly touting outputs such as the number of children on school benches, was taking attention and resources. Once baptized a program, “lekòl gratis” (free school) took institutional space initially dedicated to parents. Instead of paying parents—mothers—to send their children to school, the Lekòl Gratis program paid private school directors, confirming an NGO-run, private, evangelical orientation to Haiti’s school system and, possibly, rewarding participants for loyalty at the ballot box. Paying for this program was a new tax on remittances and international cell phone calls, called for other purposes but after political

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pressure was set aside for education. Given a clear mandate from within the Ministry of Education, the Secretary of State for the Struggle against Extreme Poverty shifted the focus of Ti Manman Cheri to individual women in the form of cash assistance. Adopting international agencies’ tactical attention to Women in Development (WID), this project could be targeted to women without blowback. The architect of these NGO-ized projects is unapologetic about her collaboration with the government. As she described it, the opportunity was too great to pass up, and many tens of thousands of individuals were direct recipients instead of being sent through a maze of foreign NGOs, who quite visibly supported parallel bureaucracies. At the May 2014 two-year celebration of the program, Auguste declared: The power of Martelly-Lamothe has respect for you. This power has decided to walk hand in hand with you, for your children to have a better life, in free education. It’s been two years since this power, the “tèt kale” power, Martelly-Lamothe, decided to create this Ti Manman Cheri program to support their children’s education. It’s not a bluff or demagoguery when the power decided to support education and Ti Manman Cheri. This power decided to respect children’s rights, who deserve education like all children. A citizen like President Martelly, a citizen like Laurent Lamothe, don’t just do things any which way because all mothers are the mothers of the country. And that’s why he reinforced mothers with this Ti Manman Cheri program. Because it is the right of women who have been living in extreme poverty to get a little support from the Martelly-Lamothe administration to get out of extreme poverty, discrimination . . . . We can’t live in this misery anymore.2

The cash assistance program was the riskiest, given donors’ traditional reticence against individual subsidies. Several spots for Ede Pèp, launched by FAES, not only declared this to be the first support of its kind within Haiti, but also argued that these occur in all other developed countries. FAES argued that only Haiti is without such a social assistance program. Planned by an NGO veteran in a position created for her, managed by a GONGO, Ede Pèp represents an NGO-ization of the government. Instead of government programs, run through ministries, Ede Pèp was created to be like an NGO project, heavily mediatized and monitored, with individual beneficiaries tracked. And Ede Pèp was a relatively large project, 3.91 billion gourdes in 2012–13 (92.7 million USD), and 4.66 billion the following year (108 million USD).3 Once begun, projects be-

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gat projects. The largest was Program Scolarisation Universelle Gratuite et Obligatoire (PSUGO, the Universal Free and Obligatory Education Program), which claimed almost 1.4 million beneficiaries in 2012–13. Ti Manman Cheri was second with 97,000. PSUGO took up the largest share of the budget as well, 59 percent of the 2012–13 budget and 45 percent the following year (Dorsainville 2015: :41). The two largest programs were also the lowest cost per participant: PSUGO cost 1,511 gourdes per beneficiary and Ti Manman Cheri, 4,037. By contrast, the “Baskets of Solidarity” cost 104,863. There was wide variation between the levels of funding in the two years; for example, this latter program went from 325 million gourdes to 99 million. The vast fluctuation in allocation mirrors the NGO sector, and particularly the importance of project funding. Projects are short-term but also can be allocated, and spent, quickly: one of USAID’s evaluations of potential NGO recipients following the earthquake was their “burn rate”—how quickly funds can be spent. Tellingly, the instability (or “flexibility” in positive terms) in funding streams allows for priority areas to receive large and quick infusions of cash. The biggest beneficiary of this sudden scale up was emergency assistance, called “good solidarity,” shooting up from 37.8 million to 308 million between 2013 and 2014. For those following events in Haiti, this sudden jump raised eyebrows. While there weren’t any particularly severe natural weather events, there was an election. Recipients of the “baskets of solidarity” or the cash assistance had to give out their NIF, their National ID number, or were given a number in the process of receiving assistance. The Martelly administration had these numbers registered to vote. During the 2014–16 election process, stalled several times, local authorities who had all sided with the Martelly administration called these individuals to vote. It was, in short, political patronage. Persistent rumors abounded about people—women—receiving the same 1,000 gourdes envelope on election day. Proof has been difficult to obtain, but this could explain voter turnout irregularities in an election that had the lowest voter turnout ever, less than a quarter of registered voters going to the polls. All the funds were from PetroCaribe. One consequence of this dependency on PetroCaribe is that Haiti, which saw nearly all its international debt canceled in 2009 following a concerted international campaign, is again in debt. Since 2013, Haiti’s debt to Venezuela has increased rapidly, 1.8 billion gourdes as of 2014 and increasing (Dorsainville 2015: 66). Given the fluctuation in global oil prices, this debt is highly

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variable and unstable. And as a result, the UN’s Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) reported that many of the Ede Pèp programs were at risk. Indeed, PetroCaribe was itself dependent on world oil prices and the Chavez government. In 2017, the US government froze Venezuela’s financial assets. In addition to crippling the Venezuelan economy, this move also spelled the end of PetroCaribe, with ripple effects to recipient countries like Haiti.

Conclusions: Limitations of NGO-ization While NGO-ization is assumed to be more democratic, the eroding of the State has seriously harmed Haiti. One key element in the failures of aid delivery in Haiti was paradoxically the attachment donors had to NGOs, deploying the ideology that NGOs are less prone to corruption than governments. The ethnographic record has provided more than enough data to highlight that, in fact, this intervention was a large part of the problem, reproducing a vicious cycle wherein the government lost the ability to effectively monitor aid while their human capital was systematically drained to support the top-heavy NGO structure. Working around the State led to the creation of many orphanages and adoption rings, in effect creating the problem, as many “orphans” have families (Schwartz 2008). Not respecting the Haitian State also warps people’s needs, as Cindy, who worked for a donor agency, argued: “So an American comes down and says, I want to work on reforestation in Kenscoff because I want to still live in Port-au-Prince. There’s no oversight, no vision. Everything becomes hodge podge. There’s no progress, no base, no plan.”

Humanitarian Aftershocks The earthquake required that foreign discourse change. Bill Clinton as UN Special Envoy argued that NGOs work themselves out of a job, and at the March 31, 2010 UN Donors Conference, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the international community needed to stop “work[ing] around the government rather than to work with them as partners, or to fund a scattered array of well-meaning projects rather than making the deeper, long-term investments that Haiti needs now.”4 However, this discourse failed to materialize in practice. According to the Office of the Special Envoy (2012), less than 1 percent of emergency aid and

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10 percent of reconstruction aid went to the Haitian government; while foreign militaries and UN agencies received some funds, the majority of funds went to INGOs (see also Katz 2010). The Haitian Parliament was asked to vote to dissolve itself to make way for the Interim Haiti Reconstruction Commission, or IHRC, with Bill Clinton as cochair. Readers can watch Raoul Peck’s Fatal Assistance (2013) to see the impacts of this loss of State control. Jonathan Katz (2013) documented how the international community “left behind a disaster.” Journalists have uncovered myriad scandals, from financial mismanagement (Elliot and Sullivan 2015) to sexual abuse. In addition to the regular account of a local mission group or orphanage settling charges, in 2018 the aid world was rocked by an exposé of a “Caligulan” underage sex ring and cover-up by aid titan Oxfam GB. Tellingly the events that came to light as Oxfam was squeezing the pressure against the world’s wealthiest eight individuals and international agencies that supported them took place in 2011, seven years prior. As titillating as these scandals may be, they were at the very least predictable outcomes of consistent policies that erode the State while infusing NGOs with cash and turning them into implementers, what Haitian commentators call “tools” or “brandishing the sword,” for foreign agencies (Étienne 1997; Lwijis 2009). NGOs also reproduce class inequality and separation between themselves and their beneficiaries (Schuller 2009, 2012). In addition to asking the journalistic question, where did the money go, many in Haiti were concerned about the impacts of this aid, in effect, what did it do? Answering this question honestly and in ethnographic depth, the $16 billion postquake aid response represented to many “humanitarian aftershocks” (Schuller 2016). This NGO-ized aid under foreign control disrupted solidarity networks, created new leaders who stoked division within communities, reproduced and increased dependency, divided and split up families, and increased violence against women.

Project Fetishism These are all outcomes of donors’ project fetishization (Freeman and Schuller 2020). Particularly, the focus on highly visible, mediatized photo ops keeps donors’ and policymakers’ attention away from long-term, structural problems, or “structural violence” (Farmer 2004; Harrison 1997). This holds true for the State in project drag. When PetroCaribe funds dried up, the Haitian government agreed to an IMF arrangement

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to increase gas prices in July 2018. The people immediately revolted, and soon a social movement crystallized; unlike other aid to Haiti, PetroCaribe was a loan, and the government had to begin paying debt service. A movement erupted demanding kòt kòb PetwoKaribe a?—“where is the money from PetroCaribe?” The movement succeeded in getting attention from Haiti’s admittedly weak judicial system, which issued several partial reports. The last report as of this writing, 612 pages, implicated Haiti’s sitting president, mentioning his name sixty-nine times. At issue was 4.2 billion in funding for projects that were never completed. The Ti Manman Cheri program was specifically noted as little more than a show, with many fake accounts created. The official investigation revealed that of 579,986,600 gourdes (the exchange rate plummeted during the period) charged from 2012 to 2016, only 211,791,800 gourdes went to beneficiaries.5 In other words, 63 percent of the funds were unaccounted for. Other irregularities included that over seventeen thousand beneficiaries did not have a telephone listed, which was interpreted by the investigating commission as indications of funds being redirected to Martelly supporters not in financial need.

Beyond the Binary The case just discussed, in all its contradictions, muddies the waters in how to understand and classify both the State and NGO, as well as blurring boundaries (Bernal and Grewal 2014) between them. Returning the conversation to uncovering the gender of the State (e.g., Heng and Devan 1995; MacKinnon 1989), the ironies of the Martelly administration having to pitch to women recipients in the first place and performing the role of NGO and creating NGO-like projects calls into question the State’s masculine “provider” role. Saida Hodžić’s (2014) notion of the “bastard” comes closer to describe the contradictions. Far from being an absent father, as Timmer describes the State in regard to Roma in Hungary (this vol.), the Martelly State made a big deal of his patronage through these NGO-ized projects, highlighting how it was not social movements but the State that was becoming NGO-ized. Particularly given that Martelly is a performer, this discussion calls into question who wrote the script, who directed the performance, and who is the intended audience? The NGO form of the project was adopted quite consciously by the government at the direction of an NGO veteran. As Anne Fausto-Sterling (2000) argued, gender as ideology can impact biology, these discourses of “weak states” become self-fulfilling

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prophecies. In States like Haiti, called by some a “non-governmental government,” much of the leadership has come from the “NGO class” (Schuller 2009) by necessity as this sector has received consistent foreign donor support. Sociologist R. W. Connell (1995) discusses different forms of “hegemonic masculinities”—could the “weak state” be parallel to emasculated, “feminized” men? The overcompensatory bluster is easy to recognize in both individual men and States. Whose nuclear button is bigger? This funding and resulting much higher salaries have pulled qualified technicians from the public sector in the first place. In this NGO-ization of the State, forms of governance follow the individual managers, moving back into the public sector. The country remained under a foreign military occupation for fourteen years, so as long as the State “as papa” dances around the lack of sovereignty, it is allowed to fulfill its feminized roles providing to individual mothers that which had been given to INGOs. Mark Schuller is professor of Anthropology and Nonprofit and NGO Studies at Northern Illinois University and affiliate at the Faculté d’Ethnologie, l’Université d’État d’Haïti. Supported by the National Science Foundation Senior and CAREER Grant, Bellagio Center, and others, Schuller’s research on NGOs, globalization, disasters, and gender in Haiti has been published in over fifty book chapters and peer-reviewed articles as well as public media. He has authored or coedited eight books, including Humanity’s Last Stand: Confronting Global Catastrophe. He is codirector/coproducer of the documentary Poto Mitan: Haitian Women, Pillars of the Global Economy (2009). Schuller is coeditor of Berghahn Books’ Catastrophes in Context: A Series in Engaged Social Science on Disasters and University of Alabama Press’ NGOgraphies: a Series of Ethnographic Reflections of NGOs. Recipient of the Margaret Mead Award, the Anthropology in Media Award, and the H.S.A. Award for Excellence, he is active in several solidarity efforts.

Notes 1. See, for example, Diederich 2011; DuBois 2012; Dupuy 1989; Farmer 2003; Ferguson 1987; Trouillot 1990. 2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wTpUbuL2UY 3. The Haitian gourde has in recent years lost its value. As of 2012 the rate varied around 43 gourdes per the US dollar. Five years later the exchange rate was 68, and 94 in 2019.

212 • Mark Schuller 4. https://reliefweb.int/report/haiti/intl-donors-conference-towards-new-fut ure-haiti-over-5-billion-pledged 5. See Alphonse 2019.

References Abrams, Philip. 1998. “Notes on the Difficulty of Studying the State.” Journal of Historical Sociology 1(1): 58–89. Agg, Catherine. 2006. Trends in Government Support for Non-Governmental Organizations: Is the “Golden Age” of the NGO Behind Us? Geneva: United Nations Research Institute on Social Development. Alphonse, Roberson. 2019. “PetroCaribe: la CSC/CA déshabille ‘Ede Pep,’ le programme social-phare de l’ère Martelly.” Le Nouvelliste, 31 May 2019. https:// lenouvelliste.com/article/202545/petrocaribe-la-cscca-deshabille-edepep-le-programme-social-phare-de-lere-martelly. Anglade, Mirielle Neptune. 1995. Fanm Ayisyen an Chif. Port-au-Prince: Comité inter-agences Femmes et Développement (CIFD) en Haïti. Beck, Erin. 2017. How Development Projects Persist: Everyday Negotiations with Guatemalan NGOs. Durham: Duke University Press. Benedicty-Kokken, Alessandra. 2016. “On “Being Jewish,” on “Studying Haiti” . . . Herskovits, Métraux, Race, and Human Rights.’” In The Haiti Exception: Haiti, Anthropology,and the Predicament of Narrative, edited by Alessandra Benedicty-Kokken, Kaiama L. Glover, Jhon Picard Byron, and Mark Schuller. Liverpool: University of Liverpool Press. Bergan, Renée, and Mark Schuller, dir. 2009. Poto Mitan: Haitian Women, Pillars of the Global Economy. Watertown, MA: Documentary Educational Resources. Bernal, Victoria, and Inderpal Grewal, eds. 2014. Theorizing NGOs: States, Feminisms, and Neoliberalism. Durham: Duke University Press. Bhavnani, Kum-Kum, John Foran, and Priya A. Kurian. 2003. Feminist Futures: Re-imagining Women, Culture and Development. London: Zed Books. Brown, Wendy. 1992. “Finding the Man in the State.” Feminist Studies 18(1): 7–34. Buss, Terry, with Adam Gardiner. 2006. Haiti in the Balance: Why Foreign Aid Has Failed and What We Can Do About It. Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution. Cayemittes, Michel, Marie Florence Placide, Bernard Barrière, Soumaïla Mariko, and Blaise Sévère. 2001. Enquête Mortalité, Morbidité et Utilisation des Services (EMMUS III) Haiti 2000. Port-au-Prince: Institut Haïtien de l’Enfance, Pan American Health Organization. Chalfin, Brenda. 2006. “Global Customs Regimes and the Traffic in Sovereignty.” Current Anthropology 47(2): 243–76. Churchill, Nancy. 2004. “Maquiladoras, Migration, and Daily Life.” In Women and Globalization, edited by Delia D. Aguilar and Anne E. Lascamana, 120–53. Amherst, NY: Humanity Books.

“Little Dear Mothers” • 213 Clarke, Edith. 1957. My Mother Who Fathered Me: A Study of the Family in Three Selected Communities in Jamaica. New York: G. Allen & Unwin. Collier, Paul. 2009. Haiti: From Natural Catastrophe to Economic Security—A Report for the Secretary General. New York: United Nations Secretary General. Collins, Jane L. 2003. Threads: Gender, Labor and Power in the Global Apparel Industry. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Connell, R. W. 1995. Masculinities. Berkeley: University of California Press. Crush, Jonathan. 1992. “Power and Surveillance on the South African Gold Mines.” Journal of Souther African Studies 18(4): 825–44. Diederich, Bernard. 2011. Duvalier: Haiti and its Dictator. Princeton: Marcus Wiener Publishers. Dorsainville, Daniel. 2015. Évaluation du financement public de la politique de protection sociale: Une lecture spéciale du Programme Ede Pèp. Mexico City: Commission Économique pour l’Amérique Latine et les Caraïbes (CEPALC), United Nations. DuBois, Laurent. 2012. Haiti: Aftershocks of History. New York: Metropolitan Books. Dubuisson, Darlène and Mark Schuller. 2021. “Beyond Poto Mitan: Challenging the ‘Strong Black Woman’ Archetype and Allowing Space for Tenderness. Feminist Anthropology. DOI: 10.1002/fea2.12065 Dupuy, Alex. 1989. Haiti in the World Economy: Class, Race and Underdevelopment Since 1700. Boulder: Westview Press. Edwards, Michael, and David Hulme. 1992. Making a Difference: NGOs and Development in a Changing World. London: Earthscan Publications. ———. 1996. Beyond the Magic Bullet: NGO Performance and Accountability in the Post-Cold War World. West Hartford: Kumarian Press. Elliot, Justin, and Laura Sullivan. 2015. How the Red Cross Raised Half a Billion Dollars for Haiti and Built Six Homes. New York: ProPublica and NPR. Enloe, Cynthia H. 2000. Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics. Berkeley: University of California Press. Escobar, Arturo. 1995. Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Étienne, Sauveur Pierre. 1997. Haiti: L’Invasion des ONG. Port-au-Prince, Haiti: Centre de Recherche Sociale et de Formation Economique pour le Développement. Farmer, Paul. 2003. The Uses of Haiti. Monroe: Common Courage Press. ———. 2004. “An Anthropology of Structural Violence.” Current Anthropology 45(3): 305–25. Fatton, Robert. 2004. “The Haitian Authoritarian Habitus and the Contradictory Legacy of 1804.” Journal of Haitian Studies 10(1): 22–43. Fausto-Sterling, Anne. 2000. Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality. New York: Basic Books. Ferguson, James. 1988. Papa Doc, Baby Doc: Haiti and the Duvaliers. Oxford: Blackwell.

214 • Mark Schuller ———. 1988. “Haiti: from Dictatorship to Dictatorship.” Race & Class 30(2): 23–40. Ferguson, James. 1990. The Anti-Politics Machine: “Development,” Depoliticization and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho. New York: Cambridge University Press. Fisher, William F. 1997. “Doing Good? The Politics and Antipolitics of NGO Practices.” Annual Review of Anthropology 26: 439–64. Freeman, Scott. 2017. “Lojik Èd: Pwojè e Odit nan Ayiti.” Chantiers, Revues des Sciences Humaines et Sociales de l’Université d’État d’Haïti 4: 197–213. Freeman, Scott and Mark Schuller. 2020. “Aid projects: The effects of commodification and exchange.” World Development 126: 1–9. Harrison, Faye Venetia. 1997. “The Gendered Politics and Violence of Structural Adjustment: A View from Jamaica.” In Situated Lives: Gender and Culture in Everyday Life, edited by Louise Lamphere, Helen Ragone, and Patricia Zavella, 451–68. New York: Routledge. Hendriksen, Rene, Lance B. Price, and James M Shupp. 2011. “Population Genetics of Vibrio cholerae from Nepal in 2010: Evidence on the Origin of the Haitian Outbreak.” mBIO 2(4): 1–6. Heng, Geraldine, and Janadas Devan. 1995. “State Fatherhood: The Politics of Nationalism, Sexuality, and Race in Singapore.” In Bewitching Women, Pious Men: Gender and Body Politics in Southeast Asia, edited by Aiwha Ong and M. G. Peletz, 343–64. Berkeley: University of California Press. Hochschild, Arlie Russell. 1989. The Second Shift: Working Parents and the Revolution at Home. New York: Viking. Hodžić, Saida. 2014. “Feminist Bastards: Toward a Post-Humanist Critique of NGOization.” In Theorizing NGOs: States, Feminisms, Neoliberalism, edited by Victoria Bernal and Inderpal Grewal. Durham: Duke University Press. Hours, Bernard. 2003. “Les ONG: outils et contestation de la globalisation.” Journal des anthropologues 94–95: 13–22. Katz, Jonathan. 2010. “Billions for Haiti, A Criticism for Every Dollar.” Associated Press, 6 March 2010. ———. 2013. The Big Truck That Went By: How the World Came to Save Haiti and Left Behind a Disaster. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Klarreich, Kathie, and Linda Polman. 2012. “The NGO Republic of Haiti.” The Nation, 19 November 2012. Krause, Monika. 2014. The Good Project: Humanitarian Relief NGOs and the Fragmentation of Reason. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Kristoff, Madeline, and Liz Panarelli. 2010. Haiti: the Republic of NGOs? Washington, DC: US Institute of Peace. Lamour, Sabine. 2017. Entre Imaginaire et histoire: une approche matérialiste du poto-mitan en Haïti. PhD thesis, Université Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint-Denis. ———. 2019. “L’irresponsabilité, une compétence de dominant.” Revue internationale des études du développement 239(3): 7–29. Leve, Lauren, and Lamia Karim. 2001. “Privatizing the State: Ethnography of De-

“Little Dear Mothers” • 215 velopment, Transnational Capital, and NGOs.” Political and Legal Anthropology Review 24(1): 53–58. Lwijis, Janil. 2009. ONG: Ki gouvènman ou ye? Pòtoprens: Asosyasyon Inivèsite ak Inivèsitèz Desalinyèn—ASID. Macdonald, Laura. 1995. “A Mixed Blessing: The NGO Boom in Latin America.” NACLA Report on the Americas 28(5): 30–35. MacKinnon, Catharine A. 1989. Toward a Feminist Theory of the State. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Ministère de la Condition Féminine et de les Droits des Femmes (MCFDF). 2004. Colloque sur la VIH-SIDA et violence sexuelle. Morton, Alice. 1997. Haiti: NGO Sector Study. Washington, DC: World Bank. N’Zengou-Tayo, Marie-José. 1998. “Fanm Se Poto Mitan: Haitian Women, the Pillar of Society.” Feminist Review 59: 118–42. Organisation des travailleurs revolutionnaires. 2005. Haïti: 1986–2004 de la chute de Duvalier à l’éviction d’Aristide. Pantin: Les Bons Caractères. Peck, Raoul, dir. 2013. Assistance Mortelle. Strasbourg: Arte France. Piarroux, Renaud, Robert Barrais, Benoît Faucher, Rachel Haus, Martine Piarroux, Jean Gaudart, Roc Magloire, and Didier Raoult. 2011. “Understanding the Cholera Epidemic, Haiti.” Emerging Infectious Diseases 17(7): 1,161–67. Porter, Marilyn, and Ellen R. Judd. 1999. Feminists Doing Development : A Practical Critique. New York: Zed Books. Riddell, Roger. 2007. Does Foreign Aid Really Work? Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rotberg, Robert. 1988. “Haiti’s Past Mortgages Its Future.” Foreign Affairs 67(1): 93–109. ———. 1997. “Preface: Haiti’s Last Best Chance.” In Haiti Renewed: Political and Economic Prospects, edited by Robert I. Rotberg, vii–xiii. Cambridge, MA: World Peace Foundation. ———. 2003. Haiti’s Turmoil: Politics and Policy Under Aristide and Clinton. Cambridge, MA: World Peace Foundation. Sassen, Saskia. 1998. “Toward a Feminist Analytics of the Global Economy.” In Globalization and Its Discontents, edited by Saskia Sassen. New York: The New Press. Scholte, Jan Aart, and Albrecht Schnabel. 2002. Civil Society and Global Finance, Warwick Studies in Globalisation. New York: Routledge. Schuller, Mark. 2009. “Gluing Globalization: NGOs as Intermediaries in Haiti, 2007 APLA Student Paper Competition Winner.” Political and Legal Anthropology Review 32(1): 84–104. ———. 2012. Killing with Kindness: Haiti, International Aid and NGOs. Foreword by Paul Farmer. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. ———. 2015. “Pa Manyen Fanm Nan Konsa: Intersectionality, Structural Violence, and Vulnerability Before and After Haiti’s Earthquake.” Feminist Studies 41(1): 184–210.

216 • Mark Schuller ———. 2016. Humanitarian Aftershocks in Haiti. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. ———. 2017. “Haiti’s ‘Republic of NGOs.’” Current History 116(787): 68–73. Schwartz, Timothy. 2008. Travesty in Haiti: A True Account of Christian Missions, Orphanages, Fraud, Food Aid and Drug Trafficking. Charleston: Book Surge Publishing. Seitenfus, Ricardo. 2015. l’échec de l’aide internationale à Haïti: Dilemmes et égarements. Port-au-Prince: Éditions Université d’État d’Haïti. Sharma, Aradhana. 2006. “Crossbreeding Institutions, Breeding Struggle: Women’s Empowerment, Neoliberal Governmentality, and State (Re)Formation in India.” Cultural Anthropology 21(1): 60–95. Sharpe, Christine. 2010. Monstrous Intimacies: Making Post-Slavery Subjects. Durham: Duke University Press. Spillers, Hortence J. 1987. “Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe: An American Grammar Book.” Diacritics 17(2): 64–81. Trouillot, Michel-Rolph. 1990. Haiti: State against Nation: The Origins and Legacy of Duvalierism. New York: Monthly Review Press. ———. 2003. Global Transformations. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. United Nations Office of the Special Envoy for Haiti. 2012. “Haiti: Lessons Learned.” www.lessonsfromhaiti.org Verna, Chantalle Francesca. 2005. Haiti’s “Second Independence” and the Promise of Pan-American Cooperation, 1934–1956. PhD diss., Michigan State University. Zanotti, Laura. 2011. Governing Disorder: UN Peace Operations, International Security, and Democratization in the Post-Cold War Era. University Park: Penn State University Press.

CHAPTER 9

Identity and the Construction of Trans Citizenship in Guatemala Alejandra Wundram Pimentel

The sounds of people ordering food at the counter overshadowed everything, making it difficult to have a conversation. I could not participate in Lisa and Simona’s conversation until the activity in the diner slowed down. At this point, they were talking about Tara. Tara is an older trans woman who did not start identifying as trans until she was in her forties. As an academic, Tara writes and advocates for the rights of trans people and others with nonnormative sexualities. Lisa and Simona, leaders of one of Guatemala’s NGOs working for trans rights, discussed how, in a recent television segment, Tara identified herself as a bisexual trans woman. I was surprised when Lisa and Simona critiqued Tara’s approach to advocacy: “Tara hinders the project of trans rights.” I had supposed the visibility of Tara would have been welcomed. I asked Simona to explain: Simona: Gender identity and sexuality are different things. AW: Yes. Simona: But one is a trans woman first and then other things. But she [Tara] goes on television and into other places and defines herself as bisexual, and then people get confused and retreat from the project [of trans rights]. AW: But if gender identity and sexuality are different things, then why can’t Tara be trans and bisexual, just like one can be trans and lesbian? Simona: No. As trans women and people, we have a defined identity, which is that we are heterosexual; everything else creates confusion and hinders the project. AW: Sorry, I do not understand; do you prefer trans women to identify as heterosexual even when personally they . . .

218 • Alejandra Wundram Pimentel Simona: No. They must identify as trans. I don’t know why Tara bothered in constructing an identity if she is not going to identify with it. There are heterosexual men que se visten [who dress as women], but they are not trans but transformistas. They are still men. Look, as an example, I prefer to be the receptive partner, but that is not what usually happens. When I began to work [in sex work], everyone wanted to try the fresh meat, but I spent two weeks without eating because I did not want to be active [the penetrating partner in sexual relationships primarily with heterosexual men]. Later I had to change my mind. It is really traumatizing; I would not do it if I could.

This vignette is one of the most telling moments of my work with the TransWomen organization. This interaction illustrates the contested nature of trans identity within a supposedly united community. The conversation above opens a window into the process through which the work of TransWomen serves as a place of knowledge production, as this NGO promotes the development of new trans subjectivities that aim to strengthen their community and help inculcate model forms of citizenship. To further the argument of this volume, this chapter explores how the NGO can become a site of identity formation, and through this, an essential space to challenge the State’s narrow definition of citizenship. Through the flexibility of nongovernmentality, marginalized individuals can craft and bolster identities that may run counter to the view of citizenry promoted by the State and activate these identities to claim rights granted by the State. However, due to the need of the NGO to promote itself and its mission, the members within must fit within certain parameters of identity formation to create the illusion of a unified identity. It is for this reason that Tara’s characterization of herself as bisexual is so troubling to Simona. This chapter looks at the gendered social role this NGO takes as a space for enculturation of trans members as proper citizens and therefore part of the State. Through the NGO the trans members of this community can mobilize for recognition within the State. They help empower gender-nonconforming, female-identified people into using the category trans, despite the category and its expressions being generally rejected by the Guatemalan government and large portions of the population, like how the Ainu use the NGO to define their category of identity in Japan (see Loy this vol.). TransWomen’s work aims to promote acceptance and changes to the social imaginary by using transnational discourses of human rights to question hegemonic and masculinist gender discourses promoted and replicated within the State. In this

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chapter, I will discuss how this organization’s work helps construct a new type of gendered subject. Through the process of transforming its members’ understanding of their embodied experiences, they take a social role of empowering trans women, which also leads to supporting intelligible gender behavior and political, personal accountability for their wellbeing and a moral responsibility to the collective. These become complex processes where the NGO’s advocacy for State recognition and protection of trans rights collides with neoliberal models of personal responsibility; and challenges to a heteronormative gender system can also reinforce hegemonic gender paradigms. Like the Ainu Association, TransWomen uses strategic discourses and culturally approved subjectivities to simultaneously reinforce and challenge dominant State notions of gender/sexuality and proper neoliberal citizenship to mediate the position and rights of trans women in Guatemala.

TransWomen in Context I first began to be in contact with TransWomen in 2012 while I worked as a research assistant on a project led by UNAIDS. Through bibliographical research and interviews, this project aimed to report on the situation of trans women in Guatemala and Central America. Based on this early contact, I decided to join TransWomen in 2013 as a regular volunteer and technical assistant while I worked on research for my master’s thesis. As a volunteer, I conducted ethnographic research by actively participating in workshops, forums, and other activities in which the organization was engaged, through which got to know the other volunteers and activists. The data in this chapter derives from this work and includes information collected through ethnographic research, interviews with activists, and analysis of visual media produced by the organization. TransWomen was created in 2012 after several of its founding members split from the largest and oldest trans organization of the country, here referred to as TransNGO. TransNGO began organizing in Guatemala City in 2004 as a travesti organization.1 At first, TransNGO aimed to improve working conditions for sex workers who, although maleassigned at birth, identified or dressed as women. As Laura—the oldest member of TransWomen and one of the founders of the first travesti collective—commented, activists founded TransNGO as a direct response to the economic hardships, violence, and danger that accompany sex work. The demographics of this early organization reflected

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the immigration of women-identified individuals from El Salvador and other Central American countries due to the armed conflicts in those countries and the difficulties travestis faced in their countries of origin. TransWomen separated aiming to reach people outside the urban areas TransNGO was focused on at that time. The leadership of TransNGO was comprised of mostly immigrant trans women, but TransWomen, by contrast, promotes the development of Guatemalan trans women as leaders. In doing so, TransWomen wants to provide support and information according to needs specific to those who belong to Guatemala’s multiple ethic groups, even if they do not exclude women from other nationalities. Since its beginnings, TransWomen aimed to establish a national network, connecting different collectives in the country, and promoting equality and participation. At the time of research, TransWomen consisted of a central work-team based in Guatemala City and four regional collectives. The work-team is in charge of fundraising and national lobbying, through which they attempt to demand space for trans women in policy, nation-wide campaigns, and decision-making processes. Each regional collective organizes educational activities with service providers, police, and others to work for trans inclusion in their town and region’s decision-making processes. Finally, the organization conducts activities and workshops with the trans women in the capital and organizes network-wide conventions and workshops that bring together members from around the country.

Gender Nonconformity and Trans Activism in Guatemala A series of reports published by human rights organizations and activists document the precarious position that sex-gender diversity holds in Guatemala (FMM 2012; Galindo Arandi et al. 2010; Marroquín n.d.; OTRANS et al. 2012; Polanco 2008; REDLACTRANS 2012; Zapeta Mazariegos 2011). These reports demonstrate that trans people in Guatemala exist on the margins of a conservative State that, through engagement in religious politics, not only privileges heteronormative relationships, but also actively rejects sexual and gender diversity. Not only are trans women outside the limited protection of the State, their access to other resources, such as education, labor opportunities, and, in many cases, familial life, is extremely hindered as discrimination rooted in their gender identity permeates all aspects of their lives (Fernández 2004; Gonzáles

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Pérez 2003; Kulick 1998; Lewis 2010; Prieur 1998). In the absence of State support for and protection of trans women, the role of advocating for and protecting their rights has fallen in the hands of activist groups, many of which have become formalized as NGOs in the past ten years. For the activists in TransWomen, the shared experiences of discrimination and violence and the difficulties of sex work help create the social networks that form the base of their activist activities. The context of sex work gave many of the activists I interviewed the push to permanently express themselves as women. Sex work also provided a social network to discuss and compare experiences and share advice. Through these networks, individuals who began to organize in the early 2000s started to share information and construct a collective identity. Talking about her early experiences with organizing, an activist recalled: We began to get together in a restaurant; we began to talk about ourselves: they are killing us, and they are violating our rights. A couple of us began to get together, then four. I began to tell the others: take notice that we are organizing, because they are killing us. Take notice that the police are extorting us. The police are imprisoning us because we dress like women, and we must have the same rights as any other person. And we started meeting in this restaurant, we began to talk about transphobia, homophobia, and a bunch of other things that came up. Ten began showing up, then we formed a group in 2004. Empezamos a juntarnos en un restaurante; empezamos a hablar de que nosotras: nos estaban matando, nos estaban violentando nuestros derechos. Empezamos a juntarnos dos, empezamos a juntarnos cuatro. Yo les empezaba a decir a las demás: fíjese que nos estamos organizando, porque nos están matando. Fíjese la policía nos esta extorsionando. La policía nos está llevando presas porque nosotras andamos vestidas de mujer, y nosotras tenemos que tener los mismos derechos como cualquier otra persona. Y empezamos a juntarnos en ese restaurante, empezamos a hablar de la transfobia, de la homofobia, y de un montón de cosas que empezaron a salir a flote. Empezamos a llegar diez, después formamos ese grupo en el 2004.

At first this group did not organize as trans. Instead, they organized as travesti—the term used in the country at the time. As individuals began to interact with transnational activism through workshops and conferences in 2004 and 2005, TransNGO changed its name from Organización Travesti to Organización Trans, marking the introduction of new language and new ways of understanding the self into the country. Every activist I interviewed recalled a period when they individually

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moved from identifying as travesti or gay toward identifying as trans women. Despite the fact that both trans and travesti aim to describe the same group, they are attached to specific meanings and forms of transnational support. TransWomen, like other organizations in Guatemala, relies significantly on external funding. The postwar period (post 1996) brought a growth in the presence and activity of international aid organizations whose funding spurred an increase in the number of NGOs. International awareness of the marginalization of sex-gender diversity, connected with HIV prevention efforts, have since opened spaces of funding and training for sex-gender diversity organizations to improve life conditions for their different communities. Trans women have utilized these avenues to acquire resources to advocate for their rights. NGOs have provided important platforms for public engagement for underrepresented groups, like women, to make claims and promote change because they are legible to multiple audiences: donors, NGOs, the government, and the wider population (Bernal and Grewal 2014: 8). NGOs have also allowed for internationally legible language, such as transgender and transsexual, to enter the local lexicon in a way that allows for advocating for rights based on international human rights legislation.2 Through these actions, these NGOs begin creating a community whose situation of vulnerability requires specific and specialized responses from the State and economic support from donors. TransWomen is an organization that aims to fight for the rights of trans women in the country. For this type of mobilization, however, the NGO needs a group of people who have highly varied, flexible, and nonnormative identities and experiences to begin collectively identifying under the label trans. The NGO attempts to meet this goal through a process of education that promotes what “being trans” means. As TransWomen engages in pedagogical activities, they promote the development of moral subjectivities and a collective consciousness where individuals are encouraged to empower themselves so that they feel driven to engage in political activity and aid others to begin accepting themselves as trans.

Trans and the Construction of a Community The opening vignette of this chapter gives an insight into the way expectations of what being trans means is shared in daily interactions.

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However, this education is institutionalized in activities called identity workshops, where the meaning of trans is explained and its adoption promoted for the members of the NGO. Through this work, TransWomen creates meaning around a category that had no meaning in the context of the country until recently, and through so doing begins constructing a new form of subjectivity around an internationally recognized label, ultimately creating the community it serves and protects. Since early discussions of transsexuality as a medical category in the early part of the twentieth century, trans, transgender, and transsexual identities have been challenged, contested, and changed. Leslie Feinberg, in “Transgender Liberation,” first used the term transgender to define those who “defy the ‘man’-made boundaries of gender” (Feinberg 2006: 205). For Feinberg, transgender is a political category for all those who felt oppressed as a result of their separation from normative gender roles, including, but not limited to, transsexuals, drag kings and queens, effeminate men, and masculine women. Transgender and trans as umbrella terms have heavily influenced the debate over gender diversity ever since (Stryker 2006). Transgender and the multiple embodiments interpellated under the term stand against the imagined strict and mimetic relationship among sex, gender roles, and gender identity. Trans, transgender, and transsexual were adopted as human rights terms in a context when sexuality was absent from most conventions on human rights, and gender was taken for granted as a self-explanatory category (Petchesky 2000). Feminist activism began to emphasize sexuality in human rights conventions starting in the 1990s. However, the misconception that gender is synonymous with biological sex persisted, and the inclusion of new possibilities for sexuality and gender identity remained marginal (Waites 2009). In 2006, the Declaration of Montreal on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Human Rights and the more influential Yogyakarta Principles on the Application of International Human Rights Law in Relation to Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity were the first active attempts to bring sexual orientation and gender identity into the international agenda, though not without significance resistance. Discussing sexual orientation and gender identity cross-culturally poses problems when the experiences they aim to define are internally fragmented and their expressions heterogeneous. Scholars such as Stuart Hall (1996) and realist scholars (Alcoff and Mohanty 2006; Martínez 2012; Mohanty 2000; Moya 2006) have called attention to identity as a

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process that is impermanent, in constant flux, and fragmented. However, the most flexible, contested, ambiguous experiences of identity and orientation clash with more essentialist public discourses that assume them as stable. These transnational terms, although embracing diversity, evoke a globally understood, coherent, and unitary self over blurred identifications. These terms, although strategic, aim to make sense of experiences that are disparate, making assumptions about the experiences, aesthetics, and meanings of gender, resistance, and compliance that vary greatly across the world. Gender identity and sexual orientation, as well as trans, lesbian, and other such terms, attempt to encompass this cross-cultural diversity, and yet they can be critiqued for their inability to transcend the limitations of the Western-binary thinking that gave rise to them. Despite their limitations, these terms have become the principal categories globally to describe gender and sexual nonnormativity. The strength that the term trans has obtained as a form of unifying the movement of gender nonconforming women in Guatemala and elsewhere has to be understood in context of what Arnaldo CruzMalavé and Martin Manalansan call teleological development, through which legibility of sexual differences depends on a globalizing development discourse (2002: 5). Cruz-Malavé and Manalansan reflect on how the legacy of colonialism has centered the United States and Europe as paragons of modernity. Therefore, they claim, US and European understandings of gender difference have become hegemonic due to the idea that the countries of the Global South should strive to reach US and European forms of modernity. Other forms of understanding sex-gender diversity must fit within the terms of the Global North to claim liberation and political consciousness. In Guatemala, these terms have come to replace other terms and identifications, especially travesti and vestida,3 and have led to important negotiations in the understanding of individual experience for those who feel included in the term. Although travesti is officially conceptualized by TransWomen under the umbrella of trans, it holds a different status than transgender and transsexual. The definition of travesti used by TransWomen states that travesti can be an initial stage of transition. In practice it is often regarded as such, with people in the community who linger in behaviors associated with travestismo assumed to have lesser progress in the process of constructing their identity, which is expected to eventually become trans. Lucía, one of the longest standing members of TransWomen explained this process towards identifying as trans:

Identity and the Construction of Trans Citizenship in Guatemala • 225 Society typecasts you as travesti, even if you are transsexual or transgender; and because of one’s lack of knowledge, of not having the correct information, we also mistakenly typecast ourselves. La sociedad lo encasilla a una como travesti, ya seas transexual o transgénero; y por el desconocimiento también de una, por no tener la información adecuada, también una misma cae en el error de encasillarse más.

As trans women began to organize, they were folded into OASIS, the first LGBT+ organization in Guatemala. Increased participation in international conferences brought exposure to the term trans as an identity that was gaining traction in the international community. Because of their participation in these international spaces, Laura recalls, they began to realize that, as a part of a gay organization, trans women were seen as part of the MSM category, or men who have sex with men. There was a growing sentiment that their presence in OASIS increased this organization’s status as an umbrella organization, giving it access to funding that was not used for programs catered to the unique needs of trans women. By framing these women as MSM, their particular experiences and needs remained invisible, dismissing experiences of transphobic discrimination that gay men did not experience (Zapeta Mazariegos 2011). Separating from OASIS was the first step of constructing the national trans communities as independent political and social actors. By constructing trans people as a distinct community, trans organizations actively present themselves to the State, calling for attention and reclaiming their right to be recognized as citizens. It was necessary to raise awareness that they, as travesti and later as trans, exist, are a part of society, and experience particular forms of violence and exclusion due to their gender nonnormativity. By working to evidence the way trans women are relegated to positions of vulnerability, Laura’s comments about their time as part of OASIS reflect experiences with invisible hypervisibility. Gender nonnormativity is hyper visible, and thus subject to increased surveillance, discrimination, and abuse. However, the consequences of this hypervisibility remain invisible (see Stryker 1994). National legislation does not explicitly mention gender identity, making trans women legally invisible, and their political claims against exclusion dependent on the interpretation of general antidiscrimination clauses. Their invisibility thus reinforces the sex-gender hierarchies that exclude them.

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Struggling against the invisibility of the struggles of gender nonconforming women required making a clear distinction between what being it means to be a gay man versus a trans woman. Ensuring this distinction has important ramifications when it comes to the relationship of the community as a part of the national imaginary, and of the position of the NGO vis-à-vis the State. Whether trans women can position themselves as a distinct group impacts their ability to fight for special protections, programs, and policy. It also opens the door for being included in the national census and to have representation in local and national political spaces. Trans women must make a claim that they are distinctive and that policies directed toward gay men are not apt enough to cover their specific needs and vulnerabilities. The work of TransWomen is reminiscent of Nguyen’s (2010) description of “therapeutic citizenship” among HIV positive men in West Africa. In the midst of West Africa’s crumbling infrastructure, NGOs emerged as the primary, and often only, sites of HIV treatment. These NGOs sought to establish a network of solidarity among HIV-infected men through testimonials of their experiences with the illness. Accessing life-saving benefits from NGOs became dependent on the successful narration of testimonials, often centered on Western notions of gay identities. Thus, HIV-infected men had to learn how to take up and perform appropriate gendered and sexualized identities as a condition of access to rights and services. TransWomen seeks to make gender diverse people in Guatemala visible, and therefore able to claim rights as citizens, through the adoption of the identity trans and the promotion of consciousness raising to foster a sense of shared identity, community, and, therefore, solidarity. Making trans women and their needs visible and identifiable has been a necessary project for the basic functioning of the NGO as well, specifically in gaining space and funding. For building this visibility, educational and consciousness-raising activities gain importance. During the course of my research, TransWomen spent a significant amount of time on what they called talleres de identidad (identity workshops), aimed at trans women, and talleres de sensibilización (sensitization workshops), aimed at healthcare providers, government officials, and other relevant actors. Although these two types of workshops are directed toward different groups, they serve a similar purpose: to generate knowledge about issues of gender and sexuality, to inform others about the social, political, and economic situation of trans women in the country, and to call attention to the fact that trans people are a community whose human rights need to be protected.

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During talleres de identidad, TransWomen uses what Howe (2013: 62) calls “intimate pedagogies”—small face-to-face interactions that connect intimate aspects of people’s lives with larger rights discourses in order to create individuals versed in the dominant discourse on international human rights of gender and sexual minorities. These workshops attempt to inculcate a “trans consciousness” and promote personal identifications that shift their identification from gay or travesti to transgender or transsexual. These workshops perform strategic work in several ways. First, they promote identifying as trans. Second, they construct a collective identity around the term trans to create a base for political action. This work of building internal cohesiveness around an identity is intended to raise the visibility of the identity and community. They are organizing around a label that does not simply represent a local experience. Instead, they are organizing around a label that aims to describe a transnational and transhistoric experience that marks them as a vulnerable population.4 By organizing under this term they can support their claims through transnational legislation that permits them gaining traction and legitimacy even when there is still little political support for LGBT+ rights. And lastly, they create a tie between trans identification, human rights, and personal responsibility for the collective’s future.

The Proper Socialization of Gender As Tara’s case shows, while the label trans begins to gain traction, individuals’ previous identifications as travesti, bisexual, or gay start to be perceived as inadequate because of the ways activist discourses and practices have constructed new ways of understanding material conditions, as well as experiences and desires of gender. As I will discuss later, these are always mediated by State discourses and hegemonic power relationships. They are also, however, disarticulated from the State as they come together with norms defined by universalizing ideas of both neoliberal values and human rights (Ong 2006). Ortner (1974: 85) explains that culture must assert proper relations between human existence and natural forces, for which women can be taken as a mediator between culture and nature as they are traditionally expected to produce well-socialized members of society. To function, she argues, a society needs citizens who adhere to its moral precepts. TransWomen takes up this feminized role as the mediator of knowledge production and proper socialization of the citizen-subject by leading

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its members to adhere to specific moral and social roles that aim to help the members claim belonging within a State that has historically rejected them. As they work to construct the trans community of the country, they promote identifications that aim to be legible within both the State-endorsed gender constructs and neoliberal logic. Guatemala has the largest measure of gender inequality in continental Latin America (UNDP 2018). This measurement is reflected in the pervasiveness of conservative gender roles and high levels of gender-based violence. The influence of religious organizations in political arenas has limited the advancement of LGBT+ and women’s rights, especially regarding sexual and reproductive health and in marriage equality. In 2017, Congress proposed the Law Initiative 5272 for the protection of life and family (Proyecto de Ley 5272 Ley de Protección de la Vida y la Familia), which aims to expressively forbid same-sex marriage and raise penalties for abortion (Comisión Ordinaria de Legislación 2017). Additionally, this law prohibits sexual orientations that promote what has become known as “gender ideology,” rejecting alternative ideas of gender, gender roles, and sexuality. Section V of the motives for this law states regarding marriage: This chapter contains a prohibitive order to private and public educational entities to promote, in childhood and adolescence, politics or programs regarding sexual diversity and gender ideology or to teach as normal sexual conducts other than heterosexuality. Contiene además este Capítulo una disposición prohibitiva a las entidades educativas públicas y privadas, de promover en la niñez y adolescencia, políticas o programas relativos a la diversidad sexual y la ideología de género o enseñar como normales las conductas sexuales distintas a la heterosexualidad.

This proposed law gathered significant support despite protests of unconstitutionality that eventually led to several changes in its content. During the political crisis of the second half of 2018, the call for respecting life and traditional family has become, with its implicit and sometimes explicit rejection of diverse forms of gender and sexuality, one of the main platforms through which the President and Congress gathered support from the conservative sectors in Guatemala. This law makes visible the power that conservative ideas of gender and sexuality hold within the country, socially and legally. The pervasiveness of taking for granted the biological basis of gender and the unequivocal link between stable and binary gender and heterosexual sex

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allows for the legitimation and promotion of discrimination and violence against those whose gender or sexuality is nonnormative. Although dissident voices exist within Congress,5 churches, and other high-level government positions, these are overshadowed by discourses of religious morality and Christian values. Outside educational contexts, there is also significant opposition to discussing sex-gender diversity from governmental authorities, the media, and the public. Responses to campaigns about sex-gender diversity often give rise to comments that use religion or social inequality as reasons to reject claims against the discrimination of sex-gender diversity. The following comment posted as a response of a video by Free and Equal Guatemala evidences this position6: That LGBT thing, with all due respect, goes against GOD’s law, better look to God to be cured of your sin. It is perversion, period. Believing that you are what you are not is a pathology, socially promoting the normalization of a pathology and in the name of the “rights of men” is abhorrent and pathetic. Eso de LGBT, con el debido respeto pero eso va contra las leyes de DIOS, busquen a Dios mejor para que los sane de su pecado, es perversión y punto. Creer ser lo que no se es una patología, promover la normalización de una patología socialmente y en nombre de los “derechos del hombre; es aberrante y patético.

In this context, NGOs that protect progressive visions of rights for women and LGBT+ communities are confronted with a State apparatus that is still dominated by and legitimizes masculinist and conservative perceptions of gender and sexuality. TransWomen as an NGO stands in opposition to these discourses, and their work aims to advocate for changes in the perception and legislation regarding gender and sexual nonnormativity. They deeply challenge traditional conceptions of the relationship between biological sex and gender and promote the seemingly radical idea that those who disrupt these conceptions have a right to exist. As they empower trans women to understand and accept their experiences and work with other actors, TransWomen remains, however, unable to completely disentangle from the dominant gender framework. In the opening vignette, Tara is questioned because she identifies both as transgender and bisexual. Other members are reprimanded by both leaders and other members of the NGO for identifying their sexual desire for men as gay and not as heterosexual. These situations high-

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light that part of their strategic use of discourse—the NGO promotes the use of trans in a way that unintentionally replicates the State’s heteronormative discourses and power relations where to be a woman implies being sexually attracted to men. In their perspective, Tara hinders the project of trans rights by rejecting their discourse where trans women are heterosexual. These acts of policing members’ self-identification reflect the NGO’s reproduction and affirmation of normative gender-sex categories that are sanctioned by State discourses and a strategic understanding that trans identities might be more palatable and therefore legitimized if they fit normative expectations of gender roles and sexuality. Being intentional or unintentional, TransWomen encourages identification with intelligible expressions of womanhood, thus promoting trans women’s integration based on a specific form of gendered citizenship, where motherhood, sexual passivity, care work, and heterosexuality are highlighted. The State’s discourses on and construction of normative gender roles find embodiment, paradoxically, thus in trans women’s gender nonnormativity. The work they conduct is permanently tangled with the State, as dominant State narratives permeate and influence these activist’s work and the way the NGO positions itself as an opposition to it. Through their work, the NGO also situates activism as a form of enacting citizenship through political participation and rejects conservative claims of immorality by highlighting their responsibility to their community as a moral imperative. During interviews, members of TransWomen could recite what the terms trans, transgender, and transsexual mean according to the NGO’s official definitions and transnational activist terms, but their personal connection to trans went beyond simple definitions by highlighting the connection between collective identity and proper citizenship: It means to have a, like a guide, something that is mine. For example, to lead a life more identified as a woman, to empower my friends to take that role. Significa llevar una, una como guía, como algo que es mío. Por ejemplo, llevar una vida más, más identificada como mujer, empoderar a mis amigas que lleven ese rol. I feel an accomplished person, despite the social load that exists in my country and the context I surround myself with. Because every time I leave my house, I am the object of mockery, I am the object of rejection, I am object of discrimination, of stigma, of transphobia,

Identity and the Construction of Trans Citizenship in Guatemala • 231 from the general society and from everyone that is part of the State of Guatemala. So, despite all of that, I have a clear conviction with myself because I feel free, because I finally express to society what I want to be and what, when I began to build my identity in my childhood, in my adolescence, and in my youth, I wanted to be. I managed to get out of that, of this display case in which so many of our friends remain trapped, like a cage. Me siento una persona realizada, a pesar de toda la carga social que existe en mi país y en mi contexto en el que me rodeo. Porque a cada rato desde que salgo de mi casa soy objeto de burla, soy objeto de rechazo, soy objeto de discriminación, de estigma, de transfobia, de parte de la sociedad en general, de parte del personal del estado, de todo lo que conforma el Estado de Guatemala. Entonces a pesar de todo eso, pues yo tengo mi convicción clara conmigo misma pues siento liberada en esta parte, porque al final expreso a la sociedad lo que yo quiero ser y lo que, al inicio de construir mi identidad en mi niñez, en mi adolescencia, mi juventud, quería ser. Ósea logré salir de ese, de ese, escaparate en el que muchas de nuestras compañeras todavía se encuentran encerradas, como en una jaula.

These excerpts show how these activists use trans to demonstrate their agency to construct their lives and bodies as women, despite the limitations. The language of trans further endorsed their empowerment through locating their desires and projects in terms of struggling to obtain rights historically denied to them. These comments reflect the many instances where trans was a short word for both a specific gender identity and for the process of asserting oneself as a legitimate member of society despite the experiences of stigma, discrimination, and rejection that come from a transphobic context. As the activists explain their identification as trans in terms of overcoming difficulties, they also express a discursive and embodied responsibility to act on the conditions of their exclusion that both aims to empower them and push them to become activists, thus perpetuating the work of the NGO. However, not only does the organization promote accountability to the collective but also to oneself. Each member has a responsibility to make herself capable of overcoming obstacles. As the earlier vignette shows, this responsibility often includes embodiment of the specific trans identity the organization has defined to help the movement move forward. Because activism provides an outlet to express the frustrations over an exclusionary State and construct political demands, engaging in activism through learning and, eventually, teaching becomes a practice of

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superación, of improving oneself. The call to superarse, to overcome the limitations imposed on them by their context, was a recurrent trope in conversation. Superarse implies opening oneself to spaces in education, work, or other areas previously denied. It also describes the freedom to be and construct oneself based on their own desires, this being socially, through the adoption of their gender, or economically, through the ability to access the recourses to change their bodies, access feminine consumer goods, or economically support their families. Working to superarse therefore is a direct response to the State’s masculinist stance that rejects them. For conscious trans women, even sex work can become a space for teaching. As an activist told me: Sometimes they come to the street, and they ask you if you are TV [travesti], that’s how they call it, and one has to say: No, I am trans. Then they ask you what that is, and you tell them, and they learn something. A veces llegan a la calle y te preguntan si sos TV, así le dicen, y uno les tiene que decir: No, soy trans. Y luego te preguntan qué es eso y pues ya les dices y aprenden algo.

Through the recurrent use of these tropes, members of TransWomen created a link between activism, personal growth, and the reality and needs of the broader trans community. This link is not surprising as many of the trans women I talked to acknowledged how their situation had improved since trans groups began organizing. The use of strategic discourse and responsibility is not all encompassing and constructs “others”—those who have not had or have refused the opportunity to gain the resources to concientizarse, or to gain “adequate” consciousness of their identity and context. Because trans must show some level of internal coherence, those who do not think trans describes their identity, or who interpret the term differently, threaten the mission of TransWomen. Simona would often say, “I always tell them to participate, to learn, to improve themselves, but some of our peers do not want to improve.”7 Not wanting to improve themselves could mean several things: (1) identifying as travesti instead of trans, as the latter holds a higher status and they have taken it to be an informed and politically conscious approach to identity; (2) not being bothered by people calling them by their masculine name; (3) being critical of the NGO and its leaders. Practices are not only important because of their meaning, but also because they contribute to constituting the individual (Mahmood

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2005). Practices often constitute trans women in contradicting ways. Lauren Leve (2014) discusses how Freirean and neoliberal frameworks of thinking about freedom can coexist within the same organization’s approach to advocacy. She explains that discourses of masculinized, neoliberal modernization conceptualize the citizen as responsible consumers, economically self-reliant, and politically active. Freirean ideas situate agency not as choice to consume but as empowerment through a change of consciousness that eventually manifests in a change in power relations. She explains that this can happen because both logics have as a goal the development of subjects as self-conscious agents who eventually will manage to transform reality. Both models imagine the subject as somehow incomplete and only fully actualized in the moment of greatest autonomy, even though autonomy and transformation are conceptualized differently. The discourse around superarse is a discourse of empowerment, aiming for a freedom to express and make decisions for oneself. It acknowledges personal growth without collective empowerment is unsustainable, especially when challenging structural violence, which requires collective consciousness and action. As TransWomen links identity with moral responsibility to the individual and group’s wellbeing, its work also inculcates what is currently expected of a neoliberal citizen. This resonates with Trnka and Trundle’s (2014: 138) analysis of the “responsible citizen” promoted by a neoliberal logic. Citizens are constructed as autonomous and independent, and their empowerment is highlighted to fulfill their potential. Based on this logic, citizens must reject antisocial behavior to promote inclusivity. Their responsibility depends on individuals conducting moral evaluations of them, designing their lives to mitigate risk and maximize benefits for themselves and others.

Conclusion TransWomen as an NGO not only engages a set of subjects, trans women, it also actively helps create trans women at any given time as activists, agents, or victims. They have had to engage in processes of community building that later translated in their pedagogical and political interventions with the government, service providers, and even their own social networks. They use strategic approaches for public presentation that attempt not only to challenge State policy but also to create a cultural change regarding how people (including their own

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community) think about gender rights and sexuality (Howe 2013). As the members engage in activism and with the networks, discourses, and practices it entails, they construct new desires, new language, and new ways to interpret their experiences. The new subjectivities that arise through activism further ensure the continuation of the organization and the larger movement by instilling a type of moral subjectivity where the individual is responsible for both herself and to the future of the trans community. This process is not without its contradictions, as their work with gender both disrupts and supports conservative State discourses about gender and sexuality. They also aim to boost the autonomy trans women have in making choices about their own lives while at times also curtailing this freedom for the movement to be legible to the State. Finally, they aim for the State to take responsibility for recognizing and protecting their rights, while promoting the neoliberal models of the self that are preferred in Guatemala where responsibility for citizens’ wellbeing is taken away from the State and put in the hands of marginalized groups themselves who are evermore thought to be solely responsible for the outcomes of their lives. The work of TransWomen in attempting to construct a collective consciousness that translates to activism exhibits internal contradictions as it relates itself to the State. The NGO fills a feminized role of mediating knowledge production and rearing individual people into properly socialized citizens; yet this is accomplished by promoting masculinized traits such as autonomy, individualism, empowerment, and politically aware citizen-subjects who demand State recognition and rights. This NGO straddles the boundary of both challenging and reinforcing State-sponsored discourses of normative gender roles by promoting the adoption of a subversive gender identity (trans) alongside a normative sexuality (heterosexual). The dual-gendered approach is even more peculiar in that the NGO and its leaders promote a version of womanhood for trans women that adheres to masculine notions of the neoliberal self. By examining the work of TransWomen, we can see the powerful role that NGOs can play in cultivating notions of citizenships and rights that are informed by both local gender and sexuality ideologies and international discourses on human rights. TransWomen is also disarticulated from the State as it exists and mediates discourses of human rights, international donors, and transnational communities of activists. TransWomen’s work is also deeply intertwined with the State both because

Identity and the Construction of Trans Citizenship in Guatemala • 235

it rejects the hegemonic narratives and actions that aim to curtail trans women’s lives and, to act for transformation, it must work within the State’s structure, its systems of meaning, and the same narratives they wish to change. However, the incorporation of trans women’s NGOs, and therefore trans women, into the existing power structure through both social engagement and legal recourse is, it itself, a significant accomplishment, one that hopefully will lead to more transformation and the advancement of trans women’s political, economic, and social goals. Alejandra Wundram Pimentel earned a master’s in Social Anthropology from Purdue University in 2016, after which she left the academic setting to work full time as a practitioner focused on gender planning in disarmament, demobilization and reintegration, peace-building, and development. For her master’s thesis she explored how trans rights NGOs give meaning to individual and collective identity by analyzing how they navigate between the transnational development industry, localized experiences, national understandings of gender, and activist’s construction of what “trans” means in the context of Guatemala.

Notes 1. According to TransWomen’s working definition, a person who utilizes clothing associated with the “opposite sex.” Often used to describe men who dress as women but do not live as women. For some, it is also a transitional identity in the process of building a trans identity. 2. Organizing under terms legible within transnational human rights discourses increases the visibility of these organizations and their target communities by including them in high level media campaigns and legislation. Two recent relevant examples include the launching in 2017 of the Free and Equal campaign in Guatemala (Barrueto 2017) and the visibility and organizing around the Declaration of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights regarding the right to marriage for same-sex couples (CIDH 2018). 3. Term that refers to men who dress up as women. Often pejorative. 4. For a critique on the limitations of universalization of LGBT+ discourse, see Allen 2011; Blackwood 2002, 2010; Howe 2013; Manalansan 2002; Valentine 2007; Waites 2009; Wekker 2006. 5. It is worth noting the legislative work of Sandra Moran, the first lesbian legislator of the country. Moran and other legislators have worked closely with LGBT+ and women rights organizations to propose progressive legislation, such as law initiative 5278 to outlaw prejudice-based crimes (Iniciativa que dispone aprobar Ley para Sancionar los Crímenes por Prejuicio), which

236 • Alejandra Wundram Pimentel did not pass to first debate; or initiative 5376 to decriminalize abortion for teenagers and girls in cases of sexual violence, exploitation, and trafficking (Iniciativa que dispone aprobar Ley para la Protección Integral, Acceso a la Justicia, Reparación Digna y Transformadora a las Niñas y Adolescentes Víctimas de Violencia Sexual, Explotación Sexual y Trata de Personas). 6. See Libres e Iguales Guatemala, “Diversidad Sexual,” 14 December 2017, https://www.facebook.com/1675332569171543/videos/1691334090904724/. 7. “Yo siempre les digo que participen, que aprendan, que se superen, pero algunas de las compañeras no se quieren supercar.”

References Alcoff, Linda Martín, and Satya P. Mohanty. 2006. “Reconsidering Identity Politics: An Introduction.” In Identity Politics Reconsidered, edited by Linda Martín Alcoff, Homes-García Michael, Satya P. Mohanty, and Paula M. L. Moya, 1–9. Berkeley: University of California Press. Allen, Jafari. 2011. ¡Venceremos? The Erotics of Black Self-Making in Cuba. Durham: Duke University Press. Barrueto, Luis Eduardo. 2017. “Alto Comisionado de DDHH Lanza Campaña Libres E Iguales En Guatemala.” Visibles, 17 November 2017. http://www.visi bles.gt/alto-comisionado-libres-e-iguales-guatemala/. Bernal, Victoria, and Inderpal Grewal, eds. 2014. Theorizing NGOs: States, Feminisms, and Neoliberalism. Durham: Duke University Press. Blackwood, Evelyn. 2002. “Reading Sexualities across Cultures: Anthropology and Theories of Sexuality.” In Out in Theory: The Emergence of Lesbian and Gay Anthropology, edited by Ellen Lewin and William L. Leap, 69–92. Champaign: University of Illinois Press. ———. 2010. Falling into the Lesbi World: Desire and Difference in Indonesia. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. Comisión Ordinaria de Legislación y Puntos Constitucionales del Congreso de la República de Guatemala. 2017. “Iniciativa que dispone aprobar Ley para la Protección de la Vida y la Familia.” Congreso de la República de Guatemala, 27 April 2017. https://www.congreso.gob.gt/detalle_pdf/iniciativas/66#gsc .tab=0. Corte Interamericana de Derechos Humanos (CIDH). 2018. “Opinión Consuliva Sobre Identidad de Género, Y No Discriminación a Parejas Del Mismo Sexo.” San José, Costa Rica. http://www.corteidh.or.cr/docs/comunicados/ cp_01_18.pdf. Cruz-Malavé, Arnaldo, and Martin F. Manalansan. 2002. “Introduction: Dissident Sexualities/Alternative Globalisms.” In Queer Globalizations: Citizenship and the Afterlife of Colonialism. New York and London: New York University Press.

Identity and the Construction of Trans Citizenship in Guatemala • 237 Feinberg, Leslie. 2006. “Transgender Liberation: A Movement Whose Time Has Come.” In The Transgender Studies Reader, edited by Susan Stryker and Stephen Whittle, 205–21. New York: Routledge. Fernández, Josefina. 2004. Cuerpos Desobedientes: Travestismo E Identidad de Género. Buenos Aires: Edhasa. Fundación Myrna Mack (FMM). 2012. “Discriminación Por Orientación Sexual E Identidad de Género Y Una Aproximación a La Interseccionalidad Con Otras Formas de Discriminación En Guatemala.” Guatemala. https://myr namack.org.gt/historial/images/stories/fmm/archivos/informes/2013/in forme%20cidh%20final.pdf. Galindo Arandi, César, Julio Martínez, Herbert Oliva, Williams Cruz, José Manuel Aguilar Martínez. 2010. Crímenes de Odio En Guatemala: Una Aproximación a Los Retos Y Desafíos Para El Desarrollo de Una Investigación Sobre Los Crímenes En El País En Contra de Gay, Bisexuales Y Trans. Guatemala: Colectivo Amigos contra el Sida. http://salutsexual.sidastudi.org/es/registro/ a53b7fb37468d17701756a9557b40497?search=autor&format=LI&autorIn stitucionalId=12194. Gonzáles Pérez, César O. 2003. Travestidos Al Desnudo: Homosexualidad, Identidades Y Luchas TerritorialesEn Colima. México: Miguel Angel Porrúa. Hall, Stuart. 1996. “The Question of Cultural Identity.” In Modernity: An Introduction to Modern Societies, edited by Stuart Hall, David Held, Don Hubert, and Kenneth Thompson, 595–634. Hoboken, NJ: Blackwell Publishing. Howe, Cymene. 2013. Intimate Activism: The Struggle for Sexual Rights in Post Revolutionary Nicaragua. Durham: Duke University Press. Kulick, Don. 1998. Travesti: Sex, Gender, and Culture among Brazilian Transgendered Prostitutes. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Leve, Lauren. 2014. “Failed Development and Rural Revolution in Nepal: Rethinking Subaltern Consciousness and Women’s Empowerment.” In Theorizing NGOs: States, Feminisms, and Neoliberalism, edited by Victoria Bernal and Inderpal Grewal, 50–92. Durham: Duke University. Lewis, Vek. 2010. Crossing Sex and Gender in Latin America. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Mahmood, Saba. 2005. Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Manalansan, Martin F. 2002. “A Queer Itinerary: Deviant Excursions into Modernities.” In Out in Theory: The Emergence of Lesbian and Gay Anthropology, edited by Ellen Lewin and William L. Leap, 246–63. Champaign: University of Illinois Press. Marroquín, Mariela. n.d. “Análisis Jurídico Y Respuesta Del Estado a Favor de Las Personas LGBT En Guatemala.” Guatemala. Martínez, Ernesto. 2012. On Making Sense: Queer Race Narratives of Intelligibility. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

238 • Alejandra Wundram Pimentel Mohanty, Satya P. 2000. “The Epistemic Status of Cultural Identity: On ‘Beloved’ and the Postcolonial Condition.” In Reclaiming Identity: Realist Theory and the Predicament of Postmodernism, edited by Paula M. L. Moya and Michael Hames-García, 29–66. Berkeley: University of California Press. Moya, Paula M. L. 2006. “What’s Identity Got to Do with It? Mobilizing Identities in the Multicultural Classroom.” In Identity Politics Reconsidered, edited by Linda Martín Alcoff, Homes-García Michael, Satya P. Mohanty, and Paula M. L. Moya, 96–117. Berkeley: University of California Press. Nguyen, Vin-Kim. 2010. The Republic of Therapy: Triage and Sovereignty in West Africa’s Time of AIDS. Durham: Duke University Press. Ong, Ainhwa. 2006. “Mutations in Citizenship.” Theory, Culture & Society 23(2– 3): 499–505. doi:10.1177/0263276406064831. Ortner, Sherry. 1974. “Is Female to Male as Nature Is to Culture?” In Woman, Culture, and Society, edited by Michelle Rosaldo and Louise Lamphere, 68–87. Stanford: Stanford University Press. OTRANS (Organización Trans Reinas de la Noche Organización), Red Latinoámericana y del Caribe de Personas Trans (RED LACTRANS), Comisión Internacional de Derechos Humanos para Gays y Lesbianas (IGLHRC), The Heartland Alliance for Human Needs and Human Rights, George Washington University International Human Rights Law Clinic. 2012. “Violaciones a los derechos humanos de las personas lesbianas, gays, bisexuales y transgénero (LGBT) en Guatemala: Informe sombra.” https://outrightinternational. org/sites/default/files/567-1.pdf Petchesky, Rosalind P. 2000. “Sexual Rights: Inventing a Concept, Mapping an International Practice.” In Framing the Sexual Subject: The Politics of Gender, Sexuality, and Power, edited by Richard Parker, Regina Maria Barbosa, and Peter Aggleton. Berkeley: University of California Press. Polanco, Zuly. 2008. “Guatemala: Situación de Las Mujeres Lesbianas, Bisexuales, Transexuales Y Transgénero En Guatemala En Relación a La Discriminación.” Convención sobre la eliminación de todas las formas de discriminación hacia la mujer (CEDAW). Organización de Mujeres Lesbianas, Bisexuales—Desde Nosotras. https://docplayer.es/19904130-Guatemala-situacion-de-las-muj eres-lesbianas-bisexuales-transexuales-y-transgenero-en-guatemalaen-relacion-a-la-discriminacion.html. Prieur, Annick. 1998. Mema’s House, Mexico City on Transvestites, Queens, and Machos. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. REDLACTRANS (Red Latinoamericana y Caribe de Personas Trans). 2012. La Noche Es Otro País: Impunidad Y Violencia Contra Mujeres Transgénero Defensoras de Derechos Humanos En América Latina. Buenos Aires: REDLACTRANS. Stryker, Susan. 1994. “My Words to Victor Frankenstein Above the Village of Chamounix: Performing Transgender Rage.” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 1 (1994): 237–54.

Identity and the Construction of Trans Citizenship in Guatemala • 239 ———. 2006. “(De)Subjugated Knowledges: An Introduction to Transgender Studies.” In The Transgender Studies Reader, edited by Susan Stryker and Stephen Whittle, 1–18. New York: Routledge. Trnka, Susanna, and Catherine Trundle. 2014. “Competing Responsibilities: Moving Beyond Neoliberal Responsibilisation.” Anthropological Forum 24(2): 136–53. United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). 2018. “Table 5: Gender Inequality Index.” Human Development Report. New York. http://hdr.undp .org/en/composite/GII. Valentine, David. 2007. Imagining Transgender: An Ethnography of a Category. Durham: Duke University Press. Waites, Matthew. 2009. “Critique of ‘Sexual Orientation’ and ‘Gender Identity’ in Human Rights Discourse: Global Queer Politics beyond the Yogyakarta Principles.” Contemporary Politics 15(1): 137–56. Wekker, Gloria. 2006. The Politics of Passion: Women’s Sexual Culture in the Afro-Surinamese Diaspora. New York: Columbia University Press. Zapeta Mazariegos, Luis. 2011. Informe Guatemala: Transfobia, Agresiones Y Crímenes de Odio 2007–2011. Ciudad de Guatemala: Organización Trans Reinas de la Noche.

CHAPTER 10

To Foresee the Unforeseeable LGBT and Feminist Civil Society and the Question of Feminine Desire Tamar Shirinian

In Armenia’s civil society, there is a tension regarding the centrality of NGOs, especially in the spaces of work having to do with action and analysis of gender and sexuality. One way in which this tension arises is through the queer and feminist condemnations of NGO work as masculine and patriarchal in scope and mode of practice. In this chapter I offer ethnographic moments and encounters that—experimentally and perhaps speculatively—ask what notions of the feminine imaginary, desire, and aesthetic forms of tactics have to offer toward understandings of civil society and especially NGO work around “women’s issues” or LGBT activism. I pay particular attention to how activism that insists on the “feminine” opens up tactics, strategies, and imaginaries that may be foreclosed by normative NGO structures and programs. The insistence on the feminine questions the inquiry at the heart of this volume—is female to male as NGO is to State? The research for this chapter is based on twelve months of ethnographic research in Yerevan, the capital city of Armenia, from August 2012 to July 2013, during which I joined the staff of two NGOs—Public Information and Need for Knowledge (PINK) and Women’s Resource Center (WRC)—as an intern to understand the everyday workings of activism and advocacy founded around gender and sexuality concerns in Armenia. PINK is an LGBT+ advocacy organization founded in 2007 that, during my research, was primarily focused on HIV/AIDS counseling and testing for men who have sex with men. But the organization also participated in various other public programs and organized events around domestic violence against women (as one member organiza-

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tion out of ten in the Coalition to Stop Violence Against Women) and bullying in schools, and also worked toward creating a platform for the possibility of an “LGBT community” in Armenia through film screenings, discussions, and workshops. WRC was one of the few organizations in Armenia at the time of this research that considered itself a “feminist organization.” Founded in 2003, it mostly worked on the issue of domestic violence, providing legal aid for women who had taken their cases to court and brought media attention to cases in which women had been murdered by intimate partners. WRC also organized various workshops on sex, sexual assault prevention, and women’s empowerment. I conducted participant observation on the day-to-day activities in the offices of these organizations, doing social scientific research for them, organizing workshops, translating documents, as well as participating in their events. While an intern at PINK and WRC, I also became an active participant in the queer feminist collective of writers, artists, and translators that called themselves Queering Yerevan (QY). Queering Yerevan was not interested in “activism,” but instead framed their work as intervention. Queering Yerevan, importantly, was not an NGO. It did not have any legal standing as one, did not receive official funding from outside sources, did not have a “staff,” and did not have any kind of fixed membership or documentation of activities. The collective maintained a blog on which they posted works of writing and art, including performative disruptions of Armenian life-as-usual in public spaces. The blog, however, was as fluid as the collective’s membership, bringing in different voices at different times without ever fixing who was a rightful member of the collective. QY took issue with the kinds of work that PINK as well as WRC were doing—sometimes through direct confrontation, sometimes by more passive forms of criticism, and often by dismissal entirely. QY often rejected the notion of “activism” and the NGO form itself and insisted on the making of something else: feminism as a womanoriented project(ion) that demands a merging of the personal, political, and ethical for the making of a new world through aesthetic forms. Here, I take up QY’s articulations of critique and action, examining the ways in which we might understand the problems of funded NGO activism as phallic design and imagine other—feminine—forms of intervention. I draw on feminist theoretical works that locate questions of the feminine within aesthetics that emerge from a notion of a feminine body, especially work by French feminist theorists Luce Irigaray and Hélène Cixous who theorized the feminine as a militant force against the world

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of phallic order. This body of feminist work, often drawn on by members of QY themselves, allows us to understand the kind of feminine political and aesthetic interventions that QY seeks to make. By taking up QY’s collective insistence on something other than “civil society,” or the otherwise, I argue that NGOs—by way of their program-oriented missions that insist on practical and tangible changes—undermine the forms of politics, claims, practices, desires, and actions that emerge on the margins of these organizations that may have the potential to transform worlds. In other words, NGOs in some ways foreclose the possibilities of what QY as well as Irigaray and Cixous might consider feminine desire and will. However, this foreclosure is incomplete, bubbling up in the activities and works of the collective. I point to the potentials of what these other, aesthetic, forms of political intervention might offer NGO activism by way of the tension on which they insist. Examining the work of QY, and especially the ways in which they have engaged and been critical of work by NGOs like PINK and WRC, opens up space to think about NGO work within newly emerging senses of the political. QY claims that NGOs and the State, in their institutionalization and phallic modes of practice, are both masculine. Yet they continuously insist on the emergence of the feminine (sometimes in these very spheres) as that which lies beyond and that can have radical impact.

Publics, Privates, and “Feminist” Civil Society The privateness and publicness of civil society—as well as the State—has been complicated by various processes within Armenia’s history of socialism and postsocialism. As Janine Wedel has shown, after the end of State socialisms in Central and Eastern Europe and the USSR, European and American governmental and nongovernmental organizations, seeing major opportunities for new markets, poured billions of dollars in aid and loans to push for privatization in this part of the world (2001). A large impetus for this funding was the creation of a private economic sphere that would be separate from State enterprise, with hopes for the total privatization of industry. Through advice from the World Bank, by the end of 1997 about 60 percent of all enterprise in Armenia had been privatized and only about 7 percent of the population participated in the process as shareholders, leading to the rise of an oligarchy that, by 1998, took over the State (Astourian 2000). Far from producing a separation

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of private and public, the Armenian State became commonly referred to as made up of “clans”1 or as a “brotherhood” (Kopalyan 2018), seen as mostly interested in protecting private investments. This state of affairs is not all that different from what James Ferguson refers to as the emergence of “nongovernmental states” in the neoliberal era, or States that are invested in a great deal of business having little to do with governance (Ferguson 2007: 39), and in which the role of governance is often taken up by NGOs. The role of NGOs in governance has also been critiqued as depoliticizing political issues, or in danger of becoming a part of the new “antipolitics machine” of development (Ferguson 1990), since what NGOs offer are not political or structural changes but rather technical solutions to what they regard as technical problems. William Fisher has suggested, however, that technical solutions to technical problems are not necessarily outside of the realm of the political or civil society, since politics as a concept also refers to power-structured relationships (Fisher 1997: 446). In the postsocialist world and in Armenia, a large part of the funding that aimed to create free market economies also pushed for the establishment of liberal democracy that, like much of the neoliberalized world, came with the foundation of NGOs that are, similarly, often critiqued for being depoliticized. However, State socialism’s reliance on economic rights rather than human rights (Zavisca 2012) complicates these notions of politics. Kristin Ghodsee suggests that feminist NGO work in the postsocialist world has often been a “feminism-by-design,” unwittingly, or perhaps even wittingly, in complicity with proponents of neoliberalism (2004) in that these organizations rarely, if ever, offer class-based gendered analyses and instead focus on cultural notions like empowerment. Thus, women’s NGOs are often dismissed by locals as “bourgeois.” Shannon Woodcock has also shown how this NGOization of sexual politics—often relying on categories of sexual identity that have been transplanted from Europe, based on identity politics of particularly recognizable identities (LGBT, for instance)—has dismantled much of the political machinery of representation that existed for women and ethnic minorities in the socialist era (2011) with little to contribute to class-based structural analyses of gendered and sexualized power. In other words, liberalism—based on individual rights (often through claims to identity—see, for instance, Pimentel this vol.)—has dismantled much of the collective forms of seeking and demanding rights that existed in socialist society. While these critiques of liberalism certainly apply, Nanette Funk cautions that the forms of liberalism that

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emerge within the postsocialist world, even ones that have come from Western donor organizations, are not quite the same as those in the West. One major difference between liberalism in this context, unlike American liberalisms, is the way in which, through the expectation of economic rights within the legacy of State socialism, women feel entitled to and thus make demands for social welfare from the State (Funk 2004). The postsocialist context, thus, with a history of State socialism, complicates the boundaries between States, markets, NGOs, civil society, and the sphere of the political. These boundaries are further complicated when we take their gendered dimensions into consideration. Nancy Fraser has suggested that mainstream Western feminist theorizations of the “public sphere,” which often rely on Jurgen Habermas’ distinction of a realm separate from State and economic spheres (Habermas 1992), often ignore not only the dependence of such a sphere on a bourgeois class, but that they also often ignore its phallic designation as a masculine sphere separate from the private feminine sphere of the domestic (Fraser 1990). Fraser, for instance, points out that “public” has etymological roots in “pubic,” and other acts within the realm of the public, such as “testimony,” can be traced to phallic roots, such as “testicle” (1990: 60). Susan Gal and Gail Kligman, however, show that the private/public distinctions within capitalist society did not necessarily hold for socialism, nor are they accurate descriptors of postsocialism—especially when viewed in these gendered dimensions. The negotiations regarding gender norms in newly emerging postsocialist economies and nation-building projects have created situations in which gender within a private/public divide is constantly being made and remade. In Central and Eastern Europe, women have largely taken up social work and teaching jobs as well as small entrepreneurial setups. Women, much more often than men, also combine various jobs to make ends meet while men often hold one salaried position. In other words, while men participate more heavily in privatized business, it is women who are often more actively involved in civil society or the public (Gal and Kligman 2000). This contrasts with notions of a feminine private sphere and a masculine public within capitalist modernity. Furthermore, the third sector of civil society in the postsocialist world has also been a major opportunity for many women to get employment. Women began participating heavily in the NGO public sphere as many of these organizations and programs were directly led by them. However, there was a great deal of using these funds for the purposes of employment

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and often surplus value for personal agendas, especially by a new ruling class that emerged from the Soviet era nomenklatura (Hemment 2004), marking dimensions of a private sphere in the public sphere. As of 2012 Armenia had 3,781 registered NGOs,2 although some of them were inactive. A great many of these organizations work specifically on “women’s issues.” There are currently three NGOs in Armenia that work on LGBT issues directly. PINK is the most active of them. PINK and WRC understand themselves as different from the larger sphere of registered NGOs in Armenia precisely because of the ways in which they take seriously funding, goals, and social advocacy agendas and base their work on merit rather than using their organization for the personal benefit of any staff members. Taking seriously the criticism from Armenian society at large—and particularly from government officials—that NGOs are grbanayin, or “pocketed” (Ishkanian 2008), they see their work as official and steer away from any behavior that may be deemed corrupt. In other words, PINK and WRC maintain a strict boundary between the private and public within their work in the public sphere. Another major difference between PINK and WRC within this larger map of NGOs in Armenia is that they see their work as political rather than as provisioning services, and many of the staff members of these organizations identify as activists. This is especially noteworthy in the context of NGOs and feminist activism. In 2012, I conducted interviews with directors and staff members of twenty of these organizations. Only Society Against Violence and WRC openly signified their agendas as feminist ones—most of the NGO workers with whom I spoke condemned feminism as a Western concept that had no place in Armenia where, as the director of one organization put it, “Women do not hate men and have generally good relations with them.” If the State in Armenia is a brotherhood (thus masculine) and the largely women-led “public” sphere of NGOs is not necessarily feminist, there is still the realm of the privatized economic sphere. Most industry in Armenia is owned by men, as most oligarchs are men. While much NGO work as well as new University-based “women’s leadership” programs in Armenia have employed discourses of women in development through entrepreneurship, capitalism presents problems for queer and feminist action beyond just male-dominated economic spheres. As much recent feminist and queer theory suggests, seemingly subversive identities within capitalist systems are easily appropriated and turned into parts and parcels of hegemonic forms—such as when LGBT activism merges with nationalism and militarization (Puar 2007), or when

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gay identity becomes another instantiation of the normative family structure with normative consuming power (Duggan 2003). Furthermore, as in other postsocialist spaces, because of backlash against LGBT as well as feminist activism from right-wing nationalists and the wider public, often supported by popular media, sexual citizenship often remains within privatized spaces of consumption such as cafés and bars (Shirinian 2018; Stella 2012), or performances of identity based on stylistic consumer choices in clothing and accessories (Essig 1999). It is within this complex terrain of porous and open boundaries between private and public, masculine and feminine, NGO, State, and market that QY seeks to make its intervention with the aim of making the world Other. For QY, the very maintenance of a private and public divide is a problem. This is not only because this distinction is an invention by a phallic order (as I discuss below), but also because it is formed by way of a refusal, a rejection, and an erasure of the possibilities of a feminine force that can transform this world. For QY, political intervention must be based on a deeply personal and aesthetic existence that can be turned into a force against a world that has denied its existence. PINK and WRC, as organizations that are based on inclusion within a civil society, exist in great tension with these forms of aesthetically grounded and feminist politics and thus are only “feminist” by the standards of a phallogocentricism—logics based around phallic order. QY formed in 2007 when one founding member, Zora, after spending seven years in the United States in a PhD program, returned to Armenia. Her return was precipitated by the end of her PhD program and the expiration of her student visa, and also the desire to return to a place where she felt she could create an aesthetic with potential. The United States was comfortable to a certain extent, Zora explained to me, but it was always uncomfortable—always foreign. She wanted a return to her mother tongue. But mother tongue was also always foreign as it had been not mother: something different from the feminine, something also foreign to her femininity and her feminine desire under Armenian patriarchy. For Zora, language and its dimensions were how she wanted to act on the world. As a writer who had been collaborating with feminists in Yerevan for a few years before her return, the aesthetics of word were where her écriture féminine—woman’s writing or the writing of woman (Cixous 1976)—resided. For other members of QY, the writing into existence of woman and the feminine came in other forms: multimedia visual arts, performance, and street actions. Queering Yerevan was from its very inception a collaborative project. The work done by

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members of the collective is exhibited collectively. Particular works may be published on their blog that was launched in 2009 under personal names, but its existence on the blog space produces an archive of a world becoming collectively feminine. Before taking on the name Queering Yerevan, the group called themselves Woman-Desiring-Woman, calling attention both to lesbianism as an aesthetic force in the world as well as a larger desire for woman—a desire to make woman and to make the world woman. Yet even with the change of name—borrowing “queering” from the AngloAmerican theoretical tradition and coining a term for it in Armenian— darorinakelov (to make strange)—it was still through feminine desire that the QY project began to take shape. Zora had known Mariam, another founding member of the collective and a visual artist, for a number of years. One summer, while in Armenia, she also—through Mariam—met Sona, a visual artist with whom she fell in love. A tumultuous transcontinental love affair, interpersonal problems between the members of the collective—some of whom are no longer participants—as well as ongoing arguing with those who are still included within the blog’s and the collective’s space are a large part of what it means to be within and amongst QY. As such, the collective produces a kind of relation to the world that merges the political, the ethical, and the deeply personal, constantly putting into flux what the collective is about, how it will proceed, and how it will desire the world that is becoming.

The Making of an (Unforeseeable) Feminine World QY understands its main mission as the disruption of space in the city through “happenings,” such as blocking street traffic, creating graffiti art on walls around the city, organizing art exhibits, talks, and performances, as well as the improvised disruption of social encounters (and especially those involving men) on the streets, in cafés, and in bars. Unlike other art groups, projects, and collectives that took up aesthetics as a form of political intervention in Yerevan—such as Utopianna and ArtLab—QY’s acts work toward bringing woman and her potentials into public space to illuminate and question phallic logics. QY is invested in another world that projects present interruptions of space into future possibilities and fields of action. Can this kind of work be considered “civil society,” and, along the same lines, can civil society make room for such acts and insistences?

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Civil society in Armenia—made up of organic social movements as well as institutionalized NGOs that allow the flow of resources into the organic grassroots—is largely opposed to the post-Soviet oligarchic regime. While many NGOs in Armenia do not directly make political claims and instead see their work as providing resources and raising awareness around social concerns, PINK and WRC have been more vocal politically, making human rights claims and advocating for changes in public policy. QY’s sphere of action, however, resides elsewhere. This elsewhere is not in being, at least not yet. It is a world that is only a possibility; a world that demands action toward it. This action is in the form of refusal or making without necessarily having a goal—at least not a goal that is aimed at any institution or actuality that is only of this world and not toward the next, the future. It is produced through happenings—opening up liminal spaces and spheres that are multiple and that make use of both the private and the public simultaneously. And it is a world that is brought about through a deeply profound relation to the feminine. To understand the ways in which QY makes sense of a feminine aesthetic intervention into space, it is useful to turn to feminist theory that has taken the feminine body, and the possibilities of a militant feminine force, seriously. This other space—this elsewhere—is in continuity with what Luce Irigaray, for instance, means by “woman”: “She is neither one nor two. Rigorously speaking, she cannot be identified either as one person, or as two. She resists all adequate definition. Further, she has no ‘proper’ name” (1985b: 26). The feminine here is something that is other than the world of masculine order, is constantly multiple, and cannot be fixed in one place or in one direction. Irigaray theorizes the possibilities of woman through her two labia lips, rather than a singular organ (phallus), always touching one another, always in relation to self and other, placing the feminine within the body. This is different from, and opposed to, the other sex (male), which is singular and does not touch himself or another. Woman, in her multiplicity, constantly reproduces difference: her difference, as woman, as well as differences within woman herself. Woman, then, can be understood as a form of being—a being, for example, whose sexuality is made up of two (labia lips), and thus is always multiple—but woman is also a disposition that can draw from the multiplicity of the feminine body to act on and transform the world. In other words, because of the multiplicity within woman’s body, the feminine emerges as a force that is not necessarily relegated to that

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body. The world, however, according to both Irigaray and Cixous, has been made in the phallic singular image. Woman as a possibility has been erased and censored. This signification of woman should not be understood as an identity position or category—marked by inclusion, exclusion, or representation. Rather, woman is a sensibility, a relation to the world, a set of possibilities (that have been marked impossible) remaining to be made, to be brought about. It is through writing and creating that woman can bring woman into the world. This woman who will become and bring forth a new order has the potential also “to break up, to destroy; and to foresee the unforeseeable, to project” (Cixous 1976: 875). This is necessarily a speculative project, based on the uses of what Irigaray calls the “speculum,” bringing into existence or acknowledging that which has not been able to exist in phallic order (1985a). To bring herself forth, woman becomes a project of her own speculation. This is a kind of imaginary that is not necessarily invested in the practical or the quotidian: the world of the everyday, that which presents itself as obviously possible. This is a kind of imaginary that demands something that has not existed—something not necessarily goal-oriented, or what Cixous demanded when she claimed that “the future must no longer be determined by the past” (1976: 875). The future will be the site of a New Woman. Woman writes woman in the world—insists on the world becoming woman: a becoming that comes from her body rather than abstractions to the femininity of the body. This is what Cixous refers to as a female libidinal economy: “a regime, energies, a system of spending not necessarily carved out by culture . . . always endless” (1981: 53). Feminine space, as such, has been relegated to the “dark continent” (Cixous 1976: 884–85)—that which women have been told is unimaginable, impossible to (fore)see. The insistence on the possibilities of imagining it anyway—no matter how impractical it may seem in a larger context of civil society—is where I locate the politics of Queering Yerevan. Unlike NGOs that take up “women’s issues” or work within civil society through “feminism”—such as WRC—QY orients its work toward an entirely new and necessarily radically different form of a world wherein the future is imagined as an unknowable site not formed through “goals.” This future is feminine: multiple and disruptive of phallic singularity. This world, also, does not rely on distinctions between spheres that make up this singularity. Dissolutions of private and public, personal and political, are especially key to the kinds of interventions QY makes.

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Unleashing Feminine Beauty to Foresee the Unforeseeable In 2013, QY planned a happening—a series of events around the city that were connected by a common direction—themed In and Between the (Re)public, for which they also drafted a call for works.3 Some complications—from funding to personal feuds—prevented the happening from taking full shape in the end. The call itself and those events that gave it shape, from the imagined to the real, highlight a disavowal of a private and public split—that which is considered of utmost importance to traditional notions of civil society. While drafting the call, members of the collective and myself had a heated debate regarding even the use of the term “Republic.” “It is their term. It’s what they do,” claimed Mariam. Other members of the collective were insistent, however, in not silencing themselves from using the names those institutions give themselves within the context of their many contradictions. The final call, as such, has the terms “Republicanism” and “Democratization” crossed out: Republicanism and Democratization. The call carries a desire for an opening that exists between private and public rather than a split between the two: The Republic has been hegemonically designated as singular—both in form and in content. There is the Republic—the idealized structure of modern statehood to which all nations must aspire. And there is the Republic, “our” nation, “our” people as one collective body (fascism propagated by slogans such as “One nation, One culture” that canonize the “proper” and regulate possibilities within a cultural landscape). Within both singularities of the Republic, any notion of “public” is rendered meaningless through an oligarchy’s appropriation of the commons, forced mass migration, unprecedented levels of unemployment, and the draining from the population voices of resistance. But (r-e)-pu-b-l-i-c-s are also in and between language that separates rather than unites, that foreignizes rather than domesticates.

Any sense of a private/public divide is rejected not only as a failure in the present, but as a failure even in its proper workings wherein inbetweeness is made impossible by way of strict divisions while everything is already a corrupt form of an inbetween. In other words, the public is not public as it has been stolen from the public by a new rich class. They then add, “The conventional binary opposition to public has been the private, but is the private not already included within the aggressive forms of privatization of the Republic?” “Public” as such becomes a phal-

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lic order, governed by the private interests of the oligarchy class—made up largely of men—who claim there to be a division to maintain power. The contradiction is in the singularity—the phallic—of what is claimed to be multiple, or two. For QY, the very formation of a Republic through a split between the private and the public—the homes that feed into the larger body politic in which that very body politic and its aspirations are privileged—is a hegemonic formation that needs to not only be questioned but opened up and disavowed. Books, art works, happenings, exhibits, and films that the collective and its members produce are largely based on making that which is public reprivatized by way of a militant claim toward woman’s desire. The multiplicities of the domestic sphere (personal desires, sexuality, affect, and difference) are silenced by way of a colonization by a so-called public that claims to be serving the interests of culture itself—the “fascist” claim for singularity, which QY also recognizes as a phallic claim. For QY, feminine space and the feminine imaginary must work against separation. Woman, in her multiplicity, must necessarily reconcile (in no rational way) the divisions that have been falsely manufactured for the benefits of male power, because it is through this separation—especially that of private and public—that woman has been privatized and dislocated from the possibility of speaking herself in the world, or what Cixous articulates as woman’s decapitation (1981). Like Irigaray, for whom woman’s becoming in the world will work against and undo the commodification and use-value that the other sex has made of her (1985b: 31), QY refuses a private/public divide by way of discovering the ways in which this separation can be blurred, distorted, or made perverse. In and Between the (Re)public’s call for works, for example, also includes a photograph of one of several graffiti works that were found on walls and other surfaces across the city in February 2013 of a silhouette of the Mother Armenia statue that sits atop the city on a hill. The statue is visible from most public buildings located down below in the city’s center and is a Soviet era marker of internationalism’s national form that also included Mother Georgia and Russia’s “The Motherland Calls.” The Mother Armenia statue is a strange phenomenon in the context of Armenian nationalist politics, as the personification of land in Armenian is not traditionally that of mother but of father or fatherland (hayrenik). In some ways (by way, perhaps, of resignification), thus, Mother Armenia is already a refusal of a phallic personification of the nation. However, the statue itself is phallic, perhaps because it was once a representation of Stalin, only reconstructed into “Mother Armenia” in

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1967. Her erect body also carries a large erect sword between her angular arms. She is singular—one with the weapon. There are, however, possibilities of further resignifications of this resignification of nation. And QY found it in the graffiti work done by an anonymous collective. The graffiti art includes a caption below the silhouette: “Suck my pussy” (tstsir putss). Mother Armenia, standing phallic for the nation, is now marked not only by sexual desire, but also a demand for its fulfillment. In this, QY finds multiplicities of becoming that can be read alongside and through the call for works that appears in the blog post. In the graffiti work, nation—or the Republic—becomes multiple not only because it becomes personified as woman, but because of the very contradictions that mark the heart of what it means to (re)produce a nation-state. In the discussion of the piece at a gathering one evening while preparing the call for works for the happening, Zora explained this contradiction of the Republic as its simultaneous desire of woman to be free of sexuality while also giving birth to the nation literally. “If she has to have sex to reproduce the nation, then why not enjoy it?!” she joked, bringing into focus another contradiction of a separation of the private and public within the context of the (Re)public: that woman’s desire must remain private, if it is to exist at all, while her birthing must be the most public of displays for the benefits of remaking over and over again a patriarchal Armenian society. What Zora enjoyed about the work placed on walls within the public’s vision all over Yerevan was that it exploded this very contradiction. “Yes! Let Mother Armenia speak her desire!” she exclaimed, laughing again. As such, QY’s interventions into the public sphere are motivated by rejections and refusals of propriety, calling attention precisely to what one must not call attention to within traditional civil society. The same graffiti was also spotted by staff members at PINK who were confused about the message. “But I don’t understand what the artists are trying to say. Is it an insult to the nation?” asked Armen. In what Armen signified as insult, Zora found a demand for the beautiful. Like Cixous’s laughing Medusa, who has been made the object of fear—a symbol of death—within phallic logics, QY defines the public as that which has silenced and erased feminine desire. “And you only have to look at the Medusa straight on to see her. And she’s not deadly. She’s beautiful and she’s laughing,” writes Cixous (1976: 885). For Zora and other QY members, this beauty—of feminine desire and pleasure—unleashes feminine force onto the public, making the public a site of something other than phallic logic and opening up the possibility to foresee

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the unforeseeable making of a feminine world: a world that rejects— laughs in the face of—phallic logics of privatizing feminine pleasure and desire for the maintenance of the Republic’s proper reproduction.

The Invisibility of Woman (Desiring Woman) Members of QY were critical of WRC and PINK, as well as other feminist and LGBT activists in Armenia, for their attachments to phallic worlds and phallic logics, often claiming that these stemmed from their attachments to the literal phallus: heterosexual feminists and gay men activists were too attached to men to be able to make room for woman. And, importantly, they were too attached to men to be able to make room for women-desiring-women, who they often made invisible within their understandings of political and social issues. While moments that incited QY members to use this criticism against PINK and WRC were common, we can take one from November 2012 as an instance. WRC was preparing an exhibit that would take place in December in Kino Moskva’s gallery space in the central district of the city. The exhibit was part of the larger “16 Days Against Violence” campaign and would also take place on social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook. The exhibit involved photos of prominent men— police officers, members of government, ministers, soldiers, musicians, and actors—holding signs condemning domestic violence as unmanly. The NGO had asked Adrine—an Armenian American queer-identified visual artist who was interning at WRC that year—to take the photographs. Adrine was given appointments with the men participating in the campaign at their offices, homes, and studios and was expected to show up, take multiple photographs, and edit them to prepare for printing and posting. One afternoon, while in the PINK office where she was also interning, she was editing one of the photos to be used for the campaign. The photo was of Hrach Muradyan (also known as the Arch, or the Bear), the host of the daytime television talk show Kisabac Lusamudner (Windows Ajar) that often invites transgender and gay persons to discuss their problems alongside a panel that frequently includes a priest, a sexologist (who discusses the pathology of homosexuality), and leaders of parents’ committees. The show claims to have an aim of bringing into the open questions of sexuality and other life problems and to discuss them objectively, but it most usually has created a spectacle of queer gender and sexual identities and experiences.

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Adrine, however, was unaware of who Muradyan was. She had gone to the studio that morning to take the photographs and knew that he was a television celebrity but did not think much of it. Now, however, in the PINK office, she would find out as Armen saw Muradyan’s photo on the screen of her laptop and let out a gasping “YUCK! What are you doing with his photo?!” It was at this point that other staff members of PINK chimed in, relaying some most memorable and awful moments from Muradyan’s show and concluding that he was a homophobe. Armen asked why WRC had decided to include him in their exhibit. So, Adrine called WRC to speak to the director, who was not in her office. Instead, she spoke with the assistant director, Marine, who was in charge of the exhibit and who sent Adrine to take Muradyan’s photo that morning. Marine explained that Muradyan was a well-liked man in Armenia and that his contribution would be important for the campaign. When Adrine explained that he was a homophobe and that she felt uncomfortable including him, she was told that that did not matter. The campaign was not about LGBT issues; it was about domestic violence. It was at this point that Adrine solicited my help. She did not speak Armenian or understand it—except for a few words here and there— but she wanted to voice her concerns at the weekly staff meeting that WRC was having that evening. I was also working as an intern at WRC at the time, and although I did not regularly attend staff meetings, I decided to attend this one. That evening, at 5 p.m., we gathered in the office of WRC’s director and began talking about the “16 Days Against Violence” campaign that was approaching, including the event of the photo exhibit. I explained to the staff members what had happened— that Hrach Muradyan, who is known for his homophobic stance and his humiliation of queer folk on public television—was invited to participate and that I, along with Adrine who had been recruited to do all the photos, felt uncomfortable about this. As I was explaining the situation, Ruzanna, one of WRC’s newer and younger staff members interrupted: “I don’t understand what any of this has to do with the exhibit. The exhibit is about domestic violence, not about gay peoples’ rights. If it was about gay rights, we probably wouldn’t include him, of course. But this is about women, not gays.” Ruzanna, echoing Marine’s position from earlier that day, implicitly excluded homosexuality from the experience of women, denying intersectionality of these two experiences as well as the possibility of lesbians as women. For her, the campaign centered on domestic vio-

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lence, which had nothing to do with lesbians, who were not victims of domestic violence. This discussion of homophobia as having nothing to do with domestic violence prompted WRC’s director, Zabel, to interrupt: Excuse me, but when did WRC begin condoning homophobia in any way at all? Our mission, alongside being against domestic violence, includes antihomophobia. This is our position as an organization. Now, however you feel as an individual who works here, when it comes to the planning and implementing of any event, any program, or any discussion as a part of WRC, you will take an antihomophobia position. This is what you signed on for when you began working here. I hope this is clear.

It was at this point that Marine reentered the dispute we had started earlier that day: “But now what are we going to do? Are we going to not include Hrach in the exhibit? We asked him already and he very kindly agreed to do it. It would be shameful if we exclude him now, especially without telling him. And how would we tell him?” The compromise, eventually, was to include the photo in the exhibit at Kino Moskva, but to not circulate it on social networking sites. When QY members heard about disagreements among WRC staff working on the photograph campaign, they were unsurprised. This incident seemed to encapsulate everything they found problematic about the organization. “Begging men to end domestic violence,” was how Sona referred to the campaign—“If men don’t approve, then it doesn’t matter.” The campaign may also be seen—as some WRC staff who had designed it saw it—as a means to redefine proper masculinity as nonviolent in a context where masculinity is seen as aggressive and domineering, yet Sona saw it as centralizing men and men’s desires once again. Much of the work that WRC does—dictated by funders interested in progress and evidence of large-scale campaigns for changing public opinion as well as the distribution of tangible resources (like legal aid)—is concerned with domestic violence, which most often assumes “woman” to be one who is married and thus heterosexual. QY members, like the staff at WRC, recognize domestic violence as a major problem in Armenia. They often discuss the widespread sexual and emotional abuse of women by (male) romantic partners. For them, however, WRC’s focus on domestic violence stems from a focus on heterosexuality and the perpetuation of woman as heterosexual. While domestic violence and sexual assault are phenomena that can exist within woman-

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woman relationships, the domestic violence campaigns of WRC, from the perspective of QY members, work to end domestic violence but only to prop up a proper and normal—“good”—heterosexual family unit. “They are constantly focused on problems of heterosexuality, but they never challenge heterosexuality itself,” Mariam complained. While PINK, as an LGBT advocacy organization, did not focus on heterosexuality, they often implicitly excluded lesbians from their programs as well. For PINK—also dependent on funds from European organizations—HIV testing, counseling, and prevention as well as working on direct human rights violations have become major goals, which often means a focus on gay men. There was also, within PINK, a lack of access or connection to queer women, which I discuss below. While PINK was aware of these problems of invisibility and exclusion of women and often attempted to mend them, they were also often criticized by QY for them. Sona from QY, for example, once pointed out that while women are the largest population affected by HIV infection throughout the world, much of the funding that goes into the issue internationally invests in male transmission. “This is genocide against women!” she exclaimed, implicitly alleging that PINK, who continued to place the focus on men, was part of this larger conspiracy. QY’s critique of NGO work calls attention to the propensity (and desire) for NGOs to maintain the patriarchal and heteronormative status quo. Even NGOs that focus on LGBT and/or women’s issues must navigate funding tracks that are largely governed by powerful men and favor institutions that invest in reproducing masculine economies of power. In short, while NGOs work to solve practical problems, QY’s criticism of their form focuses on their inability to imagine—and unleash—feminine desire into the world. Cixous articulated this inability as partially motivated by fear: a fear of “female-sexed texts,” of woman’s resistance to death precisely by continuing to desire, and, as such, her propensity to make trouble by troubling phallogocentrism (1976: 876–77).

A Praxis of Speculating the Unforeseeable Future The ideologies, political positions, and practices of QY and its members were constantly in flux, something itself often taken as an important position of maintaining multiplicity even if sometimes breaking out into interpersonal crises. For example, at the time of my fieldwork in 2012–13, at least one of the core members of the group believed feminism could

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only be based on lesbian separatism: that if women were tied to men in any capacity, they would never be able to fully liberate themselves from patriarchal culture and masculine domination. Furthermore, theoretically, woman’s relation to man would always cause woman’s affective and aesthetic production to be less than it could be since woman would never be fully valued for her work by man. This kind of lesbian separatism, however, was never advocated by all members of QY at any time, and positions on this frequently changed among those who did at some point or another hold it. Debates about what constitutes feminism, what constitutes “woman,” and what makes possible full solidarity with woman raise various other questions and thus were continuous discussions and ongoing debates among QY members. Members also—at different times, with the propensity to change minds—pondered and challenged trans positionality. This is not to say that QY members were antitrans or “transphobic” in Euro-American parlance, but rather the very multiplicity of woman as a sensibility and disposition in the world demanded constant flux around the question of what this woman toward another kind of future would look like. Woman, as nonidentity but sensibility, insisted on being located somewhere other than where phallic order has created and defined “woman” by its own logics of difference, which deny possibilities of feminine force as full being. The very question of woman and the feminine was one that needed to be constantly challenged. Another question that constantly emerges from this interrogation of the feminine and feminine desire is how to approach women who are not necessarily woman-oriented by QY standards. Zabel, for instance, insists that WRC only hire women, which she sees as a feminist act. QY members, however, are critical of this practice as being woman-centric because WRC does not necessarily hire women who place import on feminine desire and will. WRC has most frequently hired women who identify as heterosexual and desire a heteronormative life of marriage, family, and children. QY challenged these sensibilities as not being woman-oriented. QY maintains a tension with other NGOs while also sometimes entering into collaboration with them. Members of QY, for instance, have historically collaborated with WRC. Zabel is herself a member of QY and has published a number of essays and stories on the blog. These collaborations, however, are often vexed. One instance of a potential collaboration that became problematic involved PINK’s woman’s initiative in the fall of 2012. Because PINK’s staff was largely comprised of

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gay-identifying men with some straight-identifying women, they saw the lack of queer women’s participation in their events, actions, and discussion groups as a major limitation to their work as an organization. They began the woman’s initiative to get queer women more involved, and they put Hripsime and myself in charge. As a queer woman, I was seen as a potential drawer of other queer women into the organization. I asked for QY’s help—to see whether they had interest in making use of any of PINK’s resources for woman-desiring-woman oriented events. Marlies Glasius and Armine Ishkanian (2014) term this kind of collaboration “surreptitious symbiosis,” or the use of resources available to NGOs by grassroots organizers that are not formally institutionalized as well as the reliance of NGOs on noninstitutionalized forms of action to escape the constraints of the organization. Only Mariam agreed to come to a meeting at the PINK office to discuss the possibilities. After the meeting, however, she was disappointed with the goal-orientedness of all the plans. For instance, when Mariam suggested organizing an exhibit to showcase the work of professional or nonprofessional artists around the question of the female orgasm, Hripsime from PINK wondered how they could make that specifically lesbian-oriented in order to draw in more lesbians. She suggested, for instance, that the theme be something more tangible, like how women’s sexuality is made invisible or how violence affects women’s feelings about their bodies and their pleasure. She suggested that the female orgasm was too vague to draw attention to any political or social issue. For QY, the speculative relation to the world that will bring forth something different than male dominance is inseparable from the feminine imaginary contained in the possibilities of a writing from the body—a writing that uses words (as in Zora’s case), but also a writing that inscribes in the world and on the world a new sensibility through the body. PINK and WRC speak to (even if against) State, law, institution, as well as notions like inclusion and diversity that are often projected from these sites or for the benefit of these sites. This is seen by QY as detachment from aesthetic possibilities, a kind of continuation of the death of beauty in the world as a result of male singularity. As Cixous articulates it, “The new history is coming; it’s not a dream, though it does extend beyond men’s imagination, and for good reason. It’s going to deprive them of their conceptual orthopedics” (1976: 883). For Mariam, who expressed a similar thought to me one afternoon, PINK and WRC staff were not “creators” (steghcoghner). They “don’t do anything different from any other institution. They are all the same thing.” In other

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words, they do not produce outside of the dominant imaginary—a phallic economy. From their acts, no new history, no future, will emerge.

Conclusion: Beyond Phallic Culture QY’s dispositions toward the world—that of the militantly feminist disavowal of everything that is currently phallic and thus inadequately the site of feminist (as well as lesbian) work—are often criticized by staff members of NGOs like WRC and PINK as impractical. Anna, for example, a staff member of PINK, had gotten into an argument with Zora one evening, during which Zora accused her of not being feminist because she dates men and thus could never take the side of women. Anna complained to me after this argument: “They are constantly telling us that we are doing nothing or that whatever we are doing is wrong. But what are they doing?” Then she laughed as she joked, “I would probably criticize them too if I saw them ever actually do anything.” For Anna, the creation of art (which is largely experimental), the writing of obscure texts, the criticism, and the insistence on maintaining separation from men do not count as a part of civil society. Anna, Hripsime, Armen, Zabel, and other NGO staff members are not against art or aesthetic creation necessarily, but for them these forms of production are separate from civil society, which should work toward making tangible changes in the world by way of advocacy and activism. Art would have a place, for instance, if it carried forth some kind of distinct message or theme that could be translated into public policy, a campaign, or the provision of resources. Because of the NGO form’s dependence on funding, according to members of QY, imagining an otherwise was difficult. Granters of funds demanded tangible outcomes, but only within the world that already exists, preventing difference—the feminine—from taking shape. In QY’s understanding, civil society is already and will likely always be a site of male dominance and phallic order. However, what they offer by way of their interventions are not necessarily the complete collapse of what we understand to be civil society, but rather a challenge that forces open the rigidness—singularity, phallicness—of that form. The demand for the impractical, for the improper, for the flux and constant invagination of difference and the making of worlds through deeply personal relations to world, self, and other place limits on the NGO form and on civil society writ large. Although these kinds of interventions

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might be dismissed by more traditional civil society actors as unproductive, QY’s constant disavowal and refusal forces debate, bringing forth something new into everyday grassroots politics. This something new for QY is the feminine itself—perhaps Cixous’s New Woman, or conceivably the world being made woman. In her canonical essay “Is Female to Male as Nature Is to Culture?” Sherry B. Ortner, argues that the “universal devaluation of women” stems from the fact that in every culture, universally, woman is identified with or is a symbol of what culture defines as at a lower order of existence than itself. This devalued order is that of “nature,” which is seen as something that is controlled by culture, transcended by culture, or transformed by culture into something with purpose for human use. This volume seeks to understand the relationship between NGOs and States vis-à-vis this very question, which is in itself an experimental play with dichotomies to reveal possible gendered relations that we might not see otherwise. While the history of socialism, postsocialism, and the oligarchic State in Armenia complicate the possibilities of definitively gendering any of these spheres, QY challenges both NGOs and the State as phallic institutions that constitute a masculine world too afraid to foresee the unforeseeable. Ortner’s use of the nature/culture dichotomy speaks to the phallic/feminine logics in which Irigaray, Cixous, as well as members of Queering Yerevan are invested. While these sets of feminist conceptualization do not insist on woman’s closeness with nature, they do insist on woman’s desire as something that has been hidden, obscured, and erased within the phallic logics that largely make up the ways in which “culture” is conceptualized. Feminine desire, writing, and force, thus, are forms of being and becoming that lie underneath, always controlled lest they unleash their destruction on phallic institutions. Rather than staying put and working to mend the problems that exist within phallic order, QY is invested totally in what lies beyond and outside the phallic order—culture as we know it—the other world that is yet to be, that is in becoming.

Acknowledgments I thank the editors, Andria Timmer and Elizabeth Wirtz, for the work they put into editing and bringing together these texts for the volume. Without the help and welcoming of the staff at PINK and WRC, many of

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whom are dear friends, this chapter as well as my larger research would not have been possible. And, finally, my appreciation for Queering Yerevan is boundless. The collective and its members taught me about political possibilities, but they also initiated my own entry in aesthetic theory and praxis, for which I will forever be grateful. Tamar Shirinian is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. She received her PhD in Cultural Anthropology, with a Certificate in Feminist Studies, from Duke University in 2016. Her research interests lie at the intersections of gender, sexuality, kinship, and political economy. Her current book manuscript takes up postsocialist political economy as a queer, and perverse, object of study. Tamar’s work has been published in a wide array of venues, including American Ethnologist; PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review; Gender, Place, & Culture; QED: Journal for GLBTQ Worldmaking; and the Kurdish Women’s Liberation journal: Jineoloji.

Notes 1. “Re: [Eurasia] Armenian Clans: Who controls what in a small country.” The Global Intelligence Files, Wikileaks, 10 October 2012. Available from https:// wikileaks.org/gifiles/docs/22/2256984_re-eurasia-armenian-clans-whocontrols-what-in-a-small.html (accessed on 18 June 2019). 2. “Number of Registered NGOs in Armenia.” The Civilitas Foundation, 16 July 2010. Available from http://www.civilitasfoundation.org/cf/spotlight/factsfor-thought/456-number-of-registered-ngos-in-armenia.html (accessed on 18 June 2019). See comments section for most updated information available from 2012. 3. “In and Between the (Re)public.” Queering Yerevan Collective, 11 February 2013. Available from https://queeringyerevan.blogspot.com/2013/02/ in-and-between-republics_11.html (accessed on 18 June 2019).

References Astourian, Stephen. 2000. “From Ter-Petrosian to Kocharian: Leadership Change in Armenia.” Berkeley Program in Soviet and Post-Soviet Studies Working Paper Series. Berkeley: University of California, Berkely. https://escholarship .org/content/qt0c2794v4/qt0c2794v4.pdf. Cixous, Helene. 1976. “The Laugh of the Medusa.” Translated by Keith Cohen and Paula Cohen. Signs 1(4): 875–93. ———. 1981. “Castration or Decapitation?” Translated by Annette Kuhn. Signs 7(1): 41–55.

262 • Tamar Shirinian Duggan, Lisa. 2003. The Twilight of Equality? Neoliberalism, Cultural Politics and the Attack on Democracy. Boston: Beacon Press. Essig, Laurie. 1999. Queer in Russia: A Story of Sex, Self, and the Other. Durham: Duke University Press. Ferguson, James. 1990. The Anti-Politics Machine: “Development,” Depoliticization and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho. New York: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2007. Global Shadows: Africa in the Neoliberal World Order. Durham: Duke University Press. Fisher, William F. 1997. “Doing Good? The Politics and Antipolitics of NGO Practices.” Annual Review of Anthropology 26: 439–64. Fraser, Nancy. 1990. “Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy.” Social Text 25/26: 56–80. Funk, Nanette. 2004. “Feminist Critiques of Liberalism: Can They Travel East? Their Relevance in Eastern and Central Europe and the Former Soviet Union.” Signs 29(3): 695–726. Gal, Susan, and Gail Kligman. 2000. The Politics of Gender After Socialism. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Ghodsee, Kristen. 2004. “Feminism-by-Design: Emerging Capitalisms, Cultural Feminism, and Women’s Nongovernmental Organizations in Postsocialist Eastern Europe.” Signs 29(3): 727–53. Glasius, Marlies, and Armine Ishkanian. 2014. “Surreptitious Symbiosis: Engagement Between Activists and NGOs.” Voluntas 25(6): 2,620–44. Habermas, Jürgen. 1992. “Citizenship and National Identity: Some Reflections on the Future of Europe.” Praxis International 12: 1–19. Hemment, Julie. 2004. “The Riddle of the Third Sector: Civil Society, International Aid, and NGOs in Russia.” Anthropological Quarterly 77(2): 215–41. Irigaray, Luce. 1985a. Speculum of the Other Woman. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. ———. 1985b. This Sex Which Is Not One. Translated by Catherine Porter with Carolyn Burke. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Ishkanian, Armine. 2008. Democracy Building and Civil Society in Post-Soviet Armenia. New York: Routledge. Kopalyan, Nerses. 2018. “Between Honor and Shame: Understanding Corruption in Armenia’s Political Culture. EVN Report, 9 March 2018. www.evnreport. com/raw-unfiltered/between-honor-and-shame-understanding-corrup tion-in-armenia-s-political-culture. Puar, Jasbir K. 2007. “Terrorist Assemblages.” In Next Wave: New Directions in Women’s Studies, edited by Inderpal Grewal, Caren Kaplan, and Robyn Wiegman. Durham: Duke University Press. Shirinian, Tamar. 2018. “Queer Life-Worlds in Postsocialist Armenia: Alternativ Space and the Possibilities of In/Visibility.” QED: A Journal of GLBTQ Worldmaking 5(1): 1–23.

To Foresee the Unforeseeable • 263 Stella, Francesca. 2012. “The Politics of In/Visibility: Carving Out Queer Space in Ul’yanovsk.” Europe-Asia Studies 64 (10): 1822–46. Wedel, Janine. 2001. Collision and Collusion: The Strange Case of Western Aid to Eastern Europe. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin. Woodcock, Shannon. 2011. “A Short History of Queer Time of ‘Post-Socialist’ Romania, or Are We There Yet? Let’s Ask Madonna!” In De-Centering Western Sexualities: Central and Eastern European Perspectives, edited by Robert and Joanna Mizielinska Kulpa, 63–84. Farnham: Ashgate. Zavisza, Jane. 2012. Housing the New Russia. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

CONCLUSION

Queering the NGO/State Binary On Governing Stateless Peoples Elizabeth Wirtz

Female|Male. Nature|Culture. NGO|State. Dichotomies. Each word represents a category conceptualized as mutually exclusive and diametrically opposed to its counterpart. Each categorical pair are not only set in opposition to each other; they are ordered hierarchically with one category holding primacy over the other. Female/Nature/NGO, the marked categories, can only be understood by their relation to Male/Culture/ State, the unmarked categories. That is, each element in the dichotomy is defined primarily by what it is not. While each of these terms stand independent in relation to their counterpart, each pair has been symbolically mapped onto the others. Culturally constructed cognitive categories inform our “mental maps of reality” (Wolf-Meyer 2012), which not only inform how we classify the world around us, but also how we assign meaning and value to those categories. In one of her most well-known and provocative writings, Sherry Ortner (1974) argues that women’s universal subservient position to men results from women’s physiological and psychological existence closer to nature. Men, on the other hand, are seen to have evolved beyond their “natural” state of being and are preoccupied with the creation of “culture.” Inherent in this ontology is the positing of culture, and therefore men, as superior to nature, and therefore women. Taking this symbolic relationship further, scholars examining modes of governance have interrogated the relationship between government organizations (GOs) and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), often superimposing the categories of Female to NGO and Male to GO (i.e., the State). The authors in this volume provide nuanced analyses of the gendered nature of the NGO/State relationship. Within the chapters lie

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an exploration of the ways that the NGO/State binary mimics Female/ Male relationships in that NGOs often perform work that is “feminized,” such as providing material needs, education, and healthcare, whereas the State is framed as “masculine” by virtue of its militaristic and protectivist functions. Furthermore, the State, as a cultural invention (of man) functions to protect the territory (nature, i.e., woman) it owns: the “motherland,” which is sacred, nurturing, and requires protection in order to secure her “penetrable” borders from external invading sources (Das 2008). This gendered relationship of the State to its territory is replicated within interpersonal relationships so that in the gendered scheme of the body politic, men’s bodies belong to the State as soldiers and economic producers for the protection and strength of State and society (Enloe 2007); women’s bodies belong to the State as reproducers, nurturers, and repositories of national identity (Ginsburg and Rapp 1995; Mookherjee 2008; Winter 2016). Some authors call attention to the ways in which NGO work itself has become feminized, both in the sense that a large proportion of the people who engage in NGO work are women and that NGO work is often devalued in comparison to other types of work in business and government. The chapters in this volume represent a deep engagement with the ways that the gendered nature of the NGO/State dichotomy is created, reproduced, and also challenged. While the dichotomies analyzed are useful conceptual tools, the work presented here provides evidence for the complexity of governing projects and problematizes the simplicity of categorical dichotomies. Since the current political world order is organized by geographically bound States, it seems logical to start with the State as the primary governing body and to understand how other entities like NGOs integrate into this order. But what analytical power do these dichotomies have when the unmarked category does not exist? How can we understand the NGO/State relationship when there is no clear “State”? In line with other authors in this volume, I use the NGO/State relationship to explore the complexities of the gendering of governmentality. This chapter examines systems of governance for stateless peoples—asylum seekers and refugees. Using Kakuma Refugee Camp, Kenya, as a case example, I explore the structures of governance for peoples without a government. What can the absence of a State reveal about NGOs, and can these activities be “gendered” without both elements of the dichotomy?

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Revisiting the Binaries Female|Male Years after her initial publication, Ortner revisited her assertions on the symbolic relationship between the Female/Male to Nature/Culture dichotomy (Ortner 1997). Ortner critiques her own universalist assumption that women are, and always have been, ordered subservient to men. She asserts that her initial units of analysis in examining forms of power and prestige are not easily transposed from one society to another. Indeed, her early analysis is ahistorical in that it ignored the impact of colonialism and globalization on women’s status (and gender categories for that matter) worldwide. In analyzing the relative status of men and women, it is easy to slip into the ethnocentric habit of using one notion of power and agency to analyze all types of gender relations. Since her second publication on the topic, feminist and queer scholars have produced a plethora of evidence that critiques the very foundation of her framework. First, Ortner conflates sex and gender. The decoupling of these domains is standard among feminist scholars today. With advancements in medicine and technology, we now have evidence that upsets the very notion of binary biological sex down to the chromosomal and genetic level. Sex, rather than existing as two bounded categories of “female” and “male” with divergences categorized as “intersex,” is recognized instead as a series of biological markers that present with mind-boggling diversity (Ainsworth 2015). An increasing scientific interest in trans people has led to an understanding of the impressive capacity of the body to change its physiology in response to external stimuli like hormone therapy/blockers. In reality, most of what we believe about sex reflects our cultural domains, our representations and imaginaries, rather than biological processes (Fausto-Sterling 2000). Beyond sex, gender scholars have long argued that gender is not simply “woman” and “man” and that gender constructs are highly variable across cultures. Inhibited by our own culturally informed cognitive categories, anthropologists have attempted to explain gender diversity by adding categories to “man” and “woman” such as third, fourth, and fifth genders. Queer theorists have pushed the conversation into new spaces by arguing that gender categories are often inadequate because gender, as a form of subjectivity, is a project that is contested, contingent, and constantly in the making (Blackwood 2010). Thus, feminist scholars often problematize gender categories by attending to gendered attributes that people, languages, and institutions enact and embody: mas-

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culinity and femininity, or rather, masculinities and femininities. While feminist and queer theorists have expertly decoupled sex and gender as well as gendered binaries, the classification of attributes into two types, masculinity versus femininity, can reify the gender binary.

Nature|Culture Feminist scholars have also called attention to the problematic Nature/ Culture dichotomy. In Western societies, there was little concern with the conceptual divide between nature and culture prior to the sixteenth century. With the rise of the Scientific Revolution, humanity started to be seen as something separate from, and often opposed to, nature (Possamai 2013). With increasing attention paid to the systematic observation of natural phenomena as a scientific endeavor, humans became the scientific instrument, and the rest of the world became “the other” to be studied, categorized, and understood. Developed alongside understanding humans as separate from nature was the notion that humans should control nature. Thus human activity (culture) became the mechanism to tame nature and bend it to the human will. Yet the idea that humans are separate from nature via our cultural development, and that culture is not simply another form of Homo sapiens’ natural adaptive traits, has been challenged (Nettle 2009).

NGO|State Just as the Female/Male and Nature/Culture binaries have been deconstructed, so too has the NGO/State dichotomy. While a long history of analysis of non-State actors exists, NGOs as an analytical category did not take hold until the 1980s. As neoliberal logics spread throughout the global marketplace, an explosion of NGOs occurred to address neglected human needs created by increasing privatization and concentration of wealth in the backdrop of declining public infrastructure. The expansion of domestic and international development work prompted scholars to focus on the role of NGOs in local communities, the global movement of resources and people, and the relationship between NGOs and States. A rise in “aidnographies” has illuminated the ways in which “the role of NGOs in society has changed due to changes in the nature of the state, the labor market, and social services” (Sampson 2017: 3). As discussed in many chapters of this volume, NGOs are intricately involved

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in forms of governance, blurring the NGO/State binary. In addition, the chapters demonstrate that the types, functions, organizations, and operations of NGOs are exceptionally diverse, rendering the category itself somewhat meaningless. David Lewis and Mark Schuller (2017) argue that the instability of the NGO category, rather than being a barrier to the study of governmentality, can be an asset as it forces a nuanced analysis of categorical relationships. Thus, the binaries that frame this volume are important rhetorical and structural devices that indicate relationships that do not and cannot represent reality. The authors, cognizant of the critiques of dualistic thinking, have explored the work that binaries do while presenting nuanced analyses of the manners in which they are both reproduced and resisted. I argue that this nuance contributes to a queering of the binary. In this chapter, I contribute to the understanding of liminal governing spaces as queer spaces through an ethnographic analysis of the governing of forcibly displaced peoples in Kakuma Refugee Camp.

Governing Forced Migrants The data that inform this chapter were collected over a period of eighteen months from 2008 through 2014. Using respondent-driven sampling, I worked with 161 participants, including 118 Somali refugee women, 14 Somali refugee men, and 29 humanitarian aid workers. Kakuma Refugee Camp lies 80 kilometers south of the South Sudanese border in Turkana County, Kenya. Established in 1991, the camp currently hosts approximately 186,000 refugees and asylum seekers. Kakuma, and its sister camp, Dadaab, are the only places in Kenya that most asylum seekers and refugees are legally permitted to reside.1 Like most refugee camps in the Global South, Kakuma is overseen by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). UNHCR works in tandem with the Kenyan government and a shifting landscape of national and international NGOs to manage the refugee population. To understand the governing structure of Kakuma and similar refugee camps, I first trace the history of refugee governance.

A Brief History of Refugee Governance Scholars examining refugee policy have coined the term “refugee regime” to describe the complex interactions among diverse actors in-

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volved in addressing refugee issues. The refugee regime can be understood as a set of “principles, norms, rules, and decision-making procedures that influence the treatment of refugees by actors in the international system, including states, international organizations, and NGOs” (Betts, Loescher, and Milner 2012: 125). The actors involved in the refugee regime form a “dense tapestry of international institutions at the multilateral, regional, and bilateral levels” (Betts 2010: 242). Alexander Betts (2010) states that the refugee regime is more like a regime complex as the various institutions’ functions may be nested, parallel, and/or overlapping with each other. The beginning of the global refugee regime as it exists today was rooted in the founding of the UNHCR in 1950. To date, UNHCR continues to be at the helm of this regime as the primary refugee monitoring and managing institution, as well as the principal coordinator between other actors involved in refugee affairs (i.e., governments, other InterGovernmental Organizations, NGOs, and refugee communities). Since the 1970s, UNHCR has maintained its position as the world’s largest humanitarian relief organization, with immense power and influence over political and humanitarian responses to forced migration (Betts, Loescher, and Milner 2012). Throughout its history, UNHCR has struggled to uphold the principles of humanitarianism while navigating complex political and economic terrains. However, the very formation of UNHCR was, in part, a political maneuver, one that continues to shape its work today. At the close of World War II, mass numbers of forced migrants flowed through Europe and the United States. Though there were many humanitarian organizations working with these populations, and many governments who accepted them into their borders, there was no international governing body in charge of these migrations nor any clearly defined legal rights for those forced to flee their country of origin from violence and political upheaval. UNHCR was initially formed under certain conditions in order to fulfill specific political goals during the Cold War. The United Nations was (and still is) largely influenced by the United States and Western European nations, nations that were engrossed in an arms race against the Soviet Union. During the Cold War, an exodus of people fled from communistoccupied areas to Western European countries. These people were seen as political dissidents who “voted with their feet” against communism. UNHCR (and its predecessors, the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Agency and the International Refugee Organization) was formed

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primarily to support these migrations and the political philosophies these movements represented. At this specific juncture in history, supporting the East-to-West refugee movement was viewed as a way to support anticommunist sentiments. The formation of UNHCR as the leading refugee agency in 1950 was solidified during the 1951 Geneva Convention on the Status of Refugees, during which the definition of “refugee” and refugee legal rights were outlined, as well as the core mandate of UNHCR. In the beginning, UNHCR was created with a narrow mandate and extremely limited resources (including funding and personnel) and was originally meant to be disbanded after a few years. The organization’s mandate was limited to three goals: (1) to provide access to protection, including asylum and principles of nonrefoulement (forcible return); (2) to protect the legal rights of asylum seekers and refugees laid out in international refugee law; and (3) to provide access to durable solutions for stateless and refugee populations. UNHCR’s mandate concerned the legal protection of asylum seekers and did not include providing financial relief, material aid, or social services. At this time, charitable organizations in countries hosting refugees provided the majority of humanitarian services. Originally, the scope of the agency’s work was limited to issues of forced migration in Europe to the exclusion of refugee movements in other areas of the world. In the 1960s, UNHCR expanded its geographical focus and turned an eye to refugee crises in the Global South, once again as a result of strategic political maneuvering. Western nations viewed refugee populations in the Global South as sources of political and economic instability that the Soviet Union could exploit. Therefore, providing assistance and protection to refugees in these regions was done, in part, as a tool of aggression in Cold War politics. As a result, “Western governments consequently came to see assistance to refugees as a central part of their foreign policy towards newly independent states” (Betts, Loescher, and Milner 2012: 28). According to Betts, Loescher, and Milner (2012), the primary motivation for Western governments to provide assistance to refugee populations was not solely based on the well-being or interests of refugees; rather, it was a technique to manage international political interests. UNHCR’s foray into the Global South was met with mixed responses. On the one hand, many governments in the Global South that hosted refugee populations, often referred to as “host countries” or “countries of asylum,” welcomed the institutional and financial support that UNHCR offered. On the other hand, these countries also felt that UNHCR’s in-

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volvement in their regional politics threatened their sovereignty, and the unequal burden placed on them for hosting the majority of the world’s refugee populations was unfair. As immigration policies tightened in the Global North, Western countries sought to contain refugee movements in the Global South in order to keep refugees out of their borders. At the same time, countries in the Global South, who struggled with their own political, social, and economic stability, were overwhelmed with the massive flows of forced migrants over their borders. Thus began a dichotomous approach to the international refugee problem centered on competing geopolitical interests between the Global North and the Global South. The partition between the Global North and the Global South regarding refugee management stems from the division between sources of funding and the geography of refugee movements. Prior to the recent Syrian conflict and movements of refugees across the Mediterranean and into Europe, roughly 85 percent of refugees resided in the Global South, while only ten States in the Global North accounted for 80 percent of UNHCR’s funding (Betts, Loescher, and Milner 2012; UNHCR 2018). The Global North, intent on keeping refugees from reaching their countries, channel funds through UNHCR to support humanitarian operations in the Global South. In lieu of true “burden-sharing” of the global refugee population with the Global South, and without a strong international commitment to address the political causes of forced migration, countries in the Global North offer financial assistance to countries in the Global South through funding multilateral institutions like UNHCR, World Food Programme (WFP), and International Organization for Migration (IOM). Indeed, “for the world’s most powerful states, the provision of humanitarian assistance was financially and politically preferable to intervention as it satisfied public demands for some kind of action to alleviate human suffering while excusing governments from taking more decisive and risky forms of political and military intervention” (Betts, Loescher, and Milner 2012: 56). By funneling monetary contributions through humanitarian organizations working in the Global South, governments (and by extension their citizens) in the Global North are able to reconcile their ethical obligations with their political goals. Just as the Global North seeks to segregate refugee populations from their countries, so too does the Global South. Michel Agier (2008) argues that governments seek to quarantine “undesirables” like refugees in order to contain, manage, and hide from view those they deem problematic to their sense of national and social order. Forced migrants

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spend an average of seventeen years in exile before they are folded back into the world order, either through return to their country of origin, resettlement to a third country, or being granted citizenship in their country of asylum (Agier 2011). In the absence of any real durable solutions, UNHCR is forced to manage refugee populations through policies of “care and maintenance” and “encampment.” Agier (2011) argues that care and maintenance has become a euphemism for sustaining “bare life,” the provision of basic needs such as shelter, food, water, and medicine to maintain the physical existence of people in exile limbo. “Encampment,” the confinement of refugees into geographically defined areas, has come to be the term used to discuss the current state of refugee affairs and, according to Agier (2011), is UNHCR’s unspoken “fourth solution” to the refugee problem. It is here on the “margins of the world” (Agier 2008), within the hundreds of settlements scattered throughout the Global South, where the majority of refugees eke out an existence. The world at large knows these places as refugee camps; refugees in Kakuma refer to them as “open air prisons.”

The Nation of Kakuma Kakuma spans approximately 15 square kilometers and is divided into four units. Table 11.1 lists the intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) and governmental agencies operating in Kakuma. Located in a semiarid area inhabited primarily by the mobile pastoralist Turkana, Kakuma is essentially a city in the desert (Oka 2011). Table 11.1. Intergovernmental organizations and governmental agencies. Organization

Acronym

Primary Areas of Work

Government of Kenya Refugee Affairs Secretariat

GoK RAS

Liaises with UNHCR to manage the camp, provides travel documents

United Nations High Commission for Refugees

UNHCR

Manages Kakuma and coordinates efforts of implementing partners and GoK

International Organization for Migration

IOM

Coordinates migration and resettlement cases

Joint Voluntary Agency

JVA

US agency that screens refugee cases for resettlement to the United States

World Food Programme

WFP

Supplies food rations

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The land where Kakuma is built is in Kenyan territory and owned by the Kenyan Government, but it is temporarily leased to UNHCR, who asserts rights to determine who, aside from Kenyan government officials and law enforcement, can occupy that space and what activities they can do within the camp. The refugee camp and Kakuma town are separated by a lagga (mostly dry riverbed) with one bridge connecting them. While people, vehicles, and goods move between these two spaces, Kakuma town and Kakuma camp operate in practice as two distinct units. On one side of the lagga lie three compounds containing housing, offices, canteens, and recreational areas of aid organizations. Spreading north and west from the NGO compounds is the camp itself. On the other side of the lagga lies Kakuma town, inhabited by some thirty thousand Turkana. In the center of town is a small compound containing a few offices for the Kenyan Government’s Refugee Affairs Secretariat (RAS). In Kakuma, the Kenyan Government has little presence, physically and operationally. The RAS compound is less than half the size of the smallest of the NGO compounds, a clear indication of the relative presence of the State compared to NGOs. Aside from the RAS compound, the only other governmental presence in the area are a few police outposts scattered throughout the camp and a police station and canteen at the perimeter of the camp close to the entrance of one of the NGO compounds. During my time in the camp, I rarely saw these police outposts occupied or police patrolling the camp. For the most part, unless the police were called into the camp to deal with a public disturbance or crime, there was little interaction between refugees and police within the camp. The RAS’s primary role is to liaise with UNHCR and other aid organizations and manage refugee movements and asylum cases. The RAS issues travel passes to refugees who need to move outside the camp for medical treatment or to meet with agencies outside of Kakuma regarding asylum or resettlement cases. The RAS office is also supposed to run the Refugee Status Determination (RSD) process. Under international refugee policy, countries that host refugees hold the right to determine to whom they grant refugee status and allow to remain within their borders. UNHCR’s primary responsibility is to ensure that States are properly adjudicating asylum claims and upholding refugee and asylee rights. However, in practice, UNHCR often fulfills this role in countries like Kenya that do not have the financial and/or personnel capacity to manage this process. Thus, in Kakuma, UNHCR is the agency that is

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primarily responsible for adjudicating asylum cases and overseeing the RSD and resettlement processes. The management of the RSD process illustrates the immense power and control UNHCR wields over refugee lives. Upon crossing a border, a forced migrant must declare that they are seeking asylum to be able to remain in the country to which they have migrated. But “asylum seeker” is a temporary status that grants limited rights to the asylee. To be considered a refugee, an asylum seeker must submit to intensive screening, known as the RSD process. During this process, asylees are interviewed, often multiple times, and any documents they have are reviewed to determine if they fit the criteria for refugee status. If UNHCR determines the asylee’s claim to be credible, and thus eligible for refugee status, they are granted full rights as a refugee and given access to all services offered by UNHCR and other aid organizations operating in the camp. Refugee status also gives a person the right to apply for resettlement to a third country and/or full citizenship in their country of asylum. If UNHCR finds the asylee is not eligible for refugee status, the Kenyan Government mandates that they must vacate the country within ninety days of the adjudication. Many of the refugees with whom I spoke in Kakuma refer to the RSD process as the process of “becoming a citizen of UNHCR.” Refugees are acutely aware that UNHCR employees have the power to determine their legal status, and therefore their rights, access to aid, and possibilities for future residence and possible citizenship. For asylees in Kakuma, the process of seeking refugee status is simultaneously a process of applying for “UNHCR citizenship” and submitting to the rule and “law” of UNHCR. In this sense, refugee status symbolizes a temporary resolution to the liminal state of statelessness. Refugee existence outside of the world-order is rectified as they are subsumed into a different type of State; one that is not bound by geography but instead formed through the power vested in IGOs by cooperating States. Recently, this notion of “refugee citizenship” has extended beyond the domain of UNHCR as the reigning “State.” For example, in the 2016 Summer Olympics, the International Olympic Committee allowed ten refugees to compete on a team. Half of these athletes came from Kakuma. The team competed under a new anthem and flag, symbolically recognized during the opening ceremonies. “Team Refugee” is just one outcome of the increasing tendency to see “refugee” as not just a legal status, but also an identity and possibly a political entity. A team of researchers at the University of Oxford have proposed a radical idea

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termed “Refugia,” which is described as “a confederal, transnational polity emerging from the connections built up by refugees, with the help of sympathizers . . . [that is] a linked set of territories and spaces connecting refugees into a polity that is neither a new nation state nor simply an international organization, but has some characteristics of both” (Centre on Migration, Policy, and Society 2018). Another proposal called Refugee Nation suggests locating an uninhabited or unwanted piece of land in which to settle all current refugees (Refugee Nation 2020). The State owning the land would then relinquish ownership of the land and grant sovereignty to the new inhabitants to form their own government, essentially a geographically bounded refugee State. For now, these proposals remain in the realm of imagination. However, in reality, the closest approximation to a real refugee nation is the millions of refugees, like those in Kakuma, who exist in a state of pseudocitizenship under the purview of UNHCR. In the absence of a State, the IGO UNHCR subsumes some of the roles typically relegated to States, namely, controlling the border of the camp and determining who has access to refugee rights via conferring “UNHCR citizenship.” In addition to these functions, UNHCR acts as a quasi-State body in its relationship to other aid organizations operating in Kakuma.

A Patchwork of Aid Table 11.2 lists the major NGOs operating in Kakuma along with their primary areas of work. NGOs offer essential social and material services to refugees like mental and physical healthcare, education, housing, water and food ration distribution, and livelihood training. In order for NGOs to work in Kakuma, they must apply to UNHCR and be granted “implementing partner” status. UNHCR facilitates some coordination between NGOs such as interagency working groups. In addition to their external budgets, NGOs can also apply to receive funding from UNHCR for their projects. UNHCR also outsources some of its operations, such as the management of special protection zones within the camp to implementing partners. In Kakuma, this responsibility falls to the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) and the Jesuit Refugee Services (JRS). However, most NGO operations are independent, and specific programs are not closely monitored by UNHCR. The NGO system in Kakuma was difficult for me to understand as programs and functions switch frequently among different agencies.

276 • Elizabeth Wirtz Table 11.2. Nongovernmental organizations. Organization

Acronym

Primary Areas of Work

Lutheran World Federation

LWF

UNHCR lead implementing partner— material assistance, water distribution management, housing, education, human rights promotion and protection

International Rescue Committee

IRC

medical care, nutrition

National Council of Churches of Kenya

NCCK

sexual and reproductive health, HIV/ AIDS support, shelter, WASH, peace education

Norwegian Refugee Council

NRC

WASH, ration distribution, livelihood training, shelter, environment, education

Danish Refugee Council

DRC

youth education, livelihood, protection

Jesuit Refugee Services

JRS

education, psychosocial services, Safe Haven

Refugee Consortium of Kenya

RCK

legal advice and representation

Film Aid

information dissemination, human rights awareness raising, entertainment

Windle Trust

education

World Vision

ration distribution, material assistance, child protection and education

International Committee of the Red Cross

ICRC

tracing services—family communication and reunification

Refugees United

REFUNITE tracing services—family communication and reunification

Don Bosco

vocational training

IsraAID

psychosocial services, training, education

Save the Children

child protection and education

CARE International

WASH, HIV/AIDS support, education, food distribution

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For example, during my first few visits to the camp, LWF was responsible for coordinating food ration distribution. When an internal investigation revealed that high ranking LWF employees were involved in corruption and mismanagement of resources, the organization lost their bid to continue in this capacity with UNHCR and WFP. When I returned in 2013, I found that UNHCR and WFP had granted food ration distribution management to two other implementing partners: the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) and World Vision. Since roles and responsibilities among aid agencies shift, it can be difficult for refugees (and anthropologists) to understand who offers what services. In addition, the multiplicity of organizations addressing the same issues makes it difficult to know who is responsible for what. This confusion is compounded by the fact that not all these organizations offer these services continuously as their ability to provide services rely on rapidly changing funding availability, guidelines, and focus. To add to this complexity, other NGOs temporarily operate in Kakuma as well. External NGOs must collaborate with and be hosted by either UNHCR or an implementing partner NGO. For example, in 2013, John Snow, Inc., a public health consulting organization based in the United States, coordinated with the National Council of Churches of Kenya to train refugees educators in sexual and reproductive health. Elizabeth Cullen Dunn (2012) calls this sort of organizational chaos “adhocracy” as opposed to a centralized bureaucracy.

Divisions of Labor In Kakuma, like many refugee camps in the Global South, managing refugee populations includes the participation of multiple actors. Elizabeth Holzer (2015) describes one such configuration of managing actors as “bifurcated governmentality.” Holzer details the ways the Ghanaian government, UNHCR, and host subcontractors work, sometimes in tandem and sometimes separately, to support the everyday functioning of Buduburam camp. Unlike Buduburam, the Kenyan Government has abdicated the majority of responsibility of and control over Kakuma to UNHCR and its implementing partners. Within the humanitarian field of Kakuma, the typology of organizations (IGOs vs. NGOs) determines their functioning in the camp. These differing roles map strikingly well onto cultural representations of gendered relationships of State versus NGO. UNHCR operates as a pseudogovernment in that it performs masculinized activities: (1) en-

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forces the boundaries of the camp, (2) grants rights via determining “citizenship,” (3) provides protection, (4) controls “implementing partner” status and coordinates NGO activity, and (5) sometimes provides funding for NGO projects. NGOs on the other hand, perform the feminized activities of delivering material and social services to refugees. This analogy of UNHCR as the masculine State and implementing partners as feminine NGOs, however, only extends to the internal logic of the aid landscape. Given the complexity of the patchwork of aid organizations and shifting projects in Kakuma, the majority of refugees I worked with in Kakuma considered the various NGOs to be extensions of UNHCR. Speaking on how refugees view the NGOscape in Kakuma, one aid worker stated, “UNHCR is your mother and your father; they give you everything you need, so what more could you want?” Among refugees in Kakuma, there was little deciphering between IGOs and NGOs, and among NGOs, and their structures and roles. Part of this lack of differentiation stems from the fact that aid organizations do not sufficiently communicate to refugees the intricacies of humanitarian interventions. More importantly however, are the ways implementing partners participate indirectly in the process of governance. Built into IGO and NGO programs and services are systems of data collection that are shared with UNHCR and then used to inform and administer camp governance. Rose Jaji (2011) likens the Kenyan refugee camps to a “total institution” (Goffman 1961), whereby camp authorities meticulously monitor and regulate refugee activity. Both Jaji (2011) and Jennifer Hyndman (2000) detail how even the architecture and spatial layout of the camps facilitate aid organizations’ “disciplinary gaze” (Foucault 1977) over refugees. Beyond the physical layout of the camp, aid organizations scrupulously collect information on refugees through head counts, ration card issuing, medical screening, refugee status determination processes, resettlement interviewing, and periodic camp-wide information gathering exercises (Hyndman 2000; Jaji 2011; Verdirame and Harrell-Bond 2005). Camp-wide information gathering exercises can be seen as similar in function to the census in the United States. Through these activities, refugees are reduced to case numbers with associating statistical information that serves to situate them within the humanitarian apparatus so that it may govern them properly (Jaji 2011). The collection and use of these data can be seen as a creation of a “data doubles” for refugees. Data doubles can be seen as a “surveillant assemblage” whereby various pieces of information about a person are “reas-

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sembled in different settings through a series of data flows [with] . . . the result [being] a decorporealized body . . . which can then be scrutinized and targeted for intervention” (Haggerty and Ericson 2003: 606, 611). As technologies develop, the tools with which aid organizations surveil refugees become more effective, increasing humanitarian “biopower” over refugees, in the manner Foucault suggests (1978). By using electronic forms, computer software, and Internet servers, aid organizations can easily standardize data collection materials and share information on both statistical data and particular refugee cases. These data are shared with UNHCR and used both to create policies to govern the camp and to inform individual case adjudication. An example of the increasing use of digital surveillance is the implementation of biometrics in food ration distribution. Kakuma and its sister camp, Dadaab, served as the testing ground for a new biotechnology system that replaced paper food ration cards with fingerprinting. This system allows aid organizations to more accurately track ration collection and therefore who is physically present in the camp (or more accurately, who physically collects rations). The NGOs that distribute food rations collect biometric data and share it with UNHCR and WFP. Failure to collect rations for more than one cycle signals to these IGOs that the beneficiary is not present in the camp, which can impact refugee status and access to other resources. The data that implementing partners collect has an impact on the legal status, rights, and resource access of refugees (Wirtz 2017). Many of the refugees I worked with saw the NGOs that distribute rations and collect biometric data as not simply working with the IGOs that govern the camp, but also for them. The conflation of humanitarian aid distribution and humanitarian governance makes for little meaningful difference between the two projects as well as the various actors involved in those projects. In the absence of State structures in governing refugee camp populations in Kenya, Kakuma emerges as a semi-sovereign space with UNHCR as it’s quasigovernment (masculine) and implementing partners as complementary and subordinate NGOs (feminine). However, the relationship between the Kenyan Government, UNHCR, and implementing partners is not necessarily stable nor seen as separate by all parties involved. In Kakuma, NGOs are intimately involved in the process of governance via their position as intermediaries between refugees and UNHCR (in data collection and provision of services), leading to little perceived difference between projects of humanitarianism and projects of governance.

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Abandoning Binaries? Binaries demonstrate the discursive power of cultural representations, as the ways we conceptualize and communicate about a subject is reflexive of and influences the ways we act in relation to that subject. Anthropologists and other scholars have offered a plethora of evidence proving that dichotomous cultural representations do not capture the complicated reality of gender and governance. The authors in this volume apply a critical analytical lens to how governing unfolds in complex gendered ways. In the first section, the authors seek to explore the ways in which the stereotypical Male/Female, State/NGO binary is both resisted and upheld. By focusing on elder care, Crampton discusses how care work in both the United States and Ghana is highly gendered but in dissimilar ways. Loy draws attention to agency of the actors in the nongovernmental sphere and, through his example of Ainu associations in Japan, shows that in their struggle for recognition, NGOs struggle to work outside of the binary. Finally, Reinke highlights the manner in which advocacy work is both gendered and racialized. The chapters in the second section lean into the binary to explore how care work is assumed to be the domain of a feminized nongovernmental sphere. Altman explores how volunteer work in Australia is largely taken up by and associated with women. Panda and Pandey explain the embodiment of nongovernmental action in India by providing examples of protests in which women’s bodies became spaces of and weapons of resistance. Timmer, in her analysis of Roma NGOs in Hungary, and Zhan, in her assessment of the Chinese principle of “loving care,” explain how nongovernmental work is expected to be nurturing or loving, qualities associated with women. The final section of this volume seeks to explore places and people that have attempted to subvert the dichotomy. Schuller asserts that since NGOs in postquake Haiti have access to more power resources and visibility, State entities must perform in “NGO drag” in order to gain legitimacy. Pimentel explains how an NGO working to support trans identities forced a redefinition at the State level. Similarly, in her ethnography of LGBTQI groups in Armenia, Shirinian discusses the manner in which the members refuse to accept the masculine State and work to push back against its power through disruptions of public space. Finally, I have argued that refugees, because of their liminality, pose a challenge in terms of governance as they are under the thumb of both

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GO and NGO, and neither. Like queer and feminist scholars who deconstruct gender binaries, the authors demonstrate the ways gendered relationships both reproduce and challenge, sometimes simultaneously, the NGO/State binary. Given that both gender and governance are fluid, complex, and changing processes, is there any use in conceptualizing either of these subjects in relation to binary categorical representations? Queering binaries allows us to reconceptualize our cultural representations, yet our mental maps of reality do more than shape our systems of classification and the language we use to describe these categories. Cultural projects of ordering and mapping reality are also processes of assigning value and therefore determining distributions of power. Projects of gender and governance are constituted by power relations. Gender, in addition to a system of cultural classification (social roles of man and woman), is a part of identity formation and performance (Butler 2010). Evelyn Blackwood (2010) differentiates between subject positions as a category and subjectivity as a process of selfhood. She argues that subject position is a “culturally constructed and ideologically dominant social category . . . [whereas] subjectivity points to a dynamic and transformative process of self-positioning as subjects take up, engage, and rework socially constituted subject positions” (Blackwood 2010: 21–22). Henrietta Moore (1994) argues that gendered identities are fractured, always shifting, imaginary, and conflicting in nature, and that each culture has multiple discourses on gender and that these opposing discourses are stratified hierarchically. She posits that power and dominance play a coercive role in peoples’ ability to realize various gendered subject positions in that there exist alternative options for individuals, but that they will be inclined to choose, invest in, and reproduce the dominant ideal in order to achieve more symbolic and tangible benefits while avoiding negative consequences. Moore argues that individuals are subconsciously invested in maintaining dominant gender ideologies shaped around idealized femininity and masculinity and existing power structures—or what she calls fantasies of identity and fantasies of power. These fantasies, or imaginaries, are powerful in that they do not preclude individual’s ability to challenge hegemonic gender ideologies, but that they work to maintain the existing power structure. So individual people can “queer” gender, but their identities, performances, and activities do not necessarily fundamentally alter heteropatriarchal hierarchies of power. Just as gender is relational, contingent, and dynamic, so too is the NGO/State association. Yet, the application of complexity in the study

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of forms of governance is marred by a sort of linguistic determinism inherent in the very terminology we use. By maintaining the term NGO, we are defining an entity not by what it is, but rather by what it is not. In this sense, the only coherency to the category of NGO is that it is not a GO (the State). The “non” aspect of NGOs implies that these entities are not involved in the primary functioning of the State: governance. The State’s supposed monopoly over governance stems from the ideal that it acts as the ultimate sovereign—though State sovereignty, like gender, is often an ideal rather than a reality. Anthropologists have long noted that power is diffuse and multiple actors can hold sovereignty. Many of the authors here and elsewhere detail the ways NGOs can participate in and enact modes of governance, as well as challenge and subvert State governance. The “NGO boom” (Alvarez 1999) itself is in large part a result of neoliberal challenges to State sovereignty. Non-State actors can and do challenge State sovereignty. However, there remain some essential forms of sovereignty that belong solely to States. Only States maintain the ability to manage boundaries, confer true citizenship and rights, pass laws, enter into international treaties, and declare war. This exclusive authority to operate in these ways matter and represent forms of power. UNHCR may perform a State-like subjectivity, but it does not completely occupy a State’s subject position. The Government of Kenya maintains its geographical sovereignty and can expel UNHCR (and refugees and asylum seekers) from its territory. UNHCR must adhere to Kenyan laws. UNHCR can lease, but not own, the land where Kakuma sits. The “citizenship” that UNHCR confers is partial with no passports and restricted rights. Because UNHCR cannot form an autonomous government in Kakuma, its sovereignty is limited in critical ways that shape its ability to “govern” stateless peoples. The Government of Kenya (the State) ultimately has the power to determine UNHCR’s right to govern stateless people in Kakuma. Thus, NGOs can challenge State power, but they cannot subsume it. Queering gender and queering governmentality require fundamentally restructuring our mental maps of reality. But this project requires more than just queering cultural representations and deconstructing categories; it also requires upending value hierarchies and therefore distributions of power, specifically, heteropatriarchy and state sovereignty. As products of cultures (and/or natures?), mental maps of reality are contested, dynamic, and processual. The work of this volume entails more than a gendered analysis of governmentality. Here, we present ethnographically grounded evidence of the complexity of these

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relationships and ask in what ways anthropological exploration might challenge the underpinnings of power that structure our gendered governing processes.

Acknowledgments I thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions in improving earlier versions of the manuscript. I am also thankful to the press editors and team at Berghahn books for taking on this project and ushering us through the process. I thank my funding sources for financially supporting this research: National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant (BCS-1324243) and Graduate Research Fellowship Program (DGE-1333468 / DGE-0946812), Purdue Research Foundation Research Grant, Purdue University Walter Hirsch Graduate Student Dissertation Research Award, and Kellogg Institute for International Studies Fellows Research Grant. All content appearing in this work are that of the author and do not reflect the opinions of the granting agencies. Elizabeth Wirtz is a Qualitative Analyst in the Center for Access and Delivery Research and Evaluation at the Department of Veterans Affairs, Iowa City, IA (Disclaimer: The views expressed in this book are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the position or policy of the Department of Veterans Affairs or the United States Government). A cultural anthropologist, her research centers on veteran/military health, telemedicine, refugees/forced migration, humanitarianism in relief and development, sexual and gender-based violence, reproductive/maternal health, human-centered design in technology and engineering, and STEM higher education. She serves as Senior Co-Chair of the Gender Based Violence Topical Interest Group of the Society for Applied Anthropology and as board member of the Society for Medical Anthropology.

Note 1. In 2015, a new integrated settlement site called Kalobeyei was established 40 kilometers from Kakuma. As the research for this chapter was conducted prior to the launch of Kalobeyei, a discussion of the settlement was excluded from this chapter.

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Conclusion • 285 Jaji, Rose. 2011. “Social Technology and Refugee Encampment in Kenya.” Journal of Refugee Studies 25(2): 221–38. Lewis, David, and Mark Schuller. 2017. “Engagements with a Productively Unstable Category: Anthropologists and Nongovernmental Organizations.” Current Anthropology 58(5): 634–51. Mookherjee, Nayanika. 2008. “Gendered Embodiments: Mapping the BodyPolitic of the Raped Woman and the Nation in Bangladesh.” Feminist Review 88: 36–53. Moore, Henrietta L. 1994. A Passion for Difference: Essays in Anthropology and Gender. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Nettle, Daniel. 2009. “Beyond Nature Versus Culture: Cultural Variation as an Evolved Characteristic.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 15: 223, 240. Oka, Rahul. 2011. “Unlikely Cities in the Desert: The Informal Economy as Causal Agent for Permanent ‘Urban’ Sustainability in Kakuma Refugee Camp, Kenya.” Urban Anthropology 40(3–4): 223–62. Ortner, Sherry. 1974. “Is Female to Male as Nature Is to Culture?” In Woman, Culture, and Society, edited by Michelle Rosaldo and Louise Lamphere, 68–87. Stanford: Stanford University Press. ———. 1997. Making Gender: The Politics and Erotics of Culture. Boston: Beacon Press. Possamai, Fabio V. 2013. “Nature and Culture: Genesis of an Obsolete Dichotomy.” Philosophy Study 3(9): 836–42. Refugee Nation. 2020. “Home Page.” Refugee Nation. http://www.refugeenation .org/index.html. Sampson, Steven. 2017. “Introduction: Engagements and Entanglements in the Anthropology of NGOs.” In Cultures of Doing Good: Anthropologists and NGOs, edited by Amanda Lashaw, Christian Vannier, and Steven Sampson, 1–20. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press. UNHCR. 2018. “Figures at a Glance.” UNHCR: Statistical Yearbooks. http://www .unhcr.org/en-us/figures-at-a-glance.html. Verdirame, Guglielmo, and Barbara Harrell-Bond. 2005. Rights in Exile: JanusFaced Humanitarianism. New York: Berghahn Books. Winter, Bronwyn. 2016. “Women as Cultural Markers/Bearers.” In The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Gender and Sexuality Studies, edited by Nancy Naples, Renee C. Hoogland, Maithree Wickramasinghe, and Wai Ching Angela Wong. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell. Wirtz, Elizabeth. 2017. “The Inhumanity of Humanitarian Aid: Gender and Violence in a Kenyan Refugee Camp.” PhD diss., Purdue University. ProQuest. Wolf-Meyer, Matthew. 2012. The Slumbering Masses: Sleep, Medicine, and Modern American Life. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Index

adivasi. See indigeneity and indigenous advocacy and activism, 5, 9, 14–15, 20, 29, 33–38, 42, 45, 62, 100, 128, 130–31, 140–43, 145, 156, 178, 192, 204, 217, 219–21, 223, 230–32, 240–42, 245–46, 256, 259 Ainu. See indigeneity and indigenous aixin. See loving care aging, 9, 12, 19, 29, 32–37, 39–46. See also elder care alternative justice, 20, 30–31, 75–89 anthropology, 13, 16, 74, 193, 197 feminist, 1–2, 13, 16, 194, 266–67 Armenia, 21, 192, 240–43, 245–48, 251–55, 260, 290 asylum seekers. See refugees Australia, 20, 66, 93, 96–100, 104–5, 109, 112–17, 280

81, 188, 192, 201. See also grassroots organizations, nongovernmental organizations Cixous, Hélène, 241–42, 246, 249, 251–52, 256, 258, 260 Clintons Bill, 193–94, 196, 200–1, 208–9 Hillary, 194, 201, 208 collective resistance. See protest colonialism, 52, 59, 62, 69, 98–99, 101, 105, 125, 224, 266 postcolonial, 6, 43, 64, 195 compassion, 75, 93, 98, 106, 150, 155, 163, 173, 175, 177–78, 182 conflict resolution, 31, 36, 46, 76–79, 82–85, 88–89 corporate power, 7, 15, 94, 125–27, 129, 131–32, 134, 138, 141–55

bodies as sites of resistance, 94, 126, 129–31, 134, 140–42, 144, 280 borders, 10–11, 20, 97–100, 115, 194, 265, 269, 271, 273–74 Butler, Judith, 3, 13, 15, 116n1, 281

discrimination, 51, 59–60, 64–65, 69–70, 125, 151–53, 159–60, 162–63, 203–4, 206, 220, 229–31 development projects, 5, 40, 46, 58, 69, 93, 114, 124–25, 128, 132–33, 138, 141, 144–45, 193, 196, 200, 205–6. See also industrialization domestic arts, 2, 14, 96–97, 102, 104, 108–9, 111–12, 114–15, 117 domestic violence, 113, 185, 240, 253–56. See also sexual and gender-based violence drag performance, 12, 191, 194, 200, 203, 209, 223, 280 education, 20, 15, 51, 54, 58, 66, 94–95, 128, 140, 150–53, 159–66, 168, 172–74, 177, 186, 194, 203–4, 206, 220, 222–23, 229, 232, 265, 275–76

care work, 14–16, 21, 33, 35, 40–41, 44, 46, 75, 81, 88–89, 93, 96, 101, 103–4, 113–15, 151–52, 173, 213, 230, 280. See also nurturance and emotional labor, 14, 81, 151 charity, 94, 101, 172–74, 176–78, 182, 187 China, 20, 58, 94, 172–79, 181–89, 280 citizenship, 11, 22, 103, 191–92, 218–29, 226, 230, 234, 246, 272, 274–5, 282 civil society, 15–16, 88, 96, 99, 116–17, 128, 131, 134, 144, 161, 172–75, 180–

Index • 287 elder care, 12, 19, 29–33, 37, 39, 41, 43, 45, 280. See also aging embodiment, 223, 230–31, 280. See also bodies as sites of resistance emotional labor. See care work Fausto-Sterling, Anne, 12, 210, 281 feminism, 21, 68, 130–31, 203, 241, 243, 245, 249, 256–57 as different from women’s movement, 131–32 gender, 2, 15, 19–21, 32–33, 69, 94, 96, 100–4, 107, 116n1, 116n2–17, 124, 142–45, 175, 182–84, 192, 198, 200, 203, 210, 218, 226–30, 232, 234, 240, 243–44, 260, 266, 280, 282–83 binary and nonbinary, 2–3, 16, 20, 95, 100, 116, 191–92, 228, 265, 266–67, 280–81 disparities, 129, 131, 186, 204, 228, 264–65, 277 division of labor, 13, 125, 173, 175, 182, 187, 203–5 and governance, 9–10, 18, 97–98, 194, 210, 265, 280, 282 identity, 131, 217, 220, 223–25, 231, 234, 281 and nongovernance, 15, 29, 31, 75, 103, 173, 181, 188, 191 gerontology. See aging Ghana, 19, 29, 32–37, 39, 42–46, 280 global north, 99, 114, 224, 271 global south, 5–6, 43, 101, 114, 129, 195, 224, 268, 270–72, 277 governance. See State government-organized NGOs (GONGOs), 7, 17, 62, 181, 200, 206 grassroots organizations, 7, 124, 126, 133, 142–43, 172, 178. See also civil society, nongovernmental organizations Guatemala, 20, 191–92, 215–20, 222, 224–25, 228–29, 231, 234–35 Haiti, 11–12, 191, 193–211, 280 helping, 8, 43–46, 102, 151, 181

homosexuality. See LGBT(QI+) human rights, 21, 64, 66, 97, 199, 201–2, 218, 220, 222–23, 226–27, 234, 235n2, 243, 248, 256, 276 humanitarianism, 8, 12–17, 93, 96, 98–102, 105, 111, 117, 152, 154–55, 157, 160, 162–63, 168, 185, 198, 208–9, 262–71, 277–79 Hungary, 6, 17, 20, 94, 150, 152–55, 157–61, 163, 166, 168, 210, 280 impoverishment. See poverty imprisonment, 74, 85, 94, 151, 221, 272 mass incarceration, 78–79, 85 school-to-prison pipeline, 78–79, 85 India, 15, 20, 33, 42, 94, 124–25, 131–33, 146, 196, 280 indigeneity and indigenous, 12, 15, 20, 50–55, 60, 62–71, 88–89, 124–25, 127–30, 134, 138–40, 143 adivasi, 124–28, 137–38, 140–42, 146n1 Ainu, 8, 19, 30–31, 50–63, 65–72, 218–19, 280 industrialization, 125, 127–28. See also development projects International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), 16, 154–55 Irigaray, Luce, 241–42, 248–49, 252, 260 Japan, 8, 19, 30, 33, 50–55, 57–71, 72n1, 218, 280 Kakuma, 21, 265, 268, 272–75, 277–79, 282, 283n1 Kenya, 192, 265, 268, 272–74, 276–79, 282 LGBT(QI+), 9 12, 21, 86, 116n3, 192, 223–25, 227–29, 235n4, 235n5, 240–41, 243, 245–46, 254–59. See also transgender love and loving care 16–17, 20, 94–95, 98, 150–57. 160–68. 173, 175, 182, 187, 280 Martelly regime, 20, 191, 194, 200–2, 205–7, 210

288 • Index mediation, 35–36, 47n1 minority groups, 9, 53, 55, 63–66, 81, 130, 161, 163, 243 mothering and motherhood, 15, 20, 103, 105–9, 111, 114, 135, 150–51, 164, 169, 187, 192, 203–6, 211, 230, 246, 251–52, 278 natural resources, 50, 69–70, 124–25, 127–28, 132–33 nature/culture dichotomy, 1–2, 4, 11, 16, 18–19, 21, 29–30, 32–35, 46–47, 71, 128–29, 227, 269, 264, 266–67 neoliberalism, 5–8, 10, 18–19, 23–25, 27, 41, 72–73, 90–92, 99–101, 103, 106, 121–22, 127, 130, 149, 168, 170, 193–94, 197, 199, 201–2, 212, 214, 216, 219, 227–28, 233–34, 236–37, 239, 243, 262, 267, 282 nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) ambiguity of definition, 5, 7, 21, 52–53, 74, 79, 94, 150 and democracy, 6, 15, 18, 21, 161, 208 and devaluation, 10, 12–14, 18, 75, 80, 100, 168 doing good, 6, 8–9, 16, 18, 85, 99, 102 and femininity, 9–13, 93, 96, 144–45, 168, 187, 191, 234 feminized labor force, 10, 13, 20, 32, 34, 75, 77, 81, 89, 93, 96, 101–2, 105–6, 115, 182, 185, 245, 265, 277–79 funding and donors, 17, 43–45, 55, 62, 80, 83, 88, 162–63, 166, 168, 178, 194, 197–98, 200, 204, 206, 208–9, 222, 270–71, 275, 277–78 history of, 5–7, 161 relationship with the State, 2, 4, 9, 12, 21, 20, 32–33, 35, 41, 52, 55, 79, 81–82, 89, 93, 100, 114, 124, 132, 150, 168, 181, 191–95, 210–11, 219, 226, 230, 240, 242, 260, 264–65, 267–68, 280–82 Republic of, 191, 193–94, 196 nurturing or nurturance, 10, 12, 14–17, 20, 29–30, 74, 76, 93–95, 150–51, 153–55, 164, 166, 168–69, 265, 280

Ortner, Sherry, 1–2, 4, 9, 11, 13, 15–16, 18, 21, 26, 32–34, 40, 46, 48, 55, 71, 77, 89, 91, 94, 128–29, 149–50, 173, 188–89, 191–92, 227, 238, 260, 264, 266, 285 people seeking asylum. See refugees PetroCaribe, 201–2, 207–210, 212 performativity, 3, 13, 24, 116, 118, 148, 154, 168, 170, 191, 194–95, 200, 210, 213, 241, 246–47, 281, 284 philanthropy, 94–95, 172–79, 181–85, 188 politics of exclusion, 30, 74, 76–77, 84–85, 87–88, 92, 120, 150, 225, 231, 249, 270 poverty, 4, 20, 38, 51, 56, 59, 63, 86, 94, 126–27, 132, 145, 150, 159, 166, 172–73, 189, 201, 204, 206 power, 1–2, 4, 6–7, 10–14, 16, 18–19, 21, 23–24, 26, 29–31, 46, 48, 55, 71, 74, 76–77, 80, 84, 92, 102–5, 109, 111–15, 123, 125–27, 129, 131–32, 134, 136, 139, 142–45, 147, 150, 153–54, 156, 163, 181, 190, 192–93, 196–97, 202, 206, 213–14, 227–28, 230, 233, 235, 238, 243, 246, 251, 256, 262, 265–66, 269, 274, 280–83 prisons. See imprisonment project, 3, 8–10, 12, 21, 25, 34–36, 47, 76, 93, 133, 137, 146–47, 152, 163, 177–78, 185–86, 189–90, 193–95, 198–200, 202–3, 206–10, 212, 214, 217, 219, 226, 230–31, 241–42, 244, 246–27, 249, 275–76, 278–79, 281–82 project form, 191, 194–95, 198–99, 210 protest, 15, 94, 124, 130–32, 134–38, 140–44, 147–49, 228, 280 queer theory, 16–17, 20, 106, 116–17, 119, 191–92, 195, 200, 236–41, 245–47, 249, 253–54, 256–58, 260–64, 266–68, 281–82 race, 57–58, 68, 84–85, 102, 151 refugees, 12, 20–21, 96–100, 103–5, 111–12, 114–15, 116n4, 264, 268–79, 280, 282

Index • 289 religion, 18, 25, 155, 171, 229 restorative justice. See alternative justice Roma/Gypsies, 11, 17, 20–21, 27, 73, 94, 122, 150–69, 169n1, 169n4, 210, 280 rural, 61, 95, 105, 165, 174, 177, 181, 185–86 women, 20, 49, 94, 124, 126, 128, 132, 134, 140, 142, 144–45, 173, 187 segregation, 21, 150, 152, 158–59, 162, 169–71, 204, 271 social security, 38, 41 socialism, 242–44, 260 post-socialism, 173, 242, 244, 260 sovereignty, 50, 65–66, 97–100, 118, 120, 122–23, 194, 198–99, 211–12, 194, 198–99, 211–12, 238, 271, 275, 278–79, 282 State, 1–2,4,7–8,12,16–17,19–21,29–35, 37–42, 44–46, 50, 52–56, 63–65, 68, 70–71, 75–77, 81, 87–89, 93–94, 100, 177n5, 124–26, 130–36, 141–45, 160–62, 172–73, 176, 178–81, 187–88, 191–95, 199–200, 203, 208–11, 218–20, 227–30, 233–35, 242, 244, 265–65, 267, 273–75, 280–82 absence, 15, 18, 79, 88, 93, 150–51, 168, 209, 221, 275, 279 and masculinity, 10–13, 74, 95, 98, 160, 194, 210, 232, 242, 260, 278 privatization, 6, 10, 74, 106, 194 violence, 78–80, 85, 99, 136 withdrawal. See absence

stateless people. See refugees strategic essentialisms, 8, 19, 30, 50, 52, 67–69 subaltern, 19, 68, 237 third sector, 6, 9, 19, 178, 182, 188n4, 244. See also, civil society transgender, 20–21, 25, 145, 191–92, 217–234, 235n1, 253, 257, 266, 280. See also LGBT(QI+) United States, 19, 29–30, 32–38, 40–42, 44–47, 56, 74, 76–78, 86–92, 98, 155, 194, 197, 200–1, 224, 246, 269, 272, 277–78, 280, 283 UNHCR, 97, 122, 192, 269–279, 282, 284–85 violence sexual and gender-based, 98, 209, 225, 228–29, 236n5, 241, 268 structural violence, 209, 243 See also, State violence Volunteering and volunteerism, 4–5, 8–10, 15, 20, 32, 37, 42, 75–76, 81–83, 86–87, 93–94, 96–97, 99–109, 111–17, 117n10, 170, 177–78, 182–83, 188, 219, 262, 272, 280 vulnerability, 38, 215, 222, 225 Whiteness, 30, 75, 84, 119 women’s movement. See feminism