Women in Action articles from December 2005

Women in Action archives from December 2005

Strengthening counterculture.(Editorial)
December 1, 2005... In their book, Nation of Rebels, Heath and Potter show why counterculture advocated for by anti-globalisation movement is counterproductive and has instead helped create the very consumer society that they oppose. They successfully depict how...

Cultures and conflict.(Brief article)
December 1, 2005... The English word "conflict" comes from the Latin com-, meaning "together," and fligere, meaning "to strike." The term denotes a sharp disagreement, especially in terms of interests or ideas. Conflict is difficult because of the emotional and...

Group rights vs. individual rights? Navigating the tension in western liberal states.(Cultures and Conflict)(Essay)
December 1, 2005... As the term has been used in recent history, "nation-building" generally implies a "melting pot" or "national integration." (1) This means that the various ethnic, religious and cultural groups that find themselves living within defined...

Ethnic minority people in Yunnan: Naxi culture and the role of women.(Cultures and Conflict)
December 1, 2005... Southwest China's Yunnan Province is home to 26 officially recognised ethnic minorities--who account for one third (approx. 15 million) of the total population of the province--and is also home to about 29 million Han Chinese. The Han...

Sexual cultures.
December 1, 2005... As Western culture develops its hegemony over the world, destroying local belief systems in the process, it is to be expected that what were originally local problems within Western thinking must increasingly become global problems. The world...

Spelling out: from alphabet soup (1) to sexual rights.(Sexual Cultures)(gay and lesbian rights)
December 1, 2005... In August 2004, in Kathmandu, Nepal, 39 metis--self-identified "cross-dressing males"--were arbitrarily arrested and held in custody without food or water for 13 days. The International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC) (2) was...

Putting you in your place: culture and the Filipino lesbian: at an early age, both girls and boys are keenly conscious of the fact that, in our society, being male means being privileged. (1).(Sexual Cultures)
December 1, 2005... The above statement, a generalisation based on studies involving Filipino children, is a simplistic look into the difference between the sexes in a society where women are limited by societal expectations. It speaks of how children observe...

Mediated cultures.
December 1, 2005... The imposition of information and communication technology (ICT) in the cultural sphere has transformed the diversity of lifeways into a homogenised global lifesyle. For the advocate of cultural diversity, this is a great danger that is rooted...

From "horse mail" to intimation of e-culture: profile of Sarai-CSDS as a space for communicative intersections.(ComMuniTy IndePenDent MediA)(Centre for the Study of Developing Societies)
December 1, 2005... What does "horse mail" have to do with electronic culture or e-culture, and what do both of these have to do with the word "sarai"? What does contemporary e-culture have to do with the history of popular cinema, the economy of music...

Culture is dead, long live culture.(ComMuniTy IndePenDent MediA)(Nepal)
December 1, 2005... Can a country promote cultural diversity through media as a deliberate national policy, or will all such policies eventually end up "Disney-fying" cultures by stripping them down to their most basic, visible symbols? After the Nepalese...

Defining the zone.(ComMuniTy IndePenDent MediA)(life in Cairo, Egypt)
December 1, 2005... I am a professor of film studies at the American University in Cairo (AUC), and a maker of experimental and documentary films. My work floats above the categories of film/ art, and documentary/experimental film, rather than falling into their...

"The Vagina Monologues": "I am glad they have banned it".(TaLking PoiNts)
December 1, 2005... "I am glad they have banned it." So said a colleague who walked into my office the day after the news came out on the banning by the Media Council of the play The Vagina Monologues. "Why?" I asked her quietly. "Because now we can...

Crosspoints: exchanging perspectives on culture and diversity.(One On One)(Discussion)
December 1, 2005... This article was drawn from a month-long online discussion among cultural activists and artists on the Korakora listserve. (1) Though several women and men participated in the online debates (totaling sixty plus pages in printouts), we feature...

Turbulent times for multicultural societies: gap between cultures in the Netherlands widens drastically.(We'vE gOt Male)
December 1, 2005... Thousands of Australian youths chasing and attacking fellow Australians with Middle Eastern features; French North-Africans expressing their frustrations through the use of violence in the suburbs of various French cities; Great Britain...

Boys don't learn!!! Notes on Michel Hardt and Antonio Negri's 2004 "Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire".(Book review)
December 1, 2005... In their book-size essay of 2000, Hardt and Negri discussed the new world order, the Empire, which they defined as the emerging form of sovereign power that governs economic, cultural and political relations in the globalised world. In this...