of the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS), the 13-chapter,
350-page publication featuring the work of 19 contributing authors asks
if gender as a social analytic has remained true to its earlier
feminist promise for emancipatory and empowering outcomes.
NIAS Press is a leading independent publisher on Asian social science
subjects. Titles published are all thoroughly peer-reviewed research on
modern East and Southeast Asian society.
The Canadian scholar edited the book along with Dr. Bernadette P.
Resurrección and Dr. Ragnhild Lund. Dr. Resurrección is a Senior
Research Fellow at the SEI Asia Centre in Bangkok, Thailand, and is an
affiliate faculty member of the AIT School of Environment Resources and
Development. Dr. Lund is a professor at the Department of Geography,
Norwegian University of Science and Technology.
According to the editors, “the book’s overall objective is to revisit
gender as a concept that can engage simultaneously with change and
continuity in today’s Asia, but with greater intellectual reflexivity
to examine multiple, intersecting, and complex dimensions of identity
and difference and formerly unacknowledged sources of social power from
institutions and their emerging discourses.
“Individual chapters, written by gender scholars from Europe and Asia,
critically examine the concept of gender in the context of emerging
development issues relating to four broad thematic areas: ‘Gender over
Time’, which basically deals with revisiting the field repeatedly or
after a substantial period of time, reflecting reflexively on the value
of conducting longitudinal research; ‘Power, Policy, and Practices’,
which revisits different dimensions of governance and power, gender
mainstreaming, and activism involved; ‘Environment and Resources’,
which deals with new ways of examining dispossessions, dams, disasters,
and mobilities; and ‘Justice and Human Rights’, which focuses on the
often complex and at times contradictory dimensions of religious and
secular legal frameworks.
“By critically examining how revisiting gender has led the authors to
rethink gender in multiple ways, some of the chapters revisit areas
from previous research, while others rethink ways in which gender has
been framed and depoliticized in current practices, and therefore
address how gender has been changed, both as a normative process
influencing social roles and relations and as an object and/or a
concept of research.”
All editors have also penned chapters in 'Gendered Entanglements.' Dr.
Doneys co-authored a chapter with Dr. Donna L. Doane, a researcher and
visiting faculty in Gender and Development Studies at AIT, titled:
“Lost in Translation? Gender and Empowerment in the Greater Mekong
Sub-Region.” Dr. Resurrección collaborated with Dr. Edsel E. Sajor of
AIT’s Urban Environmental Management program on the chapter “Gender
Floods and Mobile Subjects: a Post-Disaster View.”
Dr. Lund and Dr. Smita Mishra Panda combined to produce the chapter
titled “Struggling Bodies and Spaces of Resistance – Adivasi Women
Activists in Odisha, India.” The three editors also collaborated on the
final, signature chapter titled “Gender entanglements in gender
development: a call for grounded, multi-dimensional and ‘moving’
feminisms.”
The also book benefits greatly from the work of other notable AIT
scholars on the subject. Dr. Kyoko Kusakabe, Assoc. Professor of Gender
and Development Studies, offers a chapter with Cambodian scholar Prak
Sereyvath titled “Women Fish Border Traders in Cambodia:
Intersectionality and Gender Analysis.” Dr. Julaikha B. Hossain, an
affiliate faculty member of gender at AIT, adds her study titled
“Rethinking Personal Laws and Gender Justice from a Bangladesh
Perspective.”
'Gendered Entanglements: Re-visiting gender in rapidly changing Asia'
was honored earlier this year at the 2015 Association of American
Geographers Annual Meeting. Available at http://www.niaspress.dk/books/gendered-entanglements,
the hardback retails for 50￡ (UK) and the softback is priced at 19.99￡
(UK).
