"Reproductive Labor and Gyno-Technologies in East Asia, 1800s-2000s”
We invite paper proposals from graduate students and early career scholars working on topics related to gynocentric work and technology in East Asia.
Few things are more everyday than what we want to study here: childbirth, childrearing, care for the ill, care for the elderly, making and mending clothes, and so forth. The term “gyno-technology” describes the diverse ways in which this work of creating and fashioning people is done, whether augmented by artifacts / machines or not. We refer to the goals of this work of “people-making” as “gynocentric" because in most societies – including East Asian societies – women tend to play a central role in these efforts. We ask questions about the transformation of reproductive labor and gyno-technologies in East Asia from the 1800s onwards, when processes of industrialization and globalization were significantly accelerated.
Throughout the region, we see a transition from an agrarian economy rooted in gendered divisions of labor in small producing households, to a modern political economy in which productive work is defined as taking place outside the household, in offices and factories. Rather than assuming a straightforward process of transformation in which women were progressively deskilled, their autonomy undermined by male experts, their work made redundant by industrially produced commodities, we assume an uneven transformation in which new skills and technologies interacted with older cultures of cooperation. We trace this transformation by focusing on changes in the everyday technologies that are involved in the work of “people-making.” We are thinking, for example, of how breast pumps, formula, and plastic bottles make it possible to disperse the work of nursing across time and space, or how cell phones and tracker wristbands allow Chinese migrant parents to be involved in child raising from a distance. Such arrangements are part of larger material and organizational infrastructures that have become increasingly transnational and commercialized as we entered the 21st century. We want to show how these emerging infrastructures of “people-making” vary across East Asia, and how these variations are shaped by long-term socio-cultural and politico-economic processes, linked to a number of different projects of gender equality and female emancipation.
We welcome paper proposals focusing on historical and/or contemporary issues, and drawing on one or several of the following disciplinary approaches (anthropology, history, sociology, STS). We are particularly interested in inter-disciplinary and cross-disciplinary perspectives that speak to larger issues in East Asian and global history and society.
The selection of specific topics for the workshop will ultimately depend on the availability of speakers, but we are interested in proposals focusing on one or several of the following key interconnected themes:
- Biological reproduction. Traditional and modern techniques that regulate and aid the reproduction of biological life, including fertility treatments, contraception, abortion, pre- and postnatal care, midwifery, and infant nursing.
- Homemaking includes various forms of domestic work and household management work including (in pre-industrial environments) activities such as hauling water, gathering fuel, spinning, weaving, sewing, raising animals, preserving food, etc. We also include commercial or public services (restaurants, canteens, laundry services, etc.) that supplement / replace domestic work.
- Intimacy and connection. Techniques that maintain and shape social bonds in the family and beyond. These include, among others, the exchange of gifts and other objects, the creation of intimacy (and sometimes control) through cell phones and social media.
- Healing and care include techniques ranging from routine “maintenance” of bodies to healing and caring for the sick, aged, and dying.
We are open to paper proposals on other themes provided that the link to women’s work and gyno-technologies must be explicit.
Interested candidates should submit an abstract (500 words max) together with a CV to the organizers by January 25th 2018 at the latest.
We will announce the shortlist of selected abstracts in early February 2018. Invited speakers will be expected to submit a full-length paper (8,000 words max) by September 1st 2018 to be presented and discussed at an Early Career Scholar Workshop on Gynocentric Technologies at Smith College. The workshop will take place on October 12-14, 2018. We will provide assistance for costs of travel and accommodation of invited speakers.
Hong Kong CRF Working Group: "Reproductive Labor and Gynocentric Technologies in East Asia, 1800s-2000s”
Contact:
Gonçalo Santos (University of Hong Kong), email: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
Jacob Eyferth (University of Chicago), email: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
Suzanne Gottschang (Smith College), email: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
Collaborative Research Fund Project: "Making Modernity in East Asia. Technologies of Everyday Life 19th -21st centuries” (Research Grants Council, Hong Kong)
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Gonçalo SANTOS, PhD 江紹龍
Assistant Professor in Anthropology
University of Hong Kong
Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences
Room 210, May Hall
Pokfulam Road
Hong Kong
Tel: (852) 3917-8113
Fax: (852) 2559-6143
Email: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
HKU Webpage<http://www.hkihss.hku.hk/en/about_hkihss/people/bio/goncalo_santos.html>
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