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Mihaela Mihai
Centre for Social Studies
University of Coimbra
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Call for Articles - Special Number e-cadernos:
“The Xenophobic Manipulation of Women’s Rights”

e-cadernos, publication of the Centre for Social Studies, University
of Coimbra, Portugal

In recent years in Europe, discourses on women’s rights have
frequently served as a basis for political agendas aiming to control
and exclude certain communities. Is this truly a case of greater
awareness about women’s rights and of an institutionalised feminism
that clashes with certain cultural and religious practices that are
“regressive and incompatible with gender equality”? Or is it rather
the case that references to women’s rights are just a mask for
attacking certain groups against whom “the centre” defines itself by
way of exclusion? And is Europe the exception? Can we find comparable
situations in other regions of the world, where women’s rights are
instrumentalised for the purpose of rejecting “the Other”? Can we find
a line of continuity between present and past practices of exclusion,
such as the colonial discourse on “saving women” from barbarous
practices?
Female genital cutting, the institutionalization of religious family
law, reproductive rights, certain understandings of “proper” gender
roles for women and men, or sexual exploitation are at the core of
fierce European debates, where the rights of women are often used to
target certain cultural and religious groups. The use of various forms
of the Muslim veil has emblematically sparked strong reactions from
various sectors of the European public sphere. As a consequence, women
from certain backgrounds may feel confronted with a tragic choice
between their rights as individuals and their cultural and religious
allegiances.
The fact that the terms of these debates are often “overculturalized”
has a negative impact on the quality of public deliberation:

1.      the internal complexity and the multiplicity of functions that
cultural practices fulfill for those concerned are hidden;

2.      the non-cultural factors (economic, geopolitical,
environmental) that affect the lives of women become invisible;

3.      under the pretext of defending women rights, imperialist,
xenophobic and racist agendas get promoted;

4.      the ways in which women exercise agency within their cultures
become invisible;

5.      the levels of violence against “emancipated” women in the West
is left out of the discussion.

This special number of e-cadernos aims to present a careful and
rigorous analysis of some of these issues, in view of examining to
what extent the tension between individual and cultural/religious
rights is real and insuperable, or fabricated for the purpose of
protecting certain political interests.

We invite contributions on the culturalization and intrumentalization
of women's rights in the public sphere of various countries, as well
as papers that tackle the much-debated tension between civil and
political rights, on the one hand, and cultural and religious rights,
on the other. We are also interested in papers that examine the
institutional dimension of such issues: both critiques of existing
institutions and constructive reform proposals are welcome. Though our
focus lies with contemporary Europe, we are open to contributions
about other epochs and regions where processes of instrumentalizing
women and their rights for racist and xenophobic purposes took/are
taking place.

We welcome a plurality of theoretical and methodological positions and
encourage submissions in sociology and political science, public
policy, history, theology, political philosophy, cultural studies, as
well as papers by activists and lawyers. Through an interdisciplinary
dialogue between different perspectives, we hope to add new insights
into the debates.

Articles should be submitted electronically to: [log in to unmask]

Deadline for submitting articles: 31 August 2012.

Submission Guidelines:
http://www.ces.uc.pt/e-cadernos/pages/en/norms-of-publication.php

e-cadernos
Edited by the Centre for Social Studies since 2008, e-cadernos is a
double-blind peer-reviewed publication. It is issued electronically,
every three months. Occasionally, it will also be published in paper
format. More information about the journal’s policy, its editorial
board, past and future issues can be found here:
http://www.ces.uc.pt/e-cadernos/pages/en/index.php?lang=EN.

CES

The Centre for Social Studies (CES), founded in 1978 at the Department
of Economics, University of Coimbra, Portugal, is a Centre of
Excellence devoted to research and advanced training in social
sciences and humanities.
Web: http://www.ces.uc.pt/index.php?id_lingua=2




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