Diane Bell

Gendered Fields: Women, Men and Ethnography

Examines and explores the progress of feminist anthropology, the gendered nature of fieldwork itself, and the articulation of gender with other aspects of the persona of the ethnographer.

Speaking about rape is everyone's business☆

Abstract The silence regarding intra-racial rape is profound. Two recent cases of rape of Aboriginal women by Aboriginal men in the Northern Territory, Australia led to this attempt to map terrain on which informed discussion may occur. Socialist and radical feminists dispute whether it is class or gender that has primacy in their analyses of rape while black activists accuse both of being insensitive to issues of race. This paper interweaves anthropological and indigenous insights regarding the shifting contexts within which rape occurs and is analysed; the strategies women pursued in the past; and argues for the provision of services which take account of the needs of Aboriginal women.

Intraracial rape revisited: On forging a feminist future beyond factions and frightening politics

Abstract Here I revisit three contentious issues: intraracial rape, feminist theorising around race and gender, and the problematics of cross-cultural collaboration (see Bell & Nelson, 1989). I begin by examining the modes of analysis of abuse of Aboriginal women as revealed in recent reports, and offer comparative case material from North America. With particular reference to the shifting bases of my relationship to Topsy Napurrula Nelson, I trace a personal, partial, and hidden history of an idea, that is, a more empowering feminist future may be envisaged by grounding our theorising on questions of gender, race and violence in the possibility of relationality. I suggest that the propensity to engage in social construct boundary maintenance is obscuring the fact that it is women who are being brutalised. With reference to the handling of violence against women by the courts and by “communities,” I argue cross-cultural collaborations and enunciation of womens law can empower women. Forging a sustainable vision of a meaningful future in the current crisis requires that the needs of woman be addressed; that in pursuit of the politics of difference we not lose sight of questions of power; that the politics of law, the nation state, the academy, and Aboriginal liberation struggles that shape the “master narratives,” are interrogated from within and from “elsewhere.”