Joanna de Groot

Metropolitan desires and colonial connections: reflections on consumption and empire

There is now a body of writing and debate on the constitutive role of colonial and imperial elements in the material and cultural as well as political history of the United Kingdom, and on the interactions of material, political and cultural developments in that constitutive process. This work has been helped by the growth of studies by economic and social historians of consumption as a dynamic agent in processes of material change since the eighteenth century, rather than just an effect of changes in production or marketing. Interest in histories of consumption in relation to those changes has converged with interest in such histories as a feature of social and cultural change signalled in publications like the volume edited by Brewer and Porter, Consumption and the World of Goods , and those edited by Berg on luxury. Earlier studies of demand, retailing and spreading use or ownership of different products, tended to focus on providers (from large enterprises to corner shopkeepers) rather than customers. Now studies of income levels or standards of living are allied to analyses of the views, values and preferences which have influenced decisions to buy or use particular goods. This convergence is part of the opening up of the study of consumption across a much broader front. From considering it as a discrete area of practical human activity, historians, social scientists, and cultural theorists have enlarged the range of approaches used to understand it, shifting attention from acts of consumption to the persons (‘consumers’) undertaking them, and developing different insights and methods of enquiry.

Women's history in many places: : reflections on plurality, diversity and polyversality

ABSTRACT This piece addresses the key questions posed by Chen Yan and Karen Offen in their joint position paper on the current state of womens history and its place at the cutting edge of historical practice. Having made the case that womens and gender history has had a significant and multi-level impact (empirical, conceptual, methodological and theoretical) on that practice, my article observes that acknowledgement of this is still very limited among those not centrally involved in the field. It notes the tensions between the aspiration both to identify and pursue womens and gender history as discrete fields of scholarly endeavour and the aspiration for women and gender to be treated as topics/categories which should be constitutive of all historical inquiry. It goes on to consider the relationship of womens history to gender history, to post-colonial and cross-cultural scholarship, and to recent work in spatial histories. It argues that in the first case the two approaches are mutually reinforcing, and that in the other two cases womens and gender history has been at the leading edge of these developing fields and is uniquely positioned to make innovative contributions there. The capacity of womens and gender history to continue as a leading edge area of historical practice will be grounded in its ongoing commitment to reflexivity about problems and limitations in the field, and to sustaining its key insights into the links between the personal and the structural, the global and the local, and the material and the cultural.ABSTRACTThis piece addresses the key questions posed by Chen Yan and Karen Offen in their joint position paper on the current state of womens history and its place at the cutting edge of historical practice. Having made the case that womens and gender history has had a significant and multi-level impact (empirical, conceptual, methodological and theoretical) on that practice, my article observes that acknowledgement of this is still very limited among those not centrally involved in the field. It notes the tensions between the aspiration both to identify and pursue womens and gender history as discrete fields of scholarly endeavour and the aspiration for women and gender to be treated as topics/categories which should be constitutive of all historical inquiry. It goes on to consider the relationship of womens history to gender history, to post-colonial and cross-cultural scholarship, and to recent work in spatial histories. It argues that in the first case the two approaches are mutually reinforcing, ...

Depicting Conflict in India in 1857-8: The Instabilities of Gender, Violence, and Colonialism

Abstract This piece explores the strong, if unstable, presence of depictions of gendered and sexualised violence in the making of narratives and memories of the confrontation between Indians and their British rulers in 1857-8. It does this through discussion of texts and images dealing with that confrontation. Firstly, it examines the gender conventions embodied (literally) in presentations of the violence which occurred in 1857-8. Secondly, it explores subversive, contradictory aspects of gender and sexuality. Thirdly, it looks at commemoration and erasure as expressions of epistemic power and violence. It focusses on both the force and the ambiguity of representation as a means to consider the making of meaning and memory, and the relationships between cultural construction and the lived past.AbstractThis piece explores the strong, if unstable, presence of depictions of gendered and sexualised violence in the making of narratives and memories of the confrontation between Indians and their British rulers in 1857-8. It does this through discussion of texts and images dealing with that confrontation. Firstly, it examines the gender conventions embodied (literally) in presentations of the violence which occurred in 1857-8. Secondly, it explores subversive, contradictory aspects of gender and sexuality. Thirdly, it looks at commemoration and erasure as expressions of epistemic power and violence. It focusses on both the force and the ambiguity of representation as a means to consider the making of meaning and memory, and the relationships between cultural construction and the lived past.

How Much Is Enough Said? Some Gendered Responses to Orientalism

In the 35 years since the publication of Edward Said’s text Orientalism there has, of course, been debate and polemic around the agenda established by that text.1 Other sections in this volume explore a number of these avenues, but the focus of this piece will be on one of the most paradoxical aspects of Orientalism’s legacy: its engagement, or lack of it, with questions and categories of gender and sexuality.2 This paradox is rooted in the ways in which Orientalism both opened up and constrained gendered analyses of the modes of knowledge, representation and power used in ‘western’ depictions of ‘the East.’ Statements in the original text linked the cultural and ideological production of ‘the East’ by Europeans to concepts of ‘Oriental’ effeminacy and of European sexual opportunity in, and fantasy about, people and societies in the Middle East and North Africa.3 Yet the propositions about such links did not establish any systematic analysis of the gendered and sexualized character of modern ‘Orientalisms.’ While this may have been understandable in the 1970s when the impact of feminist thought in the wider academy was limited, it sits oddly with the dissident method, tone and content of Said’s text. Indeed, Said marginalized and dismissed the emergent discipline of women’s studies as vulnerable to the influence of ‘pressure group complicity.’

Feminism in Another Language: Learning from ‘Feminist’ Histories of Iran and/or from Histories of Iranian ‘Feminism’ since 1830

This article draws on the experience of investigating and interpreting histories of ‘women’, ‘feminists’ and ‘feminism’ in Iran during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In particular it will consider the possibilities and limitations of cross-cultural uses of the category ‘feminist’ by historians in relation to the ‘fracturing’ or, as I would argue, ‘complexification’ of that category, and of the category ‘woman/women’ within recent scholarship. At a time when ‘Islamophobic’ and racialised analyses of Middle Eastern cultures, or world-views influenced by Islam, intersect with creative, if contentious, debates about the nature, value or even possibility of something called ‘Islamic feminism’, a historicised discussion of this question is timely and relevant. By considering histories of Iranian ‘women’ and/or ‘feminists’, those interested in the possibilities and problems of ‘feminist history’ can enrich their discussions of its conceptual underpinnings and actual practices. I will show how commonly u...This article draws on the experience of investigating and interpreting histories of ‘women’, ‘feminists’ and ‘feminism’ in Iran during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In particular it will consider the possibilities and limitations of cross-cultural uses of the category ‘feminist’ by historians in relation to the ‘fracturing’ or, as I would argue, ‘complexification’ of that category, and of the category ‘woman/women’ within recent scholarship. At a time when ‘Islamophobic’ and racialised analyses of Middle Eastern cultures, or world-views influenced by Islam, intersect with creative, if contentious, debates about the nature, value or even possibility of something called ‘Islamic feminism’, a historicised discussion of this question is timely and relevant. By considering histories of Iranian ‘women’ and/or ‘feminists’, those interested in the possibilities and problems of ‘feminist history’ can enrich their discussions of its conceptual underpinnings and actual practices. I will show how commonly used notions, such as ‘protest’, ‘gender’, ‘modernity’ and ‘femininity’, can be refined and enhanced by critical cross-cultural comparison, and will suggest some possible routes through the minefields of ethnocentric universalism and cultural relativism.