Kristin Bumiller

In an Abusive State: How Neoliberalism Appropriated the Feminist Movement against Sexual Violence

In an Abusive State puts forth a powerful argument: that the feminist campaign to stop sexual violence has entered into a problematic alliance with the neoliberal state. Kristin Bumiller chronicles the evolution of this alliance by examining the history of the anti-violence campaign, the production of cultural images about sexual violence, professional discourses on intimate violence, and the everyday lives of battered women. She also scrutinizes the rhetoric of high-profile rape trials and the expansion of feminist concerns about sexual violence into the international human-rights arena. In the process, Bumiller reveals how the feminist fight against sexual violence has been shaped over recent decades by dramatic shifts in welfare policies, incarceration rates, and the surveillance role of social-service bureaucracies. Drawing on archival research, individual case studies, testimonies of rape victims, and interviews with battered women, Bumiller raises fundamental concerns about the construction of sexual violence as a social problem. She describes how placing the issue of sexual violence on the public agenda has polarized gender- and race-based interests. She contends that as the social welfare state has intensified regulation and control, the availability of services for battered women and rape victims has become increasingly linked to their status as victims and their ability to recognize their problems in medical and psychological terms. Bumiller suggests that to counteract these tendencies, sexual violence should primarily be addressed in the context of communities and in terms of its links to social disadvantage. In an Abusive State is an impassioned call for feminists to reflect on how the co-optation of their movement by the neoliberal state creates the potential to inadvertently harm impoverished women and support punitive and racially based crime control efforts.

Quirky Citizens: Autism, Gender, and Reimagining Disability

F eminist disability scholarship has raised new issues about identity formation and social exclusion (Garland-Thomson 2005). By evoking a notion of disability that fundamentally disputes the assumption of disablement as natural or a detriment, these studies follow critiques of the social construction of gender and race and also chart out new grounds to extinguish socially disabling categories. This scholarship has unsettled how feminists conceptualize gender, sexuality, genetic and reproductive issues, and the role of women as caretakers. It has renewed interest in the question of how to promote diversity in all its manifestations and to further a more inclusive society. As a consequence, people with disabilities are asserting their place in democratic societies as identifiable groups and making demands for inclusion. One group whose struggles raise important issues for democratic participation is people with autism. While the number of people diagnosed with autism, a neurological disability with consequences for social functioning, is small relative to other disabilities such as motor impairments, according to most reports of epidemiological data the number of children being diagnosed with this disorder is rapidly escalating. Although claims of an autism epidemic are disputed (Gernsbacher, Dawson, and Goldsmith 2005), over the past thirty years the incident rate of autism worldwide may have increased threeto fourfold (Newschaffer, Falb, and Gurney 2005). The rising incidence of autism is most commonly seen as a public health crisis. Consequently, both scholarly and popular commentary seem most concerned with managing it as a disease. Yet, autism is remarkable also for its significance to many issues at the core of women’s and gender studies, including gender identification, sexuality, motherhood, and the impact of new reproductive technologies. From the perspective of feminist disability scholarship, the two most evident questions to explore are these:

The Geneticization of Autism: From New Reproductive Technologies to the Conception of Genetic Normalcy

This article examines how biomedicalization, the turn toward utilizing science for enhanced control over the body and the expanded reach of medical technologies in everyday life, has influenced divergent strategies among activists concerned about autism. It shows how divisive conflicts emerge from biological uncertainties about the etiology of autism. But it also suggests how these divisions among activists reflect deeper issues about the role of biomedical knowledge in shaping our understanding of normality as well as underlying assumptions about biological determinism. It is argued that the pull of biological/genetic explanations creates the context for life‐optimization strategies as the primary means to improve the lives of people with autism and similar disabilities. Moreover, the genetic understanding of autism furthers a cultural narrative about the possibility that biotechnological innovation will regenerate healthy children. This context increases expectations for the production of normal children, swings the agenda away from social and environmental issues, and ultimately produces an increased reliance on women’s labor and care work.

Bad jobs and good workers: The hiring of ex-prisoners in a segmented economy

Scholarship focusing on barriers to the employment of ex-prisoners has paid little attention to the linkages between mass incarceration and the structural conditions of low wage labor. In contrast, this article considers how decisions to hire ex-prisoners occur in the context of a highly segregated labor market. The research is based upon interviews with employers who are willing to hire persons exiting prisons. These employers were queried about their motivations for hiring, perceptions of their employees with criminal records, and their beliefs about fairness and justice. The interviews show that a strong motivating factor for hiring was finding a “good worker to do a bad job”, but also that decisions were influenced by employers’ common sense norms derived from surviving at the bottom of the economy. Despite the willingness of employers to offer “second chances” and make small allowances, these factors were insufficient to counteract the obstacles to sustainable employment.

Transformative Learning in Prisons and Universities: Reflections on Homologies of Institutional Power

Proponents of community-based education claim that this teaching offers positive results for the university and the community, enriching student learning beyond traditional classrooms and providing benefits to organizations in the community. Far-reaching transformations are also imagined, such as revitalizing civic engagement and fundamentally changing the mission of higher education to broaden its global impact. These aspirations follow from an ideal of transformative education that has a deep history and diverse ideological foundations, ranging from missionary teaching to progressive left activism. Community-based learning both draws upon these diverse foundations for transformative education and offers new challenges and opportunities for collaboration between the university and the community.