Verena Stolcke

Cultural Citizenship as Subject-Making: Immigrants Negotiate Racial and Cultural Boundaries in the United States [and Comments and Reply]

This paper views cultural citizenship as a process of self-making and being-made in relation to nation-states and transnational processes. Whereas some scholars claim that racism has been replaced by cultural fundamentalism in defining who belongs or does not belong in Western democracies, this essay argues that hierarchical schemes of racial and cultural difference intersect in a complex, contingent way to locate minorities of color from different class backgrounds. Comparing the experiences of rich and poor Asian immigrants to the United States, the author discusses institutional practices whereby nonwhite immigrants in the First World are simultaneously, though unevenly, subjected to two processes of normalization : an ideological whitening or blackening that reflects dominant racial oppositions and an assessment of cultural competence based on imputed human capital and consumer power in the minority subject. Immigrants from Asia or poorer countries must daily negotiate the lines of difference established by state agencies as well as groups in civil society. A subsidiary point is that, increasingly, such modalities of citizen-making are influenced by transnational capitalism. Depending on their locations in the global economy, some immigrants of color have greater access than others to key institutions in state and civil society. Global citizenship thus confers citizenship privileges in Western democracies to a degree that may help the immigrant to scale racial and cultural heights but not to circumvent status hierarchy based on racial difference

The ‘Nature’ of Nationality

Citizenship is the quintessence of the modern individual’s political emancipation and equality in the eyes of the law. Citizenship as the bundle of civil rights enjoyed by free and formally equal citizens became bounded, however, almost from the start in the emerging bourgeois world dividing into territorial nation-states which vied for dominance. The acquisition of citizenship rights became conditioned by specific legal rules, the so-called nationality laws, which codified the formal requirements which individuals must meet to be entitled to become citizens of concrete states. As a consequence, citizenship rights became the exclusive privilege of those who were recognized as nationals of a particular state to the exclusion of the nationals of any other state so constituted.

Race and Sex

The Spanish and Portuguese Americas were the scene of the first true empires controlled from Europe. The encounter of the European colonizers with the native population and the slaves transported from Africa gave rise to a hitherto unknown social formation. The Spanish colonies were the New World’s first “mixed societies,” in which a minority of European settlers engendered a range of unfamiliar categories of people by materially exploiting, sexually abusing, and absorbing the subjugated indigenous and African populations. The intimate interrelationships entailed by Indians’ forced labour and personal services condemned early projects of establishing separate republics of Spaniards and Indians to failure. The outcome was a highly dynamic social order structured by the complex intersection of class, gender, and blood. Indians, by contrast with Africans, were at least formally defined as possessing pure blood. Principles of social identification and placement changed, however, with time. New scientific categories of social classification, among them the modern category of “race,” which by the 18th century had gradually replaced the earlier Hispanic notion of blood purity in the colonies. Yet the two modes of legitimating social inequality had in common the genealogical definition of social condition in an increasingly “mixed” hierarchical society that placed a premium on the control of women’s sexuality in the competition for socio-racial prestige and preeminence. Efforts at upward mobility in a dynamic economy with a substantial population of mixed descent, more often than not the offspring of extra-conjugal sex between European men and indigenous or African women, intensified the elite’s concern over “racial” exclusiveness made dependent on legitimate descent. Contemporary Andean society no doubt bears the mark of this colonial heritage. The present sociocultural relevance and meaning of “race” and its links with class inequality, sexual values, and gender relations are, however, controversial in the historical and anthropological literature, not least because of changing academic fashions. Under the influence of U.S. research inspired by

Virgin Births and Sterile Debates: Anthropology and the New Reproductive Technologies

Embryo research in Britain has been controversial and the 1984 Warnock report on human fertilization and embryology has been in the center of the battle over the legality of embryo research. Research is permitted under Parliamentary decision as of April 23 1990. The issue arouses feelings and thoughts about the nature of motherhood paternity biological inheritance the integrity of the family and the naturalness of birth and adds to the already difficulty struggles over sexuality reproduction gender relations and the family. Reproductive technologies raise questions 1) about the ethics and practicality of embryo experimentation 2) that challenge the structure of parenthood 3) about the feminist perspective on female reproductive capacity and male-dominated medical professions and 4) about anthropological concerns with marriage parenthood childbirth kinship and cultural patterns. Studies are cited which reflect an anthropological perspective on the impact of reproductive technologies on kinship and family structure. In vitro fertilization began in 1978 with the birth of Louise Brown. In 1984 the Warnock committee made recommendations that human embryo research 1) must be considered ethically acceptable and subject to stringent controls 2) subject to licensing up to the 14th day after fertilization 3) be monitored by a new independent statutory body 4) surrogacy be subject to criminal penalties when provided through surrogacy services by agencies or individual health professionals. Proposals for legislation based on 2 white papers were developed. The proposed Human Fertilization and Embryology Bill of 1990 established a statutory licensing body and either a ban on embryo research or authorization for limited research up to 14 days. Only the 2nd part of the Bill was approved. Embryo research is supported by medical and scientific establishments and justified as providing potential health benefits. Opposition to the bill included fear of criminal prosecution and religious belief about the protection of human life from conception. Scientific objections referred to violations of medical ethics and the Hippocratic oath. Feminists objected to the loss of identity to women. Artificial insemination raised issues about social parenthood and biological procreation and surrogacy raised ones about family integrity and social order. The legal issue of freezing embryos was dealt with in the Commission report. Many institutions in society have a vested interest in controlling reproduction and the repercussions of the new reproductive technologies challenge basic ideas.

New Reproductive Technologies - Same Old Fatherhood

new reproductive technologies (NRT) for women, by citing two authors of the 1930s. Given the recent achievement of Science and Technology in the field of human procreation, their contrasting postures prove prophetic. Recent ’conquests’ by medical technology over important aspects of the human reproductive process were already foreseen at that time, but there were also people warning us of the dangers of a science inspired by specific social values and interests. In 1938 Virginia Woolf wrote in Three guineas: &dquo;Science it would seem is not sexless; she is a man, a father and infected too.’ At about the same time, on the other side of the Atlantic, the American marxist biologist, H.J. Muller, was foreseeing a ’happy world’ peopled by supremely intelligent and cooperative beings. As he wrote in 1936, biological techniques such as artificial insemination, the culture and storage of sperm from great men, the securing of ova for fertilisation outside the body, embryo transfer and sex selection in order to eliminate genetic defects and determine the sex ratio, all in the service of the new science of eugenics, would make it possible to improve the intellectual and moral character of individuals, transform competitive social relations and abolish classes:

The Exploitation of Family Morality

By contrast with the colonato system, when labour was hired and worked in family units, today’s casual wage workers sell their labour on an individual basis. Nonetheless, these men and women continue to reproduce themselves as workers within families. Their attitudes to work continue to be mediated by their socially defined and contrasting family responsibilities. Until now I have focused attention on the labourers’ experiences at work and on their class politics. However, changing productive relations have also challenged family morality and gender relationships. The workers’ class consciousness was seen to have been informed by their perceptions of the political process that made them into casual labourers. Similarly, because the workers’ social identities are shaped also by gender relations, when changing productive relations challenged these, their gender consciousness created new contradicitons between women and men within the family.

A propósito del sexo

Sex together with death are probably the most intensely and diversely symbolized events in human experience. Recent changes in Western sexual mores transcend, nonetheless, the socio-cultural realm. Embryological research and biotechnological experimentation have brought about transformations in the facts of life and the nature of sex which were hitherto inconceivable. In this article I analyze the state of cloning with the aim of thematizing two related issues. Biotechnology is especially good for thinking because it challenges conventional modern dualism which dissociates nature from culture. And a proper comprehension of the implications these biotechnological innovations may have for our conventional notions of reproduction, kinship and sex/gender relationships requires that, beyond analysing its symbolic meanings, we take the materiality of sex seriously.

Qué tiene que ver el género con el parentesco

We owe the notion of intersectionality to a group of Afro-American feminists and lesbians who in the late 1970s denounced their white sisters’ racial blindness for overlooking the former’s specific discriminations due to social class, ‘race’, sex/gender, sexuality, etc. In the meantime, intersectionality has become as fashionable in feminist theory as it is short of empirical grounding. In this article I draw on my classical study Racismo y Sexualidad en la Cuba Colonial (1974, 1992) precisely to document the dynamic intersectionality between class, “race” and sex/gender in an unequal society whose order was rationalized in terms of a racist doctrine which in turn required the control of its elite women’s sexed bodies. This naturalization of social inequality was possible on account of the modern ontology that dissociates culture from nature.

What does gender have to do with kinship

We owe the notion of intersectionality to a group of Afro-American feminists and lesbians who in the late 1970s denounced their white sisters’ racial blindness for overlooking the former’s specific discriminations due to social class, ‘race’, sex/gender, sexuality, etc. In the meantime, intersectionality has become as fashionable in feminist theory as it is short of empirical grounding. In this article I draw on my classical study Racismo y Sexualidad en la Cuba Colonial (1974, 1992) precisely to document the dynamic intersectionality between class, “race” and sex/gender in an unequal society whose order was rationalized in terms of a racist doctrine which in turn required the control of its elite women’s sexed bodies. This naturalization of social inequality was possible on account of the modern ontology that dissociates culture from nature.

Que tem a ver o gênero com o parentesco

We owe the notion of intersectionality to a group of Afro-American feminists and lesbians who in the late 1970s denounced their white sisters’ racial blindness for overlooking the former’s specific discriminations due to social class, ‘race’, sex/gender, sexuality, etc. In the meantime, intersectionality has become as fashionable in feminist theory as it is short of empirical grounding. In this article I draw on my classical study Racismo y Sexualidad en la Cuba Colonial (1974, 1992) precisely to document the dynamic intersectionality between class, “race” and sex/gender in an unequal society whose order was rationalized in terms of a racist doctrine which in turn required the control of its elite women’s sexed bodies. This naturalization of social inequality was possible on account of the modern ontology that dissociates culture from nature.