Could gender equality theory be like a radar, or a compass, beyond current feminist theory and gender theory? Can it be based on a critique of conventional gender theory? Can it develop major new insights?
These are problems I shall be working with, this spring, based on three months of author stipend.
Gene Wolfe is one of the main voices of science fiction today. Watching current world news, especially the democratic struggles in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, I could not help thinking of his torturer and torture society portraits (e g The Shadow of the Torturer, 1980), and I have ordered two of his newer books, volume one (On blues) of a trilogy, and a historical work (Latro in the mist). We shall see. Whatever I read, from now on, is more influenced by the perspectives of Edward Said, Jonathan Littell, Victor Serge and other authors widening my understanding of democracy, some of them described in this blog.
PS A good introduction to Edward Said (e g Culture and imperialism, 1993) and post-imperialist culture, as it currently applies to the “Arab” world system issue, is Robert Fisk’s The Great War for Civilization (2006). For understanding more of the crucial “dignity” aspect, cf. Evelin Lindner and others on dignity and humiliation: http://www.humiliationstudies.org/
On humiliation, see further harassment and mobbing research – this is a wide research area. For world system theory cf Immanuel Wallerstein.
It is not often that broad new research on men, masculinities and gender equality is published. Here is a new case. 
An initial research report “Evolving men – Initial Results from the International Men and Gender Equality Survey (IMAGES)” is now available from
http://www.icrw.org/publications/evolving-men
The report is based on a survey in seven countries (Brazil, Chile, Croatia,
India, Mexico, Rwanda and South Africa). The household and life course oriented survey questionnaire was to a great extent based on the “Gender equality and quality of life” survey questionnaire developed in Norway 2007.
Despite major socioeconomic differences between the countries, often influencing the results, the initial report surprisingly often confirms the main Norway survey results regarding gender equality. This includes the importance of material context and actual practices. The new report also sometimes offers better data, based on method improvements. A worrisome note concerns gender oppressive attitudes among some groups of men (especially, India).
The story of the battle ship Tirpitz is interesting, showing how some objects can become “prestige objects” in warfare, and in the background, how this is also a gendered story. The German battle ship Tirpitz was a great hope of the Nazis, but never made it as a ship of war – the performance was extremely weak, mainly, one bit of North Sea battling, and a single “disciplinary” trip to Svalbard. The German sea command was relatively new, weak, and seems to have been relatively non-nazified, and for this and various reasons including prestige, the potentially great war hammer Tirpitz was allowed to lay dormant, mainly, until the ship was destroyed by allied forces aircraft near Tromsø late in the war. A main interesting point is how something can become a fetish, even in practical warfare. Tirpitz was in fact a moderate military threat, yet all parties acted as if it was the big thug (see Tamelander, Michael; Zetterling, Niklas 2010: Tirpitz – kampen om Nordishavet, Spartacus, Oslo).
The “macho” exploits to destroy the ship may seem absurd, including one-man uboats in the Trondheim fjord, daredevil bomber flights, and other devices that lost a lot of men. They were not so strange however, considering the key importance of the convoy traffic to Murmansk and the western help to the Soviet Union. Even as a “moderate” threat, basically since Tirpitz was a battle ship and not an aircraft carrier design, it could count for much in this context. The Tirpitz evidence is interesting for showing how hard-line evidence can be mainly sensible and right, based on very real needs of the situation – and yet be wrong.
I will be on leave from my work for three months this spring, April to July, writing for a book project on gender equality theory. My aim is a book which is useful for students as well as researchers, a book that also works pedagogically.
What about class analysis for the web? Click class: researchers could measure social class or ranking by the number of clicks or input needed to get the result that the user wants on the internet. Hypothesis, low class – many clicks, middle – some clicks, high – few clicks. The greater the wallet or the contact capital relative to IT, the fewer the clicks. Similar methods, minutes to wait for customer support, and the chance that it will actually be supportive, could be employed also, like programs functioning, partly functioning or vaporware. What is the total chance of lowering “information society annoyances factors”?
This could be a social class related measure (index) in its own right. The empirical core would tell of “activation” of information society power (via the internet and the pc), which is not necessarily bound to existing “pre-pc” class, status or rank, but can be. Perhaps lower clicks rates are associated with considerable individual capacity factors and even “nerdism” and “in-group” empathy factors. Perhaps your time in the queue is lessened if you manage to give a signal “Hello I have a problem representing a big techno mystery” beyond the usual “Hello it broke down once more”? Our click class analysis might be able to tell.
Does it rise with the “day memory” needing to be refined, before given over to dream work, like Freud thought? Is it caused not just by ordinary learning and generalisation processes, but by more specific impulses too? Could being in the other person’s position, be an important factor?
In this blog, I write about my sociological sense whatever the cause, with the aim to widen and deepen the field of inquiry, and improve the methods to get there. My blog posts are explorative mainly, but with an authoritative element also, trying to sum up existing research, and how to go on from there. Learning and democratization are two main themes.
A new report by Gary Barker and co-researchers, Evolving Men – Initial Results from the International Men and Gender Equality Survey (IMAGES), published by The International Center for Research on Women, Washington, shows changing standards regarding men and masculinity. Men increasingly embrace gender equal ideals and translate this into practices, but are held back by traditional roles and structures. Men’s own choices play a large role, but at the same time, structures and constraints are a key to understand these choices.
The IMAGES survey was to a large degree based on Norwegian research (p 64-5). This is a case of rich world research used to wider benefit, and an example of how Norwegian research can become internationalized.
I am reading Susan Weissman’s Victor Serge – The course is set on hope (Verso, London 2001), a remarkable book on many accounts, not least showing more of the Stalinist purge in Russia and abroad. Serge was a Russian Bolshevik who was also a relative free-thinker, barely escaping Stalin’s purges, publishing a lot of comments and experiences. Serge documented what was possibly the first holocaust, or the overlooked twin of the holocaust of the Jews later – the systematic large scale death campaign against “rival” revolutionary factions, especially Trotskyists, but in fact everyone daring to gainsay Stalin.
Serge was sympathetic to Trotsky, but developed doubts, and characterizes the authoritarian tendencies of Stalin’s opponents also. A main matter is the documentation regarding the purge of the revolutionaries in Russia. Serge wrote that there was scarcely an “old” comrade left – they had all been imprisoned or killed by Stalin. Serge did not use the word holocaust, but he did argue that Stalinism created perhaps the bloodiest counter-revolution in history, killing off all the opponents.
This book is mainly about Serge’s biography, with limited citations from his writings, but very valuable nevertheless. Especially interesting is Serge’s portrait of the way that the Stalinist pressure increased authoritarian tendencies even within the opposition.
Highly recommended.
I have finished reading Jonathan Littell’s The kindly ones, 1026 pages in the Norwegian translation, a remarkable book, even if I retain some scepticism on the psychology level. SS officers need not be personal killers, like the protagonist in this book, yet Littell’s way of treating this theme can also be seen as a way for creative literature to make its voice heard, to create an experimental field – and as such, very interesting.
The last part of the book contains a scathing critique of the idea that the Nazi gas chamber and elimination strategy was only directed against the Jews. It was directed against everyone “inferior” in Nazi race terms, the Jews were only the first victims. Empirically, in some contexts, the proportion of communists killed may have been as large as the proportion of Jews, and the main strategical matter was to eliminate everyone who were opposed to the new order.
Littell thereby also goes beyond David Goldhagen’s thesis that the holocaust was about the Jews and that more or less “any” German supported it. Littell’s fiction portrait of Nazi power basically willing to eliminate all opposition is more realistic. Goldhagen’s idea that almost every German was behind this, is not directly addressed by Littell, but is – mainly correct, I think – undermined by his storytelling, showing how even SS officers had a lot of private doubt and problems regarding the killing machine that they participated in.
