A Critical Annotated Gender, 'Race' and Development

A Critical Annotated Bibliography Gender, 'Race' and Development



A Critical Annotated Bibliography Gender, 'Race' and Development

Mohanty, C. T. (1988)

Mohanty, in this article critically assesses what she perceives as the collapse of Western feminism to correctly and seriously theorize the alleged "third world women" and "third world feminisms". She is particularly interested in the assignment of analyzing Western feminist dialogue to become aware of how this structure of work builds "the third world woman" as a monolithic object or subject of knowledge.

Moreover, in this article, Mohanty highlights a kind of colonialism which is less clearly apparent however which is no less important: discursive colonialism; which can be attained in a number of ways. She argues that the feminist scholars of the western world ought to be decisive of how their intellectual practices are drawn in and reproduce ethocentrism, hierarchies, and other kinds of cultural domination (Mohanty, 1988). She also notices that this form of discursive classification is extracted from liberal humanism, which is mostly critiqued by the feminist world. Therefore, the spotlight of Mohanty's analysis is the modes of examination used when women in the third world are theorized by Western Scholars.

Furthermore, in this article she identifies 3 major critical presuppositions which according to her are challenging in Western feminist learning. Firstly, she looks at the discursive position of the class "women" relative to the examination, debating that Western scholarship has a propensity to make up "women" as a historical class which is undifferentiated by other aspects like geographical location, ethnicity, status etc. Secondly, she talks about the challenging use of proof used to validate the first assumption. Thirdly, she puts forward that on account of the first two logical assumptions, a model of subjectivity and struggle is built up which does not consent to the adequate agency on behalf of the females who are studied (Mohanty, 1998).

In the end, Mohanty suggests that an enhanced theoretical model comprises of intersectionality; that is building the group of "women" in "a number of political settings that mostly exist at the same time and overlaid on one another. This type of analysis is politically determined and extremely context specific, watchful of connections between women and women groups devoid of falling into bogus generalizations, and recognizes the contradictions over and above the commonalities in the experiences of women.

Dillard, S. (2006)

Dillard, in this paper exclaimed that ethnic background may be understood as a group of people who define or relate to each other based on the language they speak, the values they adhere to or the heritage that they share. He further describes that in the context of race and ethnicity, it is a myth that one group is superior to the other based on their skin colour. Hence, the homogeneity in people of multiethnic backgrounds is hard to find. For instance, a child may be born to parents who belong to different ethnic backgrounds. He grows up in a country which is not the home country to either of ...