Bangkok--15 Jul--Asian Institute of Technology
Asst. Prof. Philippe Doneys, Coordinator of Gender and Development Studies Field of Study, Asian Institute of Technology (AIT), has co-edited a newly published book titled 'Gendered Entanglements: Re-visiting gender in rapidly changing Asia' – a first of its kind publication covering a wide set of contemporary issues relating to gender, with a specific Asia focus.
Published in July 2015 by NIAS Press of the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS), the 13-chapter, 350-page publication featuring the work of 19 contributing authors asks if gender as a social analytic has remained true to its earlier feminist promise for emancipatory and empowering outcomes.
NIAS Press is a leading independent publisher on Asian social science subjects. Titles published are all thoroughly peer-reviewed research on modern East and Southeast Asian society.
The Canadian scholar edited the book along with Dr. Bernadette P. Resurrección and Dr. Ragnhild Lund. Dr. Resurrección is a Senior Research Fellow at the SEI Asia Centre in Bangkok, Thailand, and is an affiliate faculty member of the AIT School of Environment Resources and Development. Dr. Lund is a professor at the Department of Geography, Norwegian University of Science and Technology.
According to the editors, "the book's overall objective is to revisit gender as a concept that can engage simultaneously with change and continuity in today's Asia, but with greater intellectual reflexivity to examine multiple, intersecting, and complex dimensions of identity and difference and formerly unacknowledged sources of social power from institutions and their emerging discourses.
"Individual chapters, written by gender scholars from Europe and Asia, critically examine the concept of gender in the context of emerging development issues relating to four broad thematic areas: 'Gender over Time', which basically deals with revisiting the field repeatedly or after a substantial period of time, reflecting reflexively on the value of conducting longitudinal research; 'Power, Policy, and Practices', which revisits different dimensions of governance and power, gender mainstreaming, and activism involved; 'Environment and Resources', which deals with new ways of examining dispossessions, dams, disasters, and mobilities; and 'Justice and Human Rights', which focuses on the often complex and at times contradictory dimensions of religious and secular legal frameworks.
"By critically examining how revisiting gender has led the authors to rethink gender in multiple ways, some of the chapters revisit areas from previous research, while others rethink ways in which gender has been framed and depoliticized in current practices, and therefore address how gender has been changed, both as a normative process influencing social roles and relations and as an object and/or a concept of research."
All editors have also penned chapters in 'Gendered Entanglements.' Dr. Doneys co-authored a chapter with Dr. Donna L. Doane, a researcher and visiting faculty in Gender and Development Studies at AIT, titled: "Lost in Translation? Gender and Empowerment in the Greater Mekong Sub-Region." Dr. Resurrección collaborated with Dr. Edsel E. Sajor of AIT's Urban Environmental Management program on the chapter "Gender Floods and Mobile Subjects: a Post-Disaster View."
Dr. Lund and Dr. Smita Mishra Panda combined to produce the chapter titled "Struggling Bodies and Spaces of Resistance – Adivasi Women Activists in Odisha, India." The three editors also collaborated on the final, signature chapter titled "Gender entanglements in gender development: a call for grounded, multi-dimensional and 'moving' feminisms."
The also book benefits greatly from the work of other notable AIT scholars on the subject. Dr. Kyoko Kusakabe, Assoc. Professor of Gender and Development Studies, offers a chapter with Cambodian scholar Prak Sereyvath titled "Women Fish Border Traders in Cambodia: Intersectionality and Gender Analysis." Dr. Julaikha B. Hossain, an affiliate faculty member of gender at AIT, adds her study titled "Rethinking Personal Laws and Gender Justice from a Bangladesh Perspective."
'Gendered Entanglements: Re-visiting gender in rapidly changing Asia' was honored earlier this year at the 2015 Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting. Available at http://www.niaspress.dk/books/gendered-entanglements, the hardback retails for 50? (UK) and the softback is priced at 19.99? (UK).