Gender Women Studies Readings 9/1/2014 12:32:00 PM

Writing the Range

Premises and Definitions: Power, Race, Ethnicity, Class, and Gender
o Most history begins with daily acts of ordinary people
o Those acts create and maintain human social relations
o The process of personal negotiations is fundamental to how
people change their social roles and possibilities (family,
roles)
o In America, as different people occupied the region, struggles
to control resources led to a series of conflicts among people
of different race and ethnicities. The outcomes of these
conflicts determined which race had great power than others
Conquerors tended to think their superior power was
natural and that different races
o Race, ethnicity, class, and gender are not natural categories,
but are rather socially and historically constructed
o Ethnic differences occur when we label a group of people as
somehow different from us, whoever we think we are
o The ethnic categories created by the majority are often based
on prejudiced stereotypes and are part of a system of racial
discrimination
o Ethnic stereotypes reflect popular beliefs about ethnic traits,
cultures, and traditions
o Gender is the term used to distinguish the many social and
historical meanings associated with being physically male and
female from biological sex itself
A concept of relationship since it occurs in relationships
between the sexes
o Class is the most historically constructed
From a womens perspective class is more complex than
who controls the means of production and who works
for wages
Gender relationships complicate class
Borderlands
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borderlands/La_Frontera:_The_New_M
estiza
Politics of Location
Realize that what you are limits you and lets you go certain places
Womens movement came from the black movement
o Movements for social change


Gender Women Studies Lecture 9/1/2014 12:32:00 PM
September 2, 2014
I need to understand how a place on the map is also a place in
history (Rich, 448)
Abstractions cant consider the richness of these peoples lives
Theory is needing to be rooted in specific bodies, times, and place
Argue against broad generalizations, its too general and broad
o Have to consider who, what, when, where
Gender
o At base, a concept of relationship, since male/masculine and
female/feminine are often defined in relationship to one
another
o Is a historical construction, and is thus constantly changing
and changeable (but not easily)
o Involves different systems of family and kinship and how men
and women operate within these structures
o Defines acceptable sexual behavior, appropriate work roles,
and differential access to authority and power for women and
men
o Describes behaviors and expectations of men and women and
the relationship, which is not symmetrical
o Race is always gendered
Gender describes power relations
September 4, 2014
Territorial Evolution of the USA
o Territories are always changing
o Categories through which people organize come along with
our relationships and territories
Borderlands are more complicated than borders
o The borderland complicates the idea that you can separate
things
o People lose their lands, cultures, identity
o It is a story of violence, of people fighting, and things being
produced out of those fights
Intersectionality
o The concept offers a way to describe and recognize the ways
in which race, class, gender, and sexuality work together to
shape our life chances, experience, and positions within
society
o In other words: race, class, and gender are not fixed and
separate categories, they overlap, intersect, and fuse with
each other in countless ways, with consequential effects for
peoples lives and histories
o Race is always gendered and gender is always raced
Social-Historical Consequence
o Response to Essentialism
Belief in identity categories of race, sex, and sexuality
as true human essences that are distinct, easily
identified, and mutually exclusive categories, existing
outside of social/historical context
o Social-Historical Construction
Belieft that identity categories as gender and race are
NOT inherent, true human essences that exist outside
of social and historical contexts. Social constructionist
theories argue that identity categories themselves are
social and historical phenomena; they are the outcome,
rather than the cause of social power relations