Commentaries – Working Paper Series

COMMENTARY: “‘Only a Piece of the Total Prophecy’: Ghost Dancing Against Nuclear Waste” by Jennifer Graber

Commentary by Nancy Blanco

This is a commentary written by PhD student Nancy Blanco (University of Texas, Nursing) in response to Professor Jennifer Graber's paper, “‘Only a Piece of the Total Prophecy’: Ghost Dancing Against Nuclear Waste." Blanco wrote this commentary as a member of the Working Paper Series Editorial Committee.

Professor Jennifer Graber’s paper, “‘Only a Piece of the Total Prophecy’: Ghost Dancing Against Nuclear Waste,” offers a critical re-evaluation of the Ghost Dance, situating it as an ongoing and adaptive form of Indigenous resistance rather than a relic of the past. Through an examination of Maurice Eben’s 1997 testimony before the Nevada Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Graber highlights how Paiute activists drew upon spiritual traditions to oppose the transportation of nuclear waste through their lands. By doing so, she challenges dominant historiographical narratives that have often framed the Ghost Dance as a reactionary movement confined to the 19th century, instead illustrating its continued resonance in contemporary Indigenous struggles for sovereignty and environmental justice.

Graber’s intervention complicates prevailing academic interpretations of the Ghost Dance, particularly Louis Warren’s argument that it was primarily a pragmatic adaptation to colonial conditions, but those conditions are not over. While acknowledging Warren’s contributions, she critiques the tendency to flatten the movement’s significance into a utilitarian survival strate. She instead emphasizes how Indigenous leaders and activists have persistently invoked the Ghost Dance as a means of spiritual and political assertion. This reframing foregrounds Native epistemologies that have historically been marginalized in scholarly discourse, positioning Indigenous spirituality as both an interpretative framework and a mechanism for political resistance.

Interdisciplinary Perspective

From an interdisciplinary standpoint, Graber’s work contributes meaningfully to religious studies, Indigenous studies, and environmental justice scholarship. By foregrounding Native perspectives, she challenges reductionist readings that separate spiritual practice from political activism. The invocation of the Ghost Dance within anti-nuclear advocacy aligns with broader patterns of Indigenous environmental resistance, demonstrating how sovereignty claims are frequently intertwined with ecological preservation. This analysis invites further engagement with works like Winona LaDuke’s scholarship on Indigenous environmental activism, which similarly highlights the ways in which spiritual sovereignty informs contemporary land and resource struggles.

Moreover, Graber’s discussion highlights the methodological tensions within the study of religion and history. Her critique of anthropological and historical approaches that have framed the Ghost Dance within a universalist model of religious revitalization calls for a more nuanced, context-sensitive understanding of Indigenous movements. This methodological intervention has implications beyond the case study at hand, urging scholars to reconsider how they engage with Indigenous sources and traditions in their analyses.

Regional Insights and Comparative Frameworks

Graber’s focus on the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe offers an opportunity to draw parallels with other Indigenous-led environmental struggles. The Standing Rock protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline, for instance, similarly mobilized resistance based on spiritual frameworks. Lakota activists emphasized their sacred duty to protect the land and water, echoing Eben’s invocation of the Ghost Dance as a means of safeguarding Paiute lands from environmental harm. This comparative perspective not only strengthens Graber’s argument but also raises important questions about how Indigenous resistance movements strategically engage with spiritual traditions to challenge state and corporate encroachments on their sovereignty.

At the same time, Graber’s discussion invites reflection on the limitations of these comparisons. While the Ghost Dance provides a powerful case study of spiritual activism, its particular historical and cultural context should not be subsumed into a generalized model of Indigenous environmental resistance. Recognizing the distinct political and spiritual genealogies of different Indigenous movements is crucial in avoiding essentialist readings that conflate diverse traditions and strategies under a single framework.

Future Research and Avenues of Inquiry

One avenue for further exploration is the relationship between 20th-century and contemporary Indigenous spiritual activism. Graber’s discussion of how Paiute leaders like Stanley Smart reactivated the Ghost Dance raises important questions about how younger generations of Indigenous activists engage with these traditions today. Digital media, for instance, has facilitated new forms of cultural and political mobilization—analyzing how contemporary Indigenous activists invoke historical movements like the Ghost Dance in online advocacy could provide valuable insights into the evolving nature of Indigenous resistance.

Additionally, Graber’s work could benefit from further engagement with transnational Indigenous movements. The intersection of spiritual and environmental activism is not confined to North America; Andean Indigenous communities, for example, have invoked the concept of Pachamama (Mother Earth) in their resistance to extractivist industries. In Mexico, Indigenous communities such as the Wixárika (Huichol) have actively resisted mining projects that threaten their sacred lands, particularly in Wirikuta, a site of spiritual significance. Similarly, the Zapatista movement in Chiapas has long framed environmental defense as part of their broader struggle for autonomy, intertwining spiritual, ecological, and political resistance. Exploring these global and regional connections could further illuminate the ways in which Indigenous spiritual frameworks shape contemporary struggles for land and sovereignty.

COMMENTARY: “An ‘Islamic Bomb’ and the Politics of Scientific Dissent: Pakistan’s Feminist and Peace Disquietudes amidst an Unending Cold War”

Commentary by Jackie Cheng

This is a commentary written by law student Jackie Cheng (University of Texas) in response to Professor Vanja Hamzić's paper, "An 'Islamic Bomb' and the Politics of Scientific Dissent: Pakistan's Feminist and Peace Disquietudes amidst an Unending Cold War.” Cheng wrote this commentary as a member of the Working Paper Series Editorial Committee. Professor Hamzić provided a response to Cheng's commentary that can be read at the bottom of this post.

The paper “An ‘Islamic Bomb’ and the Politics of Scientific Dissent: Pakistan’s Feminist and Peace Disquietudes amidst an Unending Cold War” by Vanja Hamzić, examines Pakistan’s nuclear program through the lens of scientific dissent, feminist and peace movements, and the lingering effects of Cold War politics. It critiques the notion of an “Islamic bomb,” tracing its origins in nationalist and opportunistic rhetoric while highlighting the ways patriarchal, militaristic, and Cold War-era logic shape nuclear nationalism. The paper explores how Pakistan’s nuclearization was justified through an entanglement of security concerns, religious symbolism, and geopolitical maneuvering, while simultaneously suppressing counter-narratives from scientists, feminists, and peace activists.

The paper’s central intervention reframes Pakistan’s nuclear history through the perspectives of scientific dissent and feminist-queer critique. Rather than viewing nuclear development solely as a geopolitical or security matter, the author situates it within broader structures of power—highlighting how nuclear nationalism has been deeply intertwined with patriarchal geopolitics and militarized masculinity. In doing so, the paper challenges dominant narratives that glorify nuclear weapons as symbols of national strength, revealing instead the suppression of alternative voices that advocate for peace and disarmament. The author critiques the prevailing Cold War logic that continues to shape South Asian and global politics, arguing that the region’s “frozen peace” is an extension of an unending Cold War rather than a genuine path to stability.

Hamzić argues against the personification of Pakistan’s nuclear program as a necessary or inevitable development and critiques the sidelining of dissenting voices, particularly from feminist-queer and peace movements. The paper brings in debates on nuclear politics, gender, and postcolonial statecraft by demonstrating how nuclear nationalism serves as both a militaristic and gendered project that sustains elite power structures from the colonial era.

From a legal perspective, Hamzić’s paper raises important questions about nuclear governance, international law, and the role of legal frameworks in enabling nuclear nationalism and upholding gendered discourse regarding the role and rule of law. Pakistan’s decision to not sign the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) and its intention not to sign as long as India has nuclear weapons offer a unique case study of the limitations of international legal regimes in preventing nuclear proliferation in an increasingly security-oriented world. This legal positioning reflects broader debates in international law about the effectiveness of treaties and international statutes in shaping state behavior when geopolitical realities demand alternative strategies and often take a securitized and militarized approach.

Feminist legal scholars have examined how nuclear policy is interwoven with gendered legal and diplomatic discourses. For instance, Carol Cohn’s work demonstrates that discussions on nuclear deterrence and conflict often reinforce masculinist notions of power and control. The discourse surrounding security issues frequently employs sexualized language to refer to war and conflict. Hamzić’s engagement with feminist and queer perspectives aligns with these critiques, emphasizing that nuclear nationalism is not just a security matter but also a product of patriarchal statecraft. This intersection of international law and gendered legal analysis offers valuable insights into the social and political forces shaping both nuclear policies and the discourse surrounding conflict and security in the legal and policy spheres.

Additionally, the paper discusses how scientific dissent raises important legal questions regarding state secrecy and the rights of scientists to challenge national security policies. Many states, including Pakistan, enforce strict secrecy laws that limit open debate on nuclear policy. Examining Pakistan’s legal framework in comparison to other nuclear states could shed light on the balance between national security concerns and the rights of scientists and activists to advocate for disarmament and speak out without fear of retribution.

By considering these legal dimensions, the paper contributes to a broader interdisciplinary conversation about nuclear governance and the role of international law in upholding these gendered and masculinist ideas of power and control.

Professor Hamzić provided the following reply to Cheng’s commentary:

Thank you so much for this thoughtful and deeply engaged comment. I agree entirely with what you’ve conveyed—it captures the core concerns and analytical ambitions of my working paper with clarity and care.

As you’ve rightly noted, the piece aims to complicate dominant narratives of nuclear nationalism by foregrounding feminist-queer and dissident-scientific perspectives, and by situating Pakistan’s nuclearisation within broader patriarchal and Cold War-inflected structures of power. It’s particularly affirming to see these dimensions so carefully unpacked in your response.

Sadly, as you also suggest, the research paper remains all too relevant. It was written before the latest round of Indo-Pakistani military skirmishes, which, whilst not addressed directly in the text (written prior to them taking place), continue to operate within the same nuclear logic I critique—one marked by deterrence posturing, hypermasculine nationalism, and the systematic marginalisation of peace-oriented voices. These developments further underscore how enduring—and dangerous—this unending Cold War paradigm remains.

Thank you again for your generous engagement. It’s contributions like yours that keep this conversation vital and evolving in these troubled times!

COMMENTARY: How I Learned to Keep Worrying and Teach the Bomb

This is a commentary written by law student Katelyn Lilley (University of Texas) in response to Professor Kirsten Cather's paper, "How I Learned to Keep Worrying and Teach the Bomb." Lilley wrote this commentary as a member of the Working Paper Series Editorial Committee.

In her paper, “How I Learned to Keep Worrying and Teach the Bomb,” Professor Kirsten Cather draws upon her experience utilizing literature, film, games, historical documents, and photographs to teach “the Bomb”, i.e. the atomic bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the long political, ethical and aesthetic afterlife of that historic event. Cather utilizes the term “the Bomb,” throughout the paper to highlight how difficult and incorrect it is to re-present the use of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in such simplistic terms. The paper grapples with “how to teach ‘the Bomb’ – and also, crucially, how not to teach it.” Cather opens with relaying an “unremitting disaster” early in her teaching career. She introduced the topic to students by showing images of the Bomb. Instead of sparking conversation centered around its effects on Japan, the students fell into a debate on whether it was “right” for the United States to use it, leaving the class split over that question and not engaging with the highly contested meanings and consequences of the Bomb and how it could be represented.

Following the introductory example, Cather recounts how she has since modified her teaching methods. She has shifted her focus to exposing students to diverse personal and political narratives surrounding the Bomb, and their censorship in different national contexts. Through watching films and reading first-person accounts, students explore themes of post-war censorship in Japan and the United States. Cather has also turned to interactive genres, with her students creating a video game around these themes. She stresses the importance of teaching the Bomb in a manner that not simply re-presents its damage using pictures, statistics, and facts, but through methods that sparkunderstanding of the “power and limitations of these representations.”

Several questions are raised in responding to Cather’s paper: How do we teach significant moments in history that are becoming more distant from us in space and in time, while remaining true to lived experience? How do we remain aware of the difference in possible narratives that emerge from different sources? Cather’s use of Gojira and Godzilla, King of the Monsters! provides the perfect example of these questions in practice with her students. Through comparing and contrasting the films, Cather’s students were able to view representations of ‘the Bomb’ from the original Japanese filmmakers of Gojira, to the Western recreation in Godzilla, King of the Monsters! The students were able to understand that in essentially poaching the original film, Godzilla, King of the Monsters! recenters the narrative to focus on the West, decentering the Japanese experience.

In Gojira, the protagonist of the story is a Japanese man, while in Godzilla, King of the Monsters!,the protagonist is an American reporter, and the focus of the film is shifted. The narrative becomes centered not on those harmed by the Bomb, but on the American journalist and the West viewing its devastation. By contrasting the two films, students were able to understand both films in a new light, viewing each narrative as a product of its sociohistorical and political context.

How can we then utilize this comparative teaching method in other educational settings, for example, courses on human rights law? Many universities now offer courses on the intersection of narrative/literature and human rights.[1] Law school programs have also offered courses related to the intersection of the law and literature/film.[2] Continuing to incorporate learning through narrative within these classrooms could assist and form similar discussions to those Cather recounts. Both fictional and factual narratives, created by those who have experienced abuses, can assist in underscoring the personal impact of these abuses. Exploring the similarities and differences in these narratives could also provoke more perceptive discussions on policy and the implications of the law. For example, by comparing American media portrayals of immigration to personal accounts by immigrants themselves, educators can center those most affected by injustice.

[1] See, for example, Human Rights and World Literature, Stanford Bull. ExploreCourses, https://explorecourses.stanford.edu/search?q=COMPLIT57; Narrative and Human Rights, Colombia Univ. Dep’t. of Eng. and Compar. Literature, https://english.columbia.edu/content/narrative-and-human-rights.

[2] See, for example, SMNR: Literature and the Law, The Univ. of Tex. at Austin School of Law, https://law.utexas.edu/courses/class-details/20249/28960/; 399 Law and Literature, Duke Law, https://law.duke.edu/academics/course/339; Law in Literature and Film, Colombia Law School Courses, https://www.law.columbia.edu/academics/courses/36420.

Access to Counsel: A Corollary to “The Production of Precarity” within the US Immigration System

By Elizabeth Schmelzel

Leah Rodriguez’s work, “The Production of Precarity: How US Immigration ‘Status’ Affects Work in Central Texas” offers a comprehensive breakdown of the relationship between immigration law and precarity for immigrants in the United States, drawing on cases from Central Texas to illustrate those dynamics. Rodriguez points out that “[t]o the extent that immigrants’ precarious work is tied to their US immigration status, which is so often dependent on the will of Congress, the Executive administration, regional immigration judges, asylum officers, and countless administrative, bureaucratic actors in between,… immigration law works to create precarity.” If we want to confront and ameliorate immigrants’ precarity, she argues, law reform is critical. Rodriguez points to several possibilities for change—eliminating the codification of “discretion” and “deserving” migrants in immigration law and lowering barriers to securing driver’s licenses, among others. Yet even if law and policy shifted, creating more opportunities for immigrants to secure status or maintain work permits, immigrants will need assistance in asserting their rights. That reality is why the provision of attorneys for low-income immigrants would radically confront precariousness.

As it stands, very few categories of people have the right to a free attorney in the United States. Under the Sixth Amendment, it is only a criminal defendant that has a constitutional right to be represented by an attorney during trial. People caught in the immigration system, however, are accused of violating civil, not criminal, law. Therefore, while they can hire an attorney on their own, either with their own money or by securing the help of legal non-profits, immigrants do not have the right to appointed counsel at the government’s expense. This is true no matter what the stakes of an immigration case might be, from completing a relatively straightforward DACA application, to adjudicating a protracted and complicated asylum claim which could determine whether someone is deported. What this means is that indigent asylum seekers, who may have fled torture, who do not speak English, and who are unfamiliar with immigration law, are forced to represent themselves. Egregiously, this includes children, who, under American asylum law, can be forced to represent themselves in proceedings to determine whether they will be deported.[1]

We know that access to legal counsel secures better outcomes for immigrants, and assuages the government’s concerns about immigrants absconding to avoid court hearings. Detained immigrants are more likely to be released on bond if they have an attorney, and immigrants of all kinds are more likely to be successful on the outcome of their substantive immigration case if they are represented.[2] One recent study shows that a full 93% of non-detained immigrants showed up to court when they had legal representation.[3] By comparison, only 32% of non-detained immigrants representing themselves attended required court hearings.[4] Thus, when considering Rodriguez’s proposed solutions for ameliorating immigrant precarity, the importance of access to counsel should not be overlooked. The question, of course, is whether there is the political will (and fiscal space) to incorporate free legal representation into the American immigration system. Perhaps not now, given the shameful political rhetoric around immigration in 2018. But as Rodriguez points out, maybe there could be, provided that well-informed readers, armed with data and facts, continue engaging in the art of persuasion “in the United States Congress, in the workplace, or around the dinner table.”

[1] American Immigration Council, “Children in Immigration Court: Over 95 Per Cent Represented by an Attorney Appear in Court.” Available https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/sites/default/files/research/children_in_immigration_court_0.pdf. Accessed 20 June 2018; Loreilei Larid, “Immigration Children Begin Appearing in Court Without Lawyers or Parents,” ABA Jounral. Available: http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/children_separated_from_parents_begin_appearing_in_court_without_lawyers_or. Accessed 29 June 2018.

[2] Ingrid V. Egaly and Stephen Schaefer, A National Study of Access to Counsel in Immigration Court. 164 U. Penn. L. Review. 1, 69-70; 57-59 (2015).

[3] Id. at 73.

[4] Id.

3 Reasons Why We Need Critical Feminist Theory More Than Ever in the Age of Big Data

by Inga Helgudóttir Ingulfsen

8 NOV 2017

This post is a follow-up to Helgudóttir Ingulfsen’s paper “#RefugeesNotWelcome: Making Gendered Sense of Transnational Asylum Politics on Twitter”, which was published in the Rapoport Center’s Working Paper Series in 2016 (available here). That paper was also the winner of the Audre Rapoport Prize for Scholarship on Gender and Human Rights (2016), and was responded to by Courtney McGinn and Reina Wehbi in the piece “Are Refugees Really Not Welcome?“

In the age of Big Data—when Silicon Valley “tech bros” are busy convincing us of the merits of machine learning, and the US president pretends to govern while flirting with his white supremacists followers on Twitter—I make the case for why we need critical feminist scholarship now more than ever.

Gender is at the Core of Xenophobic and Nationalistic Discourses

In December 2015, I was in my third semester of graduate school at New York University. Concerned about the rising tide of xenophobia (little did I know how much worse it would get), I wanted to look at online discourses about immigration and was interested in applying a feminist lens to the research. I typed #Refugees and #RefugeesNotWelcome in the search bar on Twitter and what I discovered was so dense with explicit sexist and misogynistic imagery and language that a few months later it amounted to a 120 page thesis.

My dataset revealed conversations littered with images of young white women covered in blood – supposed European victims of rape perpetrated by male immigrants from Muslim-majority countries. Twitter users from the US, Europe, and Japan alike portrayed the flow of refugees crossing the Mediterranean to Europe as a carefully calculated Muslim invasion of Europe, threatening to destroy Western civilization. The Twitter users employed powerful gendered language and imagery to construct a binary opposition between ‘Us’ – the White, Western, Enlightened community – and ‘Them’ – refugees, particularly Muslim refugees, construed as threats to the racial and cultural preservation and physical safety of the Western community.

Ironically, Enlightenment ideas – civil and political rights, feminism, freedom of speech – were used to justify fundamentally illiberal immigration and integration policies. The appropriation of feminist ideas was a prevalent strategy among the Twitter users I studied. These strategies are fraught with contradictions. The Twitter users call for the protection of both Western and Muslim women against the supposed violent nature of Muslim men, while consistently attacking what they see as hypocritical liberal and multicultural feminists, framed as naïve traitors of the Enlightened White community. The below meme from my dataset is one example of this strategy, accompanied by the following tweet: “RT@……….: The perks of multiculturalism #refugeesnotwelcome”.

(Image 8: Dataset 2 tweet 120)

Feminist Research as a Tool to Understand and Combat Xenophobia

The realization that gender is instrumentalized in nationalistic and xenophpobic narratives is not new. Feminist scholars like Cynthia Enloe and Nira Yuval-Davis have been arguing as much since the 1980s. However, feminist studies of gender and nationalism have tended to be primarily based on interpretation of elite discourses or political statements. The vast amount of data produced by the billions of social media users around the world represents a new opportunity to develop more rigorous and empirically driven feminist studies of xenophobia. Social media are not just accessible pools of data that can be sampled for quantitative studies of social interactions; they are just as interesting for the richness and detail of the data produced by their users. Images, memes, and videos are combined with text commentary, providing detailed insight into how an individual user constructs a narrative and the types of visual and rhetorical tools employed to support that narrative. Knowing whether hashtags like #RefugeesNotWelomce, #Rapefugees or #WhiteGenocide are trending is not as valuable as understanding how each user justifies a narrative that frames male Muslim refugees as violent or racially inferior. If we want to combat xenophobia we have to understand what makes xenophobic narratives powerful and why they resonate with particular groups of people. Rather than counting hashtag use and “likes,” we need to delve into the stories behind the hashtags. Feminist discourse analysis is a powerful tool to do just that because gender binaries are key organizing principles behind these stories.

Feminist Scrutiny of Algorithms: Exposing Patriarchal Bias in the Big Data Universe

My study, published in 2016, highlights why we should be careful to mine Facebook and Twitter to study public sentiment: social media users differ from the general population in multiple ways, and the algorithms that structure information on social media are built to generate profit rather than organic conversations and interactions. Returning to the topic now, I see that my study failed to explore in detail a critical component of algorithmic bias – the ways in which gender and race biases are themselves integral to the structure of online information and interactions. Scientists have revealed how “machine learning algorithms are picking up deeply ingrained race and gender prejudices concealed within the patterns of language use.” The data that is used to train algorithms is after all generated by humans. One study found algorithms have adopted implicit biases commonly detected in psychology experiments: “[t]he words “female” and “woman” were more closely associated with arts and humanities occupations and with the home, while “male” and “man” were closer to math and engineering professions.” How might for example, Twitter’s algorithms have learned these types of implicit gender biases and how could those in turn be helping to make certain (gendered and racialized) content more prominent?

Phrases like artificial intelligence, Big Data, and machine learning give off a false aura of objectivity that can lead to fatal misrepresentations and uses of the data generated by social media users. I have witnessed first-hand how policy-makers can be seduced by Big Data’s false promise of objectivity. Participating in a meeting on Big Data and evaluation hosted by the Rockefeller Foundation and attended by UN evaluation officers and data scientists, algorithmic bias was not adequately addressed and Twitter was presented as a promising source of information on public sentiment. UN Global Pulse – the UN’s Big Data Initiative – was the main proponent, and several of their projects make use of social media data for perception studies. Presenting my findings to the data and research team at UN Women, I warned of the algorithmic biases in social media data and argued for extreme caution in using Twitter data to track public sentiment or perceptions on gender.

Feminist scholars would make ideal methodological foot soldiers in the battle to discount false narratives of Big Data objectivity, as feminist epistemology is inherently critical and skeptical of any tradition that lays claim to objective truth. We need more strong feminist voices like Soraya Chemaly to counter the corporate spin of Silicon Valley “tech bros.” We should ramp up investments in initiatives like the Women’s Media Center’s Speech project and the Algorithmic Justice League to begin to construct a more just and inclusive internet.

Inga H. Ingulfsen is a Research Analyst in Global Partnerships, at Foundation Center and graduated from NYU’s Center for Global Affairs in May 2016 with an MS in Global Affairs, specializing in gender, immigration and peacebuilding.

Mixed and Clashing Patterns in Fashion and Between Shanzhai Culture and Copyright Law—A Unique Perspective for Women Designers

20 JUL 2017

Sara Liao’s article, “Fashioning China,” delves into the juxtaposition of copyright laws and creative women entrepreneurs in China. Shanzhai culture refers to the detailed-oriented reproduction of clothing, accessories, and other consumer goods. Copyright laws and governmental entities claim these goods are counterfeit and damage the economy. For the women entrepreneurs, however, these reproductions are a source of livelihood and a form of artistic expression. Shanzhai culture promotes an alternative view of their work that does not characterize the makers as criminals manufacturing counterfeits, but as artists creating fashion and as women aspiring to a greater life—the Chinese dream.

The paper details the design and manufacturing process of reproduction starting with an online polling process and ending with delivery of the reproduced project. The items produced through Shanzhai are not the cheap knock-offs many associate with made-in-China counterfeit products. Instead, these products are intricate. Immense detail is required down to the stitching and attaching buttons to a garment.

The strength of this paper lies in the author’s ability to weave the human element and the true impact on women’s livelihoods into the legal discussion of the government restrictions on counterfeiting. Traditionally, discussion of copyright law and product reproduction are narrowly focused on the economic harm befalling the companies whose products are being reproduced. These accounts are cold and the actors are nameless. Instead, this paper shines light on the faces of the women who create products by giving them space in the narrative. The paper exposes the true complexity of the tension between Shanzhai culture and government regulation and gives the reader room to consider each aspect of the debate.

There are ample opportunities to further this type of research investigating the cultural and political implications of the fashion industry in China and throughout the rest of the world. There is much to be dissected from the growing feminisms of these producers and business women. Further inquiry into the implications of Shanzhai on intellectual property laws and the rights of these property holders would be illuminating to discover the cause of these problems as well as some potential solutions. Where is the exact departure between creative appreciation and a copyright violation? Where exactly will the line for protected speech be drawn? Is it in a designer’s sketchbook or a line in a settlement of litigation? Further research is necessary to advise those who might be trying to bridge these cultural divides to protect freedom of expression as well as protect individual property rights.

Additionally, analysis on free speech issues and expressive product creations could create a wealth of opportunity for scholarly work. This individualistic approach to speech strengthens with the rise of social media. In today’s information age, in this political climate where the internet and e-commerce is itself in a precarious position due to the potentiality of “net-neutrality” policies, and with globalization blending cultures at an ever accelerating rate, speech issues are a “hot” topic.

Comment on Violence, Mobility, and the Borders of Bengal

by Jason Cons

3 JUL 2017

Rimple Mehta’s ethnographic exploration of the violence of mobility in “Mobility across Borders and Continuums of Violence: Experiences of Bangladeshi Women in Correctional Homes in Kolkata” is a critical intervention in studies of migration across the India-Bangladesh border and of border crossing more generally. Through a study of Bangladeshi women in correctional homes in Kolkata, she foregrounds the ways that migrants crossing this border are exposed to multiple forms of gendered violence. Moreover, unlike much of the rapidly expanding body of work on the India-Bangladesh, she follows the trajectory of this violence outwards from the border—tracing it from Ready Made Garment factories in Dhaka to correctional homes in Kolkata and back across the border again. Thus, we learn from her work not only about the precariousness of border crossing, but also the violence of detention and return. In recent years, scholarship in the US and Europe has increasingly turned its attention to what Nicholas De Genova and Nathalie Peutz (2010) have provocatively called “the deportation regime”. Mehta’s study reminds us that we must attend to the particularities of such regimes in other spaces where borders purport to curtail movement between radically unequal states.

Mehta’s work raises questions that scholars of borders, of migration, and of violence need to consider with more care. One of these is the need for a better understanding of violence and its specific articulations with gender. Mehta’s work shows that border crossing is an act fraught with gendered precarity. That said, it remains less clear how we should understand and differentiate these specific forms of violence in the context of the broader violence of borders (Jones 2016). As the Human Rights Watch study on shootings at the India-Bangladesh border that she cites makes clear, the vast majority of those shot-on-sight by India’s Border Security Forces are men. Moreover, in the tragic case of Felani Khatun that Mehta raises at the outset of the paper, there is ample evidence to suggest that she was shot simply because she was seen as a border crosser (moving from India back into Bangladesh). There is less evidence to suggest that she was shot specifically because she was a woman. How then might we better trace and understand the relationship between gender, mobility, and violence at this border?

As the work of Malini Sur (2007), Sahana Ghosh (2014), and Delwar Hussain (2013) has recently shown, gender plays an intimate role in mediating mobility at the India-Bangladesh border. Women crossing this border are certainly exposed to often horrific forms of violence. Yet, gender also plays a critical role in enabling certain kinds of movements even as it restricts others. This suggests that greater attention is needed to the micropolitics of crossing and the ways that bodies of both women and men are exposed to regimes of violent regulation.

Perhaps the most exciting aspect of Mehta’s paper is that it furthers the project of restoring voice to women who are often systematically reduced to statistics or glossed as abject victims in reporting on human trafficking. In the narratives of women in detention centers in Kolkata, we can begin to glimpse the ways that women who move across this border make difficult choices in conditions very much not of their own choosing. As Diana Tietjens Meyers (2011) has argued, much of the literature on trafficking is trapped in a two-victim paradigm—unable to represent women as anything other than abject victims or heroic resisters of their conditions. Mehta’s paper shows the realities to be much more complicated. It is an ethnographically rich exploration of what Meyers calls “burdened agency.” Through this reading, we begin to understand the often painful decisions that women make that expose them to often horrific forms of violence. Moreover, it forces us to reckon with these decisions as choices. Her work thus demands that we confront the question of agency and humanity in mobility even as it exposes the dehumanizing technologies and techniques of violence in border crossing and detention.

Work Cited

De Genova, Nicholas and Nathalie Peutz (eds). 2010. The Deportation Regime: Sovereignty, Space, and the Freedom of Movement. Durham: Duke University Press.

Ghosh, Sahana. 2014. “Anti-Trafficking and Its Discontents: Women’s Migrations and Work in an Indian Borderland.” Gender, Place and Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography. 1220-1235.

Hussain, Delwar. 2013. Boundaries Undermined: The Ruins of Progress on the Bangladesh-India Border. London: C. Hurst & Co.

Jones, Reece. 2016. Violent Borders: Refugees and the Right to Move. London and New York: Verso.

Meyers, Diana Tietjens. 2011. “Two Victim Paradigms and the Problem of ‘Impure’ Victims.” Humanity. 2(2). 255-275.

Sur, Malini. 2007. “Bamboo Baskets and Barricades: Gendered Landscapes at the India-Bangladesh Border.” In Transnational Flows and Permissive Polities: Ethnographies of Human Mobilities in Asia. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. 127-150.

Jason Cons is in the Department of Anthropology, University of Texas at Austin

“Are Refugees Really Not Welcome?”

by Courtney McGinn and Reina Wehbi

2 MAR 2017

“#RefugeesNotWelcome: Making Gendered Sense of Transnational Asylum Politics on Twitter” by Inga Ingulfsen is the winning paper of the 2016 Audre Rapoport Prize for Scholarship on Gender and Human Rights, an interdisciplinary writing competition organized by the Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice. In 2017, Ingulfsen wrote a follow-up article to #RefugeesNotWelcome addressing why critical feminist scholarship is now more important than ever.

In this piece, Ingulfsen creatively uses new methodologies to explore the “contentious landscape of asylum politics” by analyzing the gendered discourses used by Twitter users who tweet with the hashtag #refugeesnotwelcome. In doing so, Ingulfsen unveiled that Twitter users justify refugee exclusion by imaging themselves as a “White Western Enlightened community” in binary opposition to refugees, who are deemed threats to their community. This process of binary construction is inherently gendered due to the fact that refugees (specifically Muslim refugees) are often depicted as barbaric, violent men who frequently objectify, abuse, and oppress women.

In the beginning, Ingulfsen gives insights into the evolution of contemporary asylum politics through history, statistics and a comparison of attitudes of different western communities towards asylum and immigration. She also showcases the increasing challenges faced by both refugees and asylum regimes who are sometimes unable to accommodate the large influx of migrants.

Since Twitter today serves as a platform for the “global flow of real-time reactions and opinions” worldwide, Ingulfsen sheds the light on users’ different patterns of behavior. She describes the mainstream pattern as “unequal participation” because the majority of the content on Twitter is produced by a small group of opinion makers who shape the public discourse. The majority of Twitter users disseminate the material through “re-tweeting” what that small group of opinion leaders have to say. Throughout her argument, Ingulfsen reflects on the impact of such a course of online activity on the refugee crisis.

Ingulfsen then explores the gendered discursive strategies employed by Twitter users who ‘imagine’ refugees as ‘not welcome.’ Her research methodology focuses on analyzing English-language tweets with the hashtag #refugeesnotwelcome, guiding the reader into the steps of her analysis process. To explain her findings, Ingulfsen presents a set of tweets that perceive the Muslim migrants as culturally different, barbaric, and oppressive; thus justifying their exclusion. In the end, Ingulfsen stresses on the importance of deconstructing anti-immigrant rhetoric.

This piece comes at a very troublesome time for refugees and immigration in general. Recently, President Trump signed an executive order to keep refugees and immigrants from seven predominantly Muslim nations out of the United States for a specified period of time. Refugees and immigrants were banned from entering the country for 120 days. The countries affected are Iran, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Libya, Yemen and Somalia. Even more daunting is the fact that the White House Chief of Staff, Reince Priebus, said more countries could be added to Trump’s order in the future.

Although green card holders and individuals with valid visas were supposed to be excluded from the ban, that was not what actually played out. As reported by CNN, some travelers who were in the air when Trump signed the order were not able to enter the country when they landed. Some were detained and others were sent back to the country of origin. The confusion of who was included or excluded from the travel ban came from the fact that career homeland security staff were only allowed to see the final details of the order on the day it was signed by Trump. In the following days, airports struggled to adjust to the new directive. [1]

Although presidents have broad power in shaping immigration policy, many deem this executive order as unconstitutional based on its discriminatory nature. On its face, the order does not discriminate on the basis of religion or even mention Muslims. The Supreme Court of the United States has held that a facially neutral law may still be deemed unconstitutional based on the discriminatory intent of that law. In regards to Trump’s intent, Professor Corey Brettschnieder from Brown University stated the following:

[A] closer look at the executive order’s origins makes clear that it is a direct assault on the fundamental constitutional values of equal protection and religious freedom. How do we know this? Because Trump’s adviser, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, told us so.

Interviewed on Fox News on January 28, Giuliani explained how the administration’s immigration policy morphed from one that was obviously unconstitutional to one that is more subtly so. Host Jeanine Pirro asked, “Does the ban have anything to do with religion?” In response, Giuliani said, “When [Trump] first announced it, he said ‘Muslim ban.’ He called me up, he said, ‘Put a commission together, show me the right way to do it legally.’” “It,” in this case, of course, is a ban on Muslims. Giuliani’s admission is a textbook case of drafting an order in a way that avoids overt declaration of animus against a religious or ethnic group, while retaining the motive and much of the effect.[2]

Similarly, lower courts have already shown their resistance. In New York, a federal judge granted an emergency stay for citizens of the countries included in the ban and ruled they cannot be removed from the U.S. Similarly, in Boston, federal judges ruled officials cannot detain a person on the basis of Trump’s executive order.[3] In Washington, a federal court issued a stay, which stopped detained travelers from being sent back to their home country. After the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals heard oral arguments over whether to lift the temporary halt to the travel ban, the three judge panel unanimously held that the travel ban will remained blocked.[4] Although there has been great opposition to the Trump Administration’s actions thus far, things look far from over. On February 9, 2017, in response to the 9th Circuit’s decision, Trump took to Twitter per usual, stating, “SEE YOU IN COURT, THE SECURITY OF OUR NATION IS AT STAKE!” Trump is expected to issue a replacement order in the near future.

Instigated by anti-immigration xenophobic rhetoric, hundreds of cases of hateful harassment or intimidation have been reported during the month after election day.[5] Hate speech and bias-related incidents took place on streets, schools and groceries.[6] According to CNN, overall reported hate crime rate spiked 6% since the elections. However, the actual rate could be higher since the majority of incidents go unreported.[7]

Due to today’s current issues, Ingulfsen’s emphasis on the importance of deconstructing anti-immigrant rhetoric could not be more appropriate. Inga Ingulfsen’s presented her research to the data and research team at UN Women. You can view the complete published paper here.

Courtney McGinn is an LLM student at Texas Law, concentrating in Human Rights and Comparative Constitutional Law, and member of the 2016-2017 Working Paper Series Editorial Committee.

Reina Wehbi is a Fulbright grantee from Lebanon currently pursuing her LL.M in Human Rights and Comparative Constitutional Law at the University of Texas at Austin. She graduated with an LL.B from the Lebanese University in Beirut.

Oscar Night Winners Bring Human Rights Issues Center Stage

by Briana D. Perez

1 MAR 2017

On a night usually reserved for celebrating Hollywood elites, human rights violations around the world were featured front and center in several winner’s acceptance speeches. Especially in the categories that celebrated international achievement in filmmaking, winners did not hesitate to make strong statements in support of inclusion, tolerance, and peace.

Iranian filmmaker Asghar Farhadi won the Oscar for best foreign language film for “The Salesman.” Farhadi, however, was not in attendance to accept his award. In a statement, read by Iranian-American astronaut Anousheh Ansari, Farhadi denounced President Trump’s immigration executive order, saying, “My absence is out of respect for the people of my country and those of other six nations who have been disrespected by the inhumane law that bans entry of immigrants to the US.” The statement concluded, “Dividing the world into the ‘us’ and ‘our enemies’ categories creates fear.” Before the broadcast, the five directors nominated in the best foreign language film category released a joint statement, where they denounced “the climate of fanaticism and nationalism we see today in the US and some many other countries.”

In the best short documentary category, “White Helmets” took home the statue. The 40-minute short focuses on Syria’s civil war and a volunteer rescue group working in rebel-controlled areas of the country. When director Orlando von Einsiedel accepted the award, he called the audience to stand and applaud to show their support for the Syrian people and an end to the six-year long war. A cinematographer who worked on the film, Syrian Khaled Khatib, was barred from entering the U.S. and could not attend the awards ceremony.

These two big winners, however, were not the only ones to discuss politics from the stage. Italian-born Alessandro Bertolazzi dedicated his award for Best Makeup and Hairstyling to “all the immigrants.” Presenter Gael Garcia Bernal specifically addressed President Trump’s proposed border wall, saying, “As a Mexican, as a Latin American, as a migrant worker, as a human being, I am against any form of wall that wants to separate us.” In addition, several stars, including Lin-Manuel Miranda and Ruth Negga, wore blue ribbons to demonstrate support for the American Civil Liberties Union.

In a statement that encapsulated the overall mood of the evening, Academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs pronounced, “Tonight is proof that art has no borders, art has no single language and art does not belong to a single faith.”

Briana D. Perez is a J.D. student at Texas Law, Rapoport Center Fellow, and a member of the 2016-2017 Working Paper Series Editorial Committee.

Ann Swidler on the Romance of AIDS Altruism

by Megan Tobias Neely and Maro Youssef

22 FEB 2017

How is culture embedded within institutions? This central question drives the research of Ann Swidler, a professor of sociology at the University of California at Berkeley. The interplay between culture and institutions has taken her from investigating how middle-class Americans talk about love to studying the international AIDS effort in sub-Saharan Africa.

Last November, the Power, History, and Society group in the Sociology Department here at UT-Austin brought Swidler to campus present her current research in a talk titled “A Fraught Embrace: The Romance and Reality of AIDS Altruism in Africa.” Through this timely study, Swidler sought to understand how two institutional orders—that of the international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and of the local village—meet on the ground. She asked: How do NGOs focus their efforts? And how are these efforts implemented in a local cultural and institutional context?

To answer these questions, Swidler, her colleague Susan Cotts Watkins, and a team of 60 post-doctorates, graduate students, and undergraduate students undertook a massive data collection project. From 2004-2016, the team conducted a “Motel Ethnography,” surveying 4,000 Malawian villages, interviewing 2,000 villagers and 200 donors and brokers, and recording 1,200 ethnographic journal entries.

The researchers found that the primary efforts of NGOs focused on trainings. Topics covered everything from “Training for Home-Based Care” to “Youth Peer Education Training” to “Business Management.” These training programs were desirable to NGOs and villagers alike, because they were perceived as sustainable, cost-effective, and empowering. Attendance included a meal and a small amount of compensation. The programs also provided opportunities to employ villagers.

However, the efficacy of trainings came into question in the case of one woman who, despite completing stigma awareness training and attending support groups, failed to acquire practical information on the antiretroviral drugs available to her. Not all training programs, according to Swidler, were equally effective in preventing and treating HIV/AIDS.

This and other shortcomings in the NGOs efforts, Swidler found, arose when the priorities of foreign volunteers were disconnected from local needs. Many volunteers had an idealized fantasy of helping the Other, which Swidler called the “romance of AIDS altruism.” As volunteers encountered difficulties, they became disillusioned and often gave up, citing “misunderstandings” with local intermediaries who were necessary in implementing the NGO programs. Swidler identified how these “misunderstandings” had to do with clashes between the volunteers’ expectations and reality. It had disastrous consequences: When an NGO terminates its programs, the flow of aid throughout the supply chain ceases.

Among the more long-lasting programs, Swidler found that the extent to which NGO efforts were subverted or indigenized depended on the NGO’s relationships with local intermediaries. According to Swidler, when the cultural expectations of an institution are transposed to a new setting, the practices and expectations of the local network “colonize” the imported institutional logics. It is a dialectical rather than one-sided process.

As the result of this dynamic, Swidler found that certain training programs were perceived as more effective by both the NGOs and the villagers. For example, trainings designed to eliminate stigma were well-received because they aligned with local cultural beliefs in a shared obligation to care for the sick and suffering. The programs most effective in changing sexual practice, according to Swidler and her team, framed contraceptives and self-protection as a radical act.

Swidler’s research on the efforts of NGOs in the fight against AIDS in Malawi sheds much-needed light on why transnational health programs do or do not work. In this case, the most effective NGOs worked with local intermediaries to understand the cultural and institutional context of the people they served. The Malawi case demonstrates how culture and institutions must be understood as deeply intertwined in order to make meaningful health interventions.

This commentary was also featured in UT Austin Soc. Listen to the audio of Professor Swidler’s talk on UT Box.

Megan Tobias Neely is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Sociology, graduate fellow in the Urban Ethnography Lab, and on the editorial committee of the Working Paper Series at the Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice. Her research interests are in gender, race, and class inequality in the workplace, financial sector, and political systems, as well as how these issues relate to the recent growth in widening economic inequality. Maro Youssef is a second-year doctoral student in the Department of Sociology and graduate fellow in the Urban Ethnography Lab. Her research interests include gender, political sociology, culture, social movements, organizations, and North Africa and the Middle East.