'Crazy for Democracy': Re
File Name: 0004.FEM
Ä Area: FEMINISM ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ
Msg#: 625 Date: 05-26-98 04:08
From: Grant Karpik Read: Yes Replied: No
To: All Mark:
Subj: 'Crazy for Democracy': Re
ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ
@MSGID: 1:153/831.2 56a77a25
@PID: timEd 1.10.y2k
H-NET BOOK REVIEW
Published by H-Pol@h-net.msu.edu (May, 1998)
Temma Kaplan. _Crazy for Democracy: Women in Grassroots
Movements_. New York and London: Routledge, 1997. x + 243 pp.
Notes, bibliography, and index. $65.00 (cloth), ISBN
0-415-91662-3; $17.99 (paper), ISBN 0-415-91663-1.
Reviewed for H-Pol by Nancy A. Naples , University
of California, Irvine
I discovered Temma Kaplan's _Crazy for Democracy: Women in
Grassroots Movements_ while in the process of completing two books
on women community activists (Naples 1998a, 1998b). Therefore,
although I have never met them, the women in Kaplan's book seem so
familiar to me. Of course, most U.S. readers will have heard about
Lois Gibbs--one of the six women Kaplan highlights--who came to
national prominence through her efforts to fight toxic waste in her
community of Love Canal. Those who have more familiarity with the
environmental movement may also have read or heard about Dollie
Burwell who has been in the forefront of the fight against
environmental racism. But, for the most part, as Kaplan points
out, women's community activism typically remains invisible to
those outside their immediate communities. Kaplan's goal is to
correct this blind spot in conceptions of women as political
actors. In a highly accessible style, she explores women's
motivations for radical political action as well as the creative
ways they negotiate the resistance they encounter in their
struggles for social justice.
As Kaplan and others who write about women's community-based
activism point out, traditional conceptualizations of politics
typically do not incorporate this form of political participation.
Given the dominant definitions of politics as related primarily to
electoral politics or participation in formal social movement
organizations, some women community activists also resist viewing
their involvement as politics. Many construct their activism as
emanating from their social location as mothers and community
caretakers, defining it as "civic work" or a "social mission"
(Naples 1998b). Patricia Hill Collins (1990) uses the term
"community othermothering" to capture this phenomenon. I use the
term "activist mothering" to describe the ways that the community
activists I studied related to their political and social work on
behalf of their families and communities. This conceptualization
"draws attention to the myriad ways these women challenged the
false separation of productive work, socially reproductive work,
and politics" (Naples 1998, p. 4).
Historians of women's social activism emphasize how social
reformers of the late 1800s and early 1900s also drew on their
identities as women and mothers to justify their entre into the
so-called public sphere. Authors who explore the political
contributions made by these social reformers often frame their
approach as "maternalist politics." Seth Koven and Sonya Michel
(1993, p. 4) define maternalism as "ideologies and discourses that
exalted women's capacity to mother and applied to society as a
whole the values they attached to the role: care, nurturance, and
morality." Contributors to the debate over the political efficacy
of maternalist politics often question to what extent such
approaches reproduce gendered inequality in the political arena.
By constructing women's entre into the public arena as based on
their position as "citizen mothers," women reinforce the normative
definition of citizen as male.
However, while many social reformers drew on their gender
identities to describe their activism, they did not adhere to a
traditional gender division of labor ideology nor did they believe
that all women could unite on the basis of their mothering status.
In fact, Wendy Sarvasy (1997) explores the political practice of
social-democratic feminists in the first decades of the nineteenth
century to offer "a conceptualization of citizenship that
highlights community-based social service and participatory
democracy" (Naples 1998c, in press) rather than "maternal
politics." Their notion of citizenship included, in Sarvasy's
assessment (1997, p. 56), "new modes of citizenship activities, a
socialized formulation of rights, new spaces for citizen
participation, and an emancipatory use of gender difference to
expand and to redefine gender equality." Like the women Kaplan
interviewed, their political praxis effectively merged expansion of
social rights with civil and political rights.
Most of the literature on women social reformers concentrates on
the activism of middle- and upper-class women. In contrast, Kaplan
is interested in centering the community activism of working class
and poor women who operate from the grassroots rather than in
centralized political or social organizations. She notes that the
term grassroots "suggests being outside the control of any state,
church, union, or political party" (p. 2). Kaplan's work further
demonstrates how "women of different racial-ethnic and class
backgrounds claim social and political citizenship in arenas
'outside the realm of governmental politics'" (Nelson 1984, p.
209). Rather than view these spheres of citizenship as separable
arenas of struggle, the community activists Kaplan studied
"understood that full participation for working-class and poor
people of different racial-ethnic backgrounds requires access to
certain basic social and economic protections" (Naples 1998c, in
press). In describing their view of social citizenship, Kaplan
draws on the political wisdom of South African activists Regina
Ntongana and Josette Cole. For Ntongana and Cole, "social
citizenship ... include[s] the rights of everyone to schools,
jobs, health care, and housing" (p. 14). However, Kaplan points
out, this form of "justice has never been codified in national or
international law" (p. 14). She points that, "By creating a third
space that is neither public nor private, grassroots activists have
opened up an arena in which human dignity, not national law or
custom, prevails" (p. 11).
Clearly Kaplan has great admiration for the women she writes about.
She tells their stories with much enthusiasm. She also views the
organizations they developed as more than simple sites through
which specific issues can be addressed. They are described as
providing models for participatory democratic practice. For
example, as a result of her struggle in Love Canal, Lois Gibbs
helped establish the Citizens Clearinghouse For Hazardous Waste.
According to Kaplan, Gibbs and Luella Kenny, another Love Canal
activist who is a board member of the Clearinghouse and director of
the Love Canal Medical Trust fund which disburses funds from the
financial settlement made with Love Canal homeowners, are committed
to supporting the work of community-based activists like Dollie
Burwell. Rather than establishing another centralized organization
with experts who are sent out to advise different communities, the
Clearinghouse revised their strategies in 1995 to fund the efforts
of local residents "who are clearly rooted in their own
communities" (p. 99). In a similar vein, Ntongana and her
co-workers at the Surplus Peoples Project in South Africa "provide
training to women who have seized the initiative in their own
struggles to achieve self-determination and decent housing" (p.
162).
Kaplan is also interested in understanding to what extent women
community activists view their politics through a feminist lens.
Kaplan (1982) employs the term "female consciousness" to describe
women who make political claims on the basis of their gender roles
and subsequently participate in radical political action. Not all
women who make claims through their gender ideology do so on behalf
of women's-specific issues like equal rights or reproductive
choice. In the concluding chapter of _Crazy for Democracy_, Kaplan
points out how she and Maxine Molyneux mistakenly have been
criticized "for implying that women were preoccupied with private
rather than public matters" (p. 219). In trying to understand the
different ways women define political issues, Molyneux (1986)
differentiates between "practical gender issues" and "strategic
gender issues" to capture the way women activists organize around
their practical everyday needs for food, housing, day care, versus
organizing around their gender-specific identities. Obviously,
this distinction often breaks down in practice as Kaplan herself
notes. However, she also points out that she and Molyneux "were in
fact arguing that the working-class women we were studying would
not accept any distinction between needs and the political
authority to fulfill them" (p. 219). She stresses that "Molyneux
and I were concerned with consciousness and democratic priorities
in movements for social change; we never accepted the idea of
separate spheres" (p. 219). In fact, as I have argued elsewhere,
"another key contribution of the scholarship on women's community
activism involves challenging limited constructions of feminism
that derive solely from white middle class women's experiences"
(Naples 1998a, p. 4).
Yet, Kaplan argues, since these women do not construct their
activism primarily as feminists, they can play with gender
stereotypes in a way that those who center their identities as
feminists may not. For example, in their efforts to confront
corporate and government officials, Lois Gibbs and the other women
involved in protesting the environmental dangers of Love Canal
permitted themselves to be depicted as comedic figures and as
victims, two modes of display that self-defined feminists would
resist. Kaplan explains, "Had the women been feminists, they could
have undercut their demands to be treated as full citizens by such
actions. But the homeowners were desperate to save their community
from disaster; they were willing to compromise their own dignity to
survive" (p. 30). Kaplan further notes that the fact that these
women did not define themselves as feminists, however, does not
mean that they did not recognize sexism in the organizations and
movements in which they participated. For example, the Surplus
People Project employs a "gender facilitator" to help staff
"recognize the importance of gender equality to all the work the
organization does: helping create democracy in South Africa" (p.
163).
Kaplan also demonstrates the influence of other social movements in
shaping the activists' political analyses and political networks.
Dollie Burwell and her daughter Kim drew on lessons from the U.S.
civil rights movement. Regina Ntongana and Josette Cole tied their
activism to the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa. In fact,
Kaplan writes, "Women like Regina Ntongana, by their struggle to
establish homes in the cities, helped undermine apartheid and
contributed to the view that housing has some relationship to
social justice" (p. 128). For the Burwells, the civil rights
movement provided a ready-made political community in which to
mobilize against environmental racism. Dollie Burwell believes
that the link made between "environmental issues and civil rights"
became news and therefore brought their fight to the attention of
the national media (p. 61).
Women who participate in community-based struggles especially in
racist and authoritarian contexts expose themselves to physical
threat, arrest, and other risks to their safety and well-being.
Burwell was arrested for protesting against toxic waste in her
community of Warren County, North Carolina. Ntongana's life was
threatened on a number of occasions. Working class women's entre
into the public sphere also challenged the gender division of labor
and gendered ideologies within their families. Marriages did not
always survive such redefinition of roles as Gibbs' experience
attests. Activist mothers often felt torn between the demands of
parenting and the hours required to mount an effective campaign
against injustice (also see Naples 1998b). As Kaplan explains,
"Guilt about not being home, stress over taking on extensive
community work in addition to their many tasks as homemakers, and
worry over the harm pollution has already done to their families
cause personal pain" (p. 41). Yet these women also became
empowered by their efforts to fight against toxic waste,
environmental racism, and other oppressions. As in the case of the
community workers I studied, the women activists in Kaplan's book
often gained strength from their religious beliefs as well as from
other women activists.
Another theme in _Crazy for Democracy_ is how these women modeled a
political commitment for their children. This is demonstrated most
directly in Kaplan's interviews with Kim Burwell. While I disagree
with Kaplan's comment that "No woman is a hero to her daughter" (p.
110), I have also noted significant generational variation in
political practice (Naples 1998b). For example, the church did not
offer as significant a site for Kim Burwell's activism as it
provided her mother. However, both women recognized the key
contributions that women make to the survival of communities of
color. These "community othermothers" may not view themselves as
political leaders, but they know "everything that goes on and,
without [them], nothing will happen in town" (p. 119). In South
Africa, "Collective self-reliance under a crisis situation forged
the women into a group that trusted its own judgment" (p. 135) and
provided the basis from which to organize against attempts to
destroy their housing settlement outside Cape Town. Kaplan gains
hope for a more equitable democratic future from their political
practice. She writes, "The fact that ordinary women were able to
create a sense of community identity and wring a sense of justice
out of a social system that sought to bury them alive reveals
certain new possibilities for democracy. In their struggles for
urban housing, they helped establish new criteria for justice,
standards that combined democracy with social need" (p. 156).
Regina Ntongana, Josette Cole, Dollie and Kim Burwell, Lois Gibbs,
and Luella Kenny are but six of the hundreds of thousands of women
engaged in community-based struggles for social justice around the
world today. We all can draw inspiration from their ongoing
commitment to democratic practice, gender equality, and social
citizenship.
References
Collins, Patricia Hill. 1990. _Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge,
Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment_. Boston: Unwin
Hyman.
Kaplan, Temma. 1982. "Female Consciousness and Collective Action:
The Case of Barcelona, 1910-1918." _Signs: Journal of Women in
Culture and Society_ 7(3): 545-566.
Koven, Seth, and Sonya Michel, eds. 1993. _Mothers of a New World:
Maternalist Politics and the Origins of Welfare States_. New York:
Routledge.
Molyneux, Maxine. 1986. "Mobilization Without Emancipation?
Women's Interests, State and Revolution in Nicaragua." Pp. 280-302
in _Transition and Development: Problems of Third World Socialism_,
ed. Richard R. Fagen, Carmen Diana Deere, and Jose Luis Goraggio.
New York: Monthly Review Press and Center for the Study of the
Americas.
Naples, Nancy A. 1998a. _Community Activism and Feminist Politics:
Organizing Across Race, Class and Gender_. New York: Routledge.
Naples, Nancy A. 1998b. _Grassroots Warriors: Activism Mothering,
Community Work and the War on Poverty_. New York: Routledge.
Naples, Nancy A. 1998c. "Towards a Multiracial Feminist
Social-Democratic Praxis: Lessons From Grassroots Warriors in the
U.S. War on Poverty." _Social Politics_ in press.
Nelson, Barbara. 1984. "Women's Poverty and Women's Citizenship:
Some Political Consequences of Economic Marginality." _Signs:
Journal of Women in Culture and Society_ 10(2): 209-31.
Sarvasy, Wendy. 1997. "Social Citizenship From a Feminist
Perspective." _Hypathia: Special Issue on Citizenship_ 12(4):
54-73.
Copyright (c) 1998 by H-Net, all rights reserved. This work
may be copied for non-profit educational use if proper credit
is given to the author and the list. For other permission,
please contact H-Net@h-net.msu.edu. [The book review editor
for H-Pol is Lex Renda ]
................................................................
End cross-post
Grant {Internet: karpik@sprint.ca}
-!-
! Origin: Rage at the Machine... (1:153/831.2)
