Fall 2011 Bulletin Vol. 27, Number 1 (PDF) - Center for Gender in ...

mercenary labor. Hoffman argues thatin contemporary West Africa, space,sociality, and life itself are organizedaround making young men available forall manner of dangerous work. Drawingon his ethnographicresearch over thepast nine years,as well as theanthropologyof violence,interdisciplinarysecurity studies,and contemporarycrical theory, hemaintains that themobilizaon ofyoung West Africanmen exemplifiesa global trend inthe outsourcingof warfare andsecurity operaons.A similar dynamicunderlies thepolical economyof violence in Iraq,Afghanistan, and agrowing number ofpostcolonial spaces.Women, War,and the Makingof Bangladesh:Remembering1971, by YasminSaikia, 2011, 336pp. Fought betweenIndia and whatwas then East andWest Pakistan,the war of 1971led to the creaon of Bangladesh,where it is remembered as the War ofLiberaon. For India, the war representsa triumphant seling of scores withPakistan. If the war is acknowledgedin Pakistan, it is cast as an act ofbetrayal by the Bengalis. None of thesenaonalist histories convey the humancost of the war. Pakistani and Indiansoldiers and Bengali miliamen rapedand tortured women on a mass scale.In this book, survivors tell their stories,14revealing the power of speaking thatdeemed unspeakable. They talk ofvicmizaon—of rape, loss of statusand cizenship, and the “war babies”born aer 1971. The women also speakas agents of change, as social workers,caregivers, and warme fighters. In theconclusion, men who terrorized womenduring the war recollect their warmebrutality and their postwar efforts toachieve a sense of humanity.The Naon Writ Small: African Ficonsand Feminisms, 1958–1988, by SusanZ. Andrade, 2011, 280 pp. Andradefocuses on the work of Africa’s firstpost-independence generaon ofBOOKSnovelists, explaining why male writerscame to be seen as the voice of Africa’snew naon-states, and why Africanwomen writers’ commentary on naonalpolics was overlooked. Since Africa’searly female noveliststended to write about thefamily, while male authorsoen explicitly addressednaonal polics, it wasassumed that the womenwriters were uninterestedin the naon and the publicsphere. Challenging thatnoon, Andrade arguesthat the female authorsengaged naonal policsthrough allegory. In theirwork, the family stands forthe naon; it is the naonwrit small. Interprengficon by women, as wellas several feminist maleauthors, she analyzesnovels by Flora Nwapa andBuchi Emecheta (Nigeria);novellas by OusmaneSembene, Mariama Bâ, andAminata Sow Fall (Senegal);and Bildungsromansby Tsitsi Dangarembga(Zimbabwe), NuruddinFarah (Somalia), and AssiaDjebar (Algeria). Andradereveals Africa’s earlywomen novelists’ influenceon later generaons offemale authors, and shehighlights the momentwhen African womenbegan to write aboutmacropolics explicitlyrather than allegorically.Earthscanwww.earthscan.co.ukGender and Climate Change:An Introducon, edited by IreneDankelman, 2010, 312 pp. Thistextbook, now in paperback, provides acomprehensive introducon to genderaspects of climate change. Althoughclimate change affects everybody it isnot gender neutral. It has significant