Nina Laurie - Böcker

This text brings together themes integral to feminist geography. It shows how issues of globalization, "new ethnicities", and fractured identities are influencing research on feminities. The book also seeks to explain the relationships between social change and geographies of feminity.

As indigenous peoples in Latin America have achieved greater prominence and power, international agencies have attempted to incorporate the agendas of indigenous movements into development policymaking and project implementation. Transnational networks and policies centered on ethnically aware development paradigms have emerged with the goal of supporting indigenous cultures while enabling indigenous peoples to access the ostensible benefits of economic globalization and institutionalized participation. Focused on Bolivia and Ecuador, Indigenous Development in the Andes is a nuanced examination of the complexities involved in designing and executing “culturally appropriate” development agendas. Robert Andolina, Nina Laurie, and Sarah A. Radcliffe illuminate a web of relations among indigenous villagers, social movement leaders, government officials, NGO workers, and staff of multilateral agencies such as the World Bank.The authors argue that this reconfiguration of development policy and practice permits Ecuadorian and Bolivian indigenous groups to renegotiate their relationship to development as subjects who contribute and participate. Yet it also recasts indigenous peoples and their cultures as objects of intervention and largely fails to address fundamental concerns of indigenous movements, including racism, national inequalities, and international dependencies. Andean indigenous peoples are less marginalized, but they face ongoing dilemmas of identity and agency as their fields of action cross national boundaries and overlap with powerful institutions. Focusing on the encounters of indigenous peoples with international development as they negotiate issues related to land, water, professionalization, and gender, Indigenous Development in the Andes offers a comprehensive analysis of the diverse consequences of neoliberal development, and it underscores crucial questions about globalization, governance, cultural identity, and social movements.

Geographies of New Femininities examines the emergence of contemporary constructions of femininity in a global context. It asks whether these femininities are new and suggests that current celebrations of diversity in the lived experience and performance of women's identities are largely Euro-centric.Through four in-depth case studies Geographies of New Femininities illustrates how constructions of femininities across the world reflect gender inequalities embedded within global/local geographies of social and economic change. The analysis brings together key themes in geography and feminist studies, showing how globalisation and the fracturing of identities are influencing research on gender.Throughout the book the authors explore spaces of opportunity and oppression for women and highlight the geographies associated with the negotiation of gender identities.Geographies of New Femininities moves between empirical and theoretical debate using first hand accounts to work through methodological issues relating to gender and geography. It is deliberately written in an accessible style to encourage students to engage with up-to-date research on gender.