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Date: April 29, 2024 Mon
Time: 8:22 pm
Time: 8:22 pm
Results for female vigilantes
1 results foundAuthor: Baldrich, Roxana Title: Taking the Law Into Our Own Hands: Female Vigilantism in India and Mexico Summary: To conclude, the female vigilantes presented in this paper clearly have a positive short and long-term impact on society. In spite of the limitations listed above, they significantly contribute to the improvement of living conditions for people within their respective communities, especially of those of girls and women. I do not agree with Rastogi and White's (2009) conclusion that "violent retributive activities do not challenge fundamental structures of domination in society over the long term" (324) nor with Sen's (2012) conclusion that "Globally, female vigilantism eventually achieves only partial social freedoms for women, while continuing to operate within the constraints and constants of patriarchal structures" (5-6). There might be female vigilante groups for which these claims are true, but they do not hold as a general conclusion. In the case of the female vigilantes presented in this paper, we have seen that the conclusions drawn on women participating in the autodefensas of Michoacan and Guerrero were mixed, as they do not act independently of men and the media sometimes portray them in a way that highlights the inequality between them and their male comrades. Concerning the Ni Una Mas movement, the Gulabi Gang and the Red Brigade, however, this paper has demonstrated that they clearly contribute to the betterment of society. They might not be in a position where they have the means and influence to radically change their communities, but it would be unrealistic to expect them to be able to achieve this in the short run. Considering the highly oppressive and violent contexts in which these women live, the manifold activities and services that they have developed are already revolutionary. And by showing their communities - and the world - that they want change and are ready to fight for it, they have taken the first step to reforming society. Today, there might still be flaws in their strategies and limitations to their impact, but they have already achieved a lot, and each and every of their small achievements contributes to long-term change in their communities. However, it is obvious that it takes a long time to make such change happen. In a nutshell, female vigilantism seems indeed to have "transformative and dynamic properties [...] that support and empower the potential for equitable and viable female agency (Graham-Bertolini, 2011, 4). In fact, the diversity of the activities undertaken by most of the vigilantes described in this paper prove that they do have a long-term, collective vision of what they would like to achieve: in addition to their short-term goals of protecting themselves against male aggression and providing their communities with services and support on a day-to-day basis, they also clearly work towards their long-term goal of empowering women. In fact, by giving women a voice and creating an environment for them in which they can act more self-determinedly and more independently of men, as well as by negating commonly assumed gender roles and prejudices about violent women, they might be able, in the long run, to change the place that is assigned to women within their respective communities, thereby improving women's living conditions and liberating them. The success and popularity of female vigilante groups is a proof of "the power of informal women's collectives to implement change without elite intervention or leadership" (Sen, 2012, 10). However, if the Ni Una Mas movement, the Gulabi Gang and the Red Brigade clearly contribute to the betterment of society, this is in large part thanks to their peaceful activities, not through the violent acts that they perpetrate. As we have seen in this paper, violence merely represents a starting point for these vigilante groups: it is used in order to gain the attention and respect of the community, especially of its male members and of officials, and thereby enable the women to carry out their manifold activities. He have also seen that members of female vigilante groups, especially of the Gulabi Gang and the Red Brigade, "are increasingly called upon by men to challenge not only male authority over women, but all human rights abuses inflicted on the weak" (website of Sampat Pal Devi). These findings are consistent with Rastogi and White's conclusion that Gulabi Gang members are "women with grassroots feminist sensibilities, offering psychological, social and justice-related assistance" (2009, 314), as well as with Graham-Bertolini's claim that female vigilantism can be described as a form of "constructive collective enterprise" (2011, 6). These findings indicate that an important direction for further research lies in the exploration of more traditional scholarly work on activism and social movements. It would indeed be very interesting to analyze female vigilantism from a perspective where the phenomenon is seen as part of more traditional forms of collective action. This approach would allow the researcher to refer to the abundant literature available on social movements, and on the role that violence can play within them. Traditional scholarly work on activism and social movements that would be helpful in this context includes, for instance, the work by Sidney Tarrow (1994) on "protest cycles", also known as cycles of contention or waves of collective action, which help explain the rise and fall in social movement activity, described by the author as being related to cyclical openings in political opportunity which create incentives for collective action. Another important work by Tarrow, developed in cooperation with Doug McAdam and Charles Tilly, concerns the concept of "contentious politics" (Doug, Tarrow and Tilly, 2001; Tarrow and Tilly, 2006), which explains how dynamics of social protest are tied to their social, political and economic contexts. With regard to the study of vigilantism, this concept is important both as a field of study and as a methodological approach, because, amongst other things, it helps describe the use of disruptive techniques to make a political point, or to change government policy. Another important contribution to the study of social movements by Tilly (1995) is the conceptualization of the "social movement repertoire" which describes "a limited set of routines that are learned, shared, and acted out through a relatively deliberate process of choice" (264). These routines "emerge from struggle" and change over space and time (Ibid.). The concepts of protest cycles, contentious politics and repertoires are particularly relevant to the study of vigilantism because they help describe and explain the repression of social movements, as well as consequences of, and reactions to, such repression. The latter include militants' adaptation techniques and their turn to violence (Steinhoff, P.G. and Zwerman, G., 2013). The issue of social movement repression is particularly important to further the study of the Ni Una Mas movement, and has been explored in more detail by Helene Combes (2009) and by Daniela Cuadros and Daniella Rocha (2013), amongst others. Some other sources that are relevant to further research on female vigilantism include work by Etienne Penissat (2009) on the occupation of premises - a strategy used by the Gulabi Gang - and work by Lucie Bargel and Xavier Dunezat (2009) on gender and activism - especially important with regard to the study of women within mixed vigilante groups. Details: Paris: Paris School of International Affairs, 2014. 79p. Source: Internet Resource: Thesis: Accessed August 30, 2017 at: http://www.sciencespo.fr/psia/sites/sciencespo.fr.psia/files/Taking%20the%20Law%20Into%20Our%20Own%20Hands%20-%20Female%20Vigilantism%20in%20India%20%26%20Mexico_Roxanna%20Baldrich.pdf Year: 2014 Country: India URL: http://www.sciencespo.fr/psia/sites/sciencespo.fr.psia/files/Taking%20the%20Law%20Into%20Our%20Own%20Hands%20-%20Female%20Vigilantism%20in%20India%20%26%20Mexico_Roxanna%20Baldrich.pdf Shelf Number: 146956 Keywords: Female VigilantesVigilantesVigilantism |