Summary
Contents
Subject index
Nira Yuval-Davis provides an authoritative overview and critique of writings on gender and nationhood, presenting an original analysis of the ways gender relations affect and are affected by national projects and processes. In Gender and Nation Yuval-Davis argues that the construction of nationhood involves specific notions of both ‘manhood’ and ‘womanhood’. She examines the contribution of gender relations to key dimensions of nationalist projects — the nation's reproduction, its culture and citizenship — as well as to national conflicts and wars, exploring the contesting relations between feminism and nationalism. Gender and Nation is an important contribution to the debates on citizenship, gender and nation.
Women and the Biological Reproduction of the Nation
Women and the Biological Reproduction of the Nation
Women affect and are affected by national and ethnic processes in several different ways. This chapter focuses on the dimension of this relationship which corresponds most closely to the so-called ‘natural’ role of women — to bear children — and on its implications for both the constructions of nations and women's social positionings. As Paola Tabet (1996) argues, one cannot dichotomize between ‘natural’ and ‘controlled’ reproduction: all so-called natural biological reproduction takes place in the specific social, political and economic contexts which construct it. A variety of cultural, legal and political discourses are used in constructing boundaries of nations, as will be discussed in the following chapters. However, these boundaries ...
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