Gendered representations in Hawai‘i’s anti-GMO activism

The aim of this article is to analyse some of the representations of intersectional gender that materialise in activism against genetically modified organisms (GMOs). It uses the case of Hawai‘i as a key node in global transgenic seed production and hotspot for food, land and farming controversies. Based on ethnographic work conducted since 2012, the article suggests some of the ways that gender is represented within movements against GMOs by analysing activist media representations. The article shows how gender, understood intersectionally, informs possibilities for movement-identification, exploring how themes of motherhood, warrior masculinities and sexualised femininities are represented within these movements. The article suggests that some activist representations of gender invoke what could be considered as normative framings of gender similar to those seen in other environmental, food and anti-GMO movements. It is suggested that these gendered representations may influence and limit how different subjects engage with Hawai'i anti-GMO movements. At the same time, contextual, intersectional readings demonstrate the complex histories behind what appear to be gender normative activist representations. Taken together, this emphasis on relative norms of femininities and masculinities may provide anti-GMO organising with familiar social frames that counterbalance otherwise threatening campaigns against (agri)business in the settler state. Understood within these histories, the work that gender does within anti-GMO organising may offer generative examples for thinking through the relationships between gendered representations and situated, indigenous-centred, food and land-based resistances

Book Reviews

Book Reviews: The First Strange Place: The Alchemy Of Race And Sex In World War II Hawaii by Beth Bailey And David Farber; She Was A Sister Sailor: The Whaling Journals Of Mary Brewster, 1845-1851 Edited By Joan Druett; Paradise Remade: The Politics Of Culture And History In Hawai'i by Elizabeth Buck; The Gifts Of Civilization: Germs And Genocide In Hawai'i by O. A. Bushnell; Fruitful Fields: American Missionary Churches In Hawaii by Alan Gowans, Daina Penkiunas, And Augie Salbosa; The Specter Of Communism In Hawaii by T. Michael Holmes; Japanese Immigrant Clothing In Hawaii: 1885 - 1941 by Barbara F. Kawakam; At Sea With The Scientifics: The Challenger Letters Of Joseph Makin Edited By Philip F. Rehbock; Reconciling The Past: Two Basketry Ka'ai And The Legendary Liloa And Lonoikamakahiki by Roger G. Rose; Architecture In Hawai'i: A Chronological Survey by Rob Sandler; Americanization, Acculturation And Ethnic Identity: The Nisei Generation In Hawaii by Eileen H. Tamura; High Tea At Halekulani: Feminist Theory And American Clubwomen by Margit Misangyi Watt