Burnett, Kristin

Canadian Woman Studies / les cahiers de la femme (E-Journal, York University)

GENDER, RACE, AND NATION: A GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE Vanaja Dhruvarajan and JillVickers, Eds. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002 REVIEWED BY SIMONE BROWNE Questions of"belonging," difference and the nation-state have long been the subject ofmuch feminist research and discussion. The contributors of Gender, Race and Nation: A Global Perspective provide contemporary and historical understandings of the politics of inclusion and exclusion in the Canadian nation-state, and on the global stage. Organized into two parts, the first section reviews key terms and introduces the editors' one-world feminist analytical methodology as a tool for thinking through differences. This one-world framework, which reads like a best practices guide from scholars and activists includingPhilomena Essed's understanding of gendered racisms and Maria Mies' methodological postulates to guide action research and knowledge making, could also be termed a transnational feminist analysis. The second part ofthe book functions as acollection ofnine essays that attempt to apply the one-world methodology to the study ofvarious topics, including Vanaja Dhruva- rajan's chapter on reproductive technologies, Amanda Goldrick- Jones' discussion of pro-feminist men's organizations, and Pavin Ghorayshi's study of women's paid andunpaidlabour. Here, Ghorayashi reveals how national economic policies are heavily invested in gmdered racisms. In addressing how economies of the body circulate on the national stage, the chapter 'Between Body and Culture: Beauty, Ability, and Growing Up Female' asks, "Do body image issues differ among diverse groups ofwomen?" and explores the various ways in which women nego- tiate dominant ideals of beauty. Us- inga diverse group ofparticipants, in terms of physical abilities, race and gender identity, Carla Rice con- ducted interviews to chart and un- derstand these women's "bodily his- tories." Riceanalyzes technologies of social control, public scrutiny, and the body as currency, and in doing so, carves space for understanding how the participants narrate the self to create resistance strategies. One ofthe most important contri- butions to the book is Jill Vickers' chapter, "Thinking about Violence." Vickers considers the numerousways in which violence is understood in current feminist theorizing, includ- ing the violences that colonialism, globalization, and some nationalisms and state practices entail. This chap- ter adheres to the one-world frame- work by attending to the differences in how violence is understood and addressed by differently located women. Interestingly, Vickers offers a briefcomparison ofthe contents of two issues of Canadian Woman Stud- ieslles cahiers de La femrne, one from 1983 and the other from 1991, to reveal how understandings of vio- lence in academic writings have de- veloped into the more nuanced con- ception ofa "continuum ofviolence." Some of the chapters of Gender, Race and Nation serve as literature surveys of the field and would ben- efit from more inclusion ofwomen's voices and experiences, or a "view from below" as Mies suggests with her postulates for activist research. In doing so, the reader could more fittingly see the application and ben- efits of this one-world framework. For example, the chapter "Women of Colour in Canada," although highly informative, uses secondary sources to present a cursory history of Canada's immigration and multiculturalism policies, and some women's experiences regarding them. As such, the opportunity to hear women's voices is missed. As well, such terms as "people of colour," "non-white," and "Canadian," as in "Canadians perceive their country as one ofwhite settlers," would benefit from further qualification, perhaps through a discussion ofthe processes of racialization, as their use risks reifying whiteness as norm and that which constitutes a "real Canadian." However, this chapter does offer a good description of how the Wom- en's Press and NAC have changed in structure due to the efforts of "woman-of-colour activism." The contributors to this collection succeed in offering several theoreti- cal perspectives on their particular topic of inquiry. Key concepts are explained in an accessible manner, while the lengthy bibliography pro- vides for an excellent resource. Given this, Gender, Race and Nation is a useful introduction to thinking through and theorizing differences, at both the local and global level. ON THE EDGE O F  EMPIRE: GENDER, RACE, AND THE M A K I N G  O F  BRITISH COLUMBIA,  1849-1871 Adele Perry Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001 REVIEWED BY KRISTIN BURNEIT On the Edge ofEmpire: Gender, Race, and the Making ofBritish Columbia, 1 849-1 871 by Adele Perry examines British Columbia after it became a British colony in 1849 and before it joined confederation in 1871. As Perryshows, when British Columbia became a formal colony, it was anything but orderly, respectable, 182 CANADIAN WOMAN STUDIESILES CAHIERS D E  LA FEMME and white.  British Columbia  "hovered dangerously at the precipice ofVictorian social norms and ideals." Demographically, First Nations people outnumbered white people and within white communities men far outnumbered women. As well, these white communities did not conform to  nineteenth-century Victorian ideals of "sober, hard- working men, virtuous women, and respectable families." Instead white men, drawn from around the globe to the gold rush in British Columbia, produced a homosocial culture where they drank, worked, and lived with other men or pursued mixed race relationships. All of this challenged prevailing notions ofrace and gender. In response, according to Perry, disparate groups within British Co- lumbia sought to create the ideal settlercolony; one thatwas "anchored in respectable gender and racial be- haviours and identities." Reformers attempted to channel colonial mas- culinity towards acceptable sites of heteros~ciabilit~, even going so far as to import white women and regulate mixed-race relationships through marriage or by discouraging them altogether. White women, as in other colonial contexts, were regarded as the panacea that would solve the problems presented by the rough plural culture that existed in British Columbia. Ultimately, the efforts of reformers during this period failed and British Columbia remained 'on the edge of empire'. Placing her work within the broader international scholarship that deals with colonialism, Perry criti- cizes Canadian history because it has failed to analyze settlement as part of an internal colonial project. Perry effectively argues that colonialism involved a myriad of processes, not just the physical displacement of In- digenous peoples and the settlement of Euro-Canadians. As Perry aptly writes "notions and practices ofman- hood and womanhood were central to the twinned business of mar- ginalizing Aboriginal people and designing and building a white soci- ety." Representations of white and Aboriginal women were used to de- lineate and solidify boundaries be- tween Aboriginal and non-Aborigi- nal society, thus, making categories of femininity and masculinity cen- tral to reformers' efforts to create a white settler colony. Moreover, Perry's work joins the growing body ofliterature that inter- rogates the category ofwhite as 'nor- mal', recognizing that whiteness is a race like any other. The identity of Euro-Canadian settlers in British Columbia was produced through notions of whiteness. And the ac- tions of reformers and legislators in British Columbia were intended to confirm and bolster the status and power that whiteness conferred. AI- though British Columbia had failed during this period to become the ideal white settler colony, this suc- cess came two decades later when non-Aboriginal settlers began ro our- numberAborigina1 people and num- bers of white women and men ap- proached parity. It is only in the last two chapters that Perry investigates the experi- ences of women who were forced to survive in an environment which presented few job opportunities and guaranteed financial dependence. Readers, particularly those interested in learning more about women's his- tory, may find it unsettling that women seemed to play such a mar- ginal role. Partly this is because Perry makes little claim to knowing the experience of Aboriginal women through racist white male sources, but also because understanding the context inwhich white women came to the colony and the role they played in establishing a 'white man's prov- ince' is essential to investigating claims white women made to public space at the turn of the century, particularly as such claimswere made on highly racialized terrain. FLINT AND FEATHER: THE LIFE AND TlMES OF E. PAULINE JOHNSON, TEKAHIONWAKE Charlotte Gray Toronto: Harper Flamingo, 2002 REVIEWED BY CLARA THOMAS Pauline Johnson's life was both tragedy and triumph: triumph in her indomitable pursuit of a career that was glowingly successful for many years, tragedy in the stumbling blocks that her dual inheritance inevitably put before her. O n  the one hand she was a proud Mohawk woman, the daughter ofGeorge Johnson, a leader among the chiefs of the Six Nations tract along the Grand River; on the other, Emily Howells Johnson, her mother, had so instilled the lessons that a Victorian lady must learn that Pauline was forever caught in the uneasy, often warring, tensions between two cultures. In this meticulously researched biography, Charlotte Gray has shown us agifted, complex womanwho might possibly have lived comfortably today but could never have been completely at home in her own time. In 1861 when Pauline was born, Chiefswood, the home that her fa- ther had built only six years earlier, was a social centre for the Six Na- tions Reserve and a symbol of the easy relationship chat then existed between the reserve families and the wider Canadian communi ty .  Pauline, her sister and two brothers, were, shewrote, "reared on thestrict- est lines of both Indian and English principles. They were taught the leg- ends, the traditions, the culture and the etiquette of both races to which they belonged." Strangely, inview of his pride in his heritage, George Johnson did not teach his children his native language. Inevitably theirs was a partial education in both cul- tures. The easy harmony of their VOLUME 23, NUMBER 1 

On the Edge of Empire: Gender, Race, and the Making of British Columbia

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On the Edge of Empire: Gender, Race, and the Making of British Columbia

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Canadian Woman Studies / les cahiers de la femme (E-Journal, York University)