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Reviewed by:
  • Feminist Futures: Reimagining Women, Culture and Development
  • Uma Narayan (bio)
Feminist Futures: Reimagining Women, Culture and Development edited by Kum-Kum Bhavnani, John Foran, and Priya Kurian. New York: Zed Books, 2003, 320 pp., $70 hardcover, $25 paper.

Feminist Futures is densely packed with an introduction, eleven essays organized into three sections, and fourteen pieces with each section clustered under the subheading of "Visions." The aims of the anthology are to emphasize women's contributions and a regard for culture as crucial to meaningful development, and to underscore the ways in which third-world actors contribute to the discourses and practices of development. It aims to rectify the focus on the first world in discourses on globalization, and to demonstrate the usefulness of work in the humanities to challenge an overly structural and economistic approach to development. [End Page 237] The contributions undertake these aims in a variety of ways, drawing needed attention to a rich range of theoretical concerns and practical issues that pertain to gender and development in the third world.

Some of the most moving and thought provoking pieces are among those clustered under the subheading of "Visions." "Maria's Stories" is based on John Foran's interviews with a Salvadoran activist, who gives a moving account of the hunger and poverty that led her to become an activist and to join the Farabundo Marti National Liberation (FMLN). Maria's passionate account of her struggle for justice is intertwined with astute political observations about the dangers of social movements turning into nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and about women's roles in socializing children into regarding women as inferior to men. Raka Ray's essay explicates the thoughts and concerns of Lakshmi, a domestic worker, who finds her demanding job a source of pride, but is deeply unhappy at her husband's failure to appreciate her and his desire to treat her as subordinate. We get a moving glimpse of a woman who works hard to earn a livelihood and protect her children, who has negotiated a relationship with a caring man who is not her husband, and who feels strongly about society's responsibilities to those who lack the capacity to work.

Dana Collin's "Gendered Sexualities and Lived Experience" introduces us to Jose, a Filipino gay man who grapples with his sexuality and sexualized labor as he works as a paid escort to foreign tourists. While Jose mentions abuse, difficult negotiations with his sexuality, and the decrease in his employment opportunities as he grows older, his story complicates the standard "victim narrative" in a number of ways. Jose actively relishes the urban environment of the sex strip, highlights the desirable nature of his sexual exchanges, and acknowledges the ways in which his intelligence and ability to move between different classes and cultural circles enable him to provide stimulating companionship to his clients.

Light Carruyo's essay provides a powerful cautionary tale about the ways in which development agendas are constructed on the assumption that a poor community should be thrilled to partake in any project that comes their way. She describes the failure of a community in the Domincan Republic to throw their efforts behind a greenhouse project for vegetables, undertaken without any initial drawing of the community into the project, and without any engagement with issues such as competing burdens on the women's time due to rain and unsupportive husbands, and a lack of interest in vegetables.

Another interesting cluster of essays are those that draw out the implications of media such as fiction and cinema for issues of development. David McKie examines contemporary science fiction films and novels in order to examine the benefits and limitations of the imagined futures they depict. McKie uses these texts to cast light on issues of hunger, population control, and social conflict between the haves and the have-nots, and [End Page 238] suggests that these dystopic visions can help us imagine how to take actions that will avoid them. Minoo Moallem uses post-revolutionary Iranian cinema that raise issues of gender and poverty in ways that challenge the notion of a homogenous national community, and depict disempowered subjects as resourceful agents. Ming-yan Lai examines...

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