Re: new paradigm in pop policy (fwd)

   Just found this long review of, "Promoting Polyarchy, " at the cy.Rev:A
Journal of Cybernetic Revolution, Sustainable Socialism and Radical
Democracy website. Haven't gotten around to it but a book by some of these
folks was published by Verso.
http://www.cyrev.net/Issues/Issue6/TableOfContents6.htm

                                                      Michael Pugliese
----- Original Message -----
From: <md7148@cnsvax.albany.edu>
To: <wsn@csf.colorado.edu>
Sent: Sunday, June 04, 2000 4:15 PM
Subject: new paradigm in pop policy (fwd)


>
> Mary, I have not read William Robinson's _Promoting Polyarchy_ yet. Can
> you expand on this? One thing is clear that the US is not really concerned
> with promoting the reproductive health or freedom of women over there. My
> mother spent her high school education years taking _home economics_
> courses in American-Turkish school according to the cirriculum designed by
> westerners in the 50s. According to these cirriculums, women's place
> was kitchen and men's place was work. Women were taught how to become
> ideal/modern mothers as to make Turkey more acceptable to the west
> and American family style. Women were domesticated as they became
> westernized, but they were not liberated from patriarchal practices.
> Patriachy was Americanized. That was all. The same story is still
> continuing even in the West in different forms. Think about the gender
> segregation in men's and women's occupational attainments and wages in the
> US.
>
> Regarding population issues, non-state feminist organizations in the
> developing world, some of which are socialist, radical feminists (like the
> leftish one I was a member before coming to US) are sceptical of *both*
> the neo-liberal state policy of discouraging reproduction and the
> conservative (largely islamist in the Middle East) policy of restricting
> reproductive freedoms. Both are sexist as long as it is men who design
> policies, though feminists, in principle, beleive that women must have
> free access to birth control. So the issue is not choosing between the
> liberal state and conservatism, but being critical of both, or
> strategically supporting bourgeois democratic freedoms _when_ necessary
> (in the case of equal education, divorce rights, domestic violence etc..
> that have always been in the agenda of social democrats in Turkey).
>
> Implementation of population policies depend on which period we are
> talking about and who is charge of the capitalist state. For example in
> the 1930s, in Turkey, just as everywhere around world at the height of
> extereme nationalism, the state promoted a policy of over-reproduction as
> to make women reproduce healthy Turkish sons.  Family planning was part of
> the agenda of nation state building. State was the prime organizer of
> sexual relations and nuclear family. Women were targeted to "modernize"
> and purify the nation. Now, we have shifted towards neo-liberal economic
> policies, minimal state, and the ruling classes are once again targeting
> women to reproduce less in accordance with the requirements set by the US
> and world technocratic apparatuses. New policies are targeting certain
> segments of the population. They are both gender and class biased. The
> realities facing working class women and other lower classes are much
> worse because they are ones who are always blamed for _overpopulating the
> nation_ with their so called _traditional life styles_.
>
> Mine Doyran
> SUNY/Albany
>
>
> >The new paradigm for pop policy adopted by such organizations as the
> >World >Bank is focused on "gender equity, human rights, and reproductive
> health"  >following on the heals of the 1994 Cairo Intl Conf on Pop and
> >Development. >Does anyone have any interpretations of this new strategy?
> It fits >nicely >with the policy of "Promoting Polyarchy"  described by
> William Robinson.
>
> >Mary Shepherd
>
>
>