"Beyond Gender: Towards A Feminist Analysis of Humanitarianism and Development in Sri Lanka"

Abstract

We are not interested in highlighting the shortcomings of specific policies or staff in the fields of development and humanitarianism. Rather we contend that the root of the problem lies in the way in which gender has been conceived and disseminated within these fields. Accordingly we outline a more comprehensive and still portable analytic that provides a more sophisticated approach to understanding the production of gender identities and relations. The idea that gender identities and relations are generated differently across space and time and have no essential pre-established qualities is critical to changing them. This analytic then is at once a tool for understanding social economic and political relations and a tool for changing them. We define for the purpose of this article as reflecting analyses and political interventions that address the unequal and often violent relationships among people based on real or perceived social economic political cultural and sexual differences. The analysis and elimination of patriarchal relations of power within each of these fields is a primary focus. We recognize that there is more than one kind of feminism and we do not wish to fix the category feminist in any singular manner nor to create a typology of feminisms. We contend that gender analysis has fallen prey to such rigidities and has thus limited its analytical strength. (excerpt)

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