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Movements, leaders, victories and the continuing fight for equality.
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Explore the people, places, events, achievements, struggles and stories that shaped our journey.
Movements, leaders, victories and the continuing fight for equality.
Innovation, patents, science, technology and world-changing contributions.
Pioneers, champions, Negro Leagues, records, activism and excellence.
Meet the people whose lives, choices and achievements shaped the journey.
Black towns, communities, institutions and places where history happened.
Moments that changed communities, movements, institutions and the nation.
In August 1908, a white mob attacked Springfield, Illinois’s Black community, destroying homes and businesses and lynching two Black men. National outrage over the violence helped spur the movement that created the NAACP the following year.
MORE →Reflects the personal views, recollections, and perspective of the author, Mike Davis.
This is a personal recollection on the Move fire on May 13, 1985
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Feminist constructivism is an international relations theory which builds upon the theory of constructivism. Feminist constructivism focuses upon the study of how ideas about gender influence global politics.[1] It is the communication between two postcolonial theories; feminism and constructivism, and how they both share similar key ideas in creating gender equality globally.[2]
Constructivism is a theory of knowledge which argues that humans generate knowledge and meaning through world interactions and ideas. Constructivists argue that international life is social, resulting from the ways people interact with each other (i.e. talk, follow norms, create rules, etc.).[3] While there are similarities, feminist constructivists view relationships of power differently than traditional constructivists. Power and gender are considered "integral elements in processes of construction," where as traditionalists believe power to be external.[3] Feminist constructivists argue that the lack of problematization research as a social process of construction is logically inconsistent "with an ontology of becoming."[3] They also believe that differences between men and women, other than anatomical differences, were constructed due to socialization and cultural training.[4] However, there are criticisms that take place between interactions of feminism with constructivism.[2] Many feminists do not agree with constructivism as an alternative middle ground due to most constructivists ignoring feminist literature and gender analysis.[2] It's also pointed out that constructivism lacks the tools to explain how gender and power in politics influence each other, due to the social construction of power being under theorized.[2]
Feminist constructivism critiques traditional constructivist approaches for acknowledging the social construction of political realities while often neglecting to integrate gender as a central analytical category.[5] Additionally, constructivist scholarship is frequently criticized for its lack of an explicit political agenda, in contrast to feminist literature, which actively seeks to address and challenge gender-based inequalities.[5]
However, feminist constructivists argue that ideas about gender profoundly shape political outcomes by influencing norms surrounding conflict, humanitarian practices, and institutional policies.[5] By integrating these insights, feminist constructivism broadens both constructivist and feminist frameworks, emphasizing the importance of analyzing how gendered power hierarchies are constructed, sustained, and contested within political systems.[5] This approach provides a critical lens to uncover the deep interconnections between gendered norms, power dynamics, and international relations.
Major critiques in the feminist presence of global politics have not received as much attention in the media, due to more attention being given to the arguments of environmentalists and labor issues at anti-trade rallies, as opposed to those of feminist ideologies.[6] However, some places were found to be very ambivalent towards anti-globalization, an example being women in India who weren't concerned with the demands that linked trade liberalization with the enforcement of work standards.[6]
Many dilemmas feminists observe is that there is some difficulty in measuring out the impact feminists had on international relations.[7] Feminist theory tends to reveal politics in every aspect of the research process, whether it's absence of action, silence of major concerns, oppression of feminist beliefs, and the power epistemology has on others preconceptions.[7] In order to change this, many researchers utilize feminist research ethic, the commitment to inquire how one inquires.[7] It involves being attentive to the power of knowledge, boundaries, marginalization, and silences, relationships and the power differentials between them, and the researcher's own situatedness.[7] Epistemology plays a significant role, in that the researcher must destabilize themselves from our system of thought that goes into distinguishing fact from belief, which then allows the researcher to be objective in their studies.[7] Another key component in feminist research ethic is boundaries, as in being attentive to them and their power to marginalize.[7] It may include inclusion and exclusion of boundaries, as well as breaking them down.[7] Having a feminist research ethic also requires the researcher to consider are relationships and how social, political, and economical actions are interrelated with other actions and lives.[7]
When women or other members of minority groups obtain a position of substantial power in society, they most likely will encounter trouble garnering compliance for the use of their powers.[8] This is primarily caused by the existing belief that gender is an institutionalized system of social practices for constituting males and females as different in socially significant ways and organizing inequalities in terms of those differences.[9] Expectation states theory states that gender is deep-seated within social hierarchy because the rules for gender systems that contain stereotypes are considered status beliefs, cultural schemas about the leadership position that are based on gender, race, ethnicity, education, or occupation.[9]
Source: Wikipedia. Article content is retrieved live through the MediaWiki API.
Feminist constructivism is an international relations theory which builds upon the theory of constructivism. Feminist constructivism focuses upon the study of how ideas about gender influence global politics. It is the communication between two postcolonial theories; feminism and constructivism, and how they both share similar key ideas in creating gender equality globally.
In international relations (IR), constructivism is a social theory that asserts that significant aspects of international relations are shaped by ideational factors—i.e. the mental process of forming ideas. The most important ideational factors are those that are collectively held; these collectively held beliefs construct the interests and identities of actors. Constructivist scholarship in IR is rooted in approaches and theories from the field of sociology. In contrast to other prominent IR approaches and theories (such as realism and rational choice), constructivists see identities and interests of actors as socially constructed and changeable; identities are not static and cannot be exogenously assumed—i.e. interpreted by reference to outside influences alone. Similar to rational choice, constructivism does not make broad and specific predictions about international relations; it is an approach to studying international politics, not a substantive theory of international politics. Constructivist analysis can only provide substantive explanations or predictions once the relevant actors and their interests have been identified, as well as the content of social structures. The main theories competing with constructivism are variants of realism, liberalism and rational choice that emphasize materialism (the notion that the physical world determines political behavior on its own), and individualism (the notion that individual units can be studied apart from the broader systems that they are embedded in). Whereas other prominent approaches conceptualize power in material terms (e.g. military and economic capabilities), constructivist analyses also see power as the ability to structure and constitute the nature of social relations among actors.
International relations theory is the study of international relations (IR) from a theoretical perspective. It seeks to explain behaviors and outcomes in international politics. The three most prominent schools of thought are realism, liberalism, and constructivism. Whereas realism and liberalism make broad and specific predictions about international relations, constructivism and rational choice are methodological approaches that focus on certain types of social explanation for phenomena. International relations, as a discipline, is believed to have emerged after World War I with the establishment of a Chair of International Relations, the Woodrow Wilson Chair held by Alfred Eckhard Zimmern at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. The modern study of international relations, as a theory, has sometimes been traced to realist works such as E. H. Carr's The Twenty Years' Crisis (1939) and Hans Morgenthau's Politics Among Nations (1948). The most influential IR theory work of the post-World War II era was Kenneth Waltz's Theory of International Politics (1979), which pioneered neorealism. Neoliberalism (or liberal institutionalism) became a prominent competitive framework to neorealism, with prominent proponents such as Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye. During the late 1980s and 1990s, constructivism emerged as a prominent third IR theoretical framework, in addition to existing realist and liberal approaches. IR theorists such as Alexander Wendt, John Ruggie, Martha Finnemore, and Michael N. Barnett helped pioneer constructivism. Rational choice approaches to world politics became increasingly influential in the 1990s, in particular with works by James Fearon, such as the bargaining model of war; and Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, developer of expected utility and selectorate theory models of conflict and war initiation. There are also "post-positivist/reflectivist" IR theories (which stand in contrast to the aforementioned "positivist/rationalist" theories).
The English School of international relations theory (sometimes also referred to as liberal realism, the international society school or the British institutionalists) maintains that there is a 'society of states' at the international level, despite the condition of anarchy (that is, the lack of a global ruler or world state). The English school stands for the conviction that ideas, rather than simply material capabilities, shape the conduct of international politics, and therefore deserve analysis and critique. In this sense it is similar to constructivism, though the English School has its roots more in world history, international law and political theory, and is more open to normative approaches than is generally the case with constructivism.
Before the 1921 destruction of Tulsa’s Greenwood District, Black residents had created a remarkable center of business and community life. The district included stores, professional offices, entertainment venues and homes owned by Black citizens. Understanding Greenwood means learning what was built—not only what was burned.
MORE →Brown v. Board of Education in 1954.
