Between Despair and Hope: Women and Violence in Contemporary Guyana

Trotz, D. Alissa

doi:10.1353/smx.2004.0014

Cited by 10 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 10 publications

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“…Interestingly, I did not relate this message directly to myself and did not read them as personal warning signs. I reflected that I was participating in a hetero-patriarchal society in which domestic violence and sexual(ized) harassment are generally not uncommon, though seldom openly addressed (Trotz, 2004). Creating bonds of fictive kinship with my extended host family, a welcomed circumstance that provided me with access to intimate knowledge, I no longer remained an outsider of this society.…”

Section: ‘Say No and No Means No!’mentioning

confidence: 99%

Sexual(ized) harassment and ethnographic fieldwork: A silenced aspect of social research

Kloß

2016

Ethnography

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Sexual(ized) harassment during ethnographic fieldwork is often described by female researchers as a ‘rather common’ experience, yet it continues to be marginalized in methodological discussions and anthropological training. Rather than silencing accounts of these experiences, it is necessary to include them in the analysis of acquired data and to reflect on them in ethnographic writing. This article raises awareness and stimulates discussion about this neglected aspect of social research. It considers ethnography as a gendered practice in which gender norms, the (a)sexuality of the fieldworker, and power relations directly influence research and the researcher’s safety. It discusses the consequences of sexual(ized) harassment for the ethnographer, makes suggestions regarding how to deal with it in situ, and highlights the complex relationship between personal safety and researchers’ ethical obligations towards their informants.

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Section: ‘Say No and No Means No!’mentioning

confidence: 99%

Sexual(ized) harassment and ethnographic fieldwork: A silenced aspect of social research

Kloß

2016

Ethnography

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“…A focus on gender roles also revealed that adolescent boys understand the use of violence to be different based on race. This is not to imply that race does not factor into defining gender roles for adolescent girls, because Indian and African women are discursively constituted by racial stereotypes in a Caribbean context ( Beckles, 2003 ; Kempadoo, 2003 ; Trotz, 2003 , 2004 ). Rather, for participants in this study, the discussion on femininity and gender roles interestingly converged around sexual respectability across race.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Our results also indicate that without questioning how the understanding of race informs ideas of masculinity, the acceptability of violence may continue because it is naturalized as a characteristic based on race. Furthermore, further research is needed to understand how adolescent girls’ experiences of violence are mediated in a society that remains polarized by racialization ( Trotz, 2004 ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“… Stueve and O’Donnell (2008) and Savasuk-Lukston (2019) address racial discrimination and how it impacts dating violence in American society. The context of race has been considered in predominantly American studies ( Savasuk-Luxton et al, 2018 ; Storer et al, 2020 ; Stueve & O’Donnell, 2008 ) and in adult Guyanese populations with regard to gender and violence ( Trotz, 2003 , 2004 ), but there is minimal examination of race, gender roles, and violence among Guyanese adolescent populations.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Sex as Boys’ Fame, But Girls’ Shame: Adversarial Adolescent Gender Roles and Gender-based Violence in Guyana

Rodney

Gastaldo

Trotz

et al. 2021

J Interpers Violence

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Gender-based violence (GBV) is a significant issue for youth in Guyana, particularly among young women. Yet, discussions about sex, dating, and violence rarely occur at the community level. To understand the heightened risk for GBV with youth in Guyana, we utilized a critical qualitative design to explore adolescent dating violence with adolescents (14–16 years old), parents, and school officials in a public secondary school in Guyana. In total, 36 racially and religiously diverse participants from low to middle-income households participated in focus groups ( n = 30) and interviews ( n = 6). Discussions centered on dating in adolescence; community awareness of dating violence; gender, racialization, and class in relation to dating violence; and dating violence prevention in schools and family settings. Our results revealed that heteronormative, adversarial gender roles in Guyana are enacted in adolescent relationships in ways that contribute to violence. Two important factors emerged in relation to femininity: female respectability related to sexuality; and the relationship between clothing, sexuality, and social class. Masculinity for adolescent boys was centered on reproducing normative assumptions about femininity and explaining the use of violence through pathologizing race. Participants were also asked to identify gender roles that adolescent boys and girls should embody in relationships, which revealed possibilities for overcoming adversarial roles in relationships. We propose that adolescent GBV prevention initiatives consider long-standing and deeply embedded ideas within gender norms that are connected to sexuality, class, and race. Without accounting for these systemic factors, GBV prevention initiatives and programs may inadvertently perpetuate traditional definitions of masculinity and femininity that contribute to violence.

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“…Similarly, while a number of scholars have documented the crisis of social reproduction that has accompanied the economic restructuring of the Jamaican economy and the wider Caribbean (Anderson & Witter, 1994; Bolles, 1996; Mullings, 1999; Trotz, 2004), few have examined how the qualitative shifts in the organization of economic production and social reproduction have affected the intensity of the ongoing crisis. I argue that Jamaica's engagement with a strategy of neoliberal development over the past 25 years has significantly eroded the social relations and institutions that historically maintained the stability and reproducibility of the social order of this postcolony (Mbembe, 2001).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Neoliberalization, social reproduction and the limits to labour in Jamaica

Mullings

2009

Singap J Trop Geogr

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Since the 1980s the Jamaican state has systematically withdrawn from investments geared towards enhancing the social and psychological welfare of its citizens, shifting the responsibility and cost for the education, health care and socialization of dependent members of the society to households and communities. This shift in responsibility for social reproduction disproportionately and negatively affected women, who have traditionally assumed primary responsibility for this necessary component of capitalist systems. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Jamaicans, primarily women, successfully rendered a spatial fix to the crisis by stretching the space and scale of their everyday means of existence beyond the nation's territorial boundaries. However, as this paper demonstrates, Jamaica is approaching the limits of its population's ability to reproduce the social structures and relations needed for social stability. This situation, that I describe as the 'limit to labour' is increasingly manifested in declining levels of social cohesion and heightened levels of violence in at all levels of Jamaican society. Although crisis has been a defining feature of social reproduction in Jamaica throughout its history, the emerging social crisis should be distinguished in its severity because it has begun to erode the social institutions and norms upon which Jamaica's social order has historically rested. It is the economic costs of this emerging limit to labour that ultimately pose the greatest threat to the sustainability of current neoliberalization processes.

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Between Despair and Hope: Women and Violence in Contemporary Guyana

Cited by 10 publications

References 10 publications

Sexual(ized) harassment and ethnographic fieldwork: A silenced aspect of social research

Sexual(ized) harassment and ethnographic fieldwork: A silenced aspect of social research

Sex as Boys’ Fame, But Girls’ Shame: Adversarial Adolescent Gender Roles and Gender-based Violence in Guyana

Neoliberalization, social reproduction and the limits to labour in Jamaica

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