'It shocks me, the place of women': intersectionality and mining companies' retrogradation of indigenous women in New Caledonia. Issue 10 (3rd October 2017)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Horowitz, Leah S.
• Is Part Of: Gender, place and culture. Volume 24:Issue 10(2017)
• Page Start: 1419
• Page End: 1440
• Publication Date: 2017-10-03
• Subjects: Hegemony -- indigeneity -- intersectionality -- oppression -- resistance -- structural violence; Human geography -- Periodicals; Feminism -- Periodicals; Géographie féministe -- Périodiques; 305.305
• DOI: 10.1080/0966369X.2017.1387103
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0966-369X

Abstract

Abstract: Indigenous women's social positionings are complex and dynamic, informed by culture and post-colonial politics; gender and ethnicity intersect with age, socio-economic status, and social hierarchies. This article uses an ethnographic study of Kanak women's engagements with mining in New Caledonia, to examine three questions. First, how do indigenous women's dynamic social positionings shape their possibilities for negotiation with and resistance to industry? Secondly, how do women's possibilities for engagement in turn shape the wider community's possibilities for negotiation with or resistance to industry? Finally, what is the companies' role in shaping women's possibilities for such engagement? I draw on the critical feminist concept of intersectionality, bringing this into conversation with concepts of symbolic and cultural violence and hegemony. Over time, women began to actively negotiate with and resist industrial projects, in line with growing gender equity in New Caledonia, but the mining companies referenced – and thus reinforced – women's dominated social position as an excuse to sideline their concerns, a type of cultural violence I term 'retrogradation.' Thus, this article recognizes indigenous women's increasing agency in engaging with external actors, such as industrial projects, yet also shows how outsiders can commit retrogradation to further marginalize young, rural, poor community women. I discuss how such marginalization limits options for the larger group. Finally, I point to a way out of oppression, through transformation of hegemonic ideologies.