The first article I found discussed the idea of gender mainstreaming and its flaws when applied to international human rights law.[1] The article was by Hilary Charlesworth and titled “Not Waving but Drowning: Gender Mainstreaming and Human Rights in the United Nations”. The second article I found was titled “International Human Rights Law, Feminist Jurisprudence, and Nietzsche’s “Eternal Return”: Turning the Wheel”. This article focuses on how feminists can use human rights law to their advantage both domestically and internationally.[2]
Both sources are interesting and speak to each other. I would say that both pieces are legal research and follow interpretivist methodologies. I believe both articles utilize discourse analysis to explain differing outcomes of applying international law. They use the literature review to ground their analysis in relation to preexisting theories. Then, both articles go into detail on which theories are most relevant and can explain the knowledge they have generated through the research they have done.
I chose these two articles because they do not necessarily disagree with each other, rather they offer insights into the same conversations. Both articles contribute to an understanding of how law can be influenced by feminist jurisprudence. The articles also identify areas of improvement in feminist jurisprudence.
Both articles are incredibly important. For one they offer an overview of some important terminology and legal constructs. Since I have not had any classes on legal theory and international law, this was important background information that I needed to understand early on in my research process. One major problem with both articles is that they are articles that have been peer reviewed for acceptance into legal journals rather than social science journals. So, they did not look as familiar as the articles I had read for class. However, I found the literature reviews for both to be more straightforward and more helpful.
[1] Hilary Charlesworth, “Not Waving but Drowning: Gender Mainstreaming and Human Rights in the United Nations,” Harvard Human Rights Journal 18 (2005): 1-3
[2] Barbara Stark, “International Human Rights Law, Feminist Jurisprudence, and Nietzsche’s Eternal Return: Turning the Wheel,” Harvard Women’s Law Journal 19 (1996): 169-200
Hi Thamara; I’m so excited to read your research! In reading your post I was immediately intrigued by the discussion of feminism on the international level. A concept I continually struggle with is cultural relativism: the idea that we should judge a culture by its own values and beliefs. I won’t get into my internal struggle with the concept, but I wonder how it might apply to your research. Some, who I vehemently disagree with, might say feminism is different in different countries, and the freedoms afforded to women in the west should not be the expected freedoms of women around the globe. I’m wondering what you think about this concept. Based on your answer, do you think there should be defined international feminism or do you think a definition applied to the rest of the world would play out as another aspect of Western cultural imperialism. I’m not sure what I believe so please help!
Thamara, your comparison was very well done! I see that the sources you have found are Interpretivist which is what I feel would be expected from a seemingly less statistical/numbers driven topic such as your own. Have you found any kind of Neo-positivist data on the topic? With my topic, looking at the correlation between religiosity and trust in science which seems like it would mostly be looked at from an interpretivist point of view, the research I have found on the issue is actually Neo-positivist. In my research I have found interesting indexes that are very large surveys on seemingly interpretivist topics, but it would be interesting if that could be applied to your topic.
Carly — be careful not to confuse a topic area with the applicability of any particular research methodology. As we’ve discussed in class, there is *no* natural affinity between any given topic and any given methodology. Put another way around, any topic can be examined from any methodological perspective. The methodological angle shapes the *kind* of questions one might ask and the *kind* of knowledge that one might seek to create, but it is not so simple as to say one topic or the other is more interpretivist or neopositivist!
Thamara — it looks like you are off to a good start in finding literature that is relevant for your broad topic area. Legal journals can be a very useful resource, and you are also correct in noting that the articles found in such places can be quite useful in providing you with additional references to pursue. I will say, though, that legal scholarship is almost always neopositivist (what is the idea of “law” but the idea of pinning down absolute and universal concepts that can be applied in a variety of concepts?). The articles you read sound like ones that do more in terms of concept development (trying to fix the “real” meaning of certain ideas) than hypothesis testing, but this is still a neopositivist endeavor. What you have here is a good start to a discussion of the important theoretical and conceptual ideas that can help you frame your project, so keep reading and researching (and follow that trail of breadcrumbs in the bibliographies of these articles!).