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Budapest W4: Nationalism, Gender, Sexuality - Class Notes

Heng and Devan - State fatherhood in Singapore

Paternalistic state policies that encourage college-educated women to have children through framing it as a patriotic act while targeting lower-educated, ethnic minority women who are described in national rhetoric as "soft" and emotional indulgent, by bribing them not to have children. 

Focus on Confucianism in education - Mandarin being taught in schools, a nod back to higher birthrates of Chinese women, and concoction of a national ideology. But this ideology is created by English-educated ethnic-Chinese elite - who want dialect free Mandarin to connect Singapore to mainland China. Move away from Western ideology, in order to create a NATIONAL PURPOSE: make more Chinese babies that speak Mandarin and have fewer Malay and Indian babies that 'dilute' the purity of the state.

Yuval-Davis - Woman and biological reproduction of the nation

Three discourses of nationalist reproductive policy:
- People as power - more babies, more powerful nation (immigration or ban abortion or financial incentives for motherhood)
- Eugenist - force some people to breed, sterilise others
- Malthusian - third world population is exploding and threatening global food resources, population control included in 'development aid' from rich countries and religions

Reproductive policy needs to include multiplicity of identity categories of women - to homogenise is to overlook the nuances of culture and ethnicity which will lead to harmful and potentially eugenist policy. 

How does this add to nationalism as a concept?

- H&D - creation of nationalist history as a driving force to enforce a new nationalism that uses women as reproductive tools. Temporality is reconfigured to fit nationalist agenda.
- YD - nationalist reproductive policy ignores the delicacies of social relations of power, women as both individuals and part of collectives

YD - sociologist
H&D - scholars for National University of Singapore - writing this article from a postcolonial perspective
Relationship between national policies and reproductive policies

Race and Ethnicity -  What's the difference?

 Ethnicity - the cultural differences within/between races
Race - the visual, biological differences
Both are used to 'other' and are constructs, but are also reality

 Historical otherness and construction of otherness - some are considered part of the nation whilst some are marginalised based on race e.g Basque vs Roma in Spanish ideas of citizen

Who defines what nationalism is? French nationalism is based on ideals of whiteness, and flatten ethnic, religious differences
Once you don't fit stereotypes, you may lose your credibility to the ethnicity

YD - Continuous distinct ethnic group AKA race which defines the nation. 1 drop rule made famous through racial discourse - if you have one drop of Black or Jewish blood, some nations (USA) would consider you as Black or Jewish. Based off of this, you are expected to express certain characteristics as defined by the ethnicity stereotypes.
- All three nationalist reproductive discourses are intertwined and co-dependent
- Target women as having a role in the reproduction of the nation
- Policy that controls women's reproduction
-Welfare policy targets race and class of mothers making poverty and class a race problem
- State-focused national discourse of race and ethnicity and gender. Nation changing in quality and quantity. State-policies focus these changes - encourage or prevent reproduction.

Eugenist - If you can't conceive naturally, then you are undesirable to the nation and shouldn't be reproducing anyway. "Who is the 'proper' person to be reproducing the nation?"

Minorities and 'other' women are overly sexualised and feminised and exoticised - femininity essentialised as something biological.

H&D - The Singaporean policy seems to distrust mothers with education - state policy of education is to reproduce state in children.

Policy cannot relate to individuals instead of a group (not possible to address individual, nuanced needs) and yet when it addresses women as a homogeneous group, it ignores the needs of individuals

National anxiety drives crises which is expressed through nationalist reproductive policy

What would happen if reproduction and women's bodies were seperated? Policy is bad, but how do we think about our bodies?

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