Histories of Technology Culture Manifestos

Taking impetus from a collaborative conversation about writing a feminist repair manifesto, this article is focused on examining radical feminist manifestos, new technology manifestos, and their intersecting themes and influence upon cyberfeminist manifestos. Its theoretical underpinnings include histories of repair and maintenance and the manifesto as technological form. As a practice, repair and theorisations of repair regarding technology take into account invisible labour and create a relationship of care not only within communities, but in relation to everyday technologies. Since this work to write a feminist fixers’ manifesto was inspired by the iFixit Repair Manifesto, the NYC Fixers Collective manifesto, as well as manifestos from radical feminist technology movements, it seemed appropriate to consider and critically engage the function of manifestos in these various maker and digital technology communities, as well as the history of radical feminist manifestos in response to cultural oppression. By looking more deeply at specific historical instances and their function, I aim to uncover the importance of such artefacts to give voice to alternative narratives and practices, to subvert systemic oppressions while at other times reproducing them in their form. I argue that there is power in iterating and proliferating manifestos with a critical stance and work to establish the knowledge-producing and world-making potentials of manifesto writing.

Cultural Oppression and Child Sex Trafficking

Child sex trafficking is a global crisis with devastating consequences physically, psychologically, and socially. Psychologically, child sex trafficking survivors often face post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, suicidal ideation, and substance dependence, among other consequences. Children and adolescents from marginalized communities face increased risk of sex trafficking due to intergenerational poverty and trauma, discrimination, objectification, low access to helping professionals, and disparities in responsiveness from judicial and health professionals. Cultural oppression is a historical and contemporary reality that shapes the vulnerability to sex trafficking and the lack of adequate, culturally responsive care services for rescue and restorative processes. This chapter, by psychologists with expertise in the cultural context of trauma recovery, provides an overview of sex trafficking, the ways in which cultural oppression intersects with this trauma, and recommendations for combating this pervasive human rights violation.

Tribal Alienation and Conflict in India: A Perspective from Below

The Adivasi’s movement in India was seen through the abstract glasses of a Maoist movement or a peasant revolt, thus denying and failing to explain the specificity of Adivasi’s movement for democratic rights. However, the present article is an attempt to understand the socioeconomic and political structures, which forced the tribal in India to organize themselves and fight since the 1940s for the redressal of their grievances. Among the major questions which we shall attempt to answer are: how did the tribal react to alienation from the society and land, natural resources, indebtedness, and structural and cultural oppression? What was the role of the leadership in the organization of discontented tribal? The study basically aims at understanding the nexus between politics and violence in the specific context of the Adivasi movement in India. Is it a battle for social justice and equality?

Minoría lingüística: presión comunicativa y cultural hacia la persona sorda

Linguistic Minority: Communicative and Cultural Pressure towards the Deaf PersonResumenEl artículo aborda los conceptos de Minoría Lingüística, Opresión Comunicativa y Cultural, hacia la persona Sorda, como revisión teórica que permite abordar las relaciones comunicativas hegemónicas en la comunicación y las formas de considerar a un Otro diverso.La importancia para la comunidad (de Sordos) en la reivindicación como sujetos de derecho, que sus integrantes como punto de enunciación en una identidad Sorda.Abstract The article approaches the concepts of Linguistic Minority, Communicative and Cultural Oppression, towards the Deaf person, as a theoretical revision that allows to approach the hegemonic communicative relations in the communication and the ways to consider a different Other.The importance for the community (Deaf) in claiming as subjects of law, that its members as a point of enunciation in a Deaf identity.Key words: Linguistic Minority, Communicative Oppression, Deaf Culture, Deaf Subject, Sign Language.

The politics of recognition

When Charles Taylor wrote about the importance of seeing oneself reflected in the images that build a sense of identity, both internally and in the eyes of the onlooker (1997, pp. 25-26), he was writing about something that anybody could see the necessity of. I do not pretend to be able to understand the mosaic of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander experiences, but the patterns of erasure and stereotype that underpin systemic cultural oppression are echoed whenever marginalisation is something people try to maintain; for example, Taylor writes about feminist theorists with this idea of recognition and internalised oppression (1997, p. 25). The fact that anyone can then look at the prospect of constitutional recognition and feel ambivalent at the very least is genuinely upsetting to me.