The transnational dimensions of women's rights are an important emerging area of analysis. Just Advocacy? provides timely and critical insights into this area of study. This edited book is unique in that it applies a cultural lens to the study of political questions relating to rights, transnationalism, and representation, questions which are conventionally conceived through legal, institutional, or social movement theories. The critical feminist stance of the authors draws out the complex and often contradictory nature of human rights—especially as they relate to the operation of gender and to women's lives—and conceives of both feminism and transnationalism in diverse ways.
A major focus of the book is on the way rights discourse, and the activists who shape this discourse, are constructed through culture. The cultural forms considered include literature (Leigh Gilmore, Chapter 4; Arabella Lyon, Chapter 7); the press (Introduction; Susan Koshy, Chapter 3; Lyon, Chapter 7); video (Wendy Hesford, Chapter 6) and education (Jill Blackmore, Chapter 10). Together these chapters emphasize the role of culture as a repository for human rights; they suggest that through an analysis of cultural forms, it is possible to find a deep and nuanced account of the meaning of human rights in daily life that is not always possible in a more conventional treatment of human rights. Gilmore's chapter on the use of autobiography to explore the trauma of rights violations demonstrates this point very well. As her discussion illustrates, personal testimonials, such as autobiography, memoirs, and essays, provide an extrajudicial means for truth telling, providing witness to violations, and seeking justice for injuries. Similarly, Sidonie Smith's chapter on the experiences of Korean women narrating their stories of sexual servitude during World War II illustrates how powerful culture can be as a medium for exploring human rights violations.
An advantage of the cultural approach to women's human rights is that it allows for a critical assessment of the notion of rights, including their universality. Many chapters in the book demonstrate clearly the double-edged nature of human rights as they apply to transnational gender issues. While on the one hand, the discourse of human rights provide a common language for feminists to speak to one another across cultures, on the other, “rights speak” can establish hierarchies among feminists, as well as frame certain women as “victims” and others as “saviors.” This tension is particularly well highlighted in Smith's account of Korean women narrating their stories in the United States and in Amy Farrell and Patrice McDermott's description of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) and U.S.-based feminists. In telling their stories of surviving brutal regimes, these women have been able to find a ready audience in their feminist counterparts in the United States. In doing so, however, they have also found themselves cast as victims and often stripped of their agency. Hesford's chapter on global sex work further reinforces the point of how easily human rights discourse, especially around gender issues, can slide into the language of victimization.
While most of the chapters are wary of the emancipatory and universal claims made by some human rights advocates, an underlying theme of the book is that it is nevertheless necessary and important for feminists to engage with and use human rights discourse in order to make it more relevant to women's lives. Madhavi Sunder draws out this point in her chapter about the work of the feminist rights network, Women Living Under Muslim Laws (WLUML), which operates through cultural communities to challenge religious fundamentalism. Activists working through WLUML have pushed to ensure that human rights are reconceived so that they address all so-called private matters, including religion and culture, in ways that enable women to participate in the framing of these matters. Similarly, Mary Margaret Fonow argues in her chapter that with more careful attention to the different position of women across economies and their varied experiences of globalization, human rights discourse can be used as a tool for developing transnational female worker solidarity.
Various aspects of this book will satisfy some readers but be a source of frustration for others. First, the editors deliberately leave some of the key terms—including transnationalism, feminism, and representation—undefined or only loosely so. With authors coming from multidisciplinary backgrounds, this means that these terms are understood and applied very differently throughout the book. While there are some advantages in not imposing strict interpretations of these terms, it does contribute to a sense of disconnection between some of the chapters. Another issue, again stemming from the multidisciplinary approaches used, relates to the application of different methodologies. Many of the chapters focus on textual interpretations rather than empirical investigations of sources. While this will sit comfortably with cultural studies scholars, it may be a source of frustration for those coming from a social science background who prefer to see arguments supported by concrete data. Those chapters employing social science methods, such as those by Fonow, Lyon on missing women and the U.S. press, and Meredith Raimondo on gender and sexuality at the United Nations, were for me some of the more persuasive in the book.
Having said this, two of these empirical chapters included some basic errors. Lyon's conflation of human rights covenants and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and her claim that covenants are not law (p. 184) need to be clarified. The UDHR is not a covenant but a declaration and was thus only ever intended to be an aspirational document. On the other hand, such treaties as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) are, in fact, part of international law and can be enforced to the extent allowed by international law. A small but significant editing error occurs in Raimondo's chapter, which mistakenly marks the Beijing Fourth World Conference on Women as occurring in 1996, not 1995.
A final point is that inadequate attention is given to the international human rights regime that has underpinned the development of the concept of human rights. Aside from the chapters by Raimondo and Fonow, the UN and its forums were not discussed in any detail. Given that the UN provides the arena for much feminist transnational action, it would have been useful to include a chapter that directly addressed this issue.
Despite minor concerns, I enjoyed the book and think it provides an interesting and innovative approach to conceiving the interaction among rights, gender, and transnationalism. It gives scholars and students of gender and politics a cultural perspective through which to better understand women's experiences of human rights in a globalized world.
