The International Journal of Interdisciplinary Global Studies · prediction, hypothesis, induction, deduction. And it sees the world through an always cautiously critical eye, interrogating

The International Journal of

Interdisciplinary Global Studies

THESOCIALSCIENCES.COM

VOLUME 11 ISSUE 1

The International Journal of Interdisciplinary Global Studies

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The Interdisciplinary Social Sciences Journal Collection

VOLUME 11 ISSUE 1 MARCH 2016

THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF INTERDISCIPLINARY GLOBAL STUDIES www.thesocialsciences.com First published in 2016 in Champaign, Illinois, USA by Common Ground Publishing LLC www.commongroundpublishing.com ISSN: 2324-755X (Print) ISSN: 2324-7568 (Online) doi:10.18848/2324-755X/CGP (Journal) © 2016 (individual papers), the author(s) © 2016 (selection and editorial matter) Common Ground All rights reserved. Apart from fair dealing for the purposes of study, research, criticism, or review as permitted under the applicable copyright legislation, no part of this work may be reproduced by any process without written permission from the publisher. For permissions and other inquiries, please contact [email protected]. The International Journal of Interdisciplinary Global Studies is a peer-reviewed scholarly journal.

http://doi.org/10.18848/2324-755X/CGP

EDITOR

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Gerassimos Kouzelis, University of Athens, Athens, Greece

JOURNAL COLLECTION EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD

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Patrick Baert, Selwyn College, Cambridge University, Cambridge, UK Andreja Bubic, University of Split, Split, Croatia

Norma Burgess, Syracuse University, Syracuse, USA Hillel Goelman, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada

Peter Harvey, Flinders University, Adelaide, South Australia Vangelis Intzidis, University of the Aegean, Rhodes, Greece

Paul James, University of Western Sydney, Sydney, Australia Ivana Batarelo Kokic, University of Split, Split, Croatia

Gerassimos Kouzelis, University of Athens, Athens, Greece Alexandros-Andreas Kyrtsis, University of Athens, Athens, Greece

Massimo Leone, University of Turin, Turin, Italy José Luis Ortega Martín, Universidad de Granada, Granada, Spain

Francisco Fernandez Palomares, Universidad de Granada, Granada, Spain Constantine D. Skordoulis, University of Athens, Athens, Greece

Sanja Stanic, University of Split, Split, Croatia

ASSOCIATE EDITORS

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A. Burcu Bayram Jessica Lim

Keith Dewar Kelly Louise Anders Margaret Garnsey Nadine Oosthuizen

Rocio Blanco Gregory Sameera Tahira Ahmed

Sid Suntrayuth Tea Gutović

Tracey Yeadon-Lee Victor F. Climent Peredo

Wenmei Li Yulia Maleta

Scope and Concerns

THE DISCIPLINARY WORK OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES

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Each of the sciences of the social is marked by its distinctive disciplinary modes—the thinking practices of Anthropology, Archaeology, Behavioral Sciences, Cognitive Science, Communications, Cultural Studies, Demography, Economics, Education, Geography, Humanities, Law, Management, Media, Politics, Policy Studies, Psychology, Social Welfare, Sociology, to name a some of the principal sciences of the social. The disciplinary variation is so broad that practitioners in some of these areas may not even consider their discipline a ‘science’, whilst in other disciplines there is a general consensus about the scientific character of their endeavor.

What is a discipline? Disciplines represent fields of deep and detailed content knowledge, communities of professional practice, forms of discourse (of fine and precise semantic distinction and technicality), areas of work (types of organization or divisions within organizations such as academic departments or research organizations), domains of publication and public communication, sites of common learning, shared experiences of apprenticeship into disciplinary community, methods of reading and analyzing the world, ways of thinking or epistemic frames, even ways of acting and types of person. “Discipline” delineates the boundaries of intellectual community, the distinctive practices and methodologies of particular areas of rigorous and concentrated intellectual effort, and the varying frames of reference used to interpret the world.

And what is a science? Some of the studies of the social habitually and comfortably call themselves “sciences,” but others do not. The English word “science” derives from the Latin “sciens,” or knowing. Return to the expansiveness of this root, and studies of the human could lay equally legitimate claim to that word.

“Science” in this broadest of senses implies and intensity of focus and a concentration of intellectual energies greater than that of ordinary, everyday, commonsense or lay “knowing.” It is more work and harder work. It relies on the ritualistic rigors and accumulated wisdoms of disciplinary practices.

These are some of the out-of-the-ordinary knowledge processes that might justify use of the word “science,” not only in the social sciences but also in the natural, physical, mathematical and applied sciences:

Science has an experiential basis. This experience may be based direct personal intuition of the already-known, on interests integral to the lifeworld, on the richness of life fully lived. Or it might be experience gained when we move into new and potentially strange terrains, deploying the empirical processes of methodical observation or systematic experimentation.

Science is conceptual. It has a categorical frame of reference based on higher levels of semantic precision and regularity than everyday discourse. On this foundation, it connects concept to concept into schemas. This is how science builds theories which model the world.

Science is analytical. It develops frames of reasoning and explanation: logic, inference, prediction, hypothesis, induction, deduction. And it sees the world through an always cautiously critical eye, interrogating the interests, motives and ethics that may motivate knowledge claims and subjecting epistemic assumptions to an ever-vigilant process of metacognitive reflection.

Science is application-oriented. It can be used to do things in the world. In these endeavors, it may be pragmatic, designing and implementing practical solutions within larger frames of reference and achieving technical and instrumental outcomes. Or it may be transformative—redesigning paradigms, social being and even the conditions of the natural world. What, after all, is the purpose of knowing other than to have an effect on the world, directly or indirectly?

Science can be any or all of these experiential, conceptual, analytical and applied things. Some disciplines may prioritize one or other of these knowledge processes, and this may be the

source of their strength as well as potential weakness. In any event, these are the kinds of things we do in order to know in the out-of-the-ordinary ways worthy of the name “science.”

The Social Sciences conference, journals, book series and online media provide a space to discuss these varied disciplinary practices, and examine examples of these practices in action. In this respect, their concern is to define and exemplify disciplinarity. They foster conversations which range from the broad and speculative to the microcosmic and empirical.

THE INTERDISCIPLINARY WORK OF THE SOCIAL AND OTHER SCIENCES

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Interdisciplinary, transdisciplinary or multidisciplinary work crosses disciplinary boundaries. This may be for pragmatic reasons, in order to see and do things that can’t be seen or done adequately within the substantive and methodological confines of a discipline. Broader views may prove to be more powerful than narrower ones, and even the more finely grained within-discipline views may prove all-the-more powerful when contextualized broadly. The deeper perspectives of the discipline may need to be balanced with and measured against the broader perspectives of interdisciplinarity.

Interdisciplinary approaches may also be applied for reasons of principle, to disrupt the habitual narrowness or outlook of within-discipline knowledge work, to challenge the ingrained, discipline-bound ways of thinking that produce occlusion as well as insight. If the knowable universe is a unity, discipline is a loss as well as a gain, and interdisciplinarity may in part recover that loss.

Interdisciplinary approaches also thrive at the interface of disciplinary and lay understandings. Here, interdisciplinarity is needed for the practical application of disciplined understandings to the actually existing world. Robust applied knowledge demands an interdisciplinary holism. A broad epistemological engagement is required simply to be able to deal with the complex contingencies of a really-integrated universe.

The Social Sciences conference, journals, book series and online media are spaces in which to discuss these varied interdisciplinary practices, and to showcase these practices in action across and between the social, natural and applied sciences.

WAYS OF SEEING, WAYS OF THINKING, AND WAYS OF KNOWING

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What are the distinctive modes of the social, natural and applied sciences? What are their similarities and differences?

In English (but not some other languages), “science” suffers a peculiar semantic narrowing. It seems to apply more comfortably to the natural world, and only by analogy to some of the more systematic and empirically-based of the human sciences. It connotes a sometimes narrow kind of systematicity: the canons of empirical method; an often less-than reflective acceptance of received theoretical categories and paradigms; formal reasoning disengaged from human and natural consequences; technical control without adequate ethical reflection; an elision of means and ends; narrow functionalism, instrumentalism and techno-rationalism; a pragmatism to the neglect broader view of consequences; and conservative risk aversion. These are some of the occupational hazards of activities that name themselves sciences—social, natural or applied. In studying the social setting, however, it’s not good enough just to have a rigorous empirical methodology without a critical eye to alternative interests and paradigmatic frames of reference, and without a view to the human-transformational potentials of knowledge work.

Humanistic methodologies sometimes address the social in a deliberate counterpoint to science, distancing themselves from the perceived narrownesses of scientific method. This move, however, may at times leave science stranded, separated from its social origins and ends. The

natural and technological sciences are themselves more subject to contestation around axes of human interest than the narrow understanding of science seems to be able to comprehend. Whether it be bioethics, or climate change, or the debates around Darwinism and Intelligent Design, or the semantics of computer systems, questions of politics and ideology are bound closely to the ostensible evidence. Faux empiricism is less than adequate to the address the more important questions, even in the natural and technological sciences. Science can be found lacking when it is disengaged from the humanistic.

The humanistic, however, has its own occupational hazards: disengaged critique and supercilious inaction without design responsibility; political confrontation without systematic empirical foundation; ideological fractiousness without apparent need for compromise; the agnostic relativism of lived experience and identity-driven voice; voluntarism that leads to a naive lack of pragmatism and failure in application.

A reconstructive view of the social, natural and applied sciences would be holistic, attempting always to avoid the occlusions of narrow methodological approaches. It would also be ambitious, intellectually and practically.

In this context, the Social Sciences conference, group of journals, book Imprint, and online media pursue two aspirations, two openings. The first is an intellectual opening, founded on an agenda designed to strengthen the theories, the research methodologies, the epistemologies and the practices of teaching and learning about the social world and the relation of the social to the natural world.

The second opening is pragmatic and inventive. All intellectual work is an act of imagination. At its best, it is ambitious, risky and transformative. If the natural sciences can have human ambitions as big as those of the medical sciences—the fight against MS or cancer or Alzheimer’s, for instance—then the social sciences can have ambitions as large as to settle the relation of humans to the natural environment, the material conditions of human equality and the character of the future person.

The International Journal of Interdisciplinary Global Studies Volume 11, Issue 1, 2016, www.thesocialsciences.com, ISSN: 2324-755X © Common Ground, Authors, All Rights Reserved Permissions: [email protected]

Table of Contents

Exploring the Relationship between Brain Dominance and Academic Achievement among a Sample of University Social Studies Students in Jordan ........................................................................................................... 1

Salah Hailat, Mohammad Hailat, and Mohammad Jawarneh

Cultural Politics among Latin American Organizations Oriented toward Strategic Gender Interests: A Comparison of Chile, Mexico, and Uruguay, 1990–2012 ........................................................................................................ 7

Gloria Miryam Mora Guerrero

The International Journal of Interdisciplinary Global Studies Volume 11, Issue 1, 2016, www.thesocialsciences.com, ISSN: 2324-755X © Common Ground, Salah Hailat, Mohammad Hailat, Mohammad Jawarneh All Rights Reserved, Permissions: [email protected]

Exploring the Relationship between Brain Dominance and Academic

Achievement among a Sample of University Social Studies Students in Jordan

Salah Hailat, Hashemite University, Jordan Mohammad Hailat, Ministry of Education, Jordan

Mohammad Jawarneh, Hashemite University, Jordan

Abstract: This study aimed at exploring the relationship between brain dominance and academic achievement among a sample of university students at the Hashemite University in Jordan. The sample of the study consisted of 123 students whom were selected from the social studies courses offered by the Faculty of Educational Sciences. The questionnaire of the study was used to identify those students with left brain and right brain preferences. The results of the study revealed that the majority of students under study have left brain dominance and that their academic achievement was higher than their colleagues who have right brain dominance. The study ended by providing a number of practical and theoretical recommendations for the field of study.

Keywords: Brain Dominance, Left Brain, Right Brain, Academic Achievement, Jordan

Introduction and Theoretical Framework

he brain is considered the most important organ in the human body. On one hand, it is located in the top part of the body, and on the other hand, it controls and dominates the functions of the other organs of the body (Fernandez 2011). With recent developments in

computerized tomography and X-rays that are used to form accurate images of the human brain, important discoveries were found related to the brain’s mechanism from which nerve scientists and educationalists have benefited (Alekno 2012).

Recent research discovered that the brain’s structure consists of two sections known as the right hemisphere and the left hemisphere. Each half is linked to the other through a group of nerve fibers called corpus callosum (Yong and Evans 2010). It has been proven that the brain is not only one organ, but it is a complicated group of organs which perform different functions (Trefil 1997). These findings have led to the evolution of the theory of brain dominance, which entails that the brain consists of two parts: the right brain and the left brain, and each part appears as if it is separated from one another.

This separation has a significant influence on individual behavior when interacting with the surrounding environment. Moreover, brain dominance has a great impact on individual capacities when solving problems, processing information, and thinking creatively (Sperry et al. 1969). Further, Bradshaw (1996) mentioned that based on the brain’s theory, individuals tend to prefer one side of their brain over the other when performing intellectual processes or processing information.

Recent studies indicated that there are functions that could be performed by one of the two hemispheres better than the other. Thus, the concept of brain dominance appears to refer to the division of the job among the two brain circular halves. Dominance here means that the nerve centers in one of the halves are more active and more influential on an individual’s behavior than the nerve centers available in the other half. Usually the left hemisphere is the one dominating individuals’ activities (Alagha 2009; Genovese 2005). Kolb (1984) used the brain theory to discover that individuals can have four learning styles including, the converger, the diverger, the

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THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF INTERDISCIPLINARY GLOBAL STUDIES

assimilator, and the accommodator. Based on that, it is important to adapt teaching methods and styles to those students who prefer one side of the brain over the other (Genovese 2005; Ormrod 2008).

Brain Theory

What does it mean that one prefers one half of the brain over the other? When a person prefers the right hemisphere of the brain, it shows him or her as intuitive, a person who always thinks of images and imaginations and predicts using guesses, feelings, and emotions rather than using facts. That may control a person’s decisions all the time. Whereas if one prefers the left side of the brain, it means that he or she is logical, and predictions are done in an organized way not through feelings and emotions, reaching decisions through facts (Connell 1999).

The job of the brain’s left half is linear and sequential, which means that it moves from one point to the other, step by step, and it is more competent and more able to process verbal information. It is also analytical, working on dividing the parts forming the whole, and directs thinking towards details. The brain’s right side is entire (does not move linearly), and it is more competent and more able when dealing with images, working on re-structuring parts to form one integrated whole (Connell 1999; Szirony 2008).

Generally, those who prefer the left brain side are characterized by their excellence in recognition, recalling names, realizing references, and in logical thinking, perceptible thinking, mathematical reasoning, problem-solving, criticizing, analyzing, seriousness, and discipline. On the other hand, those who are of right-brain preference demonstrates more excellence in abilities like innovation, imagination, and thinking through pictures, in addition to recalling faces and shapes, realizing location relations, as well as their musical abilities, and the ability to deal with many problems and issues at the same time (Alagha 2009; Schiferi 2008).

Many studies have addressed the topic of the impact of brain preference upon a number of variables. Saleh found that the scientific majors such as engineering and science attract the students who have left preference, whereas the students of right-brain preference are more attracted to the humanity majors (Saleh 2001). Oliver sees that the brain preference has a great impact on problem-solving strategies. It was found that the students who have the left-brain preference tend to follow logical steps for solving problems, whereas students of right preference tend to outline the problem and its solution procedures (Oliver 2009).

Regarding the influence of brain preference on achievement, Gadzella conducted a study that aimed at identifying the impact of brain preference on the achievement of Psychology Course students. The sample of the study composed of fifty-five students. The results of the study revealed that the scores of the left-brain preference students had higher scores than did right-brain preference students (Gadzella 1995). The results of Van Giesen et al.’s study revealed that fifth and sixth grade students of right-brain preference performed better in reading tests than left brain preference students (Van Giesen et al. 1987).

Wang conducted a study that aimed at identifying the impact of brain preference on the academic achievement of fourth and fifth grade students in science as well as their attitudes and their verbal abilities. The findings of this study showed that the students of right-brain preference were better in achievement, attitudes, and abilities (Wang 2008).

Statement of the Problem and Importance

Higher education in Jordan is striving to enhance students’ academic achievement to better prepare students for their future employment. One of the most important variables related to academic achievement is brain dominance. To the researchers’ best knowledge, limited research on this issue was carried out in Jordan. Therefore, the primary purpose of this study was to answer the following question: Does the academic achievement of the social studies’ students differ according to their brain preference?

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HAILAT ET AL.: RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN BRAIN DOMINANCE AND ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT

This study is important for a number of reasons. First, faculty members will have advanced knowledge as to the most effective students in relation to their brain dominance. Thus, faculty members can design teaching strategies and activities that suit both types of students. Second, university administrators can use the results of this study to implement content and curriculum changes. Finally, this study may trigger other research efforts to investigate layers of brain dominance related to upper and lower aspects in addition to left side and right side brain dominance.

Methodology

Study Context: Higher Education in Jordan

Higher education in Jordan is regarded as the leading educational system in the region. In a recent poll, there are more than 236 students enrolled in higher education institutions, which is more than five percent of the Jordanian population. There are ten public universities and more than twenty private universities in Jordan. There are both graduate and undergraduate degrees offered. With regard to undergraduate students, their study takes about four years to complete except for the medicine degrees which take about seven years to complete. There are graduate degrees offered at the master and PhD levels (Abu-Orabi 2010). With regard to teaching methods, a mixed-method is used which include both traditional instruction complemented with other types of instruction such as computerized and project-based instruction (Ali 2009; Al-Sorty 2009).

Population and Sample

The population of the study consisted of university students enrolled in the Educational Sciences College (classroom teacher major) during the academic year 2013–2014, with a total of 1,200 students. The sample of the study was composed of 124 female students enrolled in the course of social studies who were selected purposively in order to accomplish the goal of the study.

Instrumentation

Two instruments were used in this study. The first instrument is the brain-dominance questionnaire. This instrument consists of fifteen items, with three alternatives for each item. The first statement refers to a style derived from the functions of left-brain hemisphere. The second statement refers to a style derived from the functions of right-brain hemisphere. Whereas the third statement refers to a style derived from the functions of both hemispheres. The brain preference is calculated as follows: We add a negative mark when the first alternative is selected for each item, and a positive mark when the second alternative is selected, whereas the third alternative selection is neglected, then the total is calculated: for example, if the student’s mark was (-1 to -15), she is a left-brain preference student. But if the mark was (+1 to +15), then she is a right-brain preference student.

This instrument was translated into Arabic by experienced translators. After that, the Arabic edition was translated into English again, and the two versions were compared to modify the translation again. To examine the reliability of the instrument, a pilot study was carried out on thirty-three students whom were excluded from the main sample of the study. The reliability coefficient for the instrument was 0.80, indicating its suitability to measure the construct under study.

The second instrument for the study was the academic achievement test. This test was composed out of three tests according to the testing system at the Hashemite University. The first and second exams consisted of twenty items each, and the final exam contained fifty items, all of them being multiple choice questions. To ensure the validity of this test, they were reviewed by a

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group of experts from the Faculty of Educational Sciences. Based on their reviews, minor changes were incorporated into the tests. The three tests went through other validation procedures such as the difficulty index, the discriminant index, and the effectiveness of choice system. The three tests were also ensured to have adequate exam time based on student’s differences.

Results and Discussion

This study aimed at investigating the relationship between brain dominance and academic achievement among a sample of social studies university students at the Hashemite University. To accomplish this question, means and standard deviations were calculated for academic achievement in accordance to students’ brain dominance. Table 1 shows these statistics.

Table 1: Means and Standard Deviations for Students’ Academic Achievement in Accordance to their Brain Preference

Variable Brain Half N Mean SD Score Left 83 76.39 10.920

Right 41 68.76 11.368 Source: Hailat et al.

It is clear from table 1 that there are clear differences between the means of students’ academic achievement. Based on that, further statistical analysis was carried out to explore those differences employing the t-test (see table 2). It is clear from table 2 that there are statistically significant differences between students’ academic achievement scores based on their brain dominance for the favor of left-brain. Also, the majority of students were of left-brain dominance.

Table 2: Comparison of Academic Achievement Based on Brain Dominance Levine’s test for equality of

variance t-test for equality of

means t df Sig. (2-tailed) lower upper Lower

Score Equal variances assumed 3.611 122 .000 Source: Hailat et al.

These results are in the expected direction because students who are left-brain dominant tend to be analytical and sequential, looking for details, linear and abstract, and usually excel in recognition and recalling names. The content of social studies courses are displayed sequentially step by step where the previous materials are reviewed at the beginning of each lecture, then the new concepts and the next content are displayed and explained thoroughly. Then, the content is examined and assessed as to determine students’ mastery of these concepts. Regarding the content of this course, it was taught in a verbal and auditory way through listening to historical texts or reading the content of these texts, and then detailed questions on that content were introduced in an abstract manner. Thus, left-brain dominant students, who have analytical and sequential skills, looking for details, linear and abstract, are expected to achieve better exam scores.

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HAILAT ET AL.: RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN BRAIN DOMINANCE AND ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT

Recommendations of the Study

In light of the above discussion, the following recommendations are provided:

Developing and improving the instructional activities and teaching strategies tosuit both types of students (left-brain and right-brain dominant).

Conducting workshops to help students increase their knowledge about braindominance.

Conducting more studies in different domains/courses and on different levelsof academic education to come up with accurate ideas related to therelationship between brain preference and academic achievement, as well asthe relationship between brain preference and some other variables likemotivation for learning, thinking skills, and university violence.

REFERENCES

Abu-Orabi, Sultan. 2010. “Higher Education in Jordan: The Future and Needed Changes.” Scientific Inquiry 2: 25–32.

Alagha, Morad. 2009. “The Effect of Using the Brainstorming Strategy in Developing Some of the Mathematical Thinking Skills in Both Sides of Brain for the Eleventh Grade Students.” Master’s thesis, Islamic University, Gaza.

Alekno, Simone. 2012. “Teachers’ Beliefs and Practices Regarding Neuromyths.” PhD diss, Capella University.

Ali, Nabel. 2009. “The Arab Brain and Knowledge Community.” The World of Knowledge, Kuwait.

Alsorty, Yazeed. 2009. “The Authority in Arabic Education.” The World of Knowledge, Kuwait. Bradshaw John. 1996. “Bradshaw On: The Family: A New Way of Creating Solid Self-Esteem.”

Deerfield Beach, FL: Health Communications Inc. Connell, Diane. 1999. “Left Brain - Right Brain.” Instructor 112: 28–32. Fernandez, Sanny. 2012. “Brain Hemisphericity and Mathematics Achievement of High School

Students.” Master’s thesis, West Visayas State University. Gadzella, Bernadette. 1995. “Differences in Academic Achievement as a Function of Scores on

Hemisphericity”. Perceptual & Motor Skills 81 (1): 153–4. Genoveses, Jeremy. 2005 “Hemispheric Cognitive Style: A Comparison of Three Instruments.”

The Journal of Psychology 166 (4): 467–81. Kolb, David. 1984. Experiential Learning: Experience as the Source of Learning and

Development. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Oliver, Erin. 2009. “Relationship between Problem Solving and Brain Hemisphericity in High

School Students”. Master’s thesis, Texas State University. Ormrod, Jeanne. 2008. Human Learning. 8th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson. Saleh, Amany. 2001. “Brain Hemisphericity and Academic Majors: A Correlation Study.”

College Student Journal 35 (2): 193–200. Schiferi, Edward. 2008. “Both Sides Now: Visualizing and Drawing with the Right and Left

Hemispheres of the Brain.” Studies in Art Education 50 (1): 67–82. Sperry, Roger, Michael Gazzaniga, and Joseph Bogen. 1996. “Interhemispheric Relationships:

The Neocortical Commissures: Syndromes of Hemispheric Disconnection.” In

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Handbook of Clinical Neurology, edited by P. J. Vinken and G. W Bruyn, 273–89. Amsterdam: North Holland Publishing Co.

Szirony, Gary, John Burgin, and Carolyn Pearson. 2008. “Hemispheric Laterality in Music and Math.” Learn Inquiry 2 (3): 169–80.

Trefil James. 1997. “Are We Unique? A Scientist Explores the Unparalleled Intelligence of the Human Mind.” Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Sons, Incorporated.

Giesen, Van, Michael Bell, and Darrell Roubinek. 1987. “Comparing Right and Left Brain Dominant Student on Reading Achievement Score.” Reading Improvement 24: 267–72.

Wang, Tzu-Ling. 2009. “Brain Hemispheric Preferences of Fourth- and Fifth- Grade Science Teacher and Student in Taiwan: An Investigation of the Relationship to Student Spatial and Verbal Ability, Student Achievement, Student Attitudes, and Teacher Practice.” PhD diss, Ohio State University.

Yong, He, and Alan Evans. 2010. “Graph Theoretical Modeling of Brain Connectivity.” Current Opinion in Neurology 23: 341–50.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Dr. Salah Hailat: Associate Professor, Educational Sciences, Hashemite University, Zarqa, Jordan

Mohammad Hailat: Supervisor, Ministry of Education, Irbid, Jordan

Dr. Mohammad Jawarneh: Associate Professor, Educational Sciences, Hashemite University, Zarqa, Jordan

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The International Journal of Interdisciplinary Global Studies Volume 11, Issue 1, 2016, www.thesocialsciences.com, ISSN: 2324-755X © Common Ground, Gloria Miryam Mora Guerrero, All Rights Reserved Permissions: [email protected]

Cultural Politics among Latin American Organizations Oriented toward Strategic Gender Interests: A Comparison of Chile,

Mexico, and Uruguay, 1990–2012 Gloria Miryam Mora Guerrero, Universidad Católica de Temuco, Chile

Abstract: The research objective was to compare the relationships between the political culture of the Chilean, Mexican, and Uruguayan states and the cultural politics of women’s organizations oriented toward strategic gender interests within each country. It was a qualitative study with an interpretive focus. The methodological strategy was based on the comparative method for qualitative studies, which included the study of women’s organizations from each country. The techniques used for data collection were interview and documental analysis. The processing of the information was carried out in accordance with the procedure of Grounded Theory. The results show that in the three case studies, the state’s stability and the dominant political practices that reproduce gender-based inequalities in the political arena are crucial to explain how the meanings and practices of democracy carry over from the point of view of the organizations. The conclusions enhance understanding of how political practices are affected by the cultural logic of gender, and how women’s cultural struggles pursue political and citizenship transformations.

Keywords: Political Culture, Cultural Politics, Strategic Gender Interests, Women’s Social Movements, Comparative Method

Introduction

his research aimed to compare the relationships between the political culture of the Chilean, Mexican, and Uruguayan states and the cultural politics of women’s organizations oriented toward strategic gender interests (SGI) from each country. The

interval between 1990 and 2012 was chosen as the period for comparison, as it represents the consolidation period of the new representative and electoral democracies that followed the intense mobilizations of the eighties for the democratization of Latin America. The study asked how the conflict between the states’ political cultures and the cultural politics of women’s organizations took shape in a formally democratic political environment.

From the 1980s onward, most Latin American countries went through the democratization process. Chile, Mexico, and Uruguay were part of this political development. In 1989, Chilean Patricio Alwyn won the first democratic election for president in his country after the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. Similarly, Julio María Sanguinetti became the president of Uruguay in 1985 after thirteen years of civil-military regime. Finally, during the late eighties and early nineties, a strong mobilization emerged in Mexico, culminating with the national coming-to-power of Vicente Fox Quesada, the first opposition candidate to the hitherto official political party, the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (Institutional Revolutionary Party) or PRI, which had been in power for more than seventy years.

The social movements surrounding these situations have encountered significant struggles for implementing their issues into public politics. Additionally, they have sought to reconstruct the notion of “citizenship, political representation and participation, and, as a consequence, democracy itself” (Álvarez, Dagnino, and Escobar 1998, 2). Hence, today democracy means going beyond that of mere representative democracy to address issues like the eradication of social inequality, such as those of gender. Women’s movements have taken part in this struggle to further extend the meaning of democracy (Álvarez 1998) through challenging the Latin

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American states whose political-cultural programs have traditionally relied on inequitable gender relations (Ketterer 2011).

In this context, this study looked at the conflict between the political culture of the Chilean, Mexican, and Uruguayan states and the cultural politics of women’s organizations oriented toward SGI from each country. The study focused on the meaning of democracy that is in conflict between these two political positions, according to the point of view of the organizations. The theoretical framework was formed by two theoretical sections: first, social movement theories and an approach to the women’s movements in Latin American; and second, cultural-political theories and their relationships with feminist and gender perspectives, including a description of the political culture of every country studied. The comparative method was used to analyze the cases of Chile, Mexico, and Uruguay since it allowed an exploration of the similarities and differences between these nations regarding the problem studied. In doing so, the article aims to enhance conceptual tools regarding the current challenges to representative democracies by women’s organizations in Latin America.

Organizations Oriented toward SGI as a Social Movement

Theories of social movements might be classified into two branches: first, theories on resource mobilization and political opportunity structures which mostly developed in North America; and second, theories on social movements’ identities which mostly developed in Europe (Millan 2009, 70). The first branch has identified the protesters’ economic, social, and political resources (71–2) and the formal institutional structure of the state (Rootes 1999, 1) as central factors for the study of strategies and outcomes of collective actions. However, many social movements—such as environmental and women’s movements—emerged during the 1960s with strategies and targets that were not attainable under the first approach. These social movements targeted the state as well as civil society and pursued cultural and political goals. Within the European tradition, the theories and collective actors surrounding these social movements are considered “new” (Armstrong and Bernstein 2008, 78–81).

Armstrong and Bernstein’s (2008) Multi-Institutional System Model belongs to the European perspective. They assert that social movements can target the state as well as other institutions and can take forms that are related to the dominant culture of every society. The Multi-Institutional System Model argues that society is composed of multiple institutions—such as the capitalist market, patriarchy, state, and democracy in modern societies—existing in intersections among societal institutions through which power relations reproduce. By studying which social institutions are targeted by social movements, scholars are able to understand the nature of social domination (81–87).

Research in the present study followed Armstrong and Bernstein’s Multi-Institutional System Model, as it called for looking at the cultural politics of women’s organizations as responsive actions intended to diffuse targets like the political culture, through which a patriarchal political order had long since exercised power over women. Also, the Latin American women’s movement is understandable from the “new” social movement perspective because their strategies have gone beyond the strikes, demonstrations, public meetings, and petitions that characterized the social movements studied by the theories on resource mobilization and political opportunity structures (Taylor et al. 2009, 866). In fact, the women’s movement includes strategies such as advocacy, research, and building organizations and collective identities (Lebon 2010, 9).

Regarding the strategy of building organizations, it is one of the main ways the current Latin American women’s movement has developed, but this manner of organization is a result of at least four decades of mobilization. During the 1970s and 1980s, the women’s movement was formed by two clearly identifiable branches: women of the feminist movement, and women of the popular movement—although both branches became allies in the struggle for the

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MORA: CULTURAL POLITICS AMONG LATIN AMERICAN ORGANIZATIONS

democratization of the countries and to overcome sexism and domestic violence, as well as poverty, labor exploitation, and unemployment (Portugal 1986, 11–2). But this alliance finished when democracy returned to every country and a rift formed between feminists and popular women (Feliu 2009, 703). Meanwhile, some feminists became civil servants (703) while other important women’s groups built nongovernmental organizations (NGO) (Álvarez 1998, 306–8). Even still, some women assumed the issue of gender as a battle flag but without identifying themselves as explicitly feminist. Namely, today the women’s movement in its feminist branch is formed by two kinds of activists: the feminists, and those women that have goals of gender equality but do not identify as feminist (Feliu 2009, 704). The present research focused on the feminist branch of the women’s movement, inquiring into the cultural production of women activists grouped as organizations that help to maintain the women’s movement and to organize its collective campaigns (Staggenborg and Taylor 2005, 41).

Democracy’s Meanings as Political Culture or Cultural Politics

Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba (1992) helped to found a long tradition of research that understands political culture as a set of attitudes, sentiments, and beliefs related to a political system and the role of its citizens. They claim that there is but one kind of political culture that is ideal for a democratic regime: civic culture. Civic culture implies coherence between the political structure and the political “type” of citizens; namely, it is desirable that, in a democratic system, a citizen feels part of the politics, showing positive attitudes toward the political structures and making decisions rationally (Almond and Verba 1992).

But the last conception of political culture was challenged by other approximations from sociology and anthropology. According to Giménez (2007, 210), political culture refers to knowledge, beliefs, values, and attitudes in which people give meanings to their political experiences. Tejera Gaona (2006, 114–8) also stated that culture is inherently political because it is a particular structure of rules, values, and perceptions which, one the one hand, are the result of a specific articulation of power relations and, on the other hand, are the result of the specific actions of actors whose purpose is to maintain or to change power relations. In that way, this second perspective of political culture indicates that although Almond and Verba’s tradition influenced an important branch of studies within the field of Political Science, this tradition made the mistake of thinking that the political field is well delineated, making it impossible from this tradition to recognize that culture is a universe of meanings that give order and reason in all social scopes, including the political arena (Giménez 2007, 229–30).

The central theoretical concepts of this research are part of this second tradition. There are two key concepts: political culture and cultural politics. In accordance with Álvarez, Dagnino, and Escobar (1998), the concept of political culture can be thought of as the dominant social formation concerning what is political in every society, while cultural politics can be used to study the political struggles of social movements. Cultural politics refers to the process in which some social actors challenge the dominant political culture in order to change the unequal social relations. Usually, social movements challenge the political culture because they generally want to change the power relations in a society. So, if political culture refers to the institutionalized areas where power negotiations take place, cultural politics represents the challenge that social movements set upon the dominant meanings of politics (5–10).

Related to the Latin American political culture, Booth and Bayer (2015, 19–20) describe it as shaped by the Western model of representative, electoral-constitutional democracy which relies on three fundamental principles: rule by the people; representative government; and constitutional restrictions on the power of majorities, government, and elected and appointed executives. However, the political culture in Latin America is more complex, as Booth and Bayer (2015) recognized. Frequently, rationalism, universalism, and individualism as principles of an idealized Western democracy are contradictorily combined with other principles aimed at

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ensuring social and political exclusion (Álvarez, Dagnino, and Escobar 1998, 9). To this end, favoritism, clientelism, tutelage (Dagnino 1998, 49), caudillismo (Díaz-Barriga 1998, 264–70), cronyism, and patronage (Nieto 2011, 165) continue to be common political practices.

But while old practices like clientelism and caudillismo maintain inequality in Latin American societies, other political values and ideals emerge which are driven by neoliberal policies implemented by states since the 1980s. The neoliberal project has included new views of citizenship as individual integration to the market (Dagnino 1998, 49) and a function of consumerism (Giroux 2005, 2) at the same time that states have promoted an autonomous, responsible, and active (economic) civil society (Schild 1998, 99). Ultimately, this current and complex scenario has promoted an increase of the mobilization of civil society, including in women’s organizations, and has also opened questions for scholars about the reconfiguration of challenges that this social mobilization presents to current Latin American political systems.

For instance, some sectors of civil society have moved toward ungovernability (Yúdice 1998, 636). They have fostered cultural politics that struggle for a new citizenship for all marginalized people (poor, women, indigenous, and black people), advocating for them the right to have rights (Dagnino 1998, 48) and the status as humans and citizens with dignity (Renfrew 2012, 13). Collective actors have also challenged the politics of representation; patronage and clientelism practices (Díaz-Barriga 1998, 264–70); and the racialized, gendered, and classist violence that neoliberal capitalism produces (Talcott 2013, 86). Therefore, this article further aimed to understand the cultural production of current Latin American social movements by looking at the shape of cultural politics surrounding women’s movements.

Political Culture and Cultural Politics from Gender Perspective

The theoretical framework of this study included feminist theory and its relationship with culture and politics. The feminist interest in culture appears by means of the concept of gender, and in this context, gender denotes the weight of culture in relation to sexual differences (Gutiérrez Castañeda 2002, 202). As Gutiérrez Castañeda (2002) says, both the radical and Marxist feminists thought cultural parameters were an important clue for explicating women’s subordination: the Marxist feminists because they identified the insufficiency of the social relations of production for understanding all gender inequalities, and the radical feminists because the notion of patriarchy opens a lot of questions about the limits between biological and cultural aspects in gender identities. Also, poststructuralism highlights that there is a symbolic order of language which explains the formation of subjects from a cultural order that is known to them (Gutiérrez Castañeda 2002). So, from the gender feminism of the 1980s to the postfeminism of the twenty-first century, the power of structuring cultures has been at the center of the research.

Regarding to the political culture, feminism suggests that if women have few capacities to exercise power, it is because they have been educated as nonpolitical subjects (Sánchez Olvera 2006, 4). Yet, this has a paradoxical consequence in that women are able to change the masculine political values and practices, but only if they learn to think as women—namely, only if when they exercise power, they do it without appealing to the masculine values and performances (Vásquez Espadas 2002). The famous slogan the personal is political becomes thinkable for women only because they think from an excluded position from the public sphere, as has happened since the public sphere emerged in the Greek polis (Amorós 1990). Feminist cultural politics challenged the traditional limits between public and private when they identified patriarchy as the masculine, systematic, and omnipresent power which defines relations and behaviors both in public and private (Randall 2002, 186). In sum, women are able to challenge the dominant order, but only if they are able to talk from the place of the excluded or invisible—namely, by gender (Martínez de la Escalera 2002). As Haraway (1999) said, feminism could rethink the social relations if it was capable of identifying the effects of the differences between

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men and women. It is a matter of replacing the principle of exclusive identity for the principle of the difference. The difference implies the unprecedented, the unforeseen, and the provisional, which is essential in politics (Martínez de la Escalera 2002, 232).

The State and the Democratic Political Culture in the Cases Studies

Three cases were selected by which to compare the relationships between the state political culture and cultural politics of women’s organizations. To address this objective, cases with similar characteristics were identified, as it allowed a common ground for comparison. Yet, it was also necessary to identify dissimilar properties between cases in order to make conclusions regarding the influence of other outlying factors. The elections in Chile, Mexico, and Uruguay provided similar cases regarding the representative and electoral democratic system, yet they were also different regarding the kinds of political culture and levels of stability within each state.

Chile

The Chilean state can be characterized by its significant stability (The Fund for Peace 2012). Such stability is not new in the country since the state attained relative autonomy stemming from mineral rents in the nineteenth century. Although during the last four decades it has been reduced to following neoliberal rules, it has maintained its capacity for strategic action and regulation of private activities (Luna and Seligson 2007, 4).

Following Falabella (2008, 12), the Chilean political culture could be characterized by its elitism, as the political elites consider that there is a single order in a democratic system. According to this order, citizens should place their confidence and power in politicians, i.e. those who make the decisions. As such, the consensus and the exclusion of citizens by elites have been two central features of the political practices. The transition to democracy was based on the consensus among the opposition to Pinochet’s dictatorship and the economic powers, militaries, and conservative groups (Feliu 2009, 708) while civil society was excluded from the negotiations (Morán Faundés 2013, 499). During the return of the democratic system in the 1990s, the left and the right elites also agreed to maintain neoliberalism as the political and economic path for the development of the country (Luna and Seligson 2007, 1–2) and also to maintain the demobilization of popular movements (Jara Ibarra 2013, 9). As consequence, disaffection for the democratic system has increased among citizens who perceive that the electoral system does not promote their participation but rather is made for guaranteeing political oligarchies (Luna and Seligson 2007, 158–61). Additionally, people feel concerned by the social fragmentation and inequality that traditionally has characterized the country (Fernández 2013, 29).

Specifically related to the women’s movement, there has emerged a strong dissatisfaction among activists because public policies regarding gender have had to adjust to a conservative view about women being privileged, and the belief of the nuclear family as a moral norm has been to the detriment of women’s rights (Feliu 2009, 709).The conservative groups have gained influence during the democratic period and have prohibited laws that promote women’s rights while weakening programs that guarantee their rights (Díaz Fernández and Shiappacasse Faúndes 2010). Thus, feminist activists frequently fight against a strongly conservative political environment, which is often supported by powerful political and economic groups.

Mexico

Related to the Mexican democracy, The Fund for Peace (2012) has warned that the Mexican state could become fragile. In fact, according to its citizens, Mexico’s democracy has significant problems of representation and participation. A high number of citizens think that political parties only represent their own interests, while many others distrust the state and perceive

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political parties as corrupt organizations. Also, it is principally the political parties, not the citizens, who influence the parliamentarians through the elections of candidates for deputies and senators (Espinoza Toledo 2011, 58). The result is that there are few channels for political participation, and overall it is an environment characterized by distrust of the political class.

According to Sandoval (2007), at the end of the Mexican Revolution, an authoritarian political regime was established and state intervention was based on the official political party’s system (PRI). This regime remained effective through patronage, clientelism, and corporatism with labor, rural, and popular organizations for at least seventy years (Sandoval 2007, 131; Nieto 2011). During PRI’s regime, a simulated political culture allowed practices in which an advantageous and corrupt oligarchy manipulated the public opinion but hid behind a pluralist democracy. Here, simulation is manifesting political norms but knowing that situations are resolved following another logic that is not dictated by laws (Revueltas 2004, 46–8). In the 1990s, however, strong democratization processes allowed the rise and consolidation of the left and the right elites, including the opposition political parties (Sandoval 2007, 143). It harkened the weakening of the party’s system, and in 2000 Vicente Fox Quesada became president of Mexico in the first election won by an opposition party, the Partido Acción Nacional (National Action Party), or PAN, in the modern history of the country.

Parallel to these democratization processes, new conservative groups have emerged as a new right elite which remains close to the economic powers (Yáñez Delgado 2005). They have raised dissatisfaction among activists within the women’s movement because their public policies have become more restrictive of women’s rights at the same time that other values like that of the nuclear family have been strengthened. Since 2000, PAN has given more space to conservative groups like el Yunque—the Anvil—a secret organization of the extreme right (Sánchez 2011). However, the new relationships with entrepreneurial and other conservative groups are not exclusive to PAN; all parties have extended their relations with these strong political and economic actors (Sánchez 2011), making the political environment more complex for feminists and women’s organizations.

Uruguay

The Uruguayan state has maintained a positive level of stability (The Fund for Peace 2012). Since the nineteenth century, the state has superseded the power of the churches, the armed forces, and the landowners (Chasquetti and Buquet 2004, 232), and as consequence, the political environment has taken on a secular form (Moreira 2011, 234). The political parties which held a central position in the politics of the era of transition have maintained their predominance even until today (Chasquetti and Buquet 2004, 232; López Burian 2015, 135). After the civil-military regime, Uruguay continued the consolidation of democracy, and in fact, democracy has attained a significant level of acceptance by its citizens (Boidi and Queirolo 2010, xxvii).

According to Tornaría (1986, 54–5), traditionally the national political culture has been based on an “illusion” of equal citizenship; namely, the state has tended to enact laws that guarantee equality among citizens, yet inequalities have been hidden under these laws. In that way, there were important advances in gender issues related to laws since the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when the Uruguayan state established mixed and secular formal education (done in 1875) and civil rights and suffrage for women in the 1940s. During the transition to democracy, feminists also failed to install the Grupo de Trabajo sobre la Condición de las Mujeres (Working Group on the Status of Women) in the Concertación Nacional Programática (National Programmatic Consultation) that leads the process of democratic recovery, so some women’s topics were assumed by the new political system as part of the democratic agenda (Johnson, Cabrera Berenguer, and Benítez 2010, 22–3). However, even if the relatively secular political culture has been more favorable to Uruguayan women’s rights, the

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overall women’s movement still reveals that there are numerous invisible obstacles to guaranteeing the rights of women.

Pointedly, the challenge is to confront the illusion of equal citizenship (Tornaría 1986) in order to expose the gender inequalities, principally among young and lower class women. Moreover, the parties on the right (the Blancos—“Whites”—and the Colorados—“Reds”) have maintained a more conservative position than the parties on the left (the Frente Amplistas—“Wide front”) on women’s issues; on the other hand, the left parties, being more liberal than the right (Boidi and Queirolo 2010, xxix), have also shown a soft position on fighting for women’s rights (Celiberti and Johnson 2010, 10). Even so, in comparison with the other two cases studied, there is a more progressive cultural environment concerning gender issues in Uruguay than in Chile or Mexico. The present research allowed understanding how these three different political contexts influence the cultural production of women’s organizations.

Methodology

The present research was a qualitative study with an interpretive focus. The comparative method for qualitative studies was chosen as the methodological strategy (Tonon 2011) because the aim was to compare Chile, Mexico, and Uruguay regarding how the conflict between the states’ political cultures and the cultural politics of women’s organizations takes shape. The 1990–2012 timeframe was used as the period of comparison since it represents the consolidation period of the new representative-electoral democracies that followed the intense mobilizations of the 1980s in favor of democratization in Latin America. The comparative method was applied to identify variables that remained constant between cases and those that varied between them (Lijphart 1971, 687). Thus, three cases were chosen in order to meet this requirement. Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay, was chosen to compare with Guanajuato, a state of Mexico, and Araucanía, a region of Chile. This called for the assessment of two relatively inconstant variables: a state’s stability, and a state’s progressive or conservative political culture (see table 1.1). According to the comparative method, first, every case was analyzed separately, and later the findings of every case were compared with each other, looking for similarities and differences between them (Tonon 2011, 8–9). Ultimately, the research showed that a state’s stability variable is related to the cultural politics of the organizations present.

Table 1.1: Comparison between Cases

Case State’s political culture Constant Variable Inconstant Variables

Araucanía Representative, electoral-constitutional democracy

Stable state State’s conservative cultural project

Guanajuato Warning state State’s conservative cultural project

Montevideo Stable state State’s progressive cultural project

Period 1990–2012

The sampling included an initial and subsequent theoretical sampling (Charmaz 2006, under

chapter 5). Initially, it worked with organizations oriented toward SGI belonging to each one of the regions studied. The notion of Molyneux (1985, 232) was assumed to define the organizations studied: those whose goals are related with the traditional feminist issues, such as equal pay between men and women, elimination of domestic and sexual violence, and sexual and reproductive rights. It allowed studying the women’s movement in its current form, namely, through the actions of the organizations that frequently maintain this movement (Staggenborg and Taylor 2005, 41). The theoretical sampling also included contact with other individual

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subjects or organizations that did not match the aforesaid criteria, but the information they provided was considered to be of prime importance for the study, such as public officials and women protesters from organizations of women but not necessarily oriented to SGI.

Data production techniques were achieved through interviews and documental analysis which were carried out in accordance with the criteria recommended by Charmaz (2006, under chapter 2) and Aróstegui (2001, under chapter 9), respectively. Five organizations from Chile, six from Mexico, and six from Uruguay were studied by interviewing at least one of their members and by analyzing at least one of their documents. One organization from Araucanía and two from Montevideo were only studied through documental analysis. Table 1.2 shows the total of the organization studies, interviews, and documents reviewed by case study. Every woman who was interviewed signed an informed consent document ratified by the Universidad de Santiago de Chile Ethics Committee. All of the documents reviewed were public; written with the explicit purpose to show the goals, objectives, and activities of the organization; and were disseminated through electronic means as one of the main communication channels employed by the organizations studied.

Table 1.2: Data Collection Case Number of

Organizations Studied

Number of Interviews

Number of Documents Reviewed

Araucanía 6 16 17 Guanajuato 6 9 20 Montevideo 8 8 19 Total 20 33 56

The information processing procedure was carried out in accordance with the Grounded

Theory fundamentally laid down by Charmaz (2006, under chapter 3) and Kelle (2005). The data processing stage was completed with the assistance of the Open Code 4.02 program (Umeå University 2011). The basic coding procedure, line by line, followed three stages: initial coding, focused coding, and theoretical coding (Charmaz 2006, under chapter 3; Kelle 2005). As Charmaz (2006, under chapter 3) recommend, the focused codes were presented in gerund form to maintain the actions of participants during the analysis.

The information of every case was processed following this general procedure. The findings are composed of six focused codes sorted into two theoretical categories: state political culture and organizational cultural politics, in such a way that both categories include the conflicting meanings about democracy in every region. Based on these two theoretical categories as transverse parameters for all cases analyzed, this work found a common general pattern as a result of the comparison: regarding democracy meanings, the shape of conflict between the state and the organizations studied is mediated by the state’s stability. Table 1.3 summarizes the findings pointed out in this article.

Table 1.3: Theoretical and Focused Codes by Case Study Theoretical Codes Cases

Democracy Meanings Political Culture of the State

Cultural Politics of the Organizations

Common pattern between cases

Araucanía Instrumentalizing to citizenship

Redefining the political practices State’s stability

as mediation for democracy meanings

Guanajuato Maintaining the status quo Denouncing the state’s negligence

Montevideo Participating politically through political parties

Making an autonomous citizenship

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Araucania Region: Instrumentalizing Citizenship and Redefining the Political Practices

Five of the six organizations studied from the Araucanía were “colectivas” (collectives), i.e. women’s groups that decided against becoming institutionalized as NGOs and prefer to act as simple organizations without legal registration. The only NGO was the Centro de las Mujeres de Temuco (Temuco Women’s Centre) that offered professional services to victims of violence for a short period. Both the “colectivas” and the NGO tended to act through non-institutional mechanisms—namely, beyond the formal channels for participation, much like the political parties and roundtables between governments and citizens. On the contrary, public demonstrations, forums, meetings, workshops, radio broadcasts, conferences, and other public and social interventions directed to citizenship were commonly organized by activists.

According to the organizations studied, although the Chilean state is formally a representative democracy, the political culture of the state includes paradoxically undemocratic practices. An undemocratic practice is one in which citizens have formal political rights but few channels for effective participation. This political condition is exacerbated when talking about the participation of women. In fact, political parties and public institutions frequently instrumentalize the female citizens. For example, they include women when doing field work (i.e., for a political campaign), but they really have fewer opportunities than men to access a position of power (i.e., for being political candidates).

Also, the state excludes from the political sector those actors whose political projects are opposed to its public policies, as is the case of the organizations oriented toward SGI. Thus, these organizations are frequently fighting against the state because it generally maintains a conservative vision of women as mothers but not citizens with rights. This is one reason why there is a barrier between the state and the organizations. The activists said, for example, that Servicio Nacional de la Mujer (National Women’s Service), or SERNAM, was institutionalized because of the political pressure from women’s organizations, but actually SERNAM does not represent their demands, as it is continually aligns to the public policy of the state. It is as if the state “steals” the achievements earned by the organizations, as one activist pointed out:

No, we never have been close with SERNAM. We [SERNAM and the organization] did activities together, but a few. Every time we [the organization] did an activity, SERNAM appeared with another one. The media communicated SERNAM’s event. It is a way to make our work invisible. (Interviewed activist, Centro de las Mujeres de Temuco)

For these reasons, the cultural politics of the organizations have been oriented toward the redefinition of the non-participatory and exclusive political practices. For the organizations, the purpose is to experiment with other kinds of practices where the participation is democratic—namely, everyone must have the same opportunity to participate in the discussions and the decision-making processes. Mainly, it is important to recover the public spaces where every woman must have the same opportunity to discuss and participate in decision-making processes. Because there have been losses of public spaces in Chilean democracy and the participation channels have been centralized by the state, activists carry out public activities with the purpose that citizens, including women, would recover their right to speak. In this context, public activities like forums, workshops, theater, artistic performances like music and dance, community radio, etc. are preferred because these activities allow the possibility to open spaces where women can participate by themselves:

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We addressed the issue of sexual harassment. We made public denouncements. In public spaces, women claimed to be victims of sexual harassment in their jobs. The Mayor was surprised when he heard them, and everyone was impressed. [The politicians] knew that we would talk. (Interviewed activist, Centro de las Mujeres de Temuco)

Accordingly, the relationships between organizations and the state are marked by conflicts and mutual distrust. Activists perceive an explicit intention of the state to remove them from the political sector. As a response, organizations try to move the politics to the informal spaces for citizens, downplaying the centrality of the state through promoting cultural politics from and for citizens. It is like a game of mutual exclusion: activists do not like to link with the state (i.e., they do not participate in government tenders although the consequence is that they do not have a budget), and reciprocally, government servants close the formal participation channels for activists (i.e., any collective lobbying with government servants during the period studied) and promote laws and public policies in favor of the other groups, like Provida, that have values accepted by the state’s democratic institutions.

Guanajuato State: Maintaining the Status Quo and Denouncing the State’s Negligence

All of the organizations studied in Guanajuato worked as NGOs. Because of their degree of institutionalization, these organizations not only carried out non-institutional actions like meetings, but some of them also eventually negotiated with governments and offered professional services, especially psychological and legal support to victims of violence. As in the case of Chile’s Araucanía Region, social and community interventions like workshops, conferences, and meetings were frequently carried out by activists trying to target the citizens.

In accordance with the organizations studied, the fundamental characteristic of Guanajuato’s state political culture is orientated toward the maintaining of the status quo. The state and the political parties focus their actions toward the preservation of the political and socioeconomic status of the elite. From this perspective, democracy is reduced to political mechanisms through which the political and economic status quo is strengthened. There are two basic mechanisms through which the status quo is maintained: corruption and bureaucracy.

Corruption is understood as making political decisions behind the scenes and seeking out purposes that benefit those who participate in said agreements. Being a friend or a relative can open opportunities at all levels of the political system. In addition, bureaucracy means to prioritize official procedures but not the goals; frequently bureaucracy leads nowhere because the citizens’ demands are filed but not resolved satisfactorily. In gender issues, corruption and bureaucracy means that women’s rights are expressed in merely formal terms, but there are not public policies, strong institutions, and mechanisms to guarantee these rights, as the following activist said:

[Taking gender issues into its hands] is really hard for the state. Gender issues are the responsibility of the state, but the state has allowed omissions, especially when it comes to justice for women. (Interviewed activist, Grupo Unido de Madres Solteras [United Group of Single Mothers])

Progressive organizations oriented toward SGI in the region focus their efforts on the construction of politics based on a deeper democracy. As activists continually pursue that the state change its common political practices, they carry out a lot of activities whose purpose is to publicly denounce omissions made by the state—primarily, the omissions concerning justice for women. Through the media, international organizations, social networks, or public meetings, these organizations regularly denounce the impunity enjoyed by the aggressors of women:

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Women victims of violence return back home with their aggressors because [after the criminal complaint] they do not receive any protection from the state. They go back home because the state does not activate all the necessary institutional mechanisms [to protect them]. Neither does the state give money for this. (Interviewed activist, Las Libres [The Women Free])

The final aim of the organizations is a renewal of the common political practices of corruption and bureaucracy. Corruption and bureaucracy are important pathways through which the violence against women is perpetuated because the aggressors do not receive any punishment. The state’s indirect message is that it is permissible to violate rights of women. Tougher laws against gender violence are necessary, as are strong institutions to guarantee women’s rights. The frequent denouncements of the state’s omissions by organizations are part of a relationship marked by conflict and hostility. On the one hand, organizations force the state to assume its responsibility regarding women’s issues, and eventually it has been possible to negotiate between activists and government servants. On the other, the state’s response often includes harassment to the organizations by arguing that such organizations are problematic for democracy because they do not recognize the advances already made regarding women’s rights.

Montevideo Department: Participation through Political Parties and Autonomous Participation

Seven of the eight women’s groups studied in Montevideo were organizations oriented towards SGI. Five of these seven were NGOs, while the other two were collectives. The eighth is an NGO oriented towards practical gender interests; that is to say, these women activists pursue goals related to their economic and social conditions as women but not necessarily from the gender perspective (Molyneux 1985, 233). The organizations oriented toward SGI in Uruguay tended to mix institutional and non-institutional action mechanisms: for example, lobbing, policy advocacy, and roundtables between activists and members of political parties, along with other kinds of activities directed toward citizens in general like workshops, talks, public meetings, and professional services related to violence and gender.

According to the organizations studied, the Montevideo Department has a strongly institutionalized democracy. There is a tendency to participate principally through the political parties using the formal channels of citizen participation. Thus, political parties maintain their historical centrality as central agents of politics. This is why the institutionalization of gender by the state is considered as a relevant achievement by the organizations studied. For example, since the return to democracy, gender topics have been gradually positioning themselves in the public agenda so that, in a way, the state and political parties have accepted the institutionalization of certain topics, such as the fight against domestic violence.

However, the organizations recognize that in spite of the relative acceptance of gender on the agenda, the state as well as political parties put up resistance to change and, in fact, put up a lot more resistance than citizens do. In fact, there are invisible mechanisms through which women do not have the same opportunities as men to exercise their rights. For example, there are still fewer female than male parliamentarians, although Parliament approved a limited-time gender quota law, which was exclusively applied during 2014’s political elections, in a weaken attempt to secure more female representation. Regarding to the political parties’ attitudes to gender issues, an interviewed women said:

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The problem is that these agendas we have created [like the gender-based agenda] have not been by the political parties. In fact, the political parties are the political actors that have required more time to incorporate these new agendas. We and other social actors have been creating another form of political participation: activism of citizens. (Interviewed activist, Plenario de Mujeres del Uruguay [Women’s Plenary of Uruguay])

For this reason, the organizations have understood that it is not sufficient to direct their efforts directly toward political impact through political parties but have turned toward the construction of an autonomous citizenship. The aim is to put pressure on the political parties by gaining strength from citizen mobilization. The empowering of politically autonomous male and female citizens thus becomes a fundamental matter for organizations so that each citizen can exercise his/her political rights and force political parties to bring into effect the changes demanded by citizens as a whole. Activities like public demonstrations, forums, and educative programs about women’s rights are preferred by activists because these kinds of activities diffuse information about women’s rights or merely about citizens’ rights.

We think that if people want, with help, to realize citizenship, they can. They can make decisions without other people who think for them. This is the kind of citizenship we [as organizations] are making in Uruguay. (Interviewed activist, Plenario de Mujeres del Uruguay)

In summation, the organizations are contributing to promote a politically autonomous citizenship. They assume that even if there are channels to participate through the political parties, opening new spaces of participation is necessary to advance in women’s issues. Women citizens must know their rights and how to exercise them, and they must be capable of organizing and fighting by themselves. The relationships between activists and the state and political parties are perceived as crossed by tensions in that there is resistance to advancements in gender issues by state and political parties; yet on the other hand, there are possibilities to negotiate and dialogue on both sides. Organizations most push for advancements and force the political parties to recognize the gender-based inequalities, but it is possible, however, to share a common political arena.

State’s Stability as Mediation for Democracy’s Meanings

After the comparison between the three cases studied, a common pattern emerged, as shown in table 1.3. Here it is clear that the stability of a state mediates the formation of the meaning of democracy by organizations oriented toward SGI. As stated previously, every case has its particularity related to what is conceived as the state’s political culture and the response to it from the organizations’ cultural politics. However, in every case the meaning of democracy pursued by activists can be understood in relation to what they perceived from the state, specifically in relation to their level of stability understood from a cultural perspective.

The most evident case is that of Guanajuato. For the organizations of this region, one of the main problems is the fragility of the state because of the corruption and bureaucratic practices. What they perceive as the state’s instability is a permanent level of corruption and bureaucracy that cuts off the possibility of an authentic democratic system. Democracy should count on laws, public policies, and programs that guarantee the female citizens’ rights. This perception of the state is related to the decision of the organizations to target the state in order to force it into a higher level of stability. The form of the confrontation is a public denouncement, which is a direct way to remark on the state’s omissions.

The cases of Chile and Uruguay show other kinds of positions about the state. In both cases, organizations face a state with a certain level of stability. In the first case, however, the state is perceived as an actor whose level of power is used to exclude the organizations and other

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opposing political actors. In this situation, activists try to open spaces to participate, not only by formal channels but mainly through other informal spaces in which women can discuss and make decisions about their lives. In the second case, the Uruguayan democracy is perceived as grounded in the stability of a state whose political parties occupy a central position. However, as political parties put up resistance to advance in gender issues, activists perceive an opportunity to act through citizen mobilizations. In this way, Uruguayan organizations link their activity with the spread of democracy in the country.

Hence, according to the cases studied, there is a central role that the state plays in understanding what democracy is, through the point of view of the organizations. The capacity of the state to maintain solid institutions is a reference for activists at the moment of understanding how the democratic system is, and how it should be, in society. The other parameter is the cultural character of the state’s solidity. It is not necessarily evaluated as totally favorable if the state has control over political and social institutions and the population. Although it could have a positive impact on gender issue achievements, it could also be more difficult to attain more advances in the field, as it happens in Chile’s case where the state maintains a conservative view of women. Moreover, from the cultural point of view of this study, activists defined the state’s character by identifying specific political practices—such as exclusion, corruption, bureaucracy, and resistance—to include the gender-based agenda as central factors to define the ways in which democracy works in relation to women’s issues. One of the main findings of this research is to describe the character of the state’s stability from the point of view of the culture as a dimension for analysis and according to the perceptions of the women activists.

Conclusions

The three cases studied coincide by indicating that their cultural politics should compete for a place in the political scene dominated by political cultures reluctant to incorporate gender agendas and the full incorporation of women as citizens. The exclusion and instrumentalization of women in Chile, the corruption and bureaucracy exacerbated in relation to women’s issues in Mexico; and a resistance to advance in gender issues concealed by the illusion of equal citizenship in Uruguay represent political practices traversed by the logic of gender which reproduces the subordination of women in the political arena. Moreover, the organizations’ cultural politics challenge the state as a key institutional area in which gender is embodied in the political culture. In that way, culture and politics are linked to each other through the fact that culture is embedded by the power relations in which it is produced and, on the other hand, because power relations have a cultural parameter (Escobar 1999, 135). In the cases studied, the place of women in political practice is related to their position in the overall social system crossed by the cultural parameters of gender, which currently still define positions with less power for women.

The findings show that the state is a central component for organizations. This conclusion is coherent with theories on resource mobilization and political opportunity structures which hold the state as a key actor in social movement studies (Armstrong and Bernstein 2008, 76). However, the role of the state as a political institution according to the point of view of the organizations has an unavoidable cultural dimension. That is, the state’s political practices reproduce the logic of gender and promote the maintenance of the subordination of women even if the representative democracies establish equality between men and women in laws. In this way, the findings challenge the theories on resource mobilization and political opportunity structures that assume that the institutional sphere is clearly separated from the cultural dimension (Gamson and Meyer 1999; McAdam, McCarthy, and Zald 1999). In other words, following Schild (1998, 96–8), the state must be understood as an assembly of multiple institutions with cultural consequences—in this case, as an assembly of democracy, politics, and gender.

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What is interesting to notice are the relationships between the stability and cultural characteristics of the states and the cultural politics of the organizations. Similar to what Kriesi (1999, 232–5) described for a strong state that closes formal and informal access of protesters to the political arena, in Chile organizations denounce practices of selective exclusions by the state and try to respond by redefining what politics means through recovering the public space even without intervention of the state. In the case of Uruguay, the state’s stability relies practically on political parties, but different to what happens in Chile, the political parties have maintained an inclusive strategy of giving important concessions to the organizations. In this context, Uruguayan organizations try to expand democracy by making an autonomous citizenship for all women and men. As Kriesi (1999, 232–5) described, for a strong state with an inclusive strategy, protesters must access politics by taking full advantage of the informal channels. Finally, in the case of Mexico, the direct confrontation of the corruption and bureaucracy of the state related to women’s issues is understandable in a political context where the state is weakened but has maintained informal and formal access to the political system by protesters (Kriesi 1999, 232–5). Thus, it is possible for the organizations to make advances in gender issues for women, but only in laws and not in the real lives of people, as organizations mentioned.

A significant achievement of this research was the employment of the comparative method for studying political cultures and social movements. This methodological design allowed exploring the role that a state’s stability plays in cultural politics formation by organizations oriented toward SGI. Furthermore, the study of the social movements of women in Latin American could be beneficial by exploring the role that multiple political and economic factors play in forming their goals, strategies, cultural politics, and so on. The diversity of the Latin American scenarios opens possibilities to explore the multiple relationships of several factors in configuring the political dynamic in every country. As this work has shown, an interdisciplinary vision for studying the research can improve the comprehension of the struggles of the organizations studied, overcoming the limitation of exclusively using the cultural studies perspective or the feminist perspective. This research has shown that cultural goals are also political and that, in fact, it is possible to think about what politics should be from the feminist perspective.

Finally, one of the main limitations of this article was to point out the results about the other factor that allowed the comparison between cases: the state’s conservative versus progressive cultural project. The author looks forward to continuing to ask about this factor and reporting the results in future articles. In the perspective of the author, the most important limitation of the study was that it considered only one point of view: that of the organizations oriented toward SGI. Another study could explore the perceptions of other political actors (for example, government officials, deputies, and senators) in order to improve the comprehension of the interrelations between political culture and cultural politics in the field of gender struggles.

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Comisión Nacional de Investigación Científica y Tecnológica (CONICYT).The author thanks the interviewed women. They were members of one of these organizations: Centro de Derechos Humanos Victoria Diez, A.C.; Centro Las Libres; Grupo Unido de Madres Solteras, A.C. (GUMSAC); Formación de la Joven Guanajuatense A.C.; Casa de Apoyo a la Mujer, A.C.; Plenario de Mujeres del Uruguay (Fundación Plemuu); Casa de la Mujer de la Unión; ICW Uruguay “Comunidad Internacional de Mujeres viviendo con VIH Sida”; Centro de Comunicación Virginia Woolf Cotidiano Mujer; Mujer y Salud en Uruguay (MYSU); Colectiva Mujeres; Mujeres Acacia; AcciónFem Temuko; Pan y Rosas Teresa Flores Temuco; Centro de las Mujeres de Temuco; and Colectiva de las Mujeres Radialistas de Temuco.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Gloria Miryam Mora Guerrero: Assistant Professor of Psychology, Universidad Católica de Temuco, Chile

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The International Journal of Interdisciplinary Global Studies is one of eight thematically focused journals in the family of journals that support the Interdisciplinary Social Sciences knowledge community—its journals, book series, conference and online community. It is a section of The International Journal of Interdisciplinary Social Sciences.

The journal investigates the dynamics of globalization and the transformation of the local.

As well as papers of a traditional scholarly type, this journal invites case studies that take the form of presentations of practice—including documentation of socially-engaged practices and exegeses analyzing the effects of those practices.

The International Journal of Interdisciplinary Global Studies is a peer-reviewed scholarly journal.

ISSN 2324-755X

The International Journal of Interdisciplinary GlobalStudies is one of nine thematically focused journals inthe family of journals that support the InterdisciplinarySocial Sciences knowledge community—its journals,book series, conference, and online community. Thejournal investigates the dynamics of globalization andthe transformation of the local.

As well as papers of a traditional scholarly type, thisjournal invites case studies that take the form ofpresentations of practice—including documentationof socially-engaged practices and exegeses analyzingthe effects of those practices.

The International Journal of Interdisciplinary GlobalStudies is a peer-reviewed scholarly journal.