Abstract
The emergence of legal decolonization in the mid-twentieth century, as evidenced by the 1960 United Nations Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples, is often understood through the lens of race and the disruption of racial hierarchy. If we take seriously the transnational feminist contention that the colonial racial order was also gendered, however, how might this perspective shift our understanding of decolonization? In this article, I explore the debates on decolonization that take place in the UN General Assembly from 1946–1960 that lead to the 1960 Declaration from a transnational feminist perspective to answer this question. Specifically, I use comparative historical and discourse methods of analysis to explore how colonialists and anti-colonialists negotiate the onset of legal decolonization, focusing especially on how colonialist hierarchies of race, culture, and gender are addressed in these debates. I argue that, on the one hand, colonialists rely on a paternalist masculinity to legitimate their rule (i.e., our dependencies require our rule the way a child requires a father). In response, anti-colonialists reply with a resistance masculinity (i.e., “colonialism is emasculating;” “decolonization is necessary for a return of masculine dignity”). I argue that decolonization in the United Nations transpires via contentions among differentially racialized masculinities. Ultimately, a transnational feminist perspective that centers the intersection of race and gender offers a richer analysis than a perspective that examines race alone.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Araim, A. S. (1976). The legal aspects of decolonization in the United Nations. government and politics. New York: St John’s University.
Archer, L., & Yamashita, H. (2003). Theorizing inner-city masculinities: “race,” Class, gender and education. Gender and Education, 15, 115–132.
Banerjee, S. (2005). Make me a man! masculinity, Hinduism and nationalism in India. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Bederman, G. (1995). Theodore Roosevelt: Manhood, nation, and “civilization.” manliness and civilization pp. 170–216. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Berger, M. T. (2004). After the third world? History, destiny and the fate of third worldism. Third World Quarterly, 25, 9–39.
Berthold, C. A. (1976). Kenneth Burke’s Cluster-Agon method: its development and an application. Central States Speech Journal, 27, 302–309.
Burke, K. (1973). The philosophy of literary form. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Burke, K. (1984). Attitudes toward history. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Burton, A. (1994). Burdens of history: British feminists, Indian Women, and imperial culture, 1865–1915. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Chen, A. (1999). Lives at the center of the periphery, lives at the periphery of the center: chinese American masculinities and bargaining with hegemony. Gender and Society, 13, 584–607.
Churchill, W. (2003). Perversions of justice: Indigenous Peoples and Angloamerican law. San Francisco, CA: City Lights Books.
Clark, S. (2003). Cold warriors: Manliness on trial in the rhetoric of the west. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.
Colwill, E. (1998). Sex, savagery, and slavery in the shaping of the french body politic. In S. E. Melzer, & K. Norberg (Eds.), From the royal to the Republican Body: Incorporating the political in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century France (pp. 198–223). Berkeley: University of California Press.
Conklin, A., & Fletcher, I. (Eds.). (1999). European imperialism, 1830–1930: Climax and contradiction. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.
Connell, R. W. (2005). Change among the gatekeepers: men, masculinities, and gender equality in the global arena. Signs, 30, 1801–1825.
Connell, R. W., & Messerschmidt, J. W. (2005). Hegemonic masculinity: rethinking the concept. Gender and Society, 19, 829–859.
Connell, R. W. (2000). The Men and the Boys. St. Leonards, Australia: Allen and Unwin.
Crawford, N. (2002). Argument and change in world politics: Ethics, decolonization, and humanitarian intervention. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Cuordileone, K. A. (2005). Manhood and american political culture in the cold war. New York: Routledge.
de Groot, J. (2000). ‘Sex’ and ‘Race’: The construction of language and image in the nineteenth century. In C. Hall (Ed.), Cultures of empire (pp. 37–60). Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Dean, R. D. (2001). Imperial brotherhood: Gender and the making of cold war foreign policy. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.
Derne, S. (2002). Globalization and the reconstitution of local gender arrangements. Men and Masculinities, 5, 144–164.
Donahue, R. T., & Prosser, M. H. (1997). Diplomatic discourse: International conflict at the United Nations: Addresses and analysis. London: Ablex Publishing Corporation.
Doty, R. (1996). Imperial encounters: The politics of representation in North-South relations. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
El-Ayouty, Y. (1971). The United Nations and decolonization: The role of Afro-Asia. The Hague, Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff.
Fanon, F. (1967). Black skin, white masks. New York: Grove Press.
Foss, S. K. (1989). Rhetorical criticism: Exploration and practice. Prospect Heights, Illinois: Waveland Inc.
Gelvin, J. L. (2002). Developmentalism, revolution, and freedom in the Arab East: The cases of Egypt, Syria, and Iraq. In R. H. Taylor (Ed.), The Idea of Freedom in Asia and Africa (pp. 62–96). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Gerami, S. (2005). Islamist masculinity and muslim masculinities. In M. S. Kimmel, J. Hearn, & R. W. Connell (Eds.), Handbook of studies on Men and masculinities pp. 448–457. London: Sage.
Gilmore, G. E. (1996). Gender and Jim Crow: Women and the politics of white supremacy in North Carolina, 1896-1920. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Grewal, I. (2005). Transnational America: Race and Gender after 9/11. In Transnational America: Feminisms, Diasporas, Neoliberalisms (pp. 196–220). Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Grosfoguel, R. (2003). Colonial subjects: Puerto Ricans in a global perspective. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Grovogui, S. N. (1996). Sovereigns, quasi sovereigns, and Africans: Race and self-determination in international law. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Hall, C. (1999). An imperial Man in Australasia and the West Indies. In A. Conklin, & I. Fletcher (Eds.), European imperialism, 1830–1930: Climax and contradiction (pp. 100–110). Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.
Hall, C. (2002). Civilizing subjects: Metropole and colony in the English imagination, 1830–1867. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Harding, S. (2000). Gender, development and post-enlightenment philosophies of science. In U. Narayan, & S. Harding (Eds.), in Decentering the Center (pp. 240–261). Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Hassan, W. S. (2003). Gender (and) Imperialism: Structures of Masculinity in Tayeb Salih’s Season of Migration to the North. Men and Masculinities 5.
Hodgson, D. (1999). “Once intrepid warriors”: modernity and the production of maasai masculinities. Ethnology, 38, 121–150.
Holden, P. (1998). The significance of uselessness: resisting colonial masculinity in Philip Jeyaretnam’s Abraham’s promise. Jouvert: A Journal of Postcolonial Studies 2.
Hooper, C. (2000). Masculinities in transition: The Case of Globalisation. In M. Marchand, & A. S. Runyan (Eds.), Gender and Global Restructuring. Sightings, sites and resistances (pp. 59–73). London: Routledge.
Hooper, C. (2001). Manly states: Masculinities, international relations, and gender politics. New York: Columbia University Press.
Hovet Jr., T. (1960). Bloc politics in the United Nations. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Kelly, J. D., & Kaplan, M. (2004). ‘My ambition is much higher than independence.’. In P. Duara (Ed.), Decolonization: Perspectives from now and then. New York: Routledge.
Kim, H., & Puri, J. (2005). Conceptualizing gender-sexuality-state-nation. Gender and Society, 19, 137–159.
Kimmel, M. (2003). Globalization and its Mal(e)contents: the gendered moral and political economy of terrorism. International Sociology, 18, 603–620.
Kondo, D. (1999). Fabricating masculinity: Gender, race and nation in a transnational frame. In C. Kaplan, N. Alarcon, & M. Moallem (Eds.), Between Woman and nation: Nationalisms, transnational feminisms, and the state (pp. 296–319). Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Lauren, P. G. (1998). The evolution of international human rights. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Legum, C. (1958). Bandung, Cairo and Accra: A report on the first conference of independent African States: The Africa Bureau.
Low, M. (2003). The Emperor’s sons go to war: Competing masculinities in modern Japan. In K. Louie, & M. Low (Eds.), Asian masculinities: The meaning and practice of manhood in China and Japan (pp. 81–99). London: RoutledgeCurzon.
Lyotard, J.-F. (1984). The postmodern condition. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Mason, M. (1997). Development and disorder: A history of the third world since 1945. Hanover and London: University Press of New England.
McClintock, A. (1995). Imperial leather: Race, gender and sexuality in the colonial conquest. New York: Routledge.
McWilliams, W. C., & Piotrowski, H. (2001). The world since 1945: A history of international relations. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner.
Messner, M. (2000). Politics of masculinities. Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press.
Mortimer, R. A. (1984). The third world coalition in international politics. Boulder and London: Westview.
Nandy, A. (1987). Traditions, tyranny and Utopias. Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Nandy, A. (1988). The intimate enemy: Loss and recovery of self under colonialism. Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Obadele, I. A. (1996). The new international law regime and United States foreign policy. baton route. LA: Malcolm Generation, Inc.
Patil, V. (2007). Negotiating decolonization in the United Nations: Politics of space, identity and international community. New York: Routledge.
Reus-Smit, C. (2001). Human rights and the social construction of sovereignty. Review of International Studies, 27, 519–538.
Robertson, C. L. (1997). International politics since world war II: A short history. Armonk, NY: M.E.Sharpe.
Salzinger, L. (2004). From gender as object to gender as verb: rethinking how global restructuring happens. Critical Sociology, 30, 43–62.
Singh, L. P. (1993). India and Afro-Asian independence: Liberation diplomacy in the United Nations. New Delhi: National Book Organization.
Sinha, M. (1995). Colonial masculinity: The ‘manly Englishman’ and the ‘effeminate Bengali’ in the late nineteenth century. New Delhi, IN: Raj Press.
Stoler, A. L. (1997). Making empire respectable: The politics of race and sexual morality in twentieth century colonial cultures. In A. McClintock, A. Mufgti, & E. Shohat (Eds.), Dangerous liasons: Gender, nation & postcolonial perspectives (pp. 344–373). Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Strang, D. (1990). From dependency to sovereignty: An event history analysis of decolonization 1870–1987. American Sociological Review, 55, 846–860).
Titscher, S., Meyer, M., Wodak, R., & Vetter, E. (2000). Two approaches to critical discourse analysis. In S. Titscher, M. Meyer, R. Wodak, & E. Vetter (Eds.), Methods of text and discourse analysis (pp. 144–170). London: Sage.
United Nations. (2003). United Nations documentation: Research guide. Department of public information (DPI), Dag Hammarskjöld Library (DHL).
Weis, L., Centrie, C., Valentin-Juarbe, J., & Fine, M. (2002). Puerto Rican men and the struggle for place in the United States: an exploration of cultural citizenship, gender, and violence. Men and Masculinities, 4, 286–302.
West, C. (1993). Race matters. Boston: Beacon.
Winant, H. (2001). The world is a ghetto: Race and democracy since world war II. New York: Basic Books.
Ziring, L., Riggs, R. E., & Plan, J. C. (1999). The United Nations: International organization and world politics: Wadsworth.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Patil, V. Contending masculinities: the gendered (re) negotiation of colonial hierarchy in the United Nations debates on decolonization. Theor Soc 38, 195–215 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-008-9076-y
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-008-9076-y