Sibyl: The women's College Academic Journal by Tiffany Donnelly

SIBYL

THE WOMENâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S COLLEGE ACADEMIC JOURNAL / Volume 2 / 2013 /

Cover Image: James Peter Quinn Australia (1869-1951) Louisa Macdonald c.1923 oil on canvas

Editorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s note: Quinnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s portrait of Louisa Macdonald was commissioned in 1919 and has hung in the College Commemorative Hall (dining hall) since 1924. Following a fire at the College in 1989 restoration work was carried out on the painting for smoke damage, along with some minor repairs. In 2013 the portrait again displayed signs of stress, grime and damage. As a result, conservation work was undertaken with the generous philanthropic support of alumnae and benefactors. The cover image is of the newly restored portrait.

EDITORIAL BOARD Dr Amanda Bell Dr Tiffany Donnelly Ms Alice Grandi Dr Rebecca Griffin Ms Rosemary Hancock Dr Tamson Pietsch Mr Chris Rudge Dr Philippa Ryan

ERRATUM The title spelling of this academic journal has been altered in this edition to reflect the archaic spelling of the eponymous Sibyl, prophetess of the ancient world, who appears in the 1913 play A Mask reprinted in this edition.

CONTACT DETAILS The Women’s College The University of Sydney NSW 2006 Australia Phone: +61 2 9517 5000 Web: www.thewomenscollege.com.au Published by: The Women’s College within the University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia 2013

Vol 2, 2013 | The Women’s College Academic Journal | SIBYL |

ii |

SIBYL | The Womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s College Academic Journal | Vol 2, 2013

CONTENTS Introduction TAMSON PIETSCH

vii

A Mask: Centenary Introduction TIFFANY DONNELLY

A Mask (1913 facsimilie edition) JOHN LE GAY BRERETON AND CHRISTOPHER BRENNAN

STUDENT ARTICLES Painting as material culture in the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic: perspectives and limitations LINDSAY SCOTT

Geographical Location and Layout: Spatial Manifestations of Classism and Feminism in Sarah Scott’s Millenium Hall ELEANOR BARZ

Les Femmes Françaises EMMA CAMPBELL

Recommendations for recruit training in the NSW Police Force ELISABETH TONDL

The role of God in American foreign policy: Examining twenty-first century Republican and Democratic support for evangelical Christian aid organisations KATHERINE MILLER

Writing Women’s History NICOLE BURGER

Immigrants and Social Class: An Australian Perspective ZAINA RAYAN AHMED

Vol 2, 2013 | The Women’s College Academic Journal | SIBYL |

vi |

SIBYL | The Womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s College Academic Journal | Vol 2, 2013

Introduction Welcome to the second edition of Sibyl, a journal that showcases the academic achievements of the undergraduates of The Women’s College. Students’ activities in the sporting and cultural realms are very prominent at College, but because their studies occur largely in the lecture theatres and laboratories of the central university, their academic achievements are less visible. Sibyl brings to light the scholarly successes of our students and helps us understand a little more about the myriad intellectual activities that they pursue. Sibyl is published thanks to the support of the College Council and the Principal Dr Amanda Bell. Its editorial board is comprised of the Principal, the Vice Principal, Dr Tiffany Donnelly, the Senior Teaching Fellow, Dr Tamson Pietsch, and the teaching fellows, Mr Chris Rudge, Ms Alice Grandi, Dr Philippa Ryan, Dr Rebecca Griffin, and Ms Rosemary Hancock. Special editorial advice for this edition was sought from Dr Barbara Garlick and Ms Gemma Easter. The journal takes its name (and its cover image) from the central character of A Mask, a play commissioned exactly a century ago by Principal Louisa Macdonald to mark the college’s 21st anniversary, in 1913. The play is part of Sydney’s literary history, written for the occasion by poets John Le Gay Brereton (1871 – 1933), then a librarian at the university, and Christopher Brennan (1870 – 1932), at the time a lecturer in modern languages. Both men were noted supporters of women’s education, and popular teachers. The play – or more properly, masque, features famous women from history assembling before the Sibyl, the prophetess of the ancient world, celebrating the achievements of women, and prophesying their future glory. Reprinted in this edition of Sibyl in celebration of its centenary year, with a new introduction by Dr Tiffany Donnelly, the message of A Mask remains in many ways as prescient now as it did one hundred years ago. Read today, the play’s vision of female freedom stands as a celebration of female agency and a call to action. All students in the College were invited to enter High Distinction

Vol 2, 2013 | The Women’s College Academic Journal | SIBYL |

vii

essays from their university courses to be considered for the journal, provided they were no more than 3000 words in length. A great number of essays met the criteria for inclusion, and choosing the final seven for publication was a difficult exercise. Those selected here therefore serve merely as an indication of the range and diversity of the work undertaken by students at the College. Drawn from the fields of Art History, English, Gender Studies, Psychology, French, and Government, they were each composed as assignments for undergraduate units, and reflect both the disciplinary conventions and the usual constraints of undergraduate scholarship. We have kept all editorial amendments to a strict minimum, and retained the original referencing styles (which therefore differ between essays). We are extremely proud of the academic successes of our students, and of the small sample represented here. We hope that Sibyl joins other Womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s College traditions as the College grows into its second century.

TAMSON PIETSCH Senior Teaching Fellow Editor-in-Chief

viii |

SIBYL | The Womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s College Academic Journal | Vol 2, 2013

A Mask: Centenary Introduction DR TIFFANY DONNELLY Vice Principal A century ago, on a cold mid-winter’s evening in August 1913, a thousand people gathered on the front lawn of Women’s College to witness a special performance composed in celebration of the College’s twenty-first birthday. The Sydney Morning Herald declared the piece “a novel and exceedingly clever entertainment … something new for Sydney” (24 Aug 1913: 22). A Mask, as the performance was titled, had been commissioned by the College’s foundation Principal, Miss Louisa Macdonald, who was at the time three-quarters of the way through her 26-year term. The founding of the College had had its challenges and its early years were fraught with financial worry. Against this backdrop Louisa felt it reasonable to refer to her Mask as “a festival of thanksgiving for the perils of youth safely past” (3). Just as an individual gains full citizenship at twenty one, the College’s coming of age, she felt, gave it “the right to rank as a full grown and established institution” (3). Its future finally seemed assured. A Mask is an important part of Sydney’s literary heritage, written for the occasion by poets John Le Gay Brereton (1871 – 1933), then a librarian at Sydney University, and Christopher Brennan (1870 – 1932), at the time a lecturer in modern languages. By the middle of the 1890s Louisa was active in a number of academic, artistic and literary circles in Sydney, and it is through these circles that she met the English poet Brereton (Beaumont and Hole: 138). Both Brereton and Brennan were supporters of women’s education, and popular teachers. The play reflects Brereton’s work as an Elizabethan scholar, and Brennan’s lifelong interest in classicism, philosophy and spirituality. To celebrate its centenary a facsimile edition follows in this edition of Sibyl, the eponymous title of which is of course derived from the Mask’s chief protagonist. The format of the play was fairly simple: an allegorical masque “in the Elizabethan fashion” which featured a passing pageant of historical women, some virtuous, some notorious, interposed with musical interludes and the mystical movements of “dancing maidens” (3). The key character in the piece was the Sibyl, prophetess of the ancient world, “the wise woman to whom present, past and future are alike unveiled” (3). As the play begins, the Sibyl stands in the pillared porch of a small temple, flooded with light, her handmaid Rumour at her side. After introducing Vol 2, 2013 | The Women’s College Academic Journal | SIBYL |

herself (“I am that Sibyl whom the Romans claim as mother of the world and of their fame” [7]) and stating her purpose (“I come to hint the tale of woman” [7]), Rumour steps forward to herald the entrance of each of the characters in the pageant, who process beneath the temple in roughly chronological order, from legendary women of ancient Greece to famous contemporary women. The “masqueraders”- all of them played by Women’s College students – do not speak, but the Sibyl comments tellingly on the fortune and fate of each. To a modern ear, the dialogue is deliciously light and humorous – at times even racy: a cheeky poetic banter which, without diminishing its import, lent its feminist message a palpably provocative edge. The choice of women featured in the Mask was coded and deliberate: in her “Foreword to the Audience” Louisa stated that the selection of historical and fictional figures “was not made at haphazard” (4). There are exquisite women such as the legendary Helen, “whose beauty touched the peaks of Troy with fire” (8), and Lord Nelson’s mistress Lady Hamilton, whose “radiant eyes” were immortalised in portraits by George Romney (19). There are patient and obedient wives such as Penelope, wife of Odysseus, and Boccaccio’s peasant maid Griselda, who “gave, when she was wed, her very soul to sauce her maidenhead” (12). There are pious women and martyred women, including the famed Joan of Arc, “saint by the sword and martyr by the flame” (18), women with political influence and patriotism, and ardent and pleasure loving women such as Queen Isabeau of France (“Desire and mirth were in her train, her blood was fire in every vein” [13]). Then there are the murderesses; women who changed the course of history and legend through the blood on their hands and their thirst for power: Medea, Lucretia, and Aggripina. Women artists were represented by the Italian ballet dancer Marie Taglioni and the painter and Royal Academician Angelica Kauffman, “a lady, free from vice; her morals, manners, pictures were all nice” (19). As the procession moves up to the approach of the twentieth century, professional women begin to make their appearance, first Florence Nightingale and finally “the lady of the electrons,” Marie Curie (20). The Sydney Morning Herald identified the message of A Mask quite plainly, stating: “it is the story of the emancipation of woman” (24 Aug 1913: 22). In presenting a rough timeline of women’s achievements, both in the real world and the literary, a common theme is perceptible: that smart women will invariably capitalise on what power they have at their disposal within their spheres of influence. These spheres have been curbed throughout history by prejudice and convention such that women’s influence has often been channelled into passive domesticity, unquestioning piety, vanity and vice. It is no accident that the feminine procession in A Mask culminates with Madame Curie – “professeur en Sorbonne” – a woman who “stands man’s peer” in the realm of science (20). The close of the pageant carries the moral that widening women’s spheres – chiefly through education – has the potential to be socially transformative.

Louisa’s hand in the thematic underpinnings of the play is easily perceptible: her letters and writings reveal her strong belief that “Women’s Higher Sphere” should extend beyond the domestic and into the public realm (Beaumont and Hole: 100). She held the additional personal belief that remaining single gave educated women extraordinary autonomy and protected them from a life of drudgery (123), and she viewed women’s access to employment as “a means of self-realisation and fulfilment” which, along with the right to vote, would help bring about a more equitable and just society (106). Louisa stated her conviction in the value of education to women in her Foreword to the Mask: It is as well for the world at large as for the individual women that in each and every woman all her faculties – and chiefly reason and will – should be trained as carefully as may be, instead of directing all the training to the emotions and the practical arts, as has too often been the case – where there has been any training at all. (4) As the first Principal of the first university residential college for women in Australia, who better to articulate this aspiration? After the pageant ends the Mask concludes with an Epilogue (spoken by the Sibyl) and a Song. Having completed her survey of the triumphs and tragedies of women of the past, the Sibyl uses her powers of foresight to look to the future. Her words would have been carried forcibly by the physical location of the performance on the College’s front lawn, its stately Main Building plainly visible. She states: see where future womanhood, here and now, in studious halls, harks, beyond the ermine hood, to the greater life that calls. (21) The final Song of the Mask acknowledges the labour ahead for women in shaking off their encumbrances to embrace this “greater life”, and in some ways prophetically foreshadows the feminist struggles of the twentieth century and beyond: Our ways are cumber’d by ruined walls And stone where the moss yet clings, But far above in the sky we love The lark of our freedom sings. And till all that rubble be cleared away,

XIII xi

O hearts that no dream appals, There are stern demands on our hearts and hands But the lark of our freedom calls. (22) Read today, Louisa’s Mask is a paean to female agency, and a call to action; an early twentieth-century equivalent of breaking through the glass ceiling. It is also a fitting prelude to this collection of outstanding student essays, proving unequivocally that the College’s “studious halls” continue to push the boundaries of women’s spheres.

WORKS CITED Beaumont, Jeanette and W. Vere Hole. Letters from Louisa. Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1996. “A Mask.” Sydney Morning Herald 23 August 1913: 22.

Painting as material culture in the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic: perspectives and limitations LINDSAY SCOTT Arts Law 5th year In a number of recent and forthcoming publications, critics remark on the ‘new and deep’ attention accorded to materiality in disciplines across the humanities and social sciences.1 This flourishing scholarly interest in the material dimensions of the world marks a shift in focus from the anthropocentric linguistic and cultural turn of the 1980s. Moving beyond the structuralist and poststructuralist privileging of language as the primary socially constitutive cultural system, scholars are reassessing objects as ‘physical embodiments’ of knowledge and power that signify and enact social relations.2 Material culture studies is essentially concerned with how objects are inscribed with and act in social relations. This burgeoning field engages the theoretical perspectives and material practices of such diverse disciplines as anthropology, sociology, psychology, archaeology and history.3 According to critics like Yonan, the new ‘transdiscipline’ of material culture studies has utility precisely because it ‘resists simple disciplinary classification’, encompassing a wide selection of interpretative modes through which the scholar might analyse an object.4 His argument situates material culture studies within the contemporary intellectual, cultural and geopolitical 1

2 3 4

Bard Graduate Center: Decorative Arts, Design History, Material Culture: Research Institute, ‘Culture Histories of the Material World’, created 2010, Bard Graduate Center: Decorative Arts, Design History, Material Culture, <http://www.bgc.bard.edu/research/publications/chmw.html>, viewed 1 June 2012; see, e.g., Dan Hicks and Mary C. Beaudry, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Material Culture Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010); Peter N. Miller, ed., Cultural Histories of the Material World (New Haven: Yale University Press for the Bard Graduate Center, forthcoming 2012). Idem.

Michael Yonan, ‘Toward a Fusion of Art History and Material Culture Studies’, West 86th, 18, no. 2 (FallWinter 2011), p. 233. Idem.

Vol 2, 2013 | The Women’s College Academic Journal | SIBYL |

milieu, which is characterised by moves toward greater integration of diverse ideas, peoples and objects Daniel Miller and Christopher Tilley similarly conceive of material culture as an interdisciplinary, transhistorical and transcultural field of study.5 Yet even in this putative era of postdisciplinarity, there is truth in Ruth B Phillip’s observation that ‘individual projects continue to be distinguished by the disciplinary formations of those who pursue them’.6 Scholars inquiring into objects of material culture typically engage the points of departure and methodologies of their favoured discipline, although their analyses might draw selectively on the theoretical perspectives and material practices of other disciplines.7 In light of these general remarks, the art historian is impelled to ask two preliminary questions. First, how might art historians apply material culture approaches to their inquiries into artworks? Second, what is the value of integrating the perspectives and practices of material culture studies into the discipline of art history? (Alternatively, one might ask whether art history should be assimilated into the broader project of material culture studies.) This essay will respond to these questions by applying material culture approaches to the analysis of a seventeenth-century Dutch painting, David Bailly’s Vanity Still Life with a Portrait of a Young Painter (hereafter referred to as Still Life) (see Appendix 1). The three approaches considered in this essay by no means cover the field of material culture studies, but they do open up the most interesting and fruitful avenues of inquiry for the art historian. After a theoretical discussion of these approaches, their explanatory power will be tested through their application to Bailly’s artwork. The essay will conclude with a discussion of the interplay of visuality and materiality in art historical inquiry.

5 6 7

2 |

Daniel Miller and Christopher Tilley, cited in Ruth B. Phillips, ‘The Value of Disciplinary Difference: Reflections on Art History and Anthropology at the Beginning of the Twenty-First Century’ in Mariët Westermann, ed., Anthropologies of Art (Williamstown, Massachusetts: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, c2005), p. 245. Ibid., p. 246.

Compare, e.g., Alfred Gell, Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory (Oxford: Clarendon, 1998) with Hans Belting, ‘Toward an Anthropology of the Image’ in Mariët Westermann, ed., Anthropologies of Art (Williamstown, Massachusetts: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, c2005).

SIBYL | The Women’s College Academic Journal | Vol 2, 2013

Art as material culture: some material culture approaches to art historical inquiry While scholars have long produced sociological interpretations of art, it is only in recent years that the objects depicted in artworks have been analysed as embodiments of social and economic relations.8 This is an anthropocentric approach in that the art historian is concerned with the production and use of objects by human subjects. Art historians engaging in these analyses tend to take the painted object as a point of departure through which to explore wider questions about material and commodity culture. In this vein, Byron Ellsworthy Hamann’s ‘Interventions: The Mirrors of Las Meninas: Cochineal, Silver, and Clay’ (2010) examines three objects in Velazquez’s canonical work that reveal the transatlantic connections linking labourers in the New World to Spanish courtiers.9 Hamann does not posit any new interpretation of Las Meninas, but rather focuses his analysis on the complex associations of the painted objects for seventeenth-century viewers. The second approach might be described as an ‘anthropological theory of art’.10 In Art and Agency (1997), Alfred Gell proposes that art objects have to be considered as ‘persons’ with social agency. Drawing extensively on actor-network theory, Gell argues that the art object is an index that stands in a variety of relations to the artist, the prototype it represents and the recipients who it affects.11 The index is not merely a product of the agency of human subjects, but rather is a distributed extension of an agent.12 Hans Belting’s theory of the anthropology of the image is the third approach that will be considered in this essay. Belting posits a triangular interrelation between image, human body and medium. He argues that images ‘testify to the absence of what they make present’.13 The mind generates images that interact with physical images, such that mental and physical images are inscribed in one another. Belting quotes Bernard Stiegler: ‘there have never existed physical images without the participation of mental images, since

9 10 11

12 13

See, e.g., J. Michael Montias, ‘Cost and Value in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Art’, Art History, 10, no. 4 (1987), pp. 455-66; J. Michael Montias, ‘Socio-Economic Aspects of Netherlandish Art from the Fifteenth to the Seventeenth Century: A Survey’, Art Bulletin, 72 (1990), pp. 358-73; North, Art and Commerce in the Dutch Golden Age. Byron Ellsworthy Hamann, ‘Interventions: The Mirrors of Las Meninas: Cochineal, Silver, and Clay’, Art Bulletin, 92, no. 1/2 (March-June 2010), pp. 6-35. Alfred Gell, Art and Agency, p. 7. Ibid., pp. 28-50. Ibid., pp. 20-1.

Hans Belting, ‘Toward an Anthropology of the Image’, p. 55.

Vol 2, 2013 | The Women’s College Academic Journal | SIBYL |

an image by definition is one that is seen.… Reciprocally mental images also rely on objective images in the sense that they are the retour or the rémanence of the latter’.14 Images use media to become visible and transmit their message to the viewer. The viewer’s experience of her body as a ‘living medium’ gives her the capacity to distinguish the inherent image from its fabricated medium, which she recognises is neither a body nor a mere object.15 The medium thus makes visible the image’s reference to something absent.16 Acknowledging that image and medium are ‘inseparable in the result’, Belting maintains that the distinction between them is dependent on the viewer’s attention to one or the other.17 While viewers tend to look for the image and disregard the medium, his theory demands that the art historian recognise the significance of the medium without reducing the image to its material embodiment.

Towards an ‘anthropology of pictures’: material culture approaches to seventeenth-century Dutch painting18 In their close attention to the material aspects of the world, seventeenth-century Dutch paintings are fertile ground on which to test the explanatory power of material culture approaches. Bailly’s mid-century painting Still Life draws on the pictorial conventions of more than one genre. In Still Life, Bailly depicts portraits alongside other objects typically included in still life works. Still Life is thus an exemplary work through which to evaluate the applicability of material culture approaches to a range of Dutch pictures. While previous scholarly interpretations have explored the personal, cultural or symbolic meaning of the objects depicted in Bailly’s Still Life, the art historian might also consider how these objects embody social and economic relations. The profusion of objects that cover the table and the wall provide abundant material for the art historian seeking to situate the work within the economic context of the seventeenthcentury Dutch Republic and its colonial empire. It is reasonable to assume that many of the raw materials used to create the depicted objects were brought to the Republic from its overseas colonies as far afield as modern day South Africa, Indonesia, the

14 Bernard Stiegler, quoted in Belting, ‘Toward an Anthropology of the Image’, p. 51. 15 16 17 18

4 |

Hans Belting, ‘Image, Medium, Body: A New Approach to Iconology’, Critical Inquiry, 31, no. 2 (Winter 2005), pp. 305-6. Belting, ‘Toward an Anthropology of the Image’, p. 55. Ibid., p. 53.

Mariët Westermann, ‘After Iconography and Iconoclasm: Current Research in Netherlandish Art, 1566-1700’, The Art Bulletin, 84, no. 2 (June 2002), p. 359.

SIBYL | The Women’s College Academic Journal | Vol 2, 2013

Caribbean and Brazil.19 The painting was completed one year before the outbreak of hostilities with the English, which over the course of twenty years eroded Dutch maritime hegemony.20 Still Life might thus provide some indication of the range of goods available in the Republic at the height of its economic and seafaring power. Following Hamann’s study of Las Meninas, the art historian might take the painted objects as a point of departure through which to elucidate the social relations that underpinned the colonial economic system.21 Drawing on textual and pictorial sources, it might be possible to identify the acts and actors involved in the production of the depicted objects. To take one example, the art historian might be able to trace the origins of the silver used in the pocket watch, trinket box and figurine. She might study the indigenous miners who extracted the silver ore, conjecturing about the conditions of their labour and the nature of their interactions with Dutch colonists. In this postcolonial reading, the painted objects might be regarded as portraits of their colonised makers, which take their place alongside the more conspicuous representations of their Western masters.22 The art historian might also explore the social significance of the painted objects in Still Life. Following Bedaux’s ideas about the social symbolism of material objects, it would be fruitful to analyse the meanings seventeenth-century Dutch people attached to the objects depicted in the painting, goods which contemporary viewers might have owned, used or encountered in their everyday lives.23 This analysis might draw on broader studies of the commodity market and collecting culture in the Dutch Republic.24 The art historian interested in producing a postcolonial reading of Still Life might focus on whether contemporary viewers would have been aware of the foreign connections of the objects depicted in the painting.25 Such analyses of the social significance of painted objects require the art historian to reconstruct seventeenth-century structures of knowledge and experience, a notoriously difficult and problematic exercise.

19 Bamber Gascoigne, ‘History of the Netherlands’, created 2001, History World, <http://www.history world.net/ wrldhis/PlainTextHistories.asp?groupid=3102&HistoryID=ac90&gtrack=pthc>, viewed 1 June 2012. 20

Idem

21 23 24 25

Hamann, ‘Interventions: The Mirrors of Las Meninas: Cochineal, Silver, and Clay’, pp. 6-35. Jan Baptist Bedaux, cited in Hamann, ‘Interventions: The Mirrors of Las Meninas: Cochineal, Silver, and Clay’, pp. 6-35. See, e.g., Eric Jan Sluijter, ‘“All Striving to Adorn their Houses with Costly Peeces”: Two Case Studies of Paintings in Wealthy Interiors’ in Art and Home: Dutch Interiors in the Age of Rembrandt, exh. cat., Newark Museum and Denver Art Museum, Denver, 2001, pp. 103-27. Hamann, ‘Interventions: The Mirrors of Las Meninas: Cochineal, Silver, and Clay’, pp. 6-35.

Vol 2, 2013 | The Women’s College Academic Journal | SIBYL |

In analysing the significance of the strands of pearls, the art historian would need to locate sources that point to the social meaning of pearl jewellery in seventeenthcentury Dutch culture. One might assume that a strand of pearls would signify the wealth and taste of their owner, but it is possible that viewers would not have attached such a meaning to the pearls depicted in the painting, which is ostensibly a vanitas image. It is even more difficult to determine whether owners of pearl jewellery and contemporary viewers of Still Life would have known of the geographic origins of the pearls and attached value to their connections with far-flung people and lands. An analysis of the social significance of the pearls and other depicted objects might enhance our understanding of how seventeenth-century viewers interpreted the work, but the art historian must be cognisant that the meaning of objects might be transformed when they are set down as paint on a canvas. Turning to Gell’s theory of the social agency of the art object, the art historian might explore how Still Life acts as a medium through which its artist manifested and realised his intentions.26 The analysis of the agency of this artwork is intimately connected to its representations of the artist and the process of painting. It is through these representations that Bailly inscribes his agency as a human subject into the works. In Art and Agency, Gell conceives of an artist’s oeuvre as an ‘objective trace of his agency’ that ‘concretely instantiate[s]’ a series of moments in his subjectivity, or inner durée. Each artwork is a place where the artist’s agency stops and assumes visible form.27 Problematically, however, Gell does not develop his idea that a work in itself may represent ‘a process, [or] a movement of durée’, nor does he posit a theory of representation that might explain how art objects act as distributed extensions of their makers.28 While an uninitiated viewer of Still Life might assume that Bailly represents himself as the seated youth, the artist is in fact the older man depicted in the portrait on the table.29 Eschewing the pictorial convention of the self-portrait of the artist at his easel, Bailly’s representation of himself in the form of a portrait might suggest that he intended the work as a ‘personal memorial and legacy’.30 Many of the objects depicted in the painting indeed have associations with Bailly’s personal and professional life.31 Applying Gell’s model of the artist’s oeuvre, the art historian 26 Gell, Art and Agency, p. 21. 27 28 29 30 31

6 |

Gell, Art and Agency, p. 250.

Ibid., p. 244; Howard Morphy, ‘Art as a Mode of Action: Some Problems with Gell’s Art and Agency’, Journal of Material Culture, 14, no. 1 (March 2009), pp. 10-14. Svetlana Alpers, The Art of Describing: Dutch Art in the Seventeenth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), p. 106. Idem Idem

SIBYL | The Women’s College Academic Journal | Vol 2, 2013

might interpret the work as an objective trace of Bailly’s agency at a moment when he was contemplating his mortality. Yet Still Life manifests its artist’s agency not merely through the form of the artwork, but also in the representations included within it. Bailly paints himself into Still Life in the self-portrait and objects on the table, making visible the connection between himself as maker and the work as a medium that manifests his artistic and personal intentions. Bailly’s agency is also made visible in the painting’s references to the artistic process. While Michael Fried considers the self-portrait ‘a clear-cut instance of the use of right-angle mirror representation’, the art historian might also detect the use of the right angle dispositif in the pose of the seated figure.32 Assuming Bailly modelled the youth on his own reflection, the figure’s right hand would correspond to the hand supporting the palette, while the hand wielding the paintbrush would be translated as the seated youth’s left hand. This hand rests on the portrait of the artist, visually associating the act of painting with the man depicted in the portrait. This interpretation of Still Life is difficult to verify, but it provides a compelling account of how the seated figure and the self-portrait might embody the process of their painting. Still Life craftily represents the duration of the artistic process. Gell observes that Cezanne’s landscapes of Mont Sainte-Victoire depict the artist’s interaction with it over time as he moves about it and absorbs its varied aspects.33 The layered design of Still Life similarly expresses the movement of durée. According to Alpers, X-ray analysis reveals that Bailly fully executed objects before laying other forms over them.34 The ‘layer-cake’ of objects does not merely ‘mimic the manner of [the painting’s] execution’, but also manifests the artist’s agency at a series of moments in its making.35 Still Life might thus be interpreted as a ‘map’ of the time taken in the process of its painting.36 The art historian can thus convincingly argue that Still Life embodies its artist’s ‘being as agent’. 37 Bailly’s agency is inscribed into these works through his selfrepresentations and references to the artistic process through which he constructed the painted image. It is nonetheless difficult to elucidate how these works might have acted as distributed extensions of their makers. In arguing that the art object acts

32 Michael Fried, The Moment of Caravaggio (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, c2010), pp. 31-2. 33

Gell, Art and Agency, p. 244.

Gell, Art and Agency, p. 249; Alpers, The Art of Describing, p. 105.

34 36 37

Alpers, The Art of Describing, pp. 104-5. Gell, Art and Agency, p. 249. Ibid., p. 250.

Vol 2, 2013 | The Women’s College Academic Journal | SIBYL |

as the medium through which the agent manifests and realises his intentions, Gell implies a direct relation between the artist as agent and the artwork as an indexical sign.38 Yet he does not posit a theory of representation that might explain how the artwork signifies meaning to its viewers.39 An analysis of the social agency of Still Life would require the art historian to speculate on how Dutch people might have interacted with and responded to the works. While she might draw on general studies of seventeenth-century visual culture, such studies cannot be applied straightforwardly in the analysis of this work.40 The art historian must account for the particularities of Still Life, explaining how its aesthetic and semantic qualities might have structured a specific viewing experience.41 It is thus extremely difficult for the art historian to elucidate how the work might have acted in the social world of the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic. The final approach that will be considered in this essay is Belting’s theory of the anthropology of the image. The art historian might analyse the interrelation between image, human body and medium in Still Life. Bailly constructs the work as a personal memorial by representing himself in the portrait that is supported by the seated youth. The portrait testifies to Bailly’s corporal absence and ‘admits and… intentionally stages’ the finality of this absence, which is his death.42 Yet the embodiment of his image in the artificial medium of the painted canvas makes Bailly present and visible ‘in the ranks of the living’.43 Still Life can thus be compared to funeral images that depict a portrait of the dead person alongside their living relatives.44 The living youth responds to the iconic presence of Bailly as he takes up the maulstick to perpetuate his artistic legacy.45 Paradoxically, however, the apposition of the living body and the artificial body of Bailly’s image calls attention to the mediality of the youth. He is ‘realer… than the portraits’, but like Bailly is an image embodied in paint on a canvas.46 This is particularly manifest to the contemporary viewer of Still Life who knows that the image of the youth occupies the place deserted by its long-dead model. 38 Morphy, ‘Art as a Mode of Action’, p. 9. 39 40

41 42 43 44 45 46

8 |

Ibid., p. 10.

See Michael Baxandall’s concept of the period eye as developed in Michael Baxandall, Painting and Experience in Fifteenth Century Italy: A Primer in the Social History of Pictorial Style (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972) and Michael Baxandall, Patterns of Intention: On the Historical Explanation of Pictures (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985). See Morphy, ‘Art as a Mode of Action’, pp. 10-14.

Belting, ‘Toward an Anthropology of the Image’, p. 46.

Belting, ‘Image, Medium, Body: A New Approach to Iconology’, p. 307. See Belting, ‘Toward an Anthropology of the Image’, pp. 45-6. Ibid., p. 308.

Alpers, The Art of Describing, p. 104.

SIBYL | The Women’s College Academic Journal | Vol 2, 2013

‘Out of the cave, once and for all’? Visuality, materiality and the object(s) of art historical inquiry47 The preceding discussion has indicated how the art historian might analyse artworks as objects of material culture that signify and enact social relations. In applying the approaches considered in this essay, the art historian is required to look at familiar works in a different way. She must move beyond the pictorial illusion of the image to engage with the materiality of the artwork and the objects depicted within it. The three material culture approaches considered in this essay thus provide new and fascinating accounts of seventeenth-century Dutch paintings. Yet the art historian must be cognisant of the limitations in the explanatory power and applicability of these approaches. In calling for the fusion of art history and material culture studies, Yonan argues that art historical scholarship should shift away from its Platonic focus on images toward an Aristotelian model that approaches art as a ‘structured entity’ composed of matter and form.48 There is indeed a strong case to be made that art historians should move out of the cave of their darkened lecture theatres and accord greater attention to how the material aspects of artworks operate in tandem with visual elements.49 While the three approaches considered in this essay have their limitations, they nonetheless stimulate the art historian to think about and account for the materiality of artworks and the objects depicted within them. Without discounting the value of material culture approaches to art historical inquiry, one could make the reactionary claim that art historians should continue to hierarchise the visual elements of art over its material aspects. Artists and viewers of Western artworks situate meaning primarily in the image, although this meaning may be inflected by the image’s material support. Applying the approaches considered in this essay, the art historian’s analysis is always rooted in the painted image. The status of the artwork as an object of material culture is secondary. Yonan is thus overly simplistic in his contention that art history ‘has tricked itself into believing that it is a discipline of images, when really it has always been a discipline of objects’. 50 Art history cannot be integrated into the broader project of material culture studies because it is not essentially concerned with the artwork as material culture. The object of art history is rather to elucidate the vision that has been materialised in paint on a canvas.

47 Yonan, ‘Toward a Fusion of Art History and Material Culture Studies’, p. 244. 48

Ibid., pp. 245-6.

Yonan, ‘Toward a Fusion of Art History and Material Culture Studies’, p. 240.

Ibid., p. 239-40.

Vol 2, 2013 | The Women’s College Academic Journal | SIBYL |

BIBLIOGRAPHY Alpers, Svetlana, The Art of Describing: Dutch Art in the Seventeenth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983). Alpers, Svetlana, ‘Picturing Dutch Culture’ in Wayne E. Franits, ed., Looking at Seventeenth-Century Dutch Art: Realism Reconsidered (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, c1997), pp. 57-67. Bard Graduate Center: Decorative Arts, Design History, Material Culture: Research Institute, ‘Culture Histories of the Material World’, created 2010, Bard Graduate Center: Decorative Arts, Design History, Material Culture, <http://www.bgc.bard.edu/research/publications/chmw.html>, viewed 1 June 2012. Belting, Hans, ‘Image, Medium, Body: A New Approach to Iconology’, Critical Inquiry, 31, no. 2 (Winter 2005), pp. 302-19. Belting, Hans, ‘Toward an Anthropology of the Image’ in Mariët Westermann, ed., Anthropologies of Art (Williamstown, Massachusetts: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, c2005), pp. 41-58. Brusati, Celeste, ‘Stilled Lives: Self-Portraiture and Self-Reflection in Seventeenth-Century Netherlandish StillLife Painting’, Simiolus: Netherlands Quarterly for the History of Art, 20, no. 2/3 (1990-1991), pp. 168-82. Brusati, Celeste, ‘Natural Artifice and Material Values in Dutch Still Life’ in Wayne E. Franits, ed., Looking at Seventeenth-Century Dutch Art: Realism Reconsidered (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, c1997), pp. 144-57. De Jongh, Eddy, ‘Realism and Seeming Realism in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Painting’ in Wayne E. Franits, ed., Looking at Seventeenth-Century Dutch Art: Realism Reconsidered (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, c1997), pp. 21-56. Filipczak, Zirka Z., ‘Vermeer, Elusiveness, and Visual Theory’, Simiolus: Netherlands Quarterly for the History of Art, 32, no. 4 (2006), pp. 259-72. Foucault, Michel, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences, ed. R.D. Laing (New York: Pantheon Books, 1970). Franits, Wayne E., ‘Introduction’ in Wayne E. Franits, ed., Looking at Seventeenth-Century Dutch Art: Realism Reconsidered (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, c1997), pp. 1-7. Fried, Michael, The Moment of Caravaggio (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, c2010). Gascoigne, Bamber, ‘History of the Netherlands’, created 2001, History World, <http://www.historyworld.net/ wrldhis/PlainTextHistories.asp?groupid=3102&HistoryID=ac90&gtrack=pthc>, viewed 1 June 2012. Gell, Alfred, Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory (Oxford: Clarendon, 1998). Hamann, Byron Ellsworthy, ‘Interventions: The Mirrors of Las Meninas: Cochineal, Silver, and Clay’, Art Bulletin, 92, no. 1/2 (March-June 2010), pp. 6-35. Hecht, Peter, ‘The Debate on Symbol and Meaning in Dutch Seventeenth-Century Art: An Appeal to Common Sense’, Simiolus: Netherlands Quarterly for the History of Art, 16, no. 2/3 (1986), pp. 173-87. Hicks, Dan and Mary C. Beaudry, ‘Introduction: Material Culture Studies: A Reactionary View’ in Dan Hicks and Mary C. Beaudry, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Material Culture Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 1-21, created 28 May 2010, Dan Hicks: Archaeological/Anthropological Writing on the Remains of the Modern, <http://weweremodern.blogspot.com.au/2010/05/material-culture-studies-introduction.html>, viewed 1 June 2012. Morphy, Howard, ‘Art as a Mode of Action: Some Problems with Gell’s Art and Agency’, Journal of Material Culture, 14, no. 1 (March 2009), pp. 5-27. Nash, J.M., The Age of Rembrandt and Vermeer: Dutch Painting in the Seventeenth Century (Oxford: Phaidon, 2nd ed., 1979).

10 |

SIBYL | The Women’s College Academic Journal | Vol 2, 2013

North, Michael, Art and Commerce in the Dutch Golden Age, trans. Catherine Hill (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1997). Phillips, Ruth B., ‘The Value of Disciplinary Difference: Reflections on Art History and Anthropology at the Beginning of the Twenty-First Century’ in Mariët Westermann, ed., Anthropologies of Art (Williamstown, Massachusetts: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, c2005), pp. 242-59. Ritzer, George, ed., Encyclopedia of Social Theory (Thousand Oaks, California: SAGE Publications, c2005). Sluijter, Eric J., ‘Didactic and Disguised Meanings?: Several Seventeenth-Century Texts on Painting and the Iconological Approach to Dutch Paintings of this Period’ in Wayne E. Franits, ed., Looking at Seventeenth-Century Dutch Art: Realism Reconsidered (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, c1997), pp. 78-87. Söderqvist, Thomas, ‘The “Material Turn”: Why Aren’t Museums and Collection Curators Collaborating More with Humanities Scholars?’, created 21 December 2011, Medical Museion: The Culture of Medicine: Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow, <http://www.museion.ku.dk/2011/12/the-material-turn-why-arent-museums-and-collectioncurators-collaborating-more-with-humanities-scholars/>, viewed 1 June 2012. Steadman, Philip, ‘Allegory, Realism and Vermeer’s Use of the Camera Obscura’, Early Science and Medicine, 10, no. 2 (Optics, Instruments and Painting, 1420-1720: Reflections on the Hockney-Falco Thesis (2005), pp. 287-313. Welu, James A., ‘Vermeer: His Cartographic Sources’, The Art Bulletin, 57, no. 4 (December 1975), pp. 529-47. Welu, James A., ‘The Map in Vermeer’s “Art of Painting”’, Imago Mundi, 30 (1978), pp. 2, 9-30. Westermann, Mariët, ‘After Iconography and Iconoclasm: Current Research in Netherlandish Art, 1566-1700’, The Art Bulletin, 84, no. 2 (June 2002), pp. 351-72. Westermann, Mariët, ‘Introduction: The Objects of Art History and Anthropology’ in Mariët Westermann, ed., Anthropologies of Art (Williamstown, Massachusetts: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, c2005), pp. viixxxi. Wiseman, Mary Bittner, ‘Vermeer and the Art of Silence’, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 64, no. 3 (Summer 2006), pp. 317-24. Woodward, Ian, Understanding Material Culture (Los Angeles; London: Sage Publications, c2007). Yonan, Michael, ‘Toward a Fusion of Art History and Material Culture Studies’, West 86th, 18, no. 2 (Fall-Winter 2011), pp. 232-48.

Vol 2, 2013 | The Women’s College Academic Journal | SIBYL |

Appendix 1 David Bailly, Vanity Still Life with a Portrait of a Young Painter (1651), oil on panel, 89.5 x 122 cm, Stedelijk Museum De Lakenhal, Leiden.

ÂŠ Museum De Lakenhal, Leiden, The Netherlands

12 |

SIBYL | The Womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s College Academic Journal | Vol 2, 2013

Geographical location and layout: Spatial manifestations of classism and feminism in Sarah Scott’s Millenium Hall ELEANOR BARZ Arts Media 2nd year In Millenium Hall, the relationship between spatial and social structures is represented in the following ways. First, the rural location of the Millenium Hall community suggests that, in Scott’s portrayal of 1800s England, geographical marginalisation is necessary in order to create a female utopia. Second, the physical layout of the community illustrates how the ladies seek to preserve the existing eighteenth-century social hierarchy, choosing to replace patriarchy with matriarchy rather than establish an egalitarian society. Finally, the landscape itself comes to represent the success of this matriarchal community. Scott demonstrates women’s superiority as leaders by juxtaposing their committed cultivation of nature against barren male-dominated landscapes. In this novel, spatial and social structures therefore interact to create a feminist but ultimately classist utopian society, which simultaneously challenges patriarchal oppression while perpetuating a class-based hierarchy. The ladies of Millenium Hall, who breathe financial and moral life into the community, take on a maternal role by offering destitute women and disabled people a safe environment free of exploitation and maltreatment. They cater to the needs of women who come from a wide range of backgrounds, from the impoverished elderly widows to “wretched”1 gentlewomen who have no means to support themselves. They employ women who would otherwise not be able to find work because of physical disabilities such as deafness2 and lameness3, and they also endeavour to educate

Sarah Scott, Millenium Hall (Ontario: Broadview Press, 2004), 115

Millenium Hall, 168

Millenium Hall 66

Vol 2, 2013 | The Women’s College Academic Journal | SIBYL |

young girls to be literate, virtuous and industrious. In this way, the ladies nurture the disadvantaged to create a body of independent women who do not need to rely on men or relatives in order to lead a stable and happy existence. Millenium Hall’s location in the country is crucial to its success as a female utopia. By placing themselves outside society, the ladies and their dependents intentionally marginalise themselves, marketing their community as an alternative to traditional female lifestyles. On page 111, the narrator’s cousin Mrs Maynard counters Mr Lamont’s suggestion that by secluding “themselves from the world in this solitary place”, they live in a “much rusticated” fashion and are “very deficient in bon ton.”4 She retorts that Lamont mistakes “a croud for society,” maintaining that there is more society in her community “than there is in what [he calls] the world.” Millenium Hall therefore functions as an alternative society rather than an alternative to society, as Lamont suggests. Setting themselves apart from mainstream society allows the women to obtain a level of autonomy that would not be possible in an urban environment. That the narrator and Lamont, his travelling companion, stumble across Millenium Hall without having heard of it before suggests that the house and its surrounds must be quite obscure. Since Mrs Maynard turns out to be a relation of the narrator’s; she allows him and Lamont to stay for several days. The men potentially have greater access to the community than would two male strangers, who perhaps would have been ushered out the door once the weather permitted them to leave. In any case, it seems unlikely that the ladies would often be bothered by unexpected visitors. By living in such a remote area, the women have full control over who enters their space and how long they stay, and can consequently regulate male presence. Their geographic remoteness means that men do not threaten to disrupt the femaledominated social structure. Just as the rural location of Millenium Hall allows the women to maintain their chosen social structure within the community, it also positively impacts on their social status outside their community. In the novel, the city and the countryside are associated with immorality and righteousness respectively. As Nicolle Jordan writes, Scott creates an “ethical geography by which vice festers in the city while virtue retires to the countryside.”5 Women who enjoy city life, such as Lady Sheerness, Lady Mary and Miss Mellman, are dismissed as “coquettish and extravagant.”6 That Lady Mary’s aunt likes her “to be distinguished by the fineness of her dress”7 4

Millenium Hall, 64

Millenium Hall, 174

Nicolle Jordan, “Gentlemen and Gentlewomen: The Landscape Ethos in Millenium Hall Eighteenth Century Fiction; Vol. 24.1, p.32 (2011) Millenium Hall, 174

14 |

SIBYL | The Women’s College Academic Journal | Vol 2, 2013

is presented by Mrs Maynard as being the source of the girl’s vanity and future misadventures with men. When the more virtuous Miss Selvyn moves to London, she finds herself preyed upon by the same men, including Lady Mary’s former suitor Lord Robert. She refuses to marry Lord Robert because “his treatment of Lady Mary Jones had disgusted her.”8 This creates the sense that the city is a dangerous place for a young woman, who may become tainted rather than more sophisticated as a result of the company she keeps. Conversely the countryside, and especially Millenium Hall, is the ideal place to seek refuge from the city and its immorality. The people who live there are less sophisticated, as evidenced by Mrs Morgan’s mother’s decision to move the family to the country so that Sir Charles might appear more worldly.9 However they are also unpolluted by vice. By locating Millenium Hall in the countryside, unmarried women can live together without raising suspicions about their morals. In fact, the young women who are educated by the ladies are highly sought after by farmers looking for “good sober wives”10, even if they lack financial wealth. This implies that growing up in such an environment renders them more desirable as wives, and that they are better able to find caring husbands who do not value them purely based on their fortunes. Their time spent in the virtuous countryside therefore positively affects their social status. While the ladies endeavour to support disadvantaged women, offering them money, skills, education and in some cases marital prospects, the society is in no way an egalitarian one. As the layout of the Millenium Hall community testifies, the matriarchy replicates the rigid class structure of eighteenth-century society. Millenium Hall itself is reserved for the ladies, all of whom come from upper class backgrounds. Only the “daughters of persons in office”, or the occasional girl “of the lower sort” who reveals “uncommon genius” can live in the house, where they are taught skills that will render them acceptable to society.11 In being so selective about which girls receive such an education, the ladies reinforce a class-based hierarchy. Lower class girls can still attend one of the schools funded by the ladies, but they do not receive the same privileges as their higher-born peers. The community is further geographically divided according to social demography when the ladies build a village for impoverished older women. These women live in their own self-contained community located on the other side of a wood, which surrounds Millenium Hall. The narrator stumbles across this neat row of cottages 8 9

Millenium Hall, 208 Millenium Hall, 84

10 Millenium Hall, 168 11 Millenium Hall, 160

Vol 2, 2013 | The Women’s College Academic Journal | SIBYL |

while exploring the vast gardens near the house, just as he discovers the house itself while exploring the countryside around it. The village, in which the women are housed together, can be read as a lower class version of Millenium Hall. Like the ladies, these women care for other people’s children, as well as for one another, benefitting immensely from the satisfaction of doing good. However they are only asked to care for children of the poor, whom they teach knitting, spinning and whatever else they can learn before they are sent to school. These children and older women, despite being financially supported by the ladies, are kept at arm’s length with a barrier of nature between them so as not to create any confusion about class identity. This effort to maintain class hierarchy can be explained by the eighteenth-century notion that for some, privilege is a birthright. For example, when Louisa Mancel is left orphaned in an inn after the death of her aunt, she is adopted by the landlord Mr Hintman, rather than the old man who manages the inn. Although she would prefer to stay with “the good old man, whose venerable aspect, and compassionate behaviour, had to some degree attached him to her,”12 the child is thrust into the hands of the landlord purely so that he can “breed her up in the genteel manner to which she seemed by birth entitled.” Despite the old man’s experience as a parent and the landlord’s “having no one fit to take care of a young person”, Mr Hintman is disastrously judged to be the more suitable guardian because he and Louisa are of the same social class. That Louisa could be raised by people who have a lower socioeconomic status is perceived as more tragic than the possibility that Mr Hintman could have irresponsible and even evil intentions. Similarly, the girls whom the ladies educate are assumed to have an intrinsic class that determines how they are cared for, and by whom. Another example of physical divisions in the community is the enclosure that the ladies build for people with birth defects, or “monsters-mongers.”13 That the narrator encounters the enclosure, or “pale”, before having any knowledge of the individuals who inhabit it means that his perception of these individuals is irreversibly fused with their physical location, and social category. Unlike the ladies, who marginalise themselves in order to start their own counter-society, the ‘monsters’ are tucked away so that society can forget they ever existed. Although they take part in communal activities such as religious worship, they do so in a fashion so cosseted that even fellow church-goers are barely aware of them. Transported to and from the church by coach, and stealthily led to the gallery via some covered stairs, their disabilities remain entirely hidden. In this way, they neither embarrass themselves nor confront the rest of society with visions of “the human form so disgraced.”14 12 Millenium Hall, 82

13 Millenium Hall, 73 14 Millenium Hall, 74

16 |

SIBYL | The Women’s College Academic Journal | Vol 2, 2013

Although the ‘monsters’ willingly participate in their marginalisation, preferring not to be “seen by numbers”,15 their shyness is partially forced upon them by the ladies. The narrator comments, “Even those poor wretches had their vanity,” describing how the ladies had to teach them not to be proud of their unusual appearances. Rather than attempt to help these people come to terms with their disfigurements and become actively engaged with the community, the women remind them that their bodies are “only a proof of their being so much farther from the standard human form.”16 Instead, they are encouraged to seclude themselves, living in quiet modesty out of the public eye. The physical boundaries of the enclosure, which marks their place in the social structure of Millenium Hall, blend easily with the natural surroundings. Located in a peaceful wood where “animals live so unmolested, that they seem to have forgot all fear”,17 the pale goes unnoticed by the narrator until he has almost reached it. Emerging from the wood, the walls of the pale are painted green and covered in a “hedge of yews, laurels, and other thick evergreens,”18 so that they are interwoven with nature. The effect is that, from the narrator’s description, the pale sounds more like the Garden of Eden than a place of oppression or social exclusion. The walls, though made by humans, appear natural. The ladies therefore use landscape to naturalise their socially-imposed boundaries. By placing physically disabled people in an isolated pale in the middle of a wood, the ladies also cause them to become more associated with animals than with humans. When he first sees the pale, Lamont guesses that it must contain a zoo and begs the ladies to allow him to see the animals. After a brief lecture on “the cruelty of tyrannical oppression”, Mrs Mancel eventually divulges that humans, rather than animals, live in the enclosure. She does not immediately clear up this initial confusion about what species lives in the pale, as she continues to use ambiguous language that could refer to either humans or animals. For example, by calling them “creatures”, “wretches” and “monster-mongers”, she emphasises their condition rather than their humanness. She therefore further places them in a category of not-human. Although the ladies insist that they do not wish to exhibit the “creatures”, they in fact do exactly this. By helping the narrator and Lamont gain permission to enter the enclosure, where the party watches them “passing backwards and forwards,” Mrs Mancel gives the visitors “a full view of them”19, reinforcing the connection between the pale and a zoo, putting the inhabitants in the category of ‘beast.’ 15 Millenium Hall, 75

16 Millenium Hall, 74 17 Millenium Hall, 69 18 Millenium Hall, 70 19 Millenium Hall, 74

Vol 2, 2013 | The Women’s College Academic Journal | SIBYL |

While the landscape functions as a tool which the ladies use to create greater distinction between the social classes, it also acts as a testament to their success as matriarchs. Each class of disadvantaged people who benefit from the ladies’ philanthropy seems to produce a garden as concrete evidence of their improvement. The narrator marvels at the attractiveness of the monsters’ living area, which is lined with shrubs and flowers.200 On his first morning at Millenium Hall, he takes delight in the “gayest flower bed” he has ever seen, which has been created by the young girls who are being educated there. The elderly woman who lives in the village behind the woods has a neat house and a small garden, and the school children also take pleasure in maintaining their small plots of earth. The large garden at Millenium Hall, which Lamont thinks must be the work of a famous designer, is in fact designed by the ladies themselves.21 This nurturing of the land, which the ladies appear to inspire in all the communities they support, is juxtaposed against male negligence throughout the novel. While the fields around Millenium Hall are lush and fertile, filled with streams and cascading ferns, the landscape around Mr Morgan’s house is barren and reeks of abandonment. The soil is “a stiff, white clay, wet and dirty” and the roads “very bad”, making travel more difficult. The only other extended description of a male-controlled landscape is of the miser’s house, which the ladies rescue from its state of disrepair. In this case, the house has been in the care of two men who represent the polar opposites of the philanthropic ladies. Both the miser, who would not allow even himself to benefit from his money, and his nephew, who spends his newly found fortune, fail to take care of the house or its surroundings. The ladies, however, manage to put their loyal, responsible school children to work mending furniture and fixing the garden. Here, they reclaim land that has been abused by men and use it to further their philanthropy, asserting themselves as matriarchs over the land. The ladies of Millenium Hall thus demonstrate their superior capability to organise and manage their external surroundings as well as society at large. Their creation of a female utopia may still feature a class hierarchy, just as does mainstream society, however they successfully remove all unhappiness and injustice from the class system. As a spatial structure, the land functions to illustrate women’s superior nurturing skills as well as to accentuate class differences in a friendly way.

20 Millenium Hall, 73

21 Millenium Hall, 68

18 |

SIBYL | The Women’s College Academic Journal | Vol 2, 2013

BIBLIOGRAPHY Dunne, Linda, “Mothers and Monsters in Sarah Robinson Scott’s Millenium Hall” in Utopian and Science Fiction by Women: Worlds of Difference, ed. Donawerth, Jane L., New York: Syracuse University Press, 1994, 54-72. Jordan, Nicolle. “Gentlemen and Gentle Women: The Landscape Ethos in Millenium Hall.” Eighteenth-Century Fiction 24.1 (2011): 31-54. O’Driscoll, Sally, “Lesbian Criticism and Feminist Criticism: Readings of Millenium Hall”, Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature 22.1 (2003): 57-80. Scott, Sarah. Millenium Hall. Ontario: Broadview Press, 2004.

Vol 2, 2013 | The Women’s College Academic Journal | SIBYL |

20 |

SIBYL | The Womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s College Academic Journal | Vol 2, 2013

Les Femmes Françaises EMMA CAMPBELL Psychology 3rd year Par quel(s) discours/concept(s) les hommes de la Révolution et de la (ou des) République(s) ont-ils justifié la situation faite à ce groupe? Quels arguments les membres du groupe et/ou leurs représentant(e)s ont-ils utilisés pour dénoncer ce discours et se battre pour leurs droits? A quels principes révolutionnaires et/ou républicains ont-ils fait référence pour construire cette argumentation? La position des femmes françaises pendant la période révolutionnaire était complexe. Il est indéniable que les femmes jouaient un rôle important en tant que soldats et membres des Clubs politiques, mais le 9 octobre 1793 voyait l’interdiction des Clubs des Femmes et aussi, l’interdiction pour les femmes d’assister aux séances de la Convention1. Ainsi, l’on perçoit dans cette période un conflit entre les rôles féminins et masculins. Ayant peut-être peur de ces militantes, les hommes de la révolution les ont condamnées en tant que femmes contre-nature. Ils citaient les mythes de Pandore et d’Eve, et aussi la nouvelle mythologie des Tricoteuses, femmes assoiffées de sang, pour déconseiller la participation des femmes aux événements de la Révolution2. Selon ces hommes, les femmes n’avaient pas de capacités intellectuelles et devaient rester dans la sphère privée avec leurs responsabilités d’épouse et de mère. Un autre argument, un peu plus raisonnable, propose que la lutte pour l’égalité des sexes aurait détruit l’unité de la République, aurait également perturbé l’ordre social et ainsi abouti à l’échec de la Révolution3. Les femmes françaises ont détourné le discours naturel, utilisé contre elles par les hommes, pour insister sur le fait d’égalité dans la nature. La Déclaration des Droits de la Femme et de la Citoyenne d’Olympe de Gouges, et les écrits de Louise Michel, en sont des exemples importants. Utilisant les principes républicains de l’égalité pour tous et le droit à la liberté de choisir son propre destin, les femmes françaises ont lutté contre leur exclusion de la Révolution et des Républiques. 1 2 3

Godineau, D. The Women of Paris and their French Revolution, California: University of California Press, 1998. p. 268 loc. cit.

ibid. p. 273

Vol 2, 2013 | The Women’s College Academic Journal | SIBYL |

La mythologie des tricoteuses est un exemple de justification pour l’exclusion des femmes de la politique révolutionnaire. Représentant « une femme douce devenue féroce »4, ce terme symbolise non seulement la condamnation de la participation des femmes dans la Révolution, mais aussi présente l’idée que le rôle des femmes est de rester chez elles. L’origine du mot « tricoteuses » n’est pas claire, mais sa première apparition dans un dictionnaire des termes révolutionnaires date de 1795 (l’an III), même si les phrases comme « habituées des tribunes », « furies de guillotine » et « agitatrices » étaient plus communes à cette époque.5 L’opposition entre une femme douce qui tricote tranquillement dans son foyer, avec des « furies de guillotine » qui attendent le sang des victimes, apparaît en comparant les deux tableaux, Madame sans Culotte et Les Tricoteuses.6 Dominique Godineau constate que la désignation des femmes qui s’intéressaient à la politique par le mot ‘tricoteuses’, « renvoyant à la sphère privée, met en évidence l’anormalité de sa présence dans le monde publique ».7 En sortant de leur maison, et en voulant intervenir dans la politique réservée aux hommes, les femmes perdaient leurs qualités ‘féminines’ et devenaient des êtres monstrueux. Charlotte Denoël donne son avis, et pense que la vision négative des femmes engagées dans la politique fût à l’origine de la décision des autorités de réprimer les activités de ces militantes révolutionnaires.8 Elle constate que « cette volonté de tenir les femmes a l’écart de la vie politique… reflète les craintes de la société quant à la possible violence des femmes ».9 Certains philosophes des Lumières, même si leurs idées égalitaires servaient d’inspiration pour la devise républicaine, supportaient l’argumentation qui montrait que la femme était un être de sentiment, qui ne possédait pas les mêmes capacités de raison et de culture que les hommes. Utilisant l’argument de la nature, que lui et ses confrères ont cité pour décrire l’égalité des hommes quel que soit leur classe sociale, Rousseau a constaté que le rôle d’une femme était de plaire aux hommes et qu’elle devait donc être passive et faible.10 Gita May soutient l’idée que même les hommes les plus éclairés considéraient les femmes comme être intellectuellement inférieur, et des

Godineau, D. “La « Tricoteuse »: formation d’un mythe contre-révolutionnaire”, Révolution Francaise.net (online), Retrieved 12 October 2012, http://revolution-francaise.net/2008/04/01/223-tricoteuse-formationmythe-contre-revolutionnaire.

5 ibid. 6 7 8

Denoël, C. “Les Tricoteuses pendant la Revolution Francaise”, L’histoire par l’Image, Retrieved 10 October 2012, http://www.histoire-image.org/site/oeuvre/analyse.php?i=951. Godineau, op.cit. Denoël, op. cit.

9 ibid. 10

Rousseau, J.J. “Emile, ou l’Education”, Institute for Learning Technologies – Columbia University, Retrieved 1 November, http://www.ilt.columbia.edu/pedagogies/rousseau/em_fr_bk5.html.

22 |

SIBYL | The Women’s College Academic Journal | Vol 2, 2013

êtres faibles qui avaient besoin d’être discipliné et, en même temps, protégé.11 Dans son des idées antiféministes de Rousseau, May donne une explication intéressante concernant le soutien continu par certaines femmes révolutionnaires : Madame de Staël, Madame Roland et George Sand12. Selon May, ces femmes voyaient dans les livres de Rousseau, sur le niveau existentiel plutôt que théorique ou intellectuel, une réflexion de leurs propres inquiétudes et désirs13 ; elles pensaient que même si la nature ne les destinait pas à être égales avec les hommes, elles auraient beaucoup plus d’influence si elles acceptaient leur rôle dans la famille, plutôt que de rivaliser avec les hommes.14 Quelques historiens ont proposé une autre raison possible pour l’exclusion des femmes des droits révolutionnaires. Selon eux, si les femmes continuaient de se battre pour les droits égaux, elles auraient entamé une division dans la force révolutionnaire. Godineau cite ce danger potentiel pour le succès de la Révolution en tant qu’argument pour le traitement des femmes.15 Il est difficile de vérifier si ces inquiétudes pour l’unité et la réussite de la Révolution ont poussé les hommes politiques à ignorer les demandes des femmes. Il paraît logique que les hommes n’auraient pas évoqué leurs soucis au sujet de la politique révolutionnaire et qu’ils auraient utilisé d’autres arguments pour nier les droits aux femmes. L’insurrection du 1er prairial, dans lequel beaucoup de femmes ont participé, voyait l’interdiction des femmes à participer aux assemblées politiques, l’instruction qu’elles devaient retourner à leurs maisons et l’avertissement que plus de cinq femmes réunis dans la rue risquaient de se faire arrêter.16 Hufon constate que ces mesures indiquaient la peur inspirée par la participation des femmes ; elle le considère une tentative de faire taire ceux qui soutenaient l’égalité des sexes.17 Il est intéressant de noter que les hommes et les femmes ont utilisé les mêmes arguments de la nature : les hommes pour justifier la situation des femmes, et les femmes pour se battre pour leurs droits. Pour les hommes, les femmes étaient naturellement inférieures et incapables de participer à la politique française ; leurs rôles étaient d’être les épouses et des mères. D’un autre côté, les hommes citaient les mythes des ‘furies de guillotine’ et ‘les tricoteuses’ pour montrer comment les 11 Spencer, S.I. (ed.) French Women and the Age of Enlightenment, Bloomington : Indiana University Press, 1984. p. 309 12

ibid. p. 312

loc. cit.

13 15 16 17

ibid. 311

Godineau, op.cit. p.273

Hufton, O. H., French Women and the limits of citizenship in the French Revolution. Canada : University of Toronto Press, 1989. p. 49 loc.cit.

Vol 2, 2013 | The Women’s College Academic Journal | SIBYL |

femmes étaient inaptes de se mêler à la politique. Selon Hufton, une des raisons principales pour refuser le droit de vote aux femmes pendant si longtemps était à cause de leur jouissance aux politiques radicales de la première révolution.18 Cependant, les femmes révolutionnaires et progressistes, comme Olympe de Gouges, et plus tard Louise Michel, ont fait appel elles aussi, au discours de la nature, mais pour souligner qu’il est seulement des êtres humains qui se distinguent par les capacités différentes des sexes. Ces femmes voyaient les grandes contradictions de la révolution : l’inégalité des sexes dans un système qui était censé vouloir établir l’égalité pour tous, l’emprisonnement des femmes par l’institution du mariage et l’incapacité de reconnaître des femmes en tant qu’individu, avec tous les droits, les responsabilités et le respect qui vont avec. La rédaction de La Déclaration des Droits de la Femme et de la Citoyenne en 1791, par Olympe de Gouges, représentait une étape importante dans la bataille pour l’égalité entre les sexes. Dans le préambule de la déclaration, Gouges souligne que : « Cette révolution ne s’opérera que quand toutes les femmes seront pénétrées de leur déplorable sort, et des droits qu’elles ont perdus dans la société ».19 Etant une féministe avant la naissance du féminisme, de Gouges a été finalement guillotinée le 3 novembre 1793 pour ses opinions et pour son alliance avec les Girondins qui l’ont vu condamnée comme contre-révolutionnaire.20 Invitant ses rivales de « Cherche, fouille et distingue… les sexes dans l’administration de la nature »21 de Gouges souligne l’absurdité d’utiliser des arguments naturels pour justifier l’exclusion des femmes à l’égard de la politique française. Un sympathisant de la cause féminine, Condorcet, a mis au défi les hommes révolutionnaires de trouver un argument naturel qui pouvait justifier la position faite aux femmes.22 Ce n’étaient pas les compétences physiques, ni le rôle social qui devaient déterminer les droits d’un individu, mais la capacité de la raison, que, selon lui, les femmes possédaient autant que les hommes.23 Les parallèles marquants entre La Déclaration des Droits de la Femme et de la Citoyenne et La Déclaration des Droits de l’Homme et du Citoyen introduisent un élément de parodie pour mettre l’accent sur l’injustice de l’oppression féminine ; si la nature ne fait pas de distinction entre les sexes, les femmes méritent les mêmes droits que les hommes. L’article X est particulièrement intéressant parce qu’il propose que, si les femmes devaient subir les mêmes peines que les hommes,

ibid. p. xxi

Rosa, A. Citoyennes : Les Femmes et la Révolution Francaise, Paris : Messidor, 1988.

19 21 22 23

Jaume, L. (ed.) Les Declarations des Droits de l’Homme, Paris: Flammarion, 1989. p. 199 Jaume, op.cit. p. 200

Godineau, op. cit. p.277 loc.cit.

24 |

SIBYL | The Women’s College Academic Journal | Vol 2, 2013

elles devraient bénéficier des mêmes droits d’électrice ou d’être éligible.24 L’argumentation des femmes françaises pour obtenir leurs droits a été essentiellement basée sur le principe républicain de l’égalité. Selon Godineau, celles qui voulaient spécifiquement améliorer la position politique et sociale des femmes, dès le début de la Révolution, étaient rares.25 C’était seulement en appliquant les principes révolutionnaires de La Déclaration des Droits de l’Homme que les femmes commençaient à imaginer l’égalité des sexes.26 Kelly dit carrément que la question des droits féminins n’était pas importante pour la plupart des femmes à cette époque,27 et Hufton avance l’idée que cela étaient peut-être la faute des Clubs de n’avoir pas abordé les problèmes d’une façon pertinente pour la majorité des femmes.28 Scott propose que la critique de la théorie de la Révolution, par les femmes comme de Gouges, ait produit un discours ambigu qui exposait les paradoxes fondamentaux de la Révolution.29 Les droits déclarés par la nouvelle République étaient prétendument universel, mais il était accepté, presque sans question, que l’incarnation de ces droits était ‘l’homme’, blanc et libre.30 Malheureusement, les avantages acquis par les femmes pendant la Révolution étaient faibles. Le droit au divorce a été légalisé en 1792, et les lois qui permettaient aux femmes d’hériter de la propriété ont été adoptées, mais ces progrès ont été renversés par Napoléon avec son ‘Code Civil’ de 1804 et ce n’est qu’en 1944 que toutes les femmes françaises ont eu le droit de vote.31 Les femmes françaises ont aussi fait référence au principe républicain de la liberté, originalement inspiré par l’idée des Lumières du ‘libre arbitre individuel’, pour construire leur argumentation pour les droits. Elles voulaient posséder la capacité de choisir leurs propres destins sans l’intrusion des hommes, et sous les régimes politiques de la République et de l’Empire, et même beaucoup plus tard, ceux-ci n’étaient pas vraiment possible. Sous le Code Civil de Napoléon, qui voyait une régression dans le statut des femmes, malgré les nouveaux droits accordés aux hommes,32 les femmes étaient des «mineures civiles»33 qui passaient de la tutelle de leurs parents à celle de leurs maris. Incroyablement, quelques articles du Code 24 Jaume, op.cit. p.202 25

Godineau, op.cit. p.225

Kelly, L. Women of the French Revolution, London: Hamish Hamilton, 1987. p. x

26 28 29 30 31 32 33

loc.cit.

Hufton, op.cit. p.24

Scott, J. W. [in] Melzer, S.E., & Rabine, L.W. Rebel Daughters: Women and the French Révolution, New York : Oxford University Press, 1992. p.116 Hufton, op.cit. p.102

Hanson, P. R. Contesting the French Révolution, United Kingdom : Wiley-Blackwell, 2009. p. 61 Carpentier, J., & Lebrun, F. Histoire de France, France : Seuil, 1987. p.256

Winter, B. (ed.) FRNC2691: Revolution and Social Thought, Australia: University of Sydney, 2012. p. 69

Vol 2, 2013 | The Women’s College Academic Journal | SIBYL |

Napoléon ont perduré jusqu’au milieu du XXème siècle.34 L’extrait des Mémoires de Louise Michel compare la position sociale des femmes à celle des esclaves.35 Pour elle, le mariage et la prostitution se ressemblaient, et la plus grande différence entre les deux était la durée de temps pour laquelle la femme se vendait.36 Michel continue l’utilisation des arguments naturels pour soutenir sa position. Il n’y a pas de différence entre les capacités féminins et masculins, mais si les femmes sont ‘bêtes’ c’est la faute des hommes pour les avoir convaincu qu’elles soient ainsi.37 L’exclusion progressive des femmes françaises pendant la période révolutionnaire relève des questions intéressantes. Malgré la participation des femmes au début de la Révolution, le dévouement de certaines femmes aux principes égalitaires ont inspiré la peur aux hommes politiques. Les hommes de la Révolution ont justifié la situation vis-à-vis des femmes en utilisant les arguments de la nature. Faisant appel à la mythologie des tricoteuses, nouvellement construit, ces hommes ont décrit les femmes comme n’ayant pas le droit de sortir de leurs maisons et de leurs rôles traditionnels, au risque de devenir des ‘furies monstrueuses’. Un autre argument naturel utilisé par des Lumières, comme Rousseau, était que les femmes ne possédaient pas les capacités de raison, et ainsi, ne devaient pas se mêler à la politique. Il est possible que ces arguments aient caché l’inquiétude des hommes envers des femmes ; la bataille pour les droits égaux aurait peut-être affaibli le succès de la Révolution. Les femmes ont utilisé le même discours naturel pour se battre pour leurs droits. Olympe de Gouges et Louise Michel ont toutes les deux incité les hommes à trouver des différences de sexes, autre que physiques, qui justifieraient le traitement des femmes. Faisant référence aux principes de l’égalité et de la liberté, les femmes ont souligné l’injustice de leur traitement. La bataille qui consistait à accorder les droits égaux aux femmes a duré longtemps, mais finalement les femmes pouvaient aussi bénéficier des valeurs détaillées dans la devise républicaine.

34 loc. cit. 35

Winter, op.cit. pp. 72 – 75

ibid.

loc.cit.

26 |

SIBYL | The Women’s College Academic Journal | Vol 2, 2013

BIBLIOGRAPHIE Carpentier, J., & Lebrun, F. Histoire de France, France: Seuil, 1987 Denoël, C. “Les Tricoteuses pendant la Revolution Francaise”, L’histoire par l’Image (online), Retrieved 10 October 2012, http://www.histoire-image.org/site/oeuvre/analyse.php?i=951. Godineau, D. The Women of Paris and their French Révolution, California: University of California Press, 1998. Godineau, D. “La « Tricoteuse »: formation d’un mythe contre-révolutionnaire”, Révolution Francaise.net (online), Retrieved 12 October 2012, http://revolution-francaise.net/2008/04/01/223-tricoteuse-formationmythe-contre-revolutionnaire. Hanson, P. R. Contesting the French Révolution, United Kingdom: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009. Hufton, O. H., French Women and the limits of citizenship in the French Revolution. Canada : University of Toronto Press, 1989. Jaume, L. (ed.) Les Declarations des Droits de l’Homme, Paris: Flammarion, 1989. Kelly, L. Women of the French Revolution, London: Hamish Hamilton, 1987. Landes, J.B. Women and the Public Sphere in the Age of the French Révolution, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988. Melzer, S.E., & Rabine, L.W. Rebel Daughters : Women and the French Révolution, New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. Rosa, A. Citoyennes : Les Femmes et la Révolution Francaise, Paris: Messidor, 1988. Rousseau, J.J. “Emile, ou l’Education”, Institute for Learning Technologies – Columbia University, Retrieved 1 November, http://www.ilt.columbia.edu/pedagogies/rousseau/em_fr_bk5.html. Spencer, S.I. (ed.) French Women and the Age of Enlightenment, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984. Winter, B. (ed.) FRNC2691: Revolution and Social Thought, Australia: University of Sydney, 2012.

Vol 2, 2013 | The Women’s College Academic Journal | SIBYL |

28 |

SIBYL | The Womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s College Academic Journal | Vol 2, 2013

Recommendations for recruit training in the NSW Police Force ELISABETH TONDL Advanced Science 3rd year In recent years, the approach of law enforcement agencies has changed from the traditional, militaristic attitude of enforcing the law to community-focused policing strategies. In contrast to the militaristic policing paradigm where reactive policing was used to quash criminal activity, community-focused approaches have re-defined the police officer’s role as proactively communicating with the public and attending to community needs (Ainsworth, 1995). This essay explores the implications of the shift from traditional policing to community-focused policing, and makes appropriate recommendations for the training of NSW police recruits. Germann (1969) made some early recommendations in support of communityfocused policing strategies, and the rapid increase of interest in community-focused policing methods was catalysed by the Brixton Disorders of 1981. During the Brixton Disorders, tensions between racial groups and the British Police Force escalated, causing riots (Scarman, 1986). Scarman’s (1986) inquiry into police conduct during the Brixton Disorders resulted in the introduction of Human Awareness Training (HAT) to teach police recruits interpersonal skills, self-awareness and community relations (Ainsworth, 1995; Bull, & Horncastle, 1988). HAT was the initial foundation for establishing community-focused philosophies in the policing organisation; however, HAT did not bring the anticipated increase in communityfocused policing practices. Bull and Horncastle (1988) found that while HAT-trained recruits received fewer conduct complaints from community members, their attitudes toward HAT and some community policing practices became increasingly negative over the course of their training and career. An improvement in recruits’ attitudes regarding police-public relations was observed, but Bull and Horncastle concluded that this improvement was unlikely to have resulted from HAT. Ultimately, HAT was inadequate in bringing permanent and widespread change to the philosophies and practices of the policing organisation (Bull, & Horncastle, 1988). Community-Oriented Policing Strategies (COPS) gained momentum in the early 1990s with the premise that policing should function to solve community problems

Vol 2, 2013 | The Women’s College Academic Journal | SIBYL |

through collaborative action with law-abiding community members (Birzer, 2001; Birzer, & Nolan, 2002) in addition maintaining social order (Chappell, & Lanza-Kaduce, 2010). Scholars agree that this fundamental paradigm shift toward community-focused policing philosophies necessitates re-assessment and re-structuring of Police Force training procedures (e.g. Birzer, 2001; Birzer, & Tannehill, 2001; Chappell, 2006a; 2006b; Chappell, & Lanza-Kaduce, 2010; Hunter-Johnson, & James, 2012; Poole, 1988). This essay will argue that the adoption of the COPS approach to policing should be reflected in changes to recruit training. The need for an updated job analysis of occupational policing in NSW will be discussed, and the necessity of integrated training for police recruits, in content, style, and experience will be explored. It will be argued that the recommended policy changes will be sustained only in the context of broader organisational change, which embraces the community-focused policing paradigm.

Updating job analyses for the NSW Police Force Effective training for any job must be based on job analysis findings, including necessary job tasks, and knowledge, skills, abilities, and other characteristics required (Bradford, & Pynes, 1999). Many of the job analyses used to inform policing training content and procedures rely on assumptions about the traditional roles of police officers (Chappell 2006b) and have changed minimally since the introduction of COPS philosophies (Bradford, & Pynes, 1999). Therefore, much of this training is inconsistent with the contemporary requirements of occupational policing (Bradford, & Pynes, 1999; Werth, 2011; Zhao, & Thurman, 1997) and must be updated to reflect the increasingly complex demands of community-focused policing (Birzer, & Nolan, 2002; Marion, 1998; Schafer, & Boyd, 2007). Research has indicated that there are large differences in the training received by recruits compared with the tasks of operational police officers. Germann (1969) found that up to 90% of police officersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; time involves paperwork and community-related activities, with relatively little time spent on task-oriented policing activities such as car chases and arrests. Bradford and Pynes (1999) examined curricula of police training academies across the different states in America, and found that on average, less than 3% of recruit academy training was devoted to teaching interpersonal and decision-making skills for community relations. These findings indicate that there has been minimal adjustment to recruit training curricula to match the required COPS-related policing competencies. While these results are not directly generalizable to the NSW Police Force, they do emphasis the need for recruit training to reflect accurately the nature of policing work. Job analyses should be conducted to determine the job tasks, knowledge, skills, abilities and other characteristics that are required for occupational policing in the NSW Police Force. The findings of these job analyses should inform police recruit training in NSW. 30 |

SIBYL | The Womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s College Academic Journal | Vol 2, 2013

Integrated, holistic training for NSW police recruits Bradford and Pynes (1999) have argued that the community-sensitive, proactive COPS policing style and philosophy should inform the entire training experience for recruits. This section contains recommendations on adapting police recruit training in content, teaching style and experience to reflect COPS philosophies. Current training in COPS-related areas such as interpersonal skills and decisionmaking received at recruit academies has commonly been constrained to theoretical modules without practical application, leading recruits to view COPS philosophies as unimportant to occupational policing (Bradford, & Pynes, 1999; Bull, & Horncastle, 1988; Fielding, 1988). The challenge of training police recruits is making COPSrelated content relevant to policing through application of theory to real-life situations. Werth (2011) evaluated the effectiveness of an American police recruit learning program which aimed to apply relevant policing knowledge using problemsolving and critical thinking skills. Recruits reported that the practical techniques taught in the training gave them confidence to apply their knowledge effectively to a range of real-life policing situations such as resolving conflicts, communication with the public and task-oriented skills such as arrests. However, as the learning program centred on a task-oriented policing activity (investigating a homicide), the results obtained may be unable to be generalised to community-oriented policing activities. Additionally, behavioural outcomes should be measured to indicate long-term training effects on recruits’ policing approaches. Despite this limitation, Werth’s (2011) findings provide support for integrating COPS-related content into the general training that police recruits receive. An additional challenge of integrating COPS content into the recruit academy training is balancing the new material with training for the more traditional, taskoriented skills such as gun use and knowledge of the law (Ainsworth, 1995). New COPS-related content in police recruit academy courses should be combined with task-oriented skills training to reflect accurately the demands of occupational policing, as ascertained by a job analysis (Chappell, 2006b). It is recommended that a review of the present training content of the NSW Police Force be conducted, and appropriate emphasis placed on COPS-related content to reflect the job requirements obtained from the job analysis for policing in NSW. Changes in recruit training content should be supported by appropriate changes in the style and experience of training. An observational study by Chappell and LanzaKaduce (2010) on American police recruits found that integrating COPS-related content into recruit academy training was ineffective in bringing lasting change in the absence of further organisational support. The authors’ aim of maximising integration with the recruit community discouraged direct questioning of recruits; however, such questioning may have yielded valuable data on recruits’ perceived

Vol 2, 2013 | The Women’s College Academic Journal | SIBYL |

barriers to maintaining COPS philosophies and practices. Despite the observational nature of this study, these results suggest that further steps must be taken beyond integrating COPS-related content into recruit training in order to sustain COPS philosophies in recruits. The remainder of this section will discuss recommendations for such changes, in training style and experience, for recruits of the NSW Police Force. The style of the training that recruits receive whilst in the academy may have significant implications for their ability to engage meaningfully with the training material (Werth, 2011). The traditional policing framework employed teacher-centred pedagogical approaches, which encouraged rote learning and learned behavioural responses (Birzer, & Tannehill, 2001; Hunter-Johnson, & James, 2012). While this militaristic training has advantages such as teaching recruits to obey orders, the increasing emphasis on adapting training to adult learning styles (Zemke, & Zemke, 1988) has caused greater interested in andragogical training approaches. Andragogy is a student-centred approach to learning which allows the interactive expression of students’ experiences and opinions with the aid of a facilitating teacher (Birzer, 2001; Chappell, & Lanza-Kaduce, 2010). Providing police recruits with training via their preferred method may increase their enjoyment of and engagement with the material, thereby maintaining their acceptance of the COPS philosophies taught in the academy (Chappell, 2006b). Hunter-Johnson and James (2012) conducted a review of the preferred learning orientation (andragogical or pedagogical) of Bahaman police officers of various rankings. The results revealed that 56% of police officers preferred andragogical training approaches, compared with 39% who preferred pedagogical approaches and 5% who expressed neutral preference. While these results provide some support for the implementation of andragogical training for police recruits, Hunter-Johnson and James also found that younger officers tended to prefer pedagogical training approaches, suggesting that pedagogical approaches may still be appropriate for training police recruits (see also Birzer and Nolan, 2002). These findings cannot be applied directly to police recruit training in NSW as Hunter-Johnson and James’ sample did not include police recruits, and the officers’ learning style preferences may have been influenced by their socialisation into the police force following their completion of recruit training. Research into the preferred learning styles of current NSW Police Force recruits is necessary to establish their preferred learning orientation, and to best facilitate their training (Birzer, 2001). Andragogical police training may also be more consistent with the COPS policing framework due to the interactive learning setting which allows learning to occur in a more relational environment (Birzer, 2001; Birzer, & Tannehill, 2001; Hunter-Johnson, & James, 2012). However, it may be premature to adopt

32 |

SIBYL | The Women’s College Academic Journal | Vol 2, 2013

andragogical training methods for all areas of police recruit training, as research suggests that pedagogical training is useful for task-oriented activities such as car chases and shootings, and for decision-making based on law-related knowledge (Birzer, & Tannehill, 2001). NSW police recruits’ engagement with and enjoyment of training should be maximised through the complementary use of pedagogical and andragogical training approaches where task-oriented skills are taught pedagogically, while communityrelated skills are taught andragogically. Field training affords recruits a first and formative opportunity to experience the policing environment outside of the academy classroom (Chappell, 2006a; Poole, 1988). Field training allows recruits to experience the varied and interactive job of policing, to apply knowledge and skills gained in the academy and to begin socialisation into the broader police organisation under the guidance of an operational police officer (Cox, 1996; Poole, 1988). Despite its many and varied benefits, field training typically undermines the COPS philosophies taught in the academy due to the traditional policing approach of the guiding police officers (Haarr, 2001). Chappell (2006a) analysed narratives of American recruits’ performance on everyday policing tasks written by recruits’ Field Training Officers (FTOs), and found little or no mention of community-policing behaviours and problem-solving skills. Additionally, the FTOs appeared to value assertiveness and other task-oriented behaviours at the same level as or more highly than interpersonal skills. These findings suggest that greater efforts must be made to ensure that COPS philosophies are taught and implemented in field training. However, FTOs’ narratives of recruits’ performance tasks may not be an accurate reflection of the entire training experience that recruits receive. Similar research using additional objective measures must be conducted in the NSW Police Force to examine recruits’ experiences of field training. Investigation of the application of COPS philosophies in NSW police recruit training is recommended, and appropriate adjustment to field training should be made to ensure that recruits’ experiences reflect the philosophy and practice of the COPS paradigm present in the academy training.

Broad organisational change in the NSW Police Force The recommendations proposed thus far imply the need for broad organisational change in the police force, as changes in the suggested areas can sustain COPS philosophies only with the support of the broader policing organisation (Cochrane, & Phillips, 1988). The policing organisation’s resistance to change poses a major threat to bringing sustained transformation based on COPS philosophies (Zhao, & Thurman, 1997). Chappell and Lanza-Kaduce’s (2010) observation of academy police recruit training revealed that informal militaristic training, reinforced by Vol 2, 2013 | The Women’s College Academic Journal | SIBYL |

police hierarchy, influenced recruits’ behaviour more than the formal COPS-based academy training that recruits received. This informal training typically resulted in the rejection of COPS philosophies by recruits with increasing socialisation into the police force. These results emphasise the need for unification of formal and informal recruit training, and the necessity of support of COPS philosophies from the broader policing organisation to sustain the training that recruits receive. Haarr (2001) conducted a longitudinal study on the effects of socialisation on recruits’ attitudes towards COPS-style policing throughout their training and into their early career. It was found that increasing socialisation of recruits into the police force was negatively correlated with positive attitudes toward community policing philosophies and strategies. However, Haarr also found that recruits valued policepublic relations more with increasing socialisation. This suggests that even traditional policing philosophies value some elements of community-focused policing, and this may provide further opportunities for transforming police subculture to support the COPS paradigm. These research findings emphasise the influence of the broader police organisation on attitudes recruits hold toward COPS philosophies, and suggest that operational police officers should be educated in COPS philosophies and practices in order to support recruits’ training. Similar assessments should be conducted with NSW police recruits, with additional behavioural measures to ascertain the relationship between recruits’ attitudes and behaviour toward COPSstyle policing as they are socialised into the NSW police force. Attitudes and behaviours of police officers in the NSW Police Force should be investigated to identify organisational structures and groups that need to be trained in COPS policing philosophies. This training must be thorough to ensure lasting organisational change, in turn maintaining the COPS philosophies taught to NSW police recruits during academy and field training.

Conclusions The effects of the paradigm shift from the militaristic, reactive policing style to the problem-solving, proactive COPS policing philosophies necessitate fundamental and broad organisational change in law enforcement policies and practices. In particular, this shift has numerous implications for police recruit training in NSW. An updated job analysis for the NSW Police Force should be conducted to determine the requirements of operational policing, and the academy and field training of recruits should be adjusted in content, style and experience to reflect the findings of this job analysis. Furthermore, operational police officers most in need of COPS-style training should be identified and trained with the purpose facilitating the maintenance of a broad COPS approach to policing in NSW.

34 |

SIBYL | The Women’s College Academic Journal | Vol 2, 2013

REFERENCES Ainsworth, P. B. (1995). Psychology and Policing in a Changing World. West Sussex: John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Birzer, M. L. (2001). The theory of andragogy applied to police training. Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies and Management, 26(1), 29-42. Birzer, M. L., & Nolan, R. E. (2002). Learning strategies of selected police related to community policing. Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies and Management, 25(2), 242-255. Birzer, M. L., & Tannehill, R. (2001). A more effective training approach for contemporary policing. Police Quarterly, 4(2), 233-252. Bradford, D., & Pynes, J. E. (1999). Police academy training: Why hasn’t it kept up with practice? Police Quarterly, 2(3), 283-301. Bull, R., & Horncastle, P. (1988). Evaluating training: The London Metropolitan Police’s recruit training in human awareness/ policing skills. In P. Southgate (Ed.), Directions in Police Training (pp. 219-229). London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office. Chappell, A., & Lanza-Kaduce, L. (2010). Police academy socialization: Understanding the lessons learned in a paramilitary-bureaucratic organisation. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 39(2), 187-214. Chappell, A. T. (2006a). Community policing: Is field training the missing link? Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies and Management, 30(3), 498-517. Chappell, A. T. (2006b). Police academy training: Comparing across curricula. Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies and Management, 30(1), 36-56. Cochrane, R., & Phillips, S. (1988). The training of community liaison officers. In P. Southgate (Ed.), Directions in Police Training (pp. 39-52). London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office. Cox, S. M. (1996). Police: Practices, Perspectives and Problems. Needham Heights: Allyn and Bacon. Fielding, N. (1988). Socialisation of recruits into the police force. In P. Southgate (Ed.), Directions in Police Training (pp. 58-73). London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office. Germann, C. A. (1969). Community policing: An assessment. The Journal of Criminal Law, Criminology and Police Science, 60(1), 89-96. Haarr, R. N. (2001). The making of a community policing officer: The impact of basic training and occupational socialisation on police recruits. Police Quarterly, 4(4), 402-433. Hunter-Johnson, Y., & James, W. B. (2012). A paradigm shift in law enforcement training in the Bahamas: From teachercentred to learner-centred. The International Journal of Bahaman Studies, 18, 36-48. Marion, N. (1998). Police academy training: Are we teaching recruits what they need to know? Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies and Management, 21(1), 54-79. Poole, L. (1988). Police training: A skill approach. In P. Southgate (Ed.), Directions in Police Training (pp. 74-82). London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office. Scarman, L. G. (1986). The Scarman Report: The Brixton Disorders of 10-12 April 1981. Suffolk: Pelican Books. Schafer, J. A., & Boyd, S. (2007). The future of education and training for policing. In J. A. Schafer (Ed.), Exploring the Future of Crime, Communities, and Policing (pp. 372 – 413). Retrieved from http://futuresworkinggroup.cos.ucf.edu/ publications/Policing2020.pdf#page=372 Werth, E. P. (2011). Scenario training in police academies: Developing students’ higher-level thinking skills. Police Practice and Research, 12(4), 325-340.

Vol 2, 2013 | The Women’s College Academic Journal | SIBYL |

Zemke, R., & Zemke, S. (1988). 30 things we know for sure about adult learning. Training, 25(7), 57-61. Zhao, J., & Thurman, Q. C. (1997). Community policing: Where are we now? Crime and Delinquency, 43(3), 345-357.

36 |

SIBYL | The Womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s College Academic Journal | Vol 2, 2013

The role of God in American foreign policy: Examining twenty-first century Republican and Democratic support for evangelical Christian aid organisations KATHERINE MILLER Arts 2nd year Is a Republican American government more likely to support the foreign aid work of evangelical Christian organisations than a Democratic government? In a contemporary US-dominated world, America has been able to pursue policies of international development that promote democracy and other key values in the third world, aided by the many non-governmental organisations (NGOs) working in developing countries. This paper examines this question of whether the GOP [Republican Party] will be more supportive of evangelical aid organisations (as opposed to secular or non-evangelical religious groups) than the Democrats through monetary support and implementation of foreign policy. An examination of this hypothesis will be conducted in three sections – domestic influences on foreign policy, government assistance to United States Agency for International Development (USAID) partners, and foreign policy implementation – and will use mostly quantitative data. The independent variable is the party in power, and the dependent variable is the amount of support for aid work of evangelical organisations abroad. The causal explanation of the hypothesis is that Republicans are more likely to associate with the evangelical Christian right due to similar ideological viewpoints, and thus will support evangelical aid organisations abroad due to these links. Current literature supports the notion that faith-based organisations (FBOs) are becoming more prominent and powerful in foreign aid initiatives, and the ideological links between evangelical Christians and Republicans will, it is expected, result in

Vol 2, 2013 | The Women’s College Academic Journal | SIBYL |

greater governmental contributions to evangelical causes (Marsden, 2012; Mead, 2008). This paper hopes to build on this area of study by analysing the twentyfirst century Republican and Democrat support of evangelical FBOs compared to the support of other FBOs and secular NGOs, and whether Republicans do, indeed, favour evangelical organisations over other organisations.

The first terms of Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama Using the comparative case study method, this paper analyses the first terms of Presidents George W. Bush (Republican) and Barack Obama (Democrat) to assess the hypothesis. Because a President’s first term is more conducive to change, it was assumed that in the first terms of these administrations, there would be greater deviation from the past President’s policies (Rosati and Scott, 2012, p. 68). The close nature of these presidencies, in terms of time, further renders them more comparable in analysing the role of faith in foreign policy. Domestically, Republican governments are more associated to the Christian Right and there is an assumption that this may lead to implementation of foreign policy that favours the evangelical cause. According to the Oxford Dictionary (2013), ‘evangelical’ represents ‘a tradition within Protestant Christianity emphasizing the authority of the Bible, personal conversion, and the doctrine of salvation by faith in the Atonement’. This is especially important in the area of foreign policy as evangelicals believe that ‘human beings who die without accepting Christ are doomed to everlasting separation from God’. Thus, in helping international development and alleviating poverty, evangelicals aim to ‘save’ nonbelievers through conversion (Mead, 2008, p. 10). The beliefs of such Christians (such as anti-abortion, anti-homosexual and other socially conservative principles) relate to the similarly conservative views of the Republican Party and the political right has sought to align itself with these believers (Lindsay, 2007, p. 892). Yet the assumption that evangelicals only associate with the politically conservative is misguided, as there is a group of liberal evangelicals that support the more progressive policies advocated by the Democrats, as well as an African American evangelical majority that votes Democratic (Lindsay, 2007, pp. 884-894; Mead, 2008, p. 11). Thus, while Christian support is important for both Republican and Democratic governments, this paper focuses on both parties’ support of evangelical Christian aid organisations.

Limitations Despite this being a strong comparative case study due to the increasing presence of faith-based actors in foreign policy, it may not only be religious ties but ones

38 |

SIBYL | The Women’s College Academic Journal | Vol 2, 2013

of practicality which see governments supporting FBOs, considering that ‘across much of the developing world, religious organisations are the best organised and sometimes the only NGOs in any particular area’ (Marsden, 2012, p. 959). For analysis of NGO government assistance, it would be ideal to compare total funding of all organisations over both Presidents’ terms divided into different denominations, however due to time constraints and difficulty in finding information on all USAID partners, a sample was taken of four aid organisations (Muslim, evangelical, Catholic and secular) to compare the cases.

CASE EXAMINATION Domestic influences on foreign policy In assessing biased support for evangelical organisations by Republicans, evangelical domestic voting patterns must first be examined. As Mead (2008, p.11) noted, 68 percent of self-proclaimed white evangelicals voted for Bush in the 2000 presidential elections and links could be made between this evangelical support for Bush and eventual policies and contracts which favoured faith-based groups. In essence, high evangelical domestic support may lend itself to pressure on the Republican Party to implement policies important to evangelicals. With evangelicals providing around 40 percent of Bush’s total vote in the 2004 elections, it seems an accurate assumption that policies advocated by evangelical advocacy groups would be considered in the President’s policies (Mead, 2008, p. 11). The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life had similar statistics to Mead and while data was unavailable for the 2001 presidential campaign, Bush captured approximately 79 percent of the evangelical vote in the 2004 campaign (Pew Forum, 2012). The majority of evangelical support does appear to align with conservative politics, as seen in the 2008 election between McCain and Obama, with 73 percent of evangelicals voting Republican (Pew Forum, 2012). What can be garnered from these statistics is an enduring evangelical support for the GOP. This, in turn, could be linked to the causal explanation that such voting preferences and ties to the conservative right lead to a greater Republican support of FBOs in foreign policy over other aid organisations. Obama, in comparison, did not win a majority of evangelical voters, thus would not be subject to pressure to implement policy like his predecessor. Such links are tentative however, and would need to be analysed further (and potentially through more qualitative means) to gauge actual links between domestic voting patterns and the support of evangelical FBOs and implementation of foreign policies favouring evangelical causes. Furthermore, if there was greater transparency in campaign funding, links could be made between donations from evangelical advocacy groups and their influence in the elected candidate’s eventual policies. Vol 2, 2013 | The Women’s College Academic Journal | SIBYL |

Assistance to USAID partners To measure the hypothesis, a comparison of four USAID partners was constructed, as seen in figures 1 and 2 on page 6. Africare, a secular NGO; the Aga Khan Foundation USA, a Muslim aid organisation; Catholic Relief Services, a Catholic aid agency; and Samaritan’s Purse, an evangelical FBO were selected. In essence, the data shows (with the exception of Catholic Relief Services) Bush’s tendency to favour the evangelical FBO, Samaritan’s Purse, from 2001-2004. According to the Boston Globe survey (2006), Samaritan’s Purse received a total of US$ 21 481 447 in grants and contracts, while the Aga Khan Foundation received $5 665 692. According to USA Spending (viewed 27 April 2013), no contracts or loans were given to the Africare under Bush’s first term, which suggests a strong bias towards religious organisations. The same four NGOs were again analysed to compare Obama’s foreign assistance to Bush. Importantly, USAID spending greatly increased between the periods of 2001-2004 and 2009-2012 – from US$ 70 941 071 to $2 218 757 341 (usaspending.gov, viewed 27 April 2013). Data thus appears to show that Obama supported evangelical organisations more than Bush, however while support for evangelical FBOs may have increased, there was, in fact, increased support across all NGOs. Whereas Samaritan’s Purse received the most aid under Bush, it received the least amount of funding compared to the other NGOs under Obama, as seen in figure 2 (usaspending.gov, viewed 27 April 2013). This funding disparity between the two Presidents supports the notion that Republicans may have greater links to the evangelical cause and thus will offer more support to these groups, while under a Democrat President, support will be more evenly spread across the groups.

40 |

SIBYL | The Women’s College Academic Journal | Vol 2, 2013

Fig. 1 – BUSH’S FIRST TERM (2001-2004) NGO

FY 2001

FY 2002

FY 2003

FY 2004

Total ($)

Africare (Secular)

Aga Khan Foundation of the USA (Muslim)

1 230 000

3 035 692

1 100 000

300 000

5 665 692

577 000

93 420 709.67

76 115 712.62

150 207 353 161 769 188 481 512 963.29

879 200

901 900

6 781 971

6 476 907

2 502 429

5 720 140

1 781 100

349 000

21 481 447

Catholic Relief Services (Catholic Christian) Samaritan’s Purse (evangelical Christian)

349 000 * Data taken from Boston Globe (2006). ** Data taken from USA Spending (viewed 27 April 2013). Searched ‘[insert NGO name]’ and pressed ‘Agency for International Development’ to further narrow the results. USA Spending was used to record data for Africare as the Boston Globe only researched FBOs, thus Africare – being secular – was not included and data had to be found elsewhere. Furthermore, because the Boston Globe Survey represented 2001-2005, usaspending.gov data was included to better compare to Obama’s first term. The variation between the Boston Globe and USA Spending sources was great, yet the cause of this was inexplicable.

Fig. 2 – OBAMA’S FIRST TERM (2009-2012) NGO

FY 2009

FY 2010

FY 2011

FY 2012

Total ($)

Africare (secular)

14 100 000

12 600 000

13 100 000

22 700 000

62 500 000

Aga Khan Foundation of the USA (Muslim)

6 900 000

6 100 000

10 000 000

7 700 000

30 700 000

Catholic Relief Services (Catholic)

202 100 000 232 900 000 185 200 000 13 600 000

633 800 000

Samaritan’s Purse (evangelical Christian)

9 000 000

27 400 000

5 700 000

5 000 000

7 700 000

** All data taken from USA Spending (viewed 27 April 2013). For a better comparison between the first terms of Bush and Obama, it would have been ideal to compare using only data from the Boston Globe survey, however because this only went from 2001-2005, additional sources had to be used to attempt a comparison to Obama’s foreign assistance.

Vol 2, 2013 | The Women’s College Academic Journal | SIBYL |

Policy implementation In the arena of foreign policymaking, the selection and implementation of policies is another indication of a party’s support of certain causes and values. Marsden (2012) has examined this in detail, noting that the support of FBOs was not only great under Bush, but, curiously, was expanded under Obama. Under Bush, the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives (OFBCI) was created in 2001, and was extended to foreign policy under USAID in 2003 to connect domestic FBOs with international partners (Marsden, 2012, p. 959). In response, secular NGOs ‘argued that money from established secular organisations was diverted to FBOs as a payback to religious supporters of the [Bush] administration’ (Marsden, 2012, p. 959). 2003 also saw the creation of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) (Marsden, 2012, p. 965). Importantly, of the $15 billion initially allocated to PEPFAR, US$ 3 billion was assigned to prevention programs and a third of this was specifically for abstinence-only programs (Kranish, 2006 cited in Marsden, 2012, p. 965). The notion of ‘abstinence’ in AIDS initiatives has a distinctly Christian ethic, not only because evangelical FBOs would have carried out these works, but also because abstinence is a key value for those of the Christian right (including a great deal of evangelicals) and something they believe should be encouraged. Indeed, Waldman (2009, cited in Marsden, 2012, p. 966) and Marsden (2012, p. 966) discussed the power of conservative evangelicals and the Christian Right in a campaign started in January 2005 that would eventually stop the funding of secular USAID partners which were distributing condoms to prostitutes and refused to support the notion of abstinence-only in preventing AIDS. Such actions conveyed the Republican links to the broader religious cause and the ability of these evangelical and conservative forces to dominate Republican foreign policy in favour of their beliefs. In assessing the implementation of foreign policy that favoured evangelical causes, it is difficult to find information that confirmed change or continuity in Obama’s first term. In 2009, in the domestic sphere, Obama replaced the OFBCI with the President’s Advisory Council of Faith-Based and Neighbourhood Partnerships, which had 25 members of different denominations, and the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighbourhood Partnerships (Marsden, 2012, p. 960). Indeed, it could be argued that Obama did not favour the evangelical cause above others but was supportive of all faith-based initiatives, including those of non-Christian religions. As Marsden (2011, p. 340) further noted, Obama ‘actively sought out religious figures to bring into the policy-making arena… the Christian Right … liberal and mainstream Christians and those of other faiths, including Jews, Muslims and Hindus’. In 2011, Obama ordered that the treatment of homosexual populations be considered before

42 |

SIBYL | The Women’s College Academic Journal | Vol 2, 2013

aid was distributed in a state (Gibler and Miller, 2012, p. 1206). This was a radical departure from the influence of evangelicals under Bush, as evangelicals are antihomosexual and would not have approved of such a policy. While data is hard to find to compare PEPFAR budgets in both cases, documents indicated that under Obama in 2011, AIDS prevention was allocated approximately US$ 448 800 000, with abstinence and fidelity given $165 000 000 and other prevention initiatives given $283 300 000 (PEPFAR, p. 13, 2011). This data represents a slight decrease in funding, when it is considered that under Bush, $1 billion was allocated over 5 years to abstinence programs, which amounts to $200 000 000 each year. While Obama still supported the FBO initiatives, there seemed a slight change in terms of monetary contribution to policies implemented by Bush. It does appear, however, that while Bush favoured policies that were aligned to evangelical beliefs, Obama promoted a wide range of religions to advise in policymaking and did not privilege the evangelical agenda like his predecessor.

Outcomes The hypothesis proposed that a Republican American government was more likely to support the foreign aid work of evangelical FBOs than a Democratic government because of the ideological links between Republicans and the evangelical right. The evidence gathered suggested that this was indeed correct in relation to the first term of President George W. Bush. The strong evangelical support in the domestic sphere could be assumed to pressure the President in the areas of foreign policy and aid in developing nations, given that evangelicals have a strong desire to save non-believers and aid provides an opportunity to proselytize to non-Christians. Furthermore, Bush’s assistance to USAID partners reflected a bias towards evangelical FBOs, as represented in the great monetary support of Samaritan’s Purse compared to the smaller contributions to non-evangelical and secular organisations. Bush’s implementation of policies also reflected a greater support of evangelical FBOs than other NGOs, considering a great deal of assistance was given to initiatives which drew on the socially conservative attitudes of domestic evangelicals, such as the encouragement of abstinence as a means of AIDS prevention. It appears that Obama extended the FBO initiative through far greater funding, however he did not privilege evangelical USAID partners over other NGOs and FBOs. Obama did not receive the majority vote from evangelicals in the 2008 election, which would suggest he would not be pressured by their lobbying for certain foreign policies. Furthermore, as suggested in the analysis of four different NGOs, Samaritan’s Purse was given the least funding, which contrasted greatly to its preferential funding under Bush. In policymaking, there appeared a small departure

Vol 2, 2013 | The Women’s College Academic Journal | SIBYL |

from funding of abstinence-only AIDS prevention initiatives, with Obama providing less assistance to these programs – programs that are in line with conservative Christian values and were advocated by evangelicals. Also, the consideration of homosexuals in aid distribution was an important move to more liberal Also, the consideration of homosexuals in aid distribution was an important move to more liberal foreign aid policies. While there appeared to be an increase in monetary support of all NGOs, the continuing assistance to religious organisations may reflect an increasing reliance on such groups to provide assistance to areas of the world where, as discussed in the 2010 Chicago Council on Global Affairs report on religion and foreign policy, ‘governments lack legitimacy in difficult economic and political conditions’ (Marsden, 2012, p. 955).

Conclusion The evidence presented in this paper largely supports the hypothesis that a Republican American government is more likely to support the foreign aid work of evangelical Christian organisations than a Democratic government, due, in large part, to a link in ideology between the political right and evangelicals. Bush in his first term had a large evangelical support base in the domestic sphere which could influence his actions in the international arena, and his monetary support of the evangelical FBO Samaritan’s Purse was greater than the three equivalent, non-evangelical NGOs analysed. Furthermore, Bush’s foreign policy encouraged abstinence in AIDS programs which denoted a connection to evangelical causes. While Obama’s first term saw an increase in funding for all FBOs, the data tends to support the hypothesis regarding evangelical assistance. Support of USAID partners increased in general, while assistance to Samaritan’s Purse fell compared to the other organisations studied. Policy implementation was, however, more difficult to research, yet Obama’s monetary support of PEPFAR was lower than under Bush and could reflect a desire to move away from abstinence-only and ‘be faithful’ initiatives in preventing AIDS (which are strongly linked to evangelical values and advocacy groups). The consideration of homosexuals in foreign aid distribution further moved away from evangelical beliefs. To further assess the validity of the hypothesis, future study could research in greater depth the reasons that FBOs are favoured over other NGOs, and attempts could be made at more qualitative comparisons of policy implemented in both presidencies. In essence, the hypothesis appears correct and it was found that a Republican government is more likely to support the aid work of evangelical aid organisations, than a Democratic government.

44 |

SIBYL | The Women’s College Academic Journal | Vol 2, 2013

BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary sources PEPFAR 2011, Fiscal Year 2011: PEPFAR Operational Plan, viewed 28 April 2013, http://goo.gl/Rq5fXY USA Spending 2013, Africare Prime Award Spending Data [+Agency for International Development], viewed 27 April 2013, http://goo.gl/hDRzbc USA Spending 2013, Aga Khan Prime Award Spending Data [+Agency for International Development], viewed 27 April 2013, http://goo.gl/gsvRbu USA Spending 2013, Catholic Relief Services Prime Award Spending Data [+Agency for International Development], viewed 27 April 2013, http://goo.gl/IVC0k9 USA Spending 2013, Samaritan’s Purse Prime Award Spending Data [+Agency for International Development], viewed 27 April 2013, http://goo.gl/Jw6EIL USA Spending 2013, USAID [+2001+2002+2003+2004], viewed 27 April 2013, http://goo.gl/PSWtxJ USA Spending 2013, USAID [+2009+2010+2011+2012], viewed 27 April 2013, http://goo.gl/IsvCir USAID 2012, 2012 VOLAG: Report of Voluntary Agencies engaged in overseas relief and development registered with the U.S. Agency for International Development, viewed 27 April 27, 2013, http://goo.gl/GwgBG8 ‘USAID contracts with faith-based organizations’, Boston Globe, 8 October 2006, viewed 27 April 2013, http://goo.gl/qqTVEa Secondary sources Campbell D E & Putnam R D 2012, ‘God and Caesar in America: Why Mixing Religion and Politics is Bad for Both’ Foreign Affairs, vol. 91, issue 2 (March/April), pp. 34-43. Gibler D M & Miller S V 2012, ‘Comparing the Foreign Aid Policies of Presidents Bush and Obama’ Social Science Quarterly, vol. 93, no. 5 (December), pp. 1202-1217. Lindsay D M 2007, ‘Ties That Bind and Divisions That Persist: evangelical Faith and the Political Spectrum’ American Quarterly, vol. 59, no. 3, Religion and Politics in the Contemporary United States (Sep.), pp. 883-909. Marsden, L 2012, ‘Bush, Obama and a faith-based US foreign policy’, International Affairs, vol. 88, no. 5, pp. 953-974. Marsden, L 2011, ‘Religion, identity and American power in the age of Obama’ International Politics, vol. 48, no. 2/3, pp. 326-343. Mead, W R 2008, ‘God’s Country?’ Dialog: A Journal of Theology, vol. 47, no. 1, pp. 5-15. Oxford Dictionaries 2013, evangelical, viewed 27 April 2013, http://goo.gl/weS5Bv Pew Forum 2012, How the Faithful Voted: 2012 Preliminary Analysis, viewed 27 April 2013, http://goo.gl/mporqs Rosati J A & Scott J M 2012, The Politics of United States Foreign Policy, 6th edn, Wadsworth Cengage Learning, Boston.

Vol 2, 2013 | The Women’s College Academic Journal | SIBYL |

46 |

SIBYL | The Womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s College Academic Journal | Vol 2, 2013

Writing Women’s History NICOLE BURGER Arts Education 1st Year Historians have applied a variety of well-established methods in an attempt to address the ‘absence’ of women in the historical record. It may even been said that women’s history has in fact, used all the methods that are at its disposal.1 However, as Bock rightly asserts, ‘the originality of women’s and gender history lies not so much in its methods, or in any single method, as in the questions it asks and in its perspectives’.2 It is the questions regarding the means by which women have been silenced in history that are of interest here. The societal construction of gender is imperative for understanding how women have been silenced in history. So too, Foucault’s exploration of power and power structures gives rise to questions regarding the agency of women. However, within the parameters of this paper, three essential issues concerning the making and nature of history will be addressed in connection with the attempt to write the history of women. The nature of evidence, notions of universality and the efforts of the historian to empathise with the experience of women, all emerge as significant factors when approaching the task of writing their history. Essentially, the writing of women’s history further exposes flaws in the overall nature of history itself. An analysis of Sarah Pomeroy’s Women in Hellenistic Egypt exposes these issues and attempts to address these problematic elements of writing women’s history born of the flawed nature of history itself.3 The notion of gender as a social construct is an important analytical tool for exploring the way in which women have been silenced in history. Foucault argues that ‘meaning is not given, but is socially constructed across different institutional sites and practices.’4 Meaning is derived from a variety of discourses that articulate the way humans should think, act and behave. It is, then, possible to view gender as a social and cultural construct built upon a set of contextually malleable discourses. For example, dominant discourses regarding females include women belonging in 1 2 3 4

Gisela Bock, ‘Women’s History and Gender History: Aspects of an International Debate’, Gender and History, Vol 1 (Blackwell, 1989), 394. Bock, Women’s History, 373.

Sarah B Pomeroy, Women in Hellenistic Egypt: From Alexander to Cleopatra. New York: Schocken (1984).

Robinson, Kerry. H. “The contradictory nature of children’s contemporary lives.” In Innocence, Knowledge and the Construction of Childhood. (New York: Routledge, 2013), 3.

Vol 2, 2013 | The Women’s College Academic Journal | SIBYL |

the home, and cast them as the source of nurture for children and so forth. It is important, then, to realise the way in which the construction of gender is subject to change. Gender surfaces as a ‘context-specific and context-dependent’ category in the discipline of history.5 Constructions of the identity and gender of Elizabeth I reveal this. Take, for example, the historical debate between Geoffrey Elton and Susan Bassnett regarding the effectiveness of her rule. Both historians present representations of Elizabeth I suitable for their respective milieu. Elton (1974) presents a pre-feminist and arguably misogynistic perception of Elizabeth. Although Elton praises most of her political manoeuvres, he imposes unnecessary stereotypes to her gender and subsequent ‘dilatory’ gender traits. He presents his belief that being a woman had a significant impact on Elizabeth’s ability to rule her country. However Bassnett (1988) presents a perception of Elizabeth shaped by contemporary ideologies concerning the redefinition of female roles, abilities and social position. In turn, she recognises Elizabeth’s ‘dilatory’ nature as a political tool essential for managing the chaotic nature of politics at this time and for survival in a patriarchal circle. This debate makes clear the way in which gender is socially and contextually constructed. Gender has long been a means of articulating the rules of society and relationships. In turn, there is a symbiotic relationship that exists between the construction of gender and the employment of power. As Scott rightly asserts, ‘gender is a primary way of signifying relationships of power…[and] it seems to have been a persistent and recurrent way of enabling the signification of power.’6 A prevailing binary is that of male over female, in which the woman is always the ”Other”.7 This binary is socially and culturally embedded – the opposition between males and females is ‘contextually defined [and] repeatedly constructed.’8 The construction of gender sheds light on the way in which gender constructs and binaries have facilitated the silence of women in history. Gender, therefore, has an essential role in informing positions and power in society. Gender is ‘the one constituent factor of all other relations’ and nowhere does this apply more, than to the power relationship between men and women.9 It is clear that ‘one of the forms of legitimization of power has been gender’.10 The employment of power forces society to act in a certain way, acting as a vehicle 5

Bock, Women’s History, 395.

Wilchins, Riki. “Queerer Bodies” In GenderQueer: Voices from beyond the sexual binary, edited by J.Nestle, R.Wilchins and C.Howell, (Los Angeles: Alyson Books, 2002), 43.

8 9

Wallach Scott, Joan. Gender and the Politics of History. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), 45.

Wallach Scott, Gender, 391.

Bock, Women’s History, 400. Bock, Women’s History, 400.

48 |

SIBYL | The Women’s College Academic Journal | Vol 2, 2013

for domination and control. It is the patriarchal nature of this development that has forced the silence of women in history. Only with an exploration of power can historians engage with a deeper understanding of women and their forms of agency. Humans are immersed in structures of power, which permeate all stages of society. Foucault recognises this power as a social construct through sets of intricate relationships. The human is a subject of power and is placed in a system of highly complex power relations, which ‘are rooted in the system of social networks’ not the product of institutions or control mechanisms.11 Notions of power are not merely given. Rather, power has been constructed over time, emerging as the basis upon which society operates, and manifests itself. There exists a ‘multiplicity of practices, relations, techniques and discursive operations that intersect at all levels of social reality, running through institutions’.12 In considering this, it can be deduced that power is not centred, but rather infiltrates throughout society. The functioning of these power relations expose the way in which women have been silenced in history, in the context of their constant engagement with their main source of domination – men. Foucault argues that the power relationship is based on the recognition that the “other” over whom power is exercised is one who can respond to that very action.13 He therefore asserts that the exercise of power is [a] total structure of action brought to bear upon possible actions; it incites, it induces, it seduces, it makes easier or more difficult; in the extreme it constrains or forbids absolutely; it is nevertheless always a way of acting upon an acting subject or acting subjects by virtue of their acting or being capable of action. A set of actions upon other actions.14 The power relationship between men and women is, then, one based on exclusion. It acts as a means of containing women in response to the realisation that they are in fact ‘capable of action.’ Hence women are barred from male dominated elements that dictate the way society operates, in particular war and politics. It is this power relationship, characterised by exclusion, which gives rise to the essential question – how do women achieve agency? Looking closely at antiquity, it is evident that religion and ritual emerges as one space in which women obtain power that manifests itself in a form that is not associated with traditional means of agency, control or order. It is a space that does not compromise femininity and is therefore in opposition to the 11 Michel Foucault, “The Subject and Power.” Critical Inquiry 28, no. 4 (1982), 793. 12 13 14

Saul Newman, “The Place of Power in Political Discourse.” International Political Science Review 25, no. 2 (2004), 143. Foucault, The Subject, 789. Foucault, The Subject, 789.

Vol 2, 2013 | The Women’s College Academic Journal | SIBYL |

masculine domains of control. The Thesmophoria, a Greek festival held for Demeter, is a clear demonstration of this. It was a three day festival reserved for women only and facilitated a detachment from the patriarchal bounds of everyday life, During these few days the women laid off the burden of their normal routine and of their submissiveness to male dominance, more especially their obedience to male phallokratia. For once they enjoyed privileges that were unimaginable in normal life: the right to organise a women’s society with complete autonomy and proper female archontes, to ward off male intervention (except for financial support), to leave their houses and stay outside, even during the night, to perform private and secret rituals.15 Although it is clearly arguable that women had some agency in history, it was not achieved through the patriarchal domains of society. The fact that women still had to rely on men for financial support during the Thesmophoria festival is a testimony to this. History is preoccupied with the domains of men and power and in turn, there has been no place for women. The recognition of this employment of power by women prompts self-assertion, which manifests itself in the writing of women’s history – this in itself can be seen as a reaction to a ‘long-term confrontation between adversaries.’16 Sarah Pomeroy’s work Women in Hellenistic Egypt provides insight into the status and experiences of Greek women in Egypt from Alexander to Cleopatra VII. She is not concerned with a transformative history of female agency, a recurring theme in women’s history. Rather, Pomeroy’s agenda is preoccupied with specific groups of women; in this case, those of Hellenistic Egypt. She seeks to explore and redefine the experiences of this historically ‘muted group’.17 Pomeroy states, Having worked for some twenty years on the history of Greek and Roman women, I’ve now been invited to designate the blank spaces in the field, and, what is even more difficult, to point to areas that were filled in, and are still being filled in, without adequate justification in the ancient sources. Some of the generalizations about “women” that were blithely voiced need to be erased…18 15 H.S. Versnel, “The Festival for Bona Dea and the Thesmophoria.” Greece & Rome, Second Series 39, no. 1 (1992), 37. 16 17 18

Foucault, The Subject, 795.

Pomeroy, Sarah. B. “The Study of Women in Antiquity: Past, Present and Future.” The American Journal of Philology 112, no. 2 (1991), 267. Pomeroy, “The Study of Women”, 265.

50 |

SIBYL | The Women’s College Academic Journal | Vol 2, 2013

Not only does Pomeroy seek to write the history of Hellenistic women, she is also concerned that the notion that the status of women in Ptolemaic Egypt was higher than that of women in Classical Greece.19 She supports her thesis by exploring women at different levels of Hellenistic society, evident from the names of her chapters which appear in the following order: “Queens”; “Alexandrian Women”: “Some Married Women in the Papyri”: “Slaves and Workers”; “Women’s role in the Economy.” Pomeroy’s work brings to the fore significant issues regarding the nature and making of history, which hinder the historian’s ability to write the history of women. These include the flawed nature of the evidence, notions of universality, and the issue of empathy. In writing this history of Hellenistic women Pomeroy is successful in addressing the flawed nature of ancient evidence and also the tendency to impose universality on the experiences of women in antiquity. However, like many historians before her and many to come, Pomeroy is simply unable to empathise with the experiences of women in antiquity. Empathy, if employed, is not necessarily successful in furthering historical understanding. The flawed nature of available evidence, which manifests itself in the form of conflicting perspectives, poses as a significant difficulty for historians when attempting to reconstruct the past. Pomeroy is well aware of this and relies on a vast collection of sources and interpretations in order to present a holistic depiction, and engages successfully with an intricate comparison of these findings. In her exploration of Hellenistic Queens, Pomeroy gives much attention to the power and influence of Arsinoë II after marrying her brother Ptolemy II. In attempting to decipher the level of equality in this union Pomeroy returns first to the Greek evidence and relies on the Odyssey to highlight the way in which power commonly came from the married couple together, not from the wife alone.20 In so doing, Pomeroy is able to present the twofold issue – the literary sources of the Ptolemaic period do not invite a close an evaluation of women’s power, nor can the historian make a judgement about Arsinoë’s influence from Greek sources alone. In light of this, Pomeroy turns to another perspective – the Egyptian sources, which bequeathed Arsinoë with the title “King of Upper and Lower Egypt.”21 There is a disparity between interpretations and it is clear that the Egyptian sources do not exercise the same hostility towards female power as those that are Greek in origin. As Pomeroy asserts, Greeks in the early stage of this period ‘were not accustomed to or tolerant of a woman who played the role of king. The Egyptians on the other hand

19 Pomeroy, Sarah B. Pomeroy, Women in Hellenistic Egypt: From Alexander to Cleopatra. (New York: Schocken, 1984), xviii. 20 21

Pomeroy, Women in Hellenistic Egypt, 18. Pomeroy, Women in Hellenistic Egypt, 19.

Vol 2, 2013 | The Women’s College Academic Journal | SIBYL |

did not hold such a narrow view of women’s power sphere.’22 It is interesting to note the way in which gender and power are inextricably linked in antiquity and so too the unique position of women from an Egyptian perspective. This further demonstrates the ways in which constructions of gender that dictate women’s roles are culturally malleable. In returning to Pomeroy’s use of sources, it is impossible to ignore the process of selectivity that has taken place. Pomeroy selected sources to support her thesis from the remaining accessible traces of the past.23 The evidence she presents in her findings is therefore, as Jenkins’ asserts, ‘the product of the historian’s discourse simply because, prior to that discourse being articulated, evidence (history) doesn’t exist: only traces do (only the past did).’24 It is impossible to ignore this notion when analysing the writing of women’s history. Meaning is applied to the ‘traces’ of the past for a specific purpose, and in Pomeroy’s case, it is the desire to relieve a ‘muted group’ from their silence. This should, however, in no way cloud the value of Pomeroy’s meticulous research, interpretation and reinterpretation of sources, which emerges as a strategy to address the conflicting perspectives encountered in her bid to explore the changing status of women in Hellenistic Egypt. The impeccable nature of her documentation is clear.25 Women do not dominate the historical record, so when presented with the task of writing their history, how can historians avoid succumbing to universalising those women who are present in it? Boch provides an insightful example of this very notion through her analysis of women in poverty in early modern Italy and concludes that ‘the female experience of poverty and poor was very different from that of men; it was an experience not of all women, but of a minority. Yet, the experience of this female minority was connected to the image and reality of the female sex as a whole.’26 It cannot be assumed that the experiences of all women in history, even within similar contexts were the same, as the experiences of women are socially, culturally and even personally relative. In turn, universal methods that attempt to provide a causal and transformative explanation of history are not always adequate when applied to the history of women. Marxist feminist explanations are a clear example. This interpretation is limited to ‘family and household experience and, for the historian, leaves no way to connect the concept (or the individual) to other social systems of economy, politics or power.’27 It is for this reason that it is essential 22 Pomeroy, Women in Hellenistic Egypt, 19. 23 24 25 26 27

Jenkins, Keith. “On some questions and some answers” In Re-thinking History, 27-57. (London and New York: Routledge, 1991), 48. Jenkins, Re-thinking, 49.

Frayda Hoffnung, “Women in Hellenistic Egypt, from Alexander to Cleopatra by Sarah B Pomeroy: A Review.” The History Teacher 20, no. 1 (1986), 146. Bock, Women’s History, 394. Wallach Scott, Gender, 386.

52 |

SIBYL | The Women’s College Academic Journal | Vol 2, 2013

to recognise that the writing of women’s history is not that of a transformation, but rather must be concerned with an exploration of specific societies and the systems they engage with. Once it is realised that the experiences of women are not universal, the criteria used to address the history of women must also be catered for specific groups. Pomeroy recognises this implication, stating ‘the criteria I shall use to evaluate the status of women in Ptolemaic Egypt will not be applicable to women universally. Rather, they have been shaped to suit the ancient evidence as well as the secondary sources.’28 She goes onto identify the monarchical system of government, the Egyptian family system, the economy and religion as some of the criteria on which she bases her evaluation. Her specification is evident in her exploration of women’s acquisition of land, where she concludes that the Egyptian government system stimulated a growth in private property and therefore elevated the social and economic position of women.29 In this way, Pomeroy is successful in catering for the specific experiences of women in this period. In the discipline of history the ability to empathise is seen as essential in order to gain greater historical understanding. However, the extent to which historians can empathise with the experiences of ancient women in a bid to construct their history is disputable. Jenkins provides an in depth analysis into the way in which empathy is unachievable, and provides both philosophical and practical explanations for this.30 He then continues with an exploration of the use of empathy in schooling as a tool to personalise teaching and learning31 and stresses the implications of imagination when engaging with this process.32 Kayla Yilmaz highlights the importance of a specialised ‘historical empathy’ in which students must access authentic historical sources, engage in critical examination, understand the nature of historical conclusions and maintain a balance between imaginative speculation and methodical investigation.33 However, there is a limit as to how well historians can ‘imagine’ aspects of the past that sources do not provide. To demonstrate the difficulty of exercising empathy Jenkins turns to the example of Cromwell and the reformation of the Tudor government. He argues that ‘we cannot empathise directly with Cromwell because we have reached him indirectly (via Elton) so actually we

28 Pomeroy, Women in Hellenistic Egypt, xvii. 29

Pomeroy, Women in Hellenistic Egypt, 158.

Jenkins, Re-thinking, 43.

30 32 33

Jenkins, Re-thinking, 39-41. Jenkins, Re-thinking, 46.

Kaya Yilmaz, “Historical Empathy and Its Implications for Classroom Practices in Schools.” The History Teacher 40, no. 3 (2007), 333.

Vol 2, 2013 | The Women’s College Academic Journal | SIBYL |

are emphasising less with Cromwell’s mind than with Elton’s.’34 This is also the case in Pomeroy’s work, as we turn our attention once more to the union between Arsinoë II and her brother Ptolemy II. Here, Pomeroy is occupied with the question of where the idea for a sibling union came from. She suggests that ‘the human element should not be ignored. Arsinoë was eight years older than Ptolemy, and as adults, older siblings often maintain their authority over younger ones, even if the older is female and the younger one male.’35 As responders to this information, we have reached the relationship of Arsinoë and Ptolemy via Pomeroy. In turn, we are being exposed to ‘history as the history of historians minds’ and consequently must question the extent to which empathy is attainable in history and the way in which the employment of empathy is not a suitable means of facilitating historical understanding of the experiences of women in antiquity. Significant issues regarding the nature and making of history are exposed when attempting to write the history of women. Sarah Pomeroy successfully develops several strategies, however, like many others in her discipline, she succumbs to empathy as a means of interpreting evidence and fulfilling her purpose. Ultimately historians need to focus on specific groups of women. This approach is beneficial when writing the history of women, as it sheds light on the contextually relative experiences of this ‘silenced’ group, as opposed to a preoccupation with a desire to explain the transformation of these experiences over time.

34 35

Jenkins, Re-thinking, 42.

Pomeroy, Women in Hellenistic Egypt, 17-18.

54 |

SIBYL | The Women’s College Academic Journal | Vol 2, 2013

Immigrants and social class: An Australian perspective ZAINA RAYAN AHMED Science Arts 1st year

Introduction As global culture becomes increasingly international, the study of immigrants has become more and more prevalent. Throughout its history, Australia has accepted immigrants from a variety of countries. In Victoria in 2012, 23.5% of the state were of English ancestry, 7.6% Irish, 6.4% Scottish, and 4.8% Italian – 1.4% of the population were also born in Italy (ABS, 2012). More recent immigrant groups have come from India, where 2.1% of the state were born; China, where 1.8% of the population were born and 3% of the population speak Mandarin or Cantonese; Greece, where 2.3% where born and 2.2% speak the language; and Vietnam, where 1.6% were born (ABS, 2012). Additionally, 38.1% of the population had both parents born overseas, and 11.5% had one parent born overseas (ABS, 2012). With such large groups of immigrants residing in Australia, it is pertinent to address the question: what is the experience of being an immigrant? This paper seeks to examine the intersection of immigration and social class. Two classical approaches to social class – the Marxian and Weberian perspectives – will be used to describe the social standing of migrants in Australia.

The Marxist Perspective Marx’s theory on social class centers on economic wealth – that an individual’s place in the social hierarchy is based on their relationship to the chain of goods production. The term ‘proletariat’ refers to the working class – the lowest rung of society. This includes farmers, factory workers, and other laborers. They do not own their own land or other means of wealth. The upper class consists of gentrified communities known as the ‘bourgeoisie’ who hold their wealth in assets such as land, stocks, or inheritance. Another class known as the ‘petite bourgeoisie’ are individuals such as managers and shop clerks – people who are not laborers but who don’t necessarily

Vol 2, 2013 | The Women’s College Academic Journal | SIBYL |

own the means to the production of their wealth. From a Marxian perspective the prime reason for a country to accept immigrants would be to provide exploitable labor power and reserve military forces (Kelley and McAllister, 1984). The country that an immigrant is from may predict the Marxian class into which they will fall. Mediterranean immigrants – from countries such as Italy and Greece – have traditionally been less educated and more likely to be farmers or have other labor-based jobs (Kelley and McAllister, 1984). British immigrants – coming from a country with a similar education system to Australia – are more likely to obtain white collar jobs, therefore falling into the petite-bourgeoisie or bourgeoisie class (Kelley and McAllister, 1984). Individuals from India, Bangladesh, or other Central Asian countries are more likely to be employed in the service industry (Colic-Peisker, 2011). Therefore the first and last groups would fall into the proletariat class. However, immigrant social class could also depend on the time period in which one’s family arrived in the country. In the 1950s and 1960s, a majority of immigrants came from Europe while in the past 30 years the majority has arrived from Central and South East Asia (Colic-Peisker, 2011). Mediterranean and European immigrants arriving in the mid-twentieth century were largely less educated and more likely to hold non-intellectual jobs because, at the time, they were leaving economically disadvantaged countries (Kelley and McAllister, 1984). Those arriving from Vietnam in the 1970s and 1980s were usually refuges of the Vietnam War and therefore faced similar if not worse prospects (Kelley and McAllister, 1984). More recently, with the introduction of Australia’s points-system – which favors educated and skilled immigrants – people from these same countries are more likely to be professionals or students. Therefore, immigrants who used to generally fall into the proletariat class now would be more likely to fall into the petite-bourgeoisie class (Colic-Peisker, 2011). Age upon arrival and what generation immigrant one is also impacts what class immigrants fall into as adults. Colic-Peisker (2011) found that even the children of laborers tend to enter white-collar careers. It was also found that second generation immigrants from lower class backgrounds – particularly those from China, Greece, and Italy among other countries – were highly likely to pursue higher education, improving their career opportunities (Khoo et al., 2002). This demonstrates that immigrant groups that were originally lower class tend to rise in status as they become more established in Australia. It is difficult to study immigrant status in Australia using the Marxian perspective. While certain trends between country of origin, era of immigration, and age at immigration exist, they contradict each other and demonstrate that immigrant class is too dynamic to be discussed under Marx’s social categories. It also must be noted that, because not all immigrants can be considered proletarians and non-citizen

56 |

SIBYL | The Women’s College Academic Journal | Vol 2, 2013

immigrants can’t join the army, the idea that immigrants only function as laborers or reserve army forces is invalid (Evans, 1988). This again shows how Marxian theory is relatively irrelevant to immigrant class.

The Weberian Perspective The Weberian Perspective, also known as Weberian Stratification or the Three Class System, centers on dimensions of power and an individual’s ability to exercise this power in society. The components of power include economic wealth, social status, and party membership. Economic wealth is one’s access to material resources and monetary wealth. Social status refers to one’s tier or rank in society based on factors such as education attainment, pedigree, and occupation. Party refers to one’s involvement with groups that have the ability to exercise power such as political parties, militant forces, unions, or even membership in a community. The Weberian perspective offers a more nuanced and comprehensive way to look at immigrant status. As observed in the previous section, the likelihood of falling in a certain economic class may depend on what country an immigrant is from and when they came to Australia. However, the Weberian system, unlike Marx, offers the opportunity to discuss fiscal wealth. The family incomes of Italian and Greek immigrants tend to be 15% less than Australians, even in high level jobs (Kelley and McAllister, 1984). Immigrants from Northern and Eastern Europe tend to earn salaries on par with Australians (Kelley and McAllister, 1984). Immigrants from Vietnam tend to earn more than Mediterraneans but less than Europeans (Kelley and McAllister, 1984). In recent years, the average income of Chinese immigrants has been less than other South East Asian countries, but Colic-Peisker (2011) attributes this to the arrival of large groups of international students. This shows that a majority of immigrant groups in Australia are at an economic disadvantage, but the degree to which this is the case varies. Social status varies between ethnic groups. Jobs of Mediterranean men are generally of lower status and the education levels of Greek and Italian immigrants as a whole tend to be lower (Kelley and McAllister, 1984). Meanwhile, English and other Northern Europeans have education attainment levels similar to or greater than those of Australians, but occupation status levels vary within this group (Kelley and McAllister, 1984; Khoo et al., 2002). Indian, Vietnamese, and Chinese immigrants tend to have either high or low education levels, which is perhaps why the social calibre of their careers also varies (Colic-Peisker, 2011; Kelley and McAllister, 1984). McAllister and Moore (1991), McGregor (1997), and Western and Baxter (2007) also suggest that race influences social class as immigrants of Caucasian

Vol 2, 2013 | The Women’s College Academic Journal | SIBYL |

decent are seen by Australians as less culturally distant than their Central or South East Asian counterparts. As components of the Weberian construct of social status vary within immigrant groups it is difficult to place immigrant groups in a social hierarchy. The Weberian concept of parties is also difficult to apply to social class of immigrants. A large population of Greek immigrants and people of Greek descent take part in Greek traditions and practice religion under the Greek Orthodox Church (Rosenthal et al, 1982). However, this group exists not to exercise power for the Greek community, but to tend to the community itself (Rosenthal, Moore, and Taylor, 1982). This demonstrates that membership of an immigrant group is not indicative of class in the Australian context. Alternatively, with many immigrants, membership of parties or groups is not affiliated with ethnicity (Kelley and McAllister, 1984). Most political activism is usually performed on the basis of an individual, and not on part of an ethnic group (Kelley and McAllister, 1984). The Weberian system allows for the recognition that immigrants hold different forms of power within Australian society, but does not provide the means to make generalizations about immigrant groups. It provides insight into the ways in which one community may function or be advantaged over another. Specifically, the Weberian concept of economic status provides a more relevant insight into the relative wealth of immigrant groups. However, as with the Marxian perspective, the status of immigrants in Australia varies to such an extent that it is difficult to set a hierarchy on what groups are upper or lower class.

Conclusion By attempting to examine immigrant class in Australia from a Marxian and Weberian perspective, this essay has shown that immigrant status is highly complex and can be difficult to categorize. The Marxian paradigm proved to be too simplistic, while the Weberian allowed for the study of components of class, but also failed to provide a clear analysis of social status. While Wallerstein (1947) has extended Marxian theory to study global class, perhaps these theories, being of late 19th Century European origin, cannot be applied to modern Australia. Neither take into account variations within immigrant groups, nor can they account for cultural differences or problems such as racism and political marginalization. It would be interesting to see more research into the state of immigrants in Australia to see what new theories arise.

58 |

SIBYL | The Womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s College Academic Journal | Vol 2, 2013

REFERENCES ABS (2012) ‘QuickStats’. Canberra: Australian Bureau of Statistics. Colic-Peisker, V. (2011) ‘A New Era in Australian Multiculturalism? From Working-Class “Ethnics” to a Multicultural Middle-Class’, International Migration Review 45: 562-587. Evans, M. (1988) ‘Choosing to be a Citizen: The Time-Path of Citizenship in Australia’, International Migration Review 22: 243-264 Kelley, J. and I. McAllister (1984) ‘Immigrants, Socio-Economic Attainment, and Politics in Australia’, The British Journal of Sociology 35: 187-405. Khoo, S., P. McDonald, D. Giorgas, and B. Birrell (2002) ‘Second Generation Australians’. Canberra: Department of Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs. McAllister, I. and R. Moore (1991) ‘The Development of Ethnic Prejudice: An Analysis of Australian Immigrants’, Ethnic and Racial Studies 14: 127-151 McGregor, C. (1997) Class in Australia. Victoria: Penguin. Wallerstein, I. (1974) ‘The Rise and Future Demise of the World Capitalist System: Concepts for Comparative Analysis’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 4: 387-415 Western, M. and J. Baxter (2007) ‘Class and Inequality in Australia’ pp. 215-238 in J. Germov (ed.) Public Sociology: An Introduction to Australian Society. Crows Nest: Allen and Unwin.

Vol 2, 2013 | The Women’s College Academic Journal | SIBYL |

inside back cover

outside back cover