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3. Kjønn og kolonialisme i misjon og bistandsarbeid / Nordic zealots - Gender and colonialism in Christian missions and development aid

1. Anna Jansdotter
Lunds universitet, Centrum för genusvetenskap

Prostitution, mission och det sociala arbetets paradoxer. Sverige 1850-1920

I mitt föredrag kommer jag att diskutera räddningsarbete bland prostituerade kvinnor i Sverige mellan 1850 och 1920. Jag vill koppla samman yttre och inre mission och hur relationen mellan räddare och de som ska räddas kan analyseras i relation till variablerna genus, religion och till paradoxer inom tidens sociala arbete. Medan missionärerna i exempelvis Indien och Kina ville omvända hedningar till kristendomen så vände sig de räddningskvinnor som ville omvända de "fallna" kvinnorna till underklassen och till "den undre världens" slumområden. Det sociala arbetet bland prostituerade som startades i Sverige i mitten av 1800-talet hade de prostituerade kvinnornas religiösa omvändelse i fokus.

Den bildade klassens kvinnor uppmanades att ta sig an sina "fallna" medsystrar. I min analys fokuserar jag på hur skillnad mellan kvinnor konstruerades i det sociala arbetet, men även på hur en likhet (kvinnan med stort K) skapades i samma process. Jag koncentrerar mig även på vad jag menar kan uppfattas som en paradox i det sociala arbetet - den mellan socialkontroll och omsorg. Min inställning här är att det social arbetet inte går att renodla och betrakta som antingen "välvilja" eller "förtryck" utan själva dynamiken i det räddningsarbete jag undersöker är uppbyggd kring perspektivens "samtidighet". Jag vill även argumentera för att religionen varit underutnyttjad i forskningen som tolkningsram och jag vill på ett tydligare sätt använda religionen i min analys för att få en fördjupad förståelse av räddningsrörelsens konstruktioner av kvinnligheter och av dynamiken i det sociala arbetet.

2. Ingie Hovland
Anthropology, SOAS (University of London)

To lift women up' - up and away? Women as ambivalent symbols in the Norwegian Mission Society; Glimpses from 1851 and 2004

Last year I spent a year on 'fieldwork' in the Norwegian Mission Society. Among the things that struck me was the ambivalent image of women that is alive in the organisation. On the one hand, the organisation officially aims 'to lift women up' in their church and development work abroad. They wish to improve the conditions under which women live. They wish to contribute to greater gender equality in the communities in which they work, and they wish to influence their partner churches to promote gender equality in their organisational structures. This focus on 'lifting up' women can be traced right back to the earliest missionaries for the mission society: the pioneer missionaries sent letters back from Zululand to Stavanger in the 1850s, arguing strongly for the need to use their religious work to contribute to the 'key aim' of greater freedom and influence for Zulu women in their communities.

On the other hand, we know almost nothing about the pioneer missionaries' wives - because they were not a part of the official organisational domain; they did not write letters back to Stavanger to report on their activities. This aspect of being a woman - the loyal silence - has also proved remarkably salient in the gender roles of the mission society. The organisation's thinkers (theologians) and decision-makers are thought of as typically male, while the grassroots and background supporters are thought of as typically female. The most striking sign of this today is perhaps the almost complete lack of female leaders at the mission society head office, and the similarly overwhelming lack of female theologians at the mission society's school in Stavanger. And when I went to Madagascar in 2004, I was struck by how little the role of 'missionary wife' has changed in certain respects since the 1850s. Against this background, it becomes interesting to ask: what do they actually mean in the mission society when they say that they wish to 'lift women up'? What did they use this phrase to mean under colonial regimes in the past? And what does it mean under today's development regime?

Yuval-Davis (Gender and Nation, 1997) has argued that women serve as ambivalent symbols in the construction of nation: on the one hand, they symbolise - in potent ways - the nation's unity and the collective raison d'être; on the other hand, they are excluded from the collective 'we' of the body politic. They are regarded as good images but not as grown-ups. I will argue that the same ambivalence has marked the image of women in the mission society throughout the organisation's history, from its establishment until today. I wish to explore this ambivalence through glimpses into the organisation's historical traditions and everyday episodes from the organisation today. Moreover, I will argue that while the same ambivalence may be found in secular development organisations, the mission society, as a religious organisation, faces far more external scepticism and critique. The organisation, in defense against this, seems to experience a greater need for internal rigidity and stability - thus making it more difficult to bring about change in their gender patterns.

3. Seija Jalagin:
University of Oulu/Dept. of History

The "Other" and Colonial Power Game: Crossing gendered and ethnic boundaries in Finnish mission to Japan

At first glance the Finnish mission in early twentieth century Japan doesn't seem to bear any indication to colonialist discourse of its time. The mission consisted of a small evangelical revivalist group of pastors, laymen and unmarried female missionaries in a country that was never colonised but rather acted as a colonising power in Korea after 1910. The starting point of my paper is, however, that colonialism has to be seen as a mental and cultural process. It is rather like some scholars have argued that missionaries were the worst sort of colonisers since they colonised not only the body but also the mind of the people they worked with. In the case of Japan we can also speak of a self-colonising effect: since 1860s the governments pursued to modernise Japan according to western models so that it could resist the West's political, military and economic expansion.

Amidst the umbrella of Protestant mission optimism the Finns started a mission in Japan in 1900, and they still continue the work, now under the Japan Evangelical Lutheran Church (Nihon Fukuin Ruuteru Kyookai) that originally stemmed from the work of American Lutheran missions. My paper presents a case that first brought the issues of gendered and ethnic boundaries under critical thinking in 1910s. I will study the questions of gender and ethnicity together under the framework of othering as colonial power game to expose the ways in which mission and colonialism were active even in the small Finnish mission in rapidly modernised Japan, that was successful in resisting western cultural products such as Christianity.

In 1911 the mission community was joined by a Finnish-Japanese couple, Tadao and Siiri Watanabe. Watanabe was one of the first converts of the Finnish mission and was, due to many factors relating to the young and rather vague organisation, educated as a missionary in Finland. Returning to Japan as a full-powered missionary and with a Finnish wife brought about a controversy on his status. The Finnish male missionaries objected to him being given the same rights as they had as missionaries and leaders of the mission. Moreover, Watanabe's western wife created a situation where he was also seen crossing the boundary of western and Japanese way of life and ethnic grouping. In other words, the Watanabe case threatened the identity structure of the Finnish missionaries. It, however, seemed to do so only in the case of male missionaries. In the new situation, the missionaries were forced to renegotiate the gendered and ethnic boundaries and conventions in their community. Where does this, then, leave the Finnish missionary women, the missionary wives, and the Finnish wife of the Japanese missionary? Who were the "others", whose "others", and what is the relationship between gender, othering and colonial discourse?

4. Lene Sjørup:
Har Danmark en verdensmission?

I 1927 skrev den danske missionær Anne Marie Pedersen det lille skrift Har Danmark en Verdensmission? Anledningen var en kritik fra dele af hendes danske baggrundsgruppe, der mente, hun ved sit samarbejde med indiske nationalister, bl.a. Gandhi, engagerede sig for meget i den anti-koloniale politik og var alt for åben for en indisk kristendom. De mente, hendes mission var at koncentrere sig om at drive den kristne kostskole for fattige piger, Seva Mandir i Porto Novo, hun fik økonomisk støtte til at oprette og drive. I skriftet udviklede AMP en missionsteologisk diskurs, der beskrev Danmark som et Hjertefolk med en verdensmission, som burde bestå i at acceptere en indisk Kristus, og som havde ligestillede indiske missionærer. Men Danmark havde ifølge AMP fejlet sit kald, ikke engang de grundtvigske menigheder havde turdet "betro Jesus Kristus til Indien." Ja, hun skrev ligeud: "Der er lig i Lasten på Kirkeskibet, og Stanken driver renlige og gode Mennesker bort … Kirken korsfæster Jesus Kristus".

Anne Marie Pedersens historie foregriber både nogle af de udviklingsproblemer, bistandsorganisationer i dag står i, og nogle af de emner, den postkoloniale feministiske teologi arbejder med.

Den økonomiske bistand til den 3. verden er fra 1960-erne og frem blevet gjort afhængig af en stadig voksende række af konditionaliteter. Bistanden betinges bl.a. af, at der er transparancy i forvaltningen af den, og det vil ofte sige i staten, at der tages højde for økologien, at køn mainstreames. Donorerne gennemfører desuden capacity-building af den 3. verdens kontaktpersoner og eksperter. Bistanden medfører derfor en voksende intervention, der går fra staten og ned i den enkelte. Ganske vist er man blevet opmærksom på, at hvis bistanden skal fungere lokalt, skal bistandsprojekter gennemføres i partnerskaber med de lokale. Men disse partnerskaber er i Danmark dybt afhængige af det politiske klima. Det politiske skifte til en liberal-højreorienteret regering betyder således en omlægning af bistandsmidler, så katastrofebistand og militær intervention nu prioriteres højt. Derfor er nogle omhyggeligt opbyggede partnerskaber blevet afsluttet fra dansk side. Omlægningen af den danske bistand, så dele af den går til militærets hjælpeopgaver i den 3. verden, betyder desuden en maskulinisering af den. På samme måde betød missionsselskabernes greb om økonomien, at kvindelige missionærer, der ofte var pionerer, og som ønskede en lokalt defineret udvikling, blev erstattet af mandlige med en dansk dagsorden.

Allerede i 1920-erne bemærkede en af de indiske missionærer, der som AMP fandt det vigtigt, at disse samarbejdede med missionsorganisationerne, at det var svært at tale om friendships, når den ene part stod med pengepungen og rent faktisk kontrollerede, at de havde det rette kristne og danske sindelag.

Indiske, asiatiske, afrikanske og latinamerikanske feministiske teologiformer har medført en opblomstring af den kontekstuelle teologi. Den feministiske, postkoloniale teologi har givet en række nye, spændende bud på teologisk metodologi i en globaliseret verden. I sit opgør med teologiens universalistiske diskurser viderefører den nogle af AMPs tanker, uden at hun dog har haft nogen direkte indflydelse på den. Hun døde i 1951.

Oplægget vil forsøge at optegne dette felt og på ny stille AMPs spørgsmål: Har Danmark en verdensmission.

5. Catarina Lundström
Mittuniversitet, humaniora / Föreningsarkivet i Jämtlands län

Samiskt-svenskt, kvinnligt-manligt: kvinnligt missionsarbete i det samiska ålderdomshemmet Fjällgård, Undersåker (Åre)

Vi avser att diskutera kvinnlig missionsverksamhet i Sverige ur ett postkolonalt perspektiv. I missionssammanhang talas om yttre och inre mission, där den senare främst har riktats mot den samiska befolkningen. I Jämtlands län ägnade sig organisationen KMA (Kvinnliga missionsarbetare) åt missionerande verksamhet bland samerna i Sverige. Bland annat startade man 1907 det samiska ålderdomshemmet Fjällgård i Undersåker, Åre. KMA stöddes inte minst av bildade borgerliga grupper samt av representanter från den kungliga familjen. Verksamheten syftade bland annat till att stödja den samiska slöjden, bland annat genom kurser och pristävlingar. Från denna verksamhet finns ett mycket spännande material bevarat vid Föreningsarkivet i Jämtlands län. Det består bland annat av korrespondens, fotografier, genealogiska anteckningar om de boende, handlingar från slöjdverksamheten samt en stor klippsamling. Kring ålderdomshemmet Fjällgård uppstod ett möte mellan samiskt och svenskt, mellan kvinnligt och manligt samt mellan representanter från medel- och överklassen och den samiska befolkningen. Verksamheten måste betraktas mot bakgrund av det rådande nationella projektet. Den samiska missionen innebar inte bara ett bistånd till en fattiga samisk befolkning, den bidrog också till att skapa och reproducera kategorier som ”samiskt” respektive ”svenskt” och ”kvinnligt” respektive ”manligt”. Detta skedde inte minst inom ramen för slöjdverksamheten. Utifrån materialet om Fjällgård kan en rad skärningspunkter, intersektioner studeras och analyseras: mellan kön, etnicitet, klass och plats. Inte minst måste hierarkierna inom kön lyftas fram. Projektet ”Fjällgård: samiskt – svenskt, kvinnligt – manligt” avser att koppla ett spännande arkivmaterial till feministisk postkolonial teori och till den aktuella diskussionen om intersektionalitet. Hur kom det koloniala tänkande att prägla verksamheter inom det egna landet? Hur kom det att samverka med, respektive konfronteras med kategorierna kön och klass?

6. Sunniva Engh
University of Oxford, Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine

Northern feminists and Southern women: Scandinavia's 'special role' in family planning aid

The Scandinavian countries have played pioneering roles in the international debate on population growth in developing countries, raising the question of 'the population explosion' in international fora such as the UN and the OECD. The Scandinavian countries have also been at the forefront as donors to family planning programmes in the Third World, providing substantial amounts of population aid to African and South Asian countries. In 1958, Sweden became the first country in the world to initiate a bilateral aid agreement on family planning, as they established a Swedish 'pilot project' in Sri Lanka. Norway initiated population aid in the early 1960s, and in 1971 the Storting decided to earmark as much as ten percent of the country's total aid budget for family planning activities, making Norway the most generous OECD donor to this purpose.

The Scandinavian initiatives in family planning aid were taken partly as a result of a perception of a need to limit population growth in developing countries, which became especially urgent in the 1950s and -60s, and partly due to the fact that women became a particular target group for Scandinavian aid during the 1960s and -70s. Furthermore, within the aid agencies, there was a strong belief that the Scandinavian countries were particularly suited to providing this type of assistance, due to a lack of moral or religious reservations regarding the use of contraceptives.

However the family planning assistance should also be understood in relation to domestic Scandinavian population policies of the interwar period, and what seems to have been a firm belief in the possibilities of social engineering. The very first aid to family planning was a direct result of the efforts of well-known Scandinavian feminists and activists, such as Elise Ottesen-Jensen, Hannah Rydh, and Alva Myrdal. As these central actors were involved in pioneering efforts in sexual and reproductive health, domestic population policies of both pronatalist and antinatalist varieties, as well as the eugenics movements and sterilisation policies of the interwar period, it is important to take these factors into consideration when examining the particular Scandinavian interest in population assistance to women in Third World countries.

Tracing what may be termed the intellectual origins behind the family planning aid, this paper seeks to explain the pioneering role of the Scandinavian countries in the population field, as this can be seen in the post-war period. Thus far, in Scandinavian historical research, development assistance has predominantly been understood as a post-war phenomenon, grown out of political events such as Truman's point four programme, and the Colombo and Marshall plans. The paper contradicts this view, arguing that aid should be seen within a longer historical perspective, taking into consideration important antecedents to official development aid, which this again has grown out of and may be a reflection of.