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2. Postcolonial challenges for women's history

1. Karen Bähr Caballero
Institute of Development Studies - Catholic University of Louvain

Women, Agency and Historical Development Processes. A case Study of poor rural women in Honduras.

Based on a post colonialist and a post development theoretical perspective, my paper aims to introduce a critical approach to the dominant vision of development, specially the way it intermingles with the dominant western feminist theory to produce a particular knowledge about development and women.

In the last decades many authors from different disciplines within the social sciences have been vigorously questioning the fundamental paradigms of the dominant development theory. Categories related to the universality of the development model, its reproducibility and the very normative conception of development understood as a lineal, progressive social evolution, are being revisited and deconstructed.

One of the most remarkable critical contributions to the development theorizing comes from an interdisciplinary approach that considers the importance of conceptualizing development as a historical processes in the longue durée. This approach is nourished by an anthropological reflection about the relation between Agency and Structure (Wagueninguen Rural Sociology Institute) and the efforts to introduce a variation of scale to render the complexity of historical phenomena (Italian school of Micro History).

Within the feminist thinking, the main theories about development and women have been questioned for their imperialist standpoints and their policy consequences, often negative to women. These critical stances are developed specially from a post colonialist feminist and postmodern feminist perspectives on development.

In this paper I intend to explore the possibilities of this critical approaches to the sub field of Women and Development. A particular attention is paid to the specific experiences of poor rural women's and their specific agency within a particular local context. This approach challenges « woman » as a homogenous historical category as it recognizes class and ethnic distinctiveness in the way poor rural women experience development historical processes.

This paper!presents the results of my ongoing PGD research project about "Women, Historical Development and Poor Women Agency in Rural Honduras", based on a field research carried out in a rural locality of west Honduras for several months in 2001 and 2002 and a year stay throughout 2004.

2. Gunlög Fur
Växjö universitet/Institutionen för humaniora

Gender and colonization in Swedish Lapland

During the course of the seventeenth century the Swedish crown intensified its presence in the north through the execution of legal and religious affairs during yearly gatherings between Saamis and Swedes at regional marketplaces. The court constituted an arena for the representatives of the crown to exert influence and control over Saami communities, but it was also a forum for Saami conflict management. In general court records reveal the interactions between men. In this study the search light is turned on women's roles and positions in their contacts with Swedish colonization efforts through a focus on the situations when women were present at the court proceedings. How can this presence be understood and what is the significance of women's absence from the courts? International research has demonstrated that gender, or social practices regarding sex, is a constitutive element of colonial relations. Practices regarding marriages and sexuality, division of labor, political authority, and belief systems contain aspects of gender that have had a decisive impact on the development of colonialism. Early modern Sweden and its colonization in Lapland has not previously been studied from this perspective. This project seeks to analyze the court documents to reveal fundamental aspects of how Saamis chose to act in this encounter with a Swedish legal system and how a colonial relationship developed between the Swedish crown and Saami people.

3. Pernille Ipsen
Department of History, University of Copenhagen

Intercultural intimacy in Danish Guinea

The topic of my current work is intercultural concubinary relations between Danish male administrators and traders and African women in the Danish trading post in Guinea (present day Ghana) in a broad period from about 1680 to 1850. In this paper I will focus on a special type of "marriages" - cassareringer - between Danish men and African/mulatto women that became ordinary practice in Danish Guinea from about 1720. This type of organized and officially recognized concubinary relationships took place within the framework of the general power structures in the colonial Atlantic world, but were at the same time formed by more specific European discourses on race and gender. They are therefore an interesting starting point for a survey of the cultural encounters between Danish and African cultures in the Atlantic world.

Sexual relations between Europeans and Africans were in many ways formative in the intercultural interplay in the European trading posts and later colonies in Africa and thereby in the shaping of the present day postcolonial societies. The intimate relations crossed boundaries between black and white and threatened the social hierarchy in the trading posts. The relations were especially threatening when they resulted in children, who were difficult to place on either side of the cultural and racial barriers. By establishing an accepted concubinary institution the Danish priests and trading administrators were hoping to take control over the otherwise unlawful sexual relations between Danish men and African women in Danish Guinea. Priests like Elias Swane, who founded the first "mulatto school" at Christiansborg in 1722, argued that it was against Christian fatherly practice to let the children of inter Danish-African relations grow up without any "enlightenment or knowledge of the true faith." Not only should the fathers support their children, but the mothers also had certain rights and privileges. The trading administration likewise had good reasons to support an institutionalisation of the interracial intimate relations that I shall return to in the paper.

Through a presentation of the story of the institution of cassarering in Danish Guinea the paper will broach questions about masculinity and the Danish encounter with Africa. Inspired by the anthropologist Ann Laura Stoler's many opening questions in Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power from 2002 and literary analysist Anne McClintock's Imperial Leather from 1995 with her provocative and thought generating approach to colonial encounters as inherently gendered enterprises, I will take a closer look at the early years of the Danish presence on the Gold Coast. What happens to the story of the early encounters after the establishment of Christiansborg (in present day Accra) if we read it as a gendered encounter? Who were the Danish men and how did their historically specific maculinities come into play in their encounter with Africa and African women? When and how did they establish concubinary relations with African women and what roles did the relationships play in their general encounter with Africa?

4. Marika Kivinen
Institutet för kvinnoforskning, Åbo Akademi

Postcolonial histories - Unbinding the connections between colonialism, nationalism and a "Finnish" historical past

This paper presents some thoughts on the relationship between feminist historiography and postcolonial theory. My research on feminist discourses in Finnish feminist magazines from the past few decades is largely building on postcolonial theory, in specific on Spivak (e.g. 1999) and Bhabha (e.g. 1994). However, I have found that articulating the context of Finnish feminist magazines as colonialist and imperialist is a challenging task, and I would suggest that postcolonial theory is at odds with assumptions of Finnish history. I approach the complexity of the relationship between historiography and postcolonial theory by contrasting Spivak (e.g. 1986) with understandings of colonial discourse through processes of mimicry and repetition, such as articulated by Bhabha (1990, 1994).

I argue in this paper that the "fact" of colonialism as a series of events is foundational for postcolonial theory. Thus, taking postcolonial theory seriously for historical writing in and about Finland could imply a rewriting of history, of writing a history which includes colonialist moments, movements and mentalities. In such narratives, however, the "home" in relation to colonial action is Finland, a "home" which is at odds with postcolonial articulations of the colonial metropolis, as centres of power. Thus, inscribing Finland in a colonial scholarship raises questions about power relations where colony-colonial centre are not the only axis of power.

So, articulating the context of feminist magazines as colonialist and imperialist is a two-fold challenge. On one hand it is necessary to revisit historical scholarship and indeed rewrite, on some levels, the history of nationalist becoming, of homogeneity and outsidership. On the other, this challenge is a theoretical challenge, which necessitates an intimate relationship with postcolonial theory and a re-articulation of the theoretical debates. A case in point is Spivak (1986) in which she connects imperialism, nationalism and fiction by claiming that it should not be possible to read nineteenth-century British literature without remembering that imperialism, understood as England's social mission, was a crucial part of the cultural presentation of England to the English. Were I to substitute "English" with "Finnish" in this phrase, I would be at odds with not only historical discourse, but also with post-colonial theory. This "fact", provides challenges for postcolonial historical historiography.

The following questions are presented: Can there be a postcolonial theory without a specific view of colonialism as a historical phenomenon or without a repetition of narratives of colonialism as a fact? What are the implications of this for a Finnish historiography, in which colonialism as part of a national narrative is largely absent? In what ways can Finnish history be approached through postcolonial theory?

Maud Wedin
The Forest Finns in Sweden - a gender perspective


The end of the 16th century saw the start of a westward migration of Finns from Eastern Finland to the Scandinavian conifer belt. These so-called Forest Finns settled in forest areas throughout Scandinavia from Tiveden in southern Sweden to Lapland in the north, from Gästrikland on the east coast to Norwegian Telemark in the west.
Today Forest Finn buildings, like black cottages (smoke cabins), smoke saunas and drying houses ('riihi') are still to be found in certain areas. Names of places recall the Finnish language and the old villages are still called Finn-villages and Finn forests, where during festivity days in summer the old Forest Finn dish 'mutti' is served.
During the colonisation the Forest Finns used a type of swiddening called slash-and-burn ('huuhta'), which gave very good harvests. Since they were experts in this huuhta cultivation, they were able to colonise successfully the vast spruce forests that previously had only been used for hunting and fishing. When conditions were favourable this type of cultivation could give yields 10 to 50 times greater than those of conventional arable farming.
The Forest Finns were initially welcomed to Sweden and were even given tax-free years during the colonisation in the beginning of the 17th century - the 'landnam' period. But swidden cultivation needed large forest areas and, from 1630, the mining industry and its need for charcoal became very important in Sweden. Subsequent laws and regulations limited and, in some areas, prohibited slash-and-burn methods. The Forest Finns then had to turn to arable farming. All along fishing and hunting were important sources of livelihood.
The main occupation, beside slash and burn, was cattle raising and dairy farming. The old slash and burn sites and the marshlands provided fodder for the cattle. Tending the cattle, dairy production and taking care of the house and children were female chores, while the men were mainly responsible for the slash and burn sites, hunting and fishing. Sometimes young unmarried women could perform tasks normally done by men, but men did seldom female work.
Forest Finns in a gender perspective
Women were rarely seen in cameral records. The master, who on the paper was the owner of the farm, represented the farm in official matters. Though, if the husband was dead, the widow could also officially be in charge of the farm.
Both according to authorities and the church, normal everyday life was structured after power in a hierarchic order, which also included men's supremacy and women's inferiority. Do these facts also indicate that this patriarchal pattern influenced every day life among peasants, like for instance Forest Finn farmers?
Most certainly they did in many ways, but there were also factors within the Forest Finn household, which show that the interpretation of Forest Finn social life isn't as easy as that.
All farms (Swedish and Finnish) were dependent on both female and male labour. As the fields of responsibility were so different between husband and wife, the household was dependent on both of them as "master and matron" of the farm. The wife didn't interfere with her husband's duties and vice versa. This mutual dependence between them and the other members of the farm resulted in a lack of personal freedom, not only for women but also for men. Whether the husband felt superior and the wife inferior is not easy to judge.
The best source for studies of social and everyday life is through court records. They tell about the authorities point of view what was considered right or wrong, but they also show details that give us information about the Forest Finn view.
Case 1) Parents of a young man and the parents of a young woman decide that the young couple should get married and move to her home farm. The young man doesn't like his father-in-law to-be but there is hard pressure on him to fulfil his duties to the families.
How much freedom did each individual have when it came to decide their own future and their own way of living. Was there, in reality, any difference between men and women in this respect?
Case 2) A young Forest Finn man marries a Swedish woman and the couple is thrown out from the farm by his parents. Why wasn't she accepted? Was it because of the specific knowledge a married Forest Finn wife needed to be skilled in to manage a Forest Finn household or was it just prejudice from his parents?
Case 3) Most of the Forest Finns migrating to Sweden wanted to obtain a new farm, based on slash and burn and stock-farming. But there was also quite a large group of so-called stray Finns (Sw 'lösfinnar', Fi 'irtosuomalaiset') having occasional work at the Forest Finn farms when needed. Most of these stray Finns were young men, but there were also some young women. Why they chose to live this way instead of trying to build up farms of their own is not so easy to know. Some of them did so when they grew older, but not all of them.
Swedish society didn't accept this way of living, also assigning both male and female stray Finns low status. The stray Finns were considered to have a bad morality, for example concerning sexual crimes.
But one cannot take for granted that the stray Finns had the same low status within the Forest Finn society. In Eastern Finland, where they originated from, this system of stray Finns were common and accepted, in many ways also necessary as the slash and burn cultivation needed a flexible and skilled labour during certain periods of the year, but not full time.