Introduction: Gender and Violence in Cultural Texts of the Global South

In an article concerned with Western feminist responses to the 2012 gang rape and murder of a young woman on a bus in New Delhi, Elora Halim Chowdhury criticises analyses that fail to illuminate 'globalization and the structural inequalities that play a role in producing both victims and perpetrators of violence' (10). (121) In terms of genderbased research into the Global South, this can be seen in analyses of the feminisation of labour and poverty, including the increased vulnerability to violence of women who live in slums with restricted access to water and sanitation and who are required to travel long distances to workplaces (often operated by multi-national companies). Embodying subtle modes of resistance to colonial and white supremacist domination and the violence implicit in these gendering regimes, both the African American and the Haitian women in Morrell's study are strongly oriented towards alternative and emergent futures. Summaries of Essays In '"Who Speaks for Culture?" Challenging Gender and Sexual Violence in Mori and Pacific Island Literature in English', Chris Prentice analyses the intersecting pressures of colonisation, diaspora and globalisation to observe that Mori and Pacific Island territories, communities and cultures bear the social, economic, and environmental brunt of global capitalism whose so-called benefits are weighted strongly towards the North.