Erin Beck: The Uneven Impacts of Violence against Women Reforms in Guatemala

PLC 348

Join the International Studies Community for a discussion at the INTL Lunch Talk Next Friday, May 10 @ 12 p.m. in PLC 348

The Uneven Impacts of Violence against Women Reforms in Guatemala: Intersecting Inequalities and the Patchwork State
Presented by Dr. Erin Beck, Associate Professor, Political Science, UO

In 2008, Guatemala passed one of the most comprehensive pieces of violence against women legislation in Latin America, which criminalized various forms of violence against women (VAW) and mandated the creation of a specialized court system that would focus exclusively on VAW.

This talk explores the passage of such agenda-setting reforms and analyzes their impacts. It demonstrates that the reforms’ impacts are unevenly felt, with those who are already the most marginalized benefiting the least. It explains these uneven effects by drawing on a historical intersectional analysis of gender violence and an an analysis of state-society relations at their local instantiations where reforms do (or do not) affect state officials’ behavior and individuals’ expectations and experiences of the “reformed” state.

Among other theoretical insights, this analysis reveals the importance of including place in an intersectional analysis alongside more commonly studied categories of difference such as gender, ethnicity, and class. 

Tags: Erin Beck, Guatemala, UO, Violence against Women

Study finds microfinance can help, even if goals aren’t met | Around the O

Erin Beck

Editor’s Note: Erin Beck is a member of the CLLAS Executive Board.

Source: Study finds microfinance can help, even if goals aren’t met | Around the O

August 7, 2017—UO political scientist Erin Beck thinks development organizations aren’t asking the right questions if they want to truly understand what the money they spend trying to help lift poor people out of poverty around the globe is actually doing.

Her new book, How Development Projects Persist, outlines her takeaways from researching nongovernmental microfinance organizations for poor rural women in Guatemala and challenges standard ways of measuring the success of development projects. She argues that organizations rely too much on numbers and often overlook critical human interactions, which are not as easily measured but are central to understanding how development projects function and persist.

“We can’t just think about what the projects are doing for people but should also examine what people do for projects,” Beck said. “We need to look at how policies get transformed on the ground.” › Continue reading

Tags: CLLAS, Erin Beck, Guatemala, microfinance, UO

Erin Beck’s book now out

How Development Projects Persist: Everyday Negotiations with Guatemalan NGOs
by Erin Beck. Duke University Press (May 2017)

Erin Beck is an assistant professor of political science at the University of Oregon and a member of the CLLAS Executive Board.

Publisher’s Synopsis

“In How Development Projects Persist Erin Beck examines microfinance NGOs working in Guatemala and problematizes the accepted wisdom of how NGOs function. Drawing on twenty months of ethnographic fieldwork, she shows how development models and plans become entangled in the relationships among local actors in ways that alter what they are, how they are valued, and the conditions of their persistence. › Continue reading

Tags: CLLAS, Erin Beck, Guatemala, NGO, UO

“Achieving Justice: Gendered Violence, Displacement, and Legal Access in Guatemala and Oregon,” a roundtable

Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art (JSMA)
Ford Lecture Hall
1430 Johnson Lane
Eugene, OR  97403
UO campus
PDF: printable flyer

Organized by the Center for the Study of Women in Society’s Américas Research Interest Group, this roundtable will explore how gendered violence in Guatemala leads indigenous women to flee the country as refugees to seek asylum in the United States. By putting experts on gendered violence in Central America into conversation with Oregon-based asylum attorneys, the roundtable will explore the legal reforms with greatest potential to provide effective justice for its survivors. The roundtable will address many critical questions such as: in countries with multiple forms of violence and weak rule of law, what resources are available to displaced women seeking justice and security? What obstacles to gendered justice in Guatemala push women to leave the country? Once in the U.S., what factors prevent women from seeking protection through asylum, and what resources help them create new systems of support and autonomy?

Speakers:

• Erin Beck, UO Department of Political Science
• Gabriela Martínez, UO School of Journalism and Communication
• Lynn Stephen, UO Department of Anthropology
• Vannia Glasinovic, U.S. Asylum Attorney
• Christopher Anders, U.S. Asylum Attorney
• Anna Ciesielski, U.S. Asylum Attorney

Sponsored by the UO Center for the Study of Women in Society’s Américas Research Interest Group, the Wayne Morse Center for Law & Politics, and the Center for Latino/a and Latin American Studies.

Note: This is a pre-conference event connected to the LALISA Conference: http://las.uoregon.edu/2016/12/12/2nd-lalisa-conference-april-13-15/

Tags: CLLAS, CSWS, Erin Beck, Gendered Justice, Guatemala, Lynn Stephen

“Gender Justice in Guatemala: Advances and Challenges,” a talk by Erin Beck and Lynn Stephen

Erb Memorial Union (EMU)
Room 119
UO campus

UO professors Erin Beck and Lynn Stephen will discuss their research in a CLLAS Faculty Collaborative Research talk titled “Gender Justice in Guatemala: Advances and Challenges.” The talk will take place in Room 119 in the Erb Memorial Union on January 19, 2017, at 3:30 p.m.

Presentation Focus
“In Guatemala, a woman is killed every twelve hours and her killer is likely to go unpunished. Feminicide—the killing of women based on their gender in the face of a negligent or complicit state—is the extremity of gendered violence, which includes sexual assault, gender-specific forms of torture, and economic and psychological violence towards women. Our project explores the accomplishments and challenges of Guatemala’s new feminicide law and specialized gender violence courts. We use in-depth ethnographic and qualitative analysis of the participants: judges, social workers, advocates in women’s organizations, those who train judges and advocates about gendered violence and its prevention, and survivors of gendered violence. This presentation will focus on the history of the feminicide courts and use the case study of indigenous Mam women from Todos Santos Cuchamatan, Huehuetenango to explore what the obstacles to women’s access to gendered justice are: including monolingualism, isolation and poverty, regional cultures of competing generational masculinities, and local justice systems that encourage women to reconcile with aggressors.”

Erin Beck is an assistant professor in the UO Department of Political Science. CLLAS founding director Lynn Stephen is a Distinguished Professor, College of Arts and Sciences, in the UO Department of Anthropology.

Their CLLAS-funded research is the first phase of a long-term collaborative project.

Tags: CLLAS, Erin Beck, Guatemala research, Lynn Stephen, UO