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The Emergence of Indigenous Feminism in Latin America
Abstract
In this article I present a brief summary of the processes that gave rise to the indigenous women’s movement in Latin America and describe the diverse political genealogies that influence a culturally situated feminist agenda. This article also reflects on the processes of globalization from below that are emerging as indigenous women organize throughout the Americas.
... Differences among separate identities may inform interlocking inequalities in what Collins (1990: 18) calls a matrix of domination, whereby axes of oppression intersect to generate new, unique types of inequality, like Indigenous feminist epistemology (Smith, 2012(Smith, [1999: 76). It may prove fruitful to temper the epistemology of Indigenous identity with analysis of varying and overlapping identities to identify new breeds of intersectionality that covertly order hitherto ignored forms of deprivation in other contexts, such as ownership and labor relations in workplace settings (Choo and Ferree, 2010) or the contentious politics that Indigenous women experience in mobilization (Hernández Castillo, 2010). ...
The subject of (de)colonization in the academy has witnessed an upsurge in attention over the past two decades across the social sciences and the Global North-South divide. This article critically examines central themes that have guided the conceptualization of decolonization thus far and foregrounds the convergences that decolonization shares with the epistemology of qualitative research methodology and pedagogy. In so doing, this article articulates the objective of reconciliation and demonstrates the ways in which reconciliation has been and can be enacted in the academy, limning the themes of (a) attention to physical context; (b) inclusion of Indigenous voices; (c) and decolonization of Indigenous and non-Indigenous minds. This article argues for better aligning the epistemology and conduct of qualitative research with Indigenous values—and concludes by calling for attention to Indigenous intersectionality and calling against a growing trend of decontextualizing decolonization.
... And in many local contexts across the globe, indigenous feminists continuously emphasize and oppose the ongoing coexistence of imperialism, racism and sexism (cf. Hernández Castillo 2010;Barker 2015aBarker , 2015b. Moreover, since the 1980s, critical postcolonial feminist perspectives have focused on the production of subaltern subjects in the global gender equality regime (cf. ...
Across the globe, a growing number of social movements, such as demonstrations in support of equal civil status or reproductive freedom and against sexualized violence, show that women's and gender rights are highly contested. Against the backdrop of a long history of unequal rights implementation, the contributors to this volume deal with the questions of why and in which ways gender equality has become contested in various political contexts. Local case studies examine the relevant structural, institutional, and socio-cultural causes of the global challenges to equality. This book follows an interdisciplinary approach and unites scholars from law, linguistics, cultural studies, history, social sciences, and gender studies in diverse contexts.
... Empero, las identidades de las mujeres indígenas son multifacéticas y fluidas, y enfrentan exclusión y marginación en múltiples dimensiones, cuestiones que no se abordan adecuadamente en los movimientos feministas regionales, en gran parte dirigidos por mujeres de clase media que no son indígenas (Speed et al., 2006;Richards, 2004). En respuesta, las mujeres han negociado un "feminismo indígena" que confronta el sexismo en las organizaciones indígenas y la exclusión racial en las organizaciones feministas (Hernández Castillo, 2010). Las mujeres indígenas y las afrodescendientes siguen reclamándoles a los movimientos feministas: más voz, visibilidad, reconocimiento y respeto de las diferencias culturales. ...
... Empero, las identidades de las mujeres indígenas son multifacéticas y fluidas, y enfrentan exclusión y marginación en múltiples dimensiones, cuestiones que no se abordan adecuadamente en los movimientos feministas regionales, en gran parte dirigidos por mujeres de clase media que no son indígenas (Speed et al., 2006;Richards, 2004). En respuesta, las mujeres han negociado un "feminismo indígena" que confronta el sexismo en las organizaciones indígenas y la exclusión racial en las organizaciones feministas (Hernández Castillo, 2010). Las mujeres indígenas y las afrodescendientes siguen reclamándoles a los movimientos feministas: más voz, visibilidad, reconocimiento y respeto de las diferencias culturales. ...
... Empero, las identidades de las mujeres indígenas son multifacéticas y fluidas, y enfrentan exclusión y marginación en múltiples dimensiones, cuestiones que no se abordan adecuadamente en los movimientos feministas regionales, en gran parte dirigidos por mujeres de clase media que no son indígenas (Speed et al., 2006;Richards, 2004). En respuesta, las mujeres han negociado un "feminismo indígena" que confronta el sexismo en las organizaciones indígenas y la exclusión racial en las organizaciones feministas (Hernández Castillo, 2010). Las mujeres indígenas y las afrodescendientes siguen reclamándoles a los movimientos feministas: más voz, visibilidad, reconocimiento y respeto de las diferencias culturales. ...
... Indigenous women especially in South America have been protesting against the twin exploitation of patriarchy and capitalism. The Zapatista women who came out with a charter for indigenous women in 1994 have pointed that struggles against sexism, racism and economic exploitation go together (Hernández Castillo, 2010). There is a gap in addressing coloniality experienced by vast numbers of indigenous women in the capitaloscene. ...
... As an emerging theoretical concept, decolonial feminism builds upon the work of non-Western(ised), indigenous and women of color activists engaged in women's movements in their community and society (Cunningham, 2006;Espinosa Miñoso, 2017;Hernández Castillo, 2010;Lugones 2007Lugones , 2008Lugones , 2010. It implies a new path that is not an imposition or prescription, but a worldview, a way of seeing and doing and understanding gender that emanates from marginalized women in the Global South. ...
Feminist theories in management and organisation studies, each with their own ontological and epistemological assumptions, offer critical perspectives of the status quo to challenge our idea of progress in the discipline, yet there is limited engagement with ideas, theories, or practices from the lived experiences of Global South women. Decolonial feminism engages with debates pertaining to coloniality/modernity and indigenous identity and gender in Latin America, while providing a space for the voices and lived experiences of marginalised, non‐Western(ised) women. Positioned in the context of Guatemalan Maya women and deploying critical insights from decolonial feminists, I unpack how the discourse about Global South women silences their voices and agency. Integrating decolonial feminist theory allows us to rethink management and organisation studies as a Western gendered system. Interrupting mainstream narratives to bring a new geopolitics of knowledge and knowing from the perspective of the gendered colonial difference.
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... Works such as those of Richards (2005), Speed (2006), and Hernandez Castillo (2010) have also documented how indigenous women have navigated subordination in their political ...
... Taking a reflective stance I must occupy a subject position in my interaction with the women of this research and taking a critical postcolonial stance I must challenge (my) Western power dominance in the production of knowledge. That is, I cannot ignore the political nature of my research and I must address the coloniality of knowledge being produced by Western researchers (me) engaging with non-Western persons (the marginalised Maya women) (Calás and Smircich, 1999;Hernández Castillo, 2010;Ibarra-Colado, 2006;Lugones, 2010;Ozkazanc-Pan, 2012;Said, 1993;1978). As such, my critical reflexive approach to ethnography needs to incorporate my philosophical and political assumptions and 10 address power relations in the field and the production of knowledge. ...
Purpose: The paper details the construction of a postcolonial feminist approach to ethnography; providing insight into how the researcher developed her ethnographic approach based on her theoretical framework and demonstrating how she undertook this research. Specifically, the paper outlines how the researcher identified positionality and representation as the primary challenges of undertaking a postcolonial feminist ethnography with marginalised Maya women in Guatemala, and how she addressed these complexities in the field.
Design/methodology/approach: This postcolonial feminist ethnography was conducted over a three month period in the rural highlands of Sololá, Guatemala. This approach bridges the intersections of postcolonial, feminist, critical and reflexive research.
Findings: The account presented in this paper offers insight into the theoretical development of a postcolonial feminist ethnography and its implementation in practice. The researcher demonstrates the importance of addressing the issues of positionality and representation to overcome differences in position, privilege and power when building relationships with participants, and to ensure the participants and their knowledge are accurately represented.
Originality/value: This paper contributes to the growing interest in postcolonial research and proposes a postcolonial feminist ethnography as an alternative approach for engaging in research with the marginalised
... Aguinaga et al. (2013) views on feminism and development that seek, among several other things, to provide a re-interpretation of feminist theory from the south; more specifically from women who are black, poor, indigenous or peasant, disputing the essentialist view that condemn them as inferior (or voiceless) to women (or men) from the global north. The work of Hernández Castillo (2010) and Espinosa Miñoso (2014) that addresses the emergent field of a Latin LAEMOS 2016, sub-them 3, Freedom vs. Equality? Disorganization and Subversion in Capitalist Democracy 4 American indigenous feminism founded in philosophical traditions that respond and challenge the neoliberal and individualist interpretation of how to represent women in organizations and at work. ...
In this paper we engage with indigenous women organizational practices, experiences and local histories of the global south. The paper is based on postcolonial ethnographic work conducted in Guatemala with Maya women communities from the Sololá department. Our approach to conducting this research is founded on decolonial feminist principles that seek to, reflexively and critically, dismantle the stereotypical characterization of these women as "Third World", i.e., lacking agency, education, knowledge, and therefore capacity to create their own community and organizations. Conceptually, we build our research based on decolonial Latin American feminist approaches that seek to deconstruct the colonial truncated and homogenising narrative under which most global south indigenous women organizations are interpreted and represented. The paper, in this way makes a strong contribution to the emerging literature of gender and feminism as well as postcolonial organizational interpretations. "As an indigenous feminist I intend to recover the philosophical principles of my culture and to make them fit into the reality of the twenty-first century" Alma López (quoted in Hernández Castillo, 2010:539) 1 Our sincere gratitude goes to all the Maya Women Cooperatives in the Sololá Department of Guatemala who participated in this research. This study has been supported by a an Irish
... In this regard, much attention has been focused on the ways in which a Western/liberal feminist vision of political engagement coupled with neoliberal ideologies has come to dominate economic development agendas in the Global South and/or transition economies (Narayan and Harding 2000;Ong 1987Ong /2010Ong , 2006McEwan 2001;McClintock et al. 1997). On this point, Mohanty (1988) reveals the difficulties of adopting an insular understanding of the Third World/Global South when relations of difference across gender, race, class, ethnicity, religion, and so forth provide a rich and shifting context for people's experiences under colonialism and more recently under globalized capitalism (Hernández Castillo 2010). Rather than suggesting that everyone is unique without possibility for alliances or adopting a postmodernist position of "difference," the notion available from postcolonial feminist work is that of "strategic essentialism" (Spivak 1990) whereby people forge groups and communities based on emancipatory aims while cognizant of relations of difference as a form of inclusive feminism (Cunningham 2006). ...
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has generally been recognized as corporate pro-social behavior aimed at remediating social issues external to organizations, while political CSR has acknowledged the political nature of such activity beyond social aims. Despite the growth of this literature, there is still little attention given to gender as the starting point for a conversation on CSR, ethics, and the Global South. Deploying critical insights from feminist work in postcolonial traditions, I outline how MNCs replicate gendered neocolonialist discourses and perpetuate exploitative material dependences between Global North/South through CSR activities. Specifically, I address issues of neocolonial relations, subaltern agency, and ethics in the context of gendered global division of labor through the exemplar of Rana Plaza and its aftermath. In all, I offer new directions for CSR scholarship by attending to the intersections of gender, ethics, and responsibility as they relate to corporate actions in the Global South.
... For an overview of the development of indigenous feminisms in the 1990s and 2000s, see HernándezCastillo (2010). ...
There has been much academic debate about the relationship of indigenous communities to new media technologies, specifically with respect to the way that the former might appropriate the latter and the terms in which they might do so, with a significant number of critics arguing that the concepts and lexicon of the traditional practice of weaving, sometimes recast as ‘netweaving’, may offer the most appropriate trope. However, such arguments typically remain at the level of theory, providing little or no evidence of the way in which real indigenous communities speak of how they appropriate new technologies. This article explores the poetics and underlying politics of indigenous appropriations of new media technologies, with reference to aesthetics where relevant, by contrasting the online presence of two highly prominent, prize-winning projects of indigenous internet appropriation: the web portal Índios Online, run by a group of different indigenous communities in north-eastern Brazil, and the homonymous website of the Asociación de Cabildos Indígenas del Norte del Cauca of the Nasa community in south-western Colombia. While they have both been studied extensively in their national contexts, very little attention has been paid to the poetics and aesthetics of the different projects, and no previous study has taken a sustained comparative approach. I present evidence to demonstrate that while the latter do, to some extent, engage tropes of weaving in their appropriation of these technologies, the former tend to prefer hunter and/or warrior tropes. I argue that the greater or lesser involvement of indigenous women in the appropriation of new media technologies does not seem to be a major factor determining such a choice, despite the typically gynocentric practice of weaving and hence the feminisation of related discourse, and, in contrast, the more masculinist repertoire of hunter and warrior tropes. Instead, I find that the different geographical locations, traditional activities, artisanal production and, most importantly, the immediate political situation and processes of the different communities do impact significantly on this choice.
... Julieta Paredes) and decolonial feminist theorists (e.g. Bastian Duarte, 2012;Hernández Castillo, 2010), in Latin America, who centre decolonial feminist movements on indigenous knowledge, respect and meaning of community, while also promoting indigenous women's rights that balances their conceptions of culture with feminist practices of equality and equity. I embrace decolonial feminist thinking to help me envision ways of understanding the condition and context of marginalised Maya women and new ways of seeing and doing organisation and. ...
... Maya women) (Calás and Smircich, 1999; Hernández Castillo, 2010; Ibarra-Colado, 2006; Lugones, 2010; Ozkazanc-Pan, 2012; Said, 1993; 1978). As such, my critical reflexive approach to ethnography needs to incorporate my philosophical and political assumptions and 10 address power relations in the field and the production of knowledge. ...
... In particular, drawing on conceptions of autonomy, indigenous women have argued that indigenous autonomy can never be realized if women are systematically oppressed within indigenous groups. They have asserted, via what some call an " indigenous feminism " (Espinosa Damián 2009; Hernández Castillo 2010), that the recognition of women's individual rights is inextricably linked to the recognition of collective rights, positing that one without the other limits their ability to be full human beings (Gutiérrez and Palomo 2000; Paredes 2008; Sánchez 2003). ...
In Latin America, rights to local political participation in many indigenous communities are not simply granted, but rather “earned” through acts of labor for the community. This is the case in the state of Oaxaca, Mexico, where almost three-fourths of municipalities elect municipal authorities through custom and tradition rather than secret ballot and universal suffrage. The alarmingly low rate of women’s formal participation in these municipalities has garnered attention from policymakers, provoking a series of legislative reforms designed to increase women’s roles in local politics. However, these initiatives often miss their mark. Focused on a liberal model of women as individual rights-bearers, they fail to understand the complex ways in which gendered labor influences political participation in nonliberal contexts. This article examines a case in which indigenous women reject such an initiative because it would exacerbate their exploitation within the local terms of gendered collective labor instead of promoting equality. It thus explains potential barriers to indigenous women’s political leadership at the local level and suggests ways in which gender equality can be promoted in nonliberal contexts.
Indigenous women of the Andes have been continuously adapting their social practices to regulatory institutions and modernizing processes since colonial times. They continued to be involved in informal social, economic, legal, administrative and political affairs, playing key mediating roles in society and contributing to the success of indigenous movements in countries as Bolivia and Peru over the past decades. They always mediated between different roles such as: Indian – mestizo, rural – urban, “dirty” – “clean”, traditional – emancipated, conservative – innovative. These interplays made them visible and fashionable socially and culturally. These forms of hybridization continues in new and creative ways; some are directed by others, but some continue to be adaptively adopted by the indigenous women themselves in their own interest and for the benefit of their families, communities, and ultimately the indigenous movements. While some studies suggest that indigenous movements are organized by political leaders only, that the indigenous women emancipation is produced on the model of Western feminism and that their condition is a mere example of intersectionality, we show in this article that indigenous women of the Andes participate in society based on their social traditional skills, they adapt to modern society through practices and processes resulting in hybrid forms and deliberately adopting tactics of transgressions in their transactions and relations with the state and the market. The best example of these hybridizations is “the chola” – originally a derogatory term for urbanized Indians in Bolivia and Peru, which received positive connotations due to the activity and visibility of these women. As a result they increasingly used this identity and hybridizations for negotiations in basic economic transactions and with official institutions. Since, more recently, their active image and fancy hybrid forms are manipulated by marketing agencies in the global economy of ethnic products, we conclude on the ongoing function of continuous production of hybrid cholas, as cholification, a process that may further characterize and explain regional socialpolitical practices and evolutions in the Andean and larger Latin American area.
Across the globe, a growing number of social movements, such as demonstrations in support of equal civil status or reproductive freedom and against sexualized violence, show that women's and gender rights are highly contested. Against the backdrop of a long history of unequal rights implementation, the contributors to this volume deal with the questions of why and in which ways gender equality has become contested in various political contexts. Local case studies examine the relevant structural, institutional, and socio-cultural causes of the global challenges to equality. This book follows an interdisciplinary approach and unites scholars from law, linguistics, cultural studies, history, social sciences, and gender studies in diverse contexts.
This chapter provides an overview of the history of Latinx feminism. It includes a brief history about Latinx feminist leaders and the development of feminism including womanism, Black feminism, mujerismo, and womanista. The chapter includes ways in which Latina feminism highlights indigenous ways of knowing including mestiza consciousness, borderlands, and nepantla. This chapter sets the groundwork for the authors to explore contemporary perspectives on Latinx feminism including their own feminist identity developments in another chapter.
This chapter discusses contemporary perspectives related to Latinx feminism. This chapter builds upon a previous chapter about the history of Latinx feminism. Ways in which feminism and gender identity intersect with other identities are discussed. The authors discuss how Latinx feminism provides avenues to resist oppression. The chapter ends with a discussion of application of feminist concepts discussed and future directions. A combination of third-person research and personal narrative is utilized.
This article charts a yet unsuccessful attempt to have a gender-marked musical expression legally recognised as heritage: ‘women’s singing’ of Potosí, Bolivia. Drawing on interviews and ethnographic fieldwork in Bolivian contexts, the authors read the gender-marked status of this initiative as a symbolic site of intercultural disjunctures. Conflicting gender politics sit at the crux of this difficulty to assemble ‘women’s singing’ as a heritage object, contradictions between Bolivia’s persistent neoliberal state in which feminist discourses of gender equality reign within a development apparatus, and a plurinational state that originally emerged from social movements that brought Indigenous concepts into governing practices. Expanding on the topic of gender in heritage studies, this work points to critical applications of intersectionality, and uncovers useful openings that this concept lends to heritage studies in general. Through an intersectional lens, key inconsistencies are revealed between a liberal feminist agenda that focusses on empowering stand-alone women and Indigenous working class women’s mobilisation politics that cannot address gender inequalities without also engaging class and ethnic marginalisation. The case study shows how social justice mobilisations, central to political intersectionality, productively disrupt the compartmentalised approaches to rights that usually operate in bureaucratised governing entities.
Purpose:
Researchers often debate health service structure. Understanding of the practical implications of this debate is often limited by researchers' neglect to integrate participants' views on structural options with discourses those views represent. As a case study, this paper aims to discern the extent to which and how conceptual underpinnings of stakeholder views on women's health contextualize different positions in the debate over the ideal structure of health services.
Design/methodology/approach:
The researchers chose a self-standing, comprehensive women's health service facing the prospect of being dispersed into "mainstream" health services. The researchers gathered perspectives of 53 professional and consumer stakeholders in ten focus groups and seven semi-structured interviews, analyzed through inductive thematic analysis.
Findings:
"Women's marginalization" was the core theme of the debate over structure. The authors found clear patterns between views on the function of women's health services, women's health needs, ideal client group, ideal health service structure and particular feminist discourses. The desire to re-organize services into separate mainstream units reflected a liberal feminist discourse, conceiving marginalization as explicit demonstration of its effects, such as domestic abuse. The desire to maintain a comprehensive women's health service variously reflected post-structural feminism's emphasis on plurality of identities, and a radical feminist discourse, holding that womanhood itself constituted a category of marginalization - that is, merely being at risk of unmet health needs.
Originality/value:
As a contribution to health organizational theory, the paper shows that the discernment of discursive underpinnings of particular stakeholder views can clarify options for the structure of health services.
Indigenous adoptee scholars understand their identity through community connection, culture, education and practice. In this Storywork, through engagement with current literature and ten research questions, I explored what it meant to be an adoptee in West Coast (KKKanadian) Indigenous communities. An Indigenous Youth Storywork methodology was applied to bring meaning to relationships I have with diverse Indigenous Old Ones, mentors and Knowledge Keepers and their influence on my journey as a Maya adoptee returning to my culture. My personal story was developed and analyzed using an Indigenous decolonial framework and Indigenous Arts-based methods. The intention of this Youth Storywork research work is to create space for Indigenous, Interracial, Transracial and Maya adoptees in Child and Youth Care, Social Work and Counselling Psychology education, policy and practice.
This paper addresses the question of how to organize care in degrowth societies that call for social and ecological sustainability, as well as gender and environmental justice, without prioritizing one over the other. By building on degrowth scholarship, feminist economics, the commons, and decolonial feminisms, we rebut the strategy of shifting yet more unpaid care work to the monetized economy, thereby reinforcing the separation structure in economics. A feminist degrowth imaginary implies destabilizing prevalent dichotomies and overcoming the (inherent hierarchization in the) boundary between the monetized economy and the invisibilized economy of socio-ecological provisioning. The paper proposes an incremental, emancipatory decommodification and a commonization of care in a sphere beyond the public/private divide, namely the sphere of communitarian and transformative caring commons, as they persist at the margins of capitalism and are (re-)created by social movements around the world.
El presente es un estudio de dos testimonios de Domitila Barrios de Chungara, Si me permiten hablar de Moema Viezzer (1978) y Domitila Chungara: Una vida de Lucha, de María del Carmen Garcés (2012), en el cual se quiere buscar las estrategias de resistencia que usa la narradora en cuanto al uso del cuerpo en los espacios privados y públicos. Para empezar, el artículo habla sobre la naturaleza híbrida del género testimonial, lo que lo constituye en un texto adecuado para la expresión subalterna. Además, se argumenta que el standpoint, según como lo propone Nancy C. M. Hartsock (1983), de Barrios es privilegiado para entender la opresión de la mujer subalterna latinoamericana y proponer la resignificación de espacios de opresión para así convertirlos en resistencias. Se hacen análisis específicos de cómo el cuerpo (lo privado) en el espacio público cobra nuevas connotaciones, por ejemplo, en la huelga de hambre. También, se explica cómo Barrios transforma ámbitos tradicionalmente femeninos, como el Comité de Amas de Casa, el matrimonio y la maternidad, que son usados como espacios de opresión por parte del poder patriarcal capitalista, para encontrar posibilidad de acción política. Finalmente, se propone que Barrios ingresa en la discusión del feminismo latinoamericano contemporáneo, a pesar de su abierto rechazo a este movimiento, pues su crítica desvela que clase, raza/etnia y género son ejes primordiales en el entendimiento de la mujer de América Latina
This article contributes to the ethical and practical conceptualizations of centring marginalized voices in research across borders. This project worked within the parameters of international social work (ISW) in Perú, which is a space where the advancement of globalization and colonization has deepened the historical exclusion and marginality of Indigenous women. To work towards social justice, this project developed creative innovative approaches to engagement and resisted western notions of progress. As research is not neutral, deconstruction of contextual forces that shape research makes visible how knowledge(s) are understood and subjugated in ISW, in particular that of Indigenous women.
In 2014, the Inter‐American Court of Human Rights heard two cases concerning the alleged complicity of Honduran state institutions in the violation of Garifuna communal property rights. Garifuna, a people of mixed Arawak, Carib, and African descent, are one of nine officially recognized “ethnic groups” in Honduras. Yet the state has repeatedly denied their status as a pueblo originario —a people native to Honduras—thus calling into question the lawfulness of their claims to national territory. I draw on my experience serving as an expert witness to analyze the role of cultural evidence in the legitimization of Garifuna rights claims, and how specifically ethnographic treatments of Indigenous cultural practices are circumscribed within dominant juridical interpretive frameworks and modes of recognition. The judgment, issued in October 2015, repeatedly deployed anthropological concepts and insights to bind Indigenous subjectivity to the land, thereby deepening essentialized notions of Garifuna ethnic and racial difference. This article probes the challenges of presenting cultural evidence in a court of law and the limited political potential of witnessing, which, I argue, stem from the ways in which anthropological and legal ways of knowing coarticulate.
This book examines questions about the changing nature of security and insecurity in Pacific Island Countries (PICs). Previous discussions of security in the Pacific region have been largely determined by the geopolitical interests of the Global North. This volume instead attempts to centre PICs’ security interests by focussing on the role of organisational culture, power dynamics and gender in (in)security processes and outcomes.
Mapping Security in the Pacific underscores the multidimensional nature of security, its relationship to local, international, organisational and cultural dynamics, the resistances engendered through various forms of insecurities, and innovative efforts to negotiate gender, context and organisational culture in reducing insecurity and enhancing justice. Covering the Pacific region widely, the volume brings forth context-specific analyses at micro-, meso- and macro-levels, allowing us to examine the interconnections between security, crime and justice, and point to the issues raised for crime and justice studies by environmental insecurity. In doing so, it opens up opportunities to rethink scholarly and policy frames related to security/insecurity about the Pacific.
Written in a clear and direct style, this book will appeal to students and scholars in criminology, sociology, cultural studies, social theory and those interested in learning about the Pacific region and different aspects of security.
Indigenous beauty pageants can be seen as a way of re-appropriating indigenous identity. This article approaches beauty pageants as being situated in multiple systems of power at four levels of contestation: (1) reproducing gender relations and creating new professional and political opportunities; (2) constituting a site for cultural and political agency and delimiting the ways to ‘be a Maya woman’; (3) reproducing class relations in terms of access to the event and contributing to social awareness of beauty queens; (4) as a social event consolidating (gender) relations within the family. The findings are based on longitudinal (2002–14) ethnographic fieldwork in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala.
While women are often excluded and/or portrayed as victims in the historical scholarship on war, this research builds on recent scholarship that shows women as active agents in warfare. I focus on Yugoslavia’s WWII Partizankas, female soldiers and activists, who held visible positions in the war effort, public consciousness and, later memory. Using gender as a category of analysis, my thesis explores Partizankas’ legacy and their contributions in the National Liberation Movement (NLM) in WWII (1941- 1945) and post-war nation building. I argue that the organizational framework of the Anti-Fascist Women’s Front (AWF) under the guidance of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (CPY) emphasized women’s ethnic/religious identities along with distinct social standings and geographic locations to motivate them to fight for the common cause and subsequently forge a shared South Slavic identity. This emphasis on ethnic/regional/class differences paradoxically led to the creation of a common Yugoslav national identity. Women’s involvement, therefore, becomes central to the nation- building in the post-war period while establishing the legacy for future feminists. I characterize NLM as a Marxist guerrilla movement with the intent to contextualize the organizational tactics and ideological efforts of CPY and showcase the commonalities and differences the Yugoslav resistance movement had vis-à-vis other revolutionary movements that actively recruited women. Furthermore, the thesis focuses on the representations of Partizankas in popular culture and official rhetoric from WWII to the demise of Yugoslavia in 1991 in order explore the fluidity of gender roles and their perceptions. This research is meaningful because NLM, as an organized Marxist guerrilla movement, stands out in its size, success and legacy. The Yugoslav experience broadens the understanding of why women go to war, how gender norms shift during and after the conflict, and how female soldiers are remembered.
This article demonstrates that the quotidian domain of social reproduction is fertile ground, and a crucial political terrain upon which to struggle, for revolutionary change. I propose that the Zapatistas are inspiration par excellence of decolonization, democracy, and a social movement that is co-creating the emancipatory politics, gender just social relations, and lifegiving culture its members desire. Additionally, I illustrate how anti-capitalist resistance, autonomy, mutual aid, and Indigenous worldviews can galvanize pluralistic critical mass, empower communities, animate pathways out of structural violence, transform worlds, and, ultimately, imbue the everyday realities in which people live and work with meaning and purpose.
Frauen- und Genderforschung zu Lateinamerika entwickelte sich thematisch wie auch theoretisch-methodisch in weiten Teilen ähnlich wie in Europa oder den USA, allerdings mit einem stärkeren Fokus auf Geschlechtergerechtigkeit, Verschränkung von Ethnie, Klasse und Geschlecht sowie einer Kritik „westlicher“ Theorieansätze.
This article sets the critical analysis of gender dynamics in Pacific women's literature in a decolonizing context of trans-Indigenous feminist theories. Māori author Patricia Grace, and Indigenous Australian writer and scholar Melissa Lucashenko center storytelling as a critical methodology in establishing Aboriginality as the central knowledge regime in their writing. Within the framework of a trans-Indigenous methodology, the present study is grounded on and engages with Indigenous feminist theories from the Pacific and beyond: A recognition of multiply situated knowledge and "herstories" establishes female connection to land, spirituality, and community, alongside experiences of colonial invasion and oppression, as key commonalities in Indigenous writing. Through storytelling, Grace and Lucashenko envision gender regimes that reflect Indigenous women's complexity, as well as authority, positioning Indigenous Pacific women as active agents in confronting sexist patriarchal hegemony, and instrumental for creating balance in gender relations, family, community, and nation, amid complex processes of decolonization.
This article sets the critical analysis of gender dynamics in Pacific women’s literature in a decolonizing context of trans-Indigenous feminist theories. Māori author Patricia Grace, and Indigenous Australian writer and scholar Melissa Lucashenko center storytelling as a critical methodology in establishing Aboriginality as the central knowledge regime in their writing. Within the framework of a trans-Indigenous methodology, the present study is grounded on and engages with Indigenous feminist theories from the Pacific and beyond: A recognition of multiply situated knowledge and “herstories” establishes female connection to land, spirituality, and community, alongside experiences of colonial invasion and oppression, as key commonalities in Indigenous writing. Through storytelling, Grace and Lucashenko envision gender regimes that reflect Indigenous women’s complexity, as well as authority, positioning Indigenous Pacific women as active agents in confronting sexist patriarchal hegemony, and instrumental for creating balance in gender relations, family, community, and nation, amid complex processes of decolonization.
This paper aims to contribute to discussions around alliances and collaborations between feminisms. It analyses relations between movements in the development of indigenous women's organizational autonomy in Mexico. It seeks to understand how the struggle for autonomy involved a redefinition of the forms of collaboration by indigenous women in the consolidation of their movement. An intersectional perspective is proposed to better understand how power relations affect the organizing processes of social movements, as well as how organizations and individuals respond to and challenge them. I argue here that the redefinition of collaborations and alliances has been a key determinant in the organizing capacity of indigenous women to position themselves as autonomous political actors. From the analysis of two specific cases, this paper poses broader questions regarding representation and autonomy that may be applied towards a reflection of our feminist practices and discourses of solidarity.
In this article, I explore the relationship between anti-globalization counter hegemonic discourse and Indigenous feminist alternative knowledge production. Although seemingly unrelated, the autoethnographic writing of some Indigenous feminists from Latin America questions the assumptions and presuppositions of Western development models and globalization, while asserting an identity as contemporary Indigenous activist women. Drawing on the central ideas developed in the book Indigenous Feminist Narratives: I/We: Wo(men) of An(Other) Way, I reflect on parallels and counterpoints between the voices from the global street movement, “other” epistemologies (identified hereafter), postcolonial theory, and contemporary Indigenous feminist theorization.
The introduction explores the ways in which Colombian women’s writing intersects with an alternative history of feminism in the country. In doing so, it provides an exciting and timely critique of predominant critical narratives of feminist history and Latin American women’s writing. Questioning the idea that feminism was a belated import to Latin America or is a discourse that belongs to the “essentialist” past, Elston analyses the complex ways that feminism has been theorized and practised in Colombia, tracing its links to left-wing politics and the country’s armed conflict. She shows how this alternative history challenges the teleological narratives that have constructed feminist theory and how Colombian women writers destabilize the critical trajectories of Latin American literary history.
Development has offered a complex and contradictory mix of constraints and opportunities, enabling and disabling conditions for feminist and women’s movements in Latin America and across the globe. It indirectly contributed to the emergence and expansion of women’s movements in the Global South — while selectively absorbing, if most often distorting and depoliticising, feminist claims — and, in turn, disciplined feminisms, constraining our discourses, practices, prospects and possibilities.
Este artigo propõe uma linguagem conceitual, um aparelho interpretativo e uma nova
unidade de análise para repensarmos as dinâmicas e mudanças dos feminismos no Brasil
e América Latina. Enquadrando os feminismos como campos discursivos de ação, elabora
uma revisão narrativa de três momentos na trajetória dos feminismos contemporâneos à
luz dessa abordagem analítica: 1) o "centramento" e a configuração do feminismo no
singular; 2) o descentramento e pluralização dos feminismos e o
"mainstreaming" (fluxos verticais) do gênero; e 3) o momento
atual de "sidestreaming" (fluxos horizontais) dos feminismos plurais
e a multiplicação de campos feministas.
Based on comparative research this article analyses indigenous women's organising trajectories and the creation of spaces where they position themselves as autonomous political actors. Drawing on social movement theory and intersectionality, we present a typology of the organisational forms adopted by indigenous women in Peru, Bolivia and Mexico over the last two decades. One of the key findings of our comparative study is that indigenous women have become social movement actors through different organisational forms that in part determine the degree of autonomy they can exercise as political subjects.
The legal and normative openness of human rights allows for the integration of new subjects, arenas, violators, and protectors of human rights. Indigenous movements manage to use this flexibility and implement their claims within the human rights system. Yet, indigenous rights cause manifold discussions and ambiguities, all of which are related to the question of the concept of indigeneity. In spite of the endeavor for pragmatic and flexible approaches, scopes and implications of concepts of indigeneity need to be dealt with. This paper discusses both scope and implications, starting from hegemonic criteria for a working definition of indigeneity. It shows how indigenous identity is inextricably linked to its non-indigenous other. Subsequently, indigenous human rights entail specific repercussions in indigeneity being a resource and an imperative. Those repercussions stem from indigeneity being simultaneously a source and target of indigenous human rights claims and from the self-referential duplication of the right to indigeneity for indigenes, respectively. The provided tools for an analysis of the ambiguities of indigenous human rights (without simply dismissing them) contribute to their further and more just development, implementation, and monitoring.
L’accession au pouvoir en Bolivie d’Evo Morales transforme l’institutionnalisation du genre. La lutte contre les discriminations de genre, tout comme celles d’origine ethnique, ne se concentre désormais plus uniquement dans des entités institutionnelles spécifiques. À partir d’une analyse de discours, cet article pose la question de la politisation ambivalente des rapports sociaux de sexe concomitants à ces changements institutionnels. L’association du concept de genre aux principes andins permet une politisation des rapports sociaux de sexe. Cependant, ce processus est affaibli par l’invisibilité du genre aux expériences autochtones et l’assimilation du patriarcat à la colonisation, qui tendent à une dépolitisation du genre.
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