Feminist Responses to Crises and Dehumanization: Transnational Scholar-Activist Perspectives(Gender in a Global/Local World)

Feminist Responses to Crises and Dehumanization brings together academic knowledge with activist strategies and lived experiences from different socio-geographic angles––bridging the gap between theory and on-the-ground impact. The experience of the Covid-19 pandemic has laid bare humanity’s existential vulnerabilities. But ecological, economic, political, reproductive, and other instabilities have also shown us how we are connected to non-human species and planet Earth, and how human practices that have long normalized devaluation have in fact created the contemporary multi-crisis. In response to this historical moment, this book articulates visions toward fairer, more caring, and sustainable societies. It brings together feminist and queer scholars and scholar-activists from different world regions who write about critical crisis issues, offer reinterpretations of these crises and develop strategies of resistance. The contributions focus on three dimensions of crisis—ecological devastation and economic exploitation; political authoritarianism and violence; and the denial of reproductive justice and bodily autonomy—and combine systemic and situated analysis with a focus on agency. This volume will appeal to scholars and students interested in transnational feminism, in areas such as Gender Studies, Political Science, Social Studies, and International Relations.

Table of Contents:
1. Introduction Part I: Ecological devastation and economic exploitation 2. Religion, nature, and queer theory: Planetary identities in a post-human world 3. Stories of care: Towards the repair of our life-worlds 4. Land Defenders and Ocean Warriors: Resistance to land grabs as a politics of social reproduction 5. Between the IMF and the far-right: Feminist resistance against financial violence in Argentina Part II: Political authoritarianism and violence 6. Beyond backlash: Unpacking the dynamics of political conservatism in 21st-century Brazil 7. Resilience amidst regression: Gender policy, political authoritarianism, and women’s activism in Türkiye 8. Demanding state recognition, transforming political rights: Women’s activism to end violence against women in politics in the Americas 9. Trading insecurities: Crime, gun violence and women’s sensibilities toward policy reform Part III: Denial of reproductive justice and bodily autonomy 10. Infertile bodies, disrupted lifeworlds: Forced sterilizations in Peru and the extraction of Indigenous cuerpos-territorios 11. Mapping the body politics of autonomy and respectability: A comparative study of contemporary feminist movements in India and Ireland 12. LesboCenso and anti-gender offensive in Brazil: A transnational perspective in data collection, knowledge production, and lesbian activism 13. The Black Mothers Care Plan: Lessons for Black Feminist Health Research and Community-Based Praxis 14. Conclusion

About the Author :
Susanne Zwingel is a Professor of Politics and International Relations at Florida International University, USA. She is the author of Translating International Women’s Rights: The CEDAW Convention in Context (2016), co-organizes the Florida Feminist Fridays event series, and blogs at https://commonsensefeminist.blog/. Brianna N. Hernandez is the Gordon Morgan Fellow in the Political Science Department at the University of Arkansas, USA. She is the author of feminist works, including co-author of the Oxford Bibliography entry on Feminism and Human Rights (2022). Luisa Turbino Torres is an Assistant Professor of Women, Gender & Sexuality Studies and Political Science at Florida Atlantic University (FAU), USA. She specializes in Latin American politics, focusing on comparative and transnational feminist politics, social movements and activism, and sports and politics.

Review :
"This edited volume was conceived as an act of solidarity and defiance in times of brutal attacks on humanity and the earth itself. Spanning the globe, the powerful academic voices within it speak with passion and determination about ways in which transnational feminist, queer and black perspectives can challenge and reverse the ongoing destruction of the very conditions of our planetary survival." - Aida Hozic, Associate Professor of International Relations and Associate Chair of the Department of Political Science, University of Florida "This marvelous book embodies the expansive, border-crossing promise of transnational feminism, its systemic analysis, as well as its attentiveness to the specificities of context and inequalities of power. In its pages, we encounter not only interdisciplinary perspectives from authors in disparate locations, but also deep engagements between scholars and activists in their struggles. Most of all, in the face of state violence, ecological devastation, capitalist expansion, and reproductive injustice, we find stories of feminists’ fierce defense of the value of human solidarity, democracy, bodily autonomy, and care for the earth. This is the kind of hopeful analysis sorely needed in our times." - Millie Thayer, University of Massachusetts, Amherst (retired)