In Feminist Politics, Intersectionality and Knowledge Cultivation, Radhika Govinda engages with intersectionality – as critical theory, as critical methodology and as critical pedagogy – to make sense of feminist politics in India and beyond, and knowledge-making on feminist politics, as such. In doing so, she makes a case for theory-making, conducting empirical research and classroom teaching to be understood as integral parts of knowledge cultivation, each feeding into the other. Differently put, the book encapsulates Govinda’s engagement, spanning fifteen years and four case studies, exploring what insights an intersectional lens throws up, and how these insights complicate our understandings of marginality, privilege and solidarity in the field of women’s and gender studies, in feminist classrooms, in women’s and social movements, in particular NGO-led feminist activism, state-led development initiatives and digital feminist campaigns, and in everyday social relations in rural and urban spaces. Uncovering, interrogating and disrupting the politics of coloniality and feminist complicity is an important running thread in the book. Through a reflexive account of her own location and practice in the academy at the cusp of the global north and the global south, Govinda highlights the importance of being attentive to intersectional positionality and to the contextual specificities of engaging in feminist politics and knowledge-making in the age of global neoliberalism.
Table of Contents:
Introduction: Intersectionality, Coloniality and Feminist Knowledge Cultivation: Contours and Context 1. ‘Third World Woman’, Feminism and Empire 2. Doing Women’s and Gender Studies in Contemporary India and the UK: Interrogating Margins and Marginalisation 3. ‘Mirror Mirror on the Wall…’ Decolonising Feminist Classrooms: The Promise and Perils of Intersectional Pedagogy 4. Beyond Tropes: Dalit Women’s Diverse Narratives of Agency and Activism from Rural North India 5. In Pursuit of ‘Southern Feminism’? Intersectionality, Coloniality and NGO-led Feminist Activism in India 6. Towards a Renewal of Feminist Politics? ‘Bad Girls’, Everyday Sexual Harassment and Activist Campaigns in Millennial India 7. From the Rear-View Mirror of the Taxi-Driver? Masculinity, Marginality and ‘Rape Culture’ in Urban India 8. ‘First Our Fields, Now Our Women’ Questions of Honour, Patriarchy and Intersectional Politics in Delhi’s Urban Villages Conclusion: Insights, Dilemmas and Hopes in Knowledge-making on Feminist Politics – A Meditation
About the Author :
Radhika Govinda is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Edinburgh, UK and the Director of GENDER.ED – the University’s interdisciplinary hub for gender and sexualities studies. Her research and teaching bridge the fields of sociology of gender, international development and South Asian Studies. She is co-editor of Doing Feminisms in the Academy, and Gender in South Asia and Beyond.
Review :
"Feminist Politics, Intersectionality and Knowledge Cultivation makes a new and dynamic contribution to debates on intersectionality, decolonisation, social movements and NGOs. A product of 15 years of research and the researcher's own migratory trajectory across the global North and the South, the book shows how intersectional positionality is dynamic, relational and contextualized, and secondly, that it is only by engaging the margins that we can have a truly global feminist theory and praxis. Drawing on a wide swathe of epistemic and political traditions - from black feminism in the US to Dalit feminism in India and Euro-American feminist studies to Indian sociology - Govinda moves deftly from the British classroom to research fields and movements sites in India. This book is set to be compulsory reading for all interested in the dynamic and generative quality of intersectionality."
Srila Roy, Professor of Sociology at the University of the Witwatersrand
"Weaving together fieldnotes and research findings, fragments of autobiography and poetry, critical theory, and reflections on pedagogy and classroom experience, this beautifully written book brings fresh – and ultimately hopeful – insights on knowledge-making around the ‘sticky and complicated’ feminist politics of India and beyond. Govinda makes the case for the relevance and use of intersectionality as critical theory, critical methodology and critical pedagogy as well as the need for all aspects of progressive academic practice to cultivate anti-colonial and emancipatory knowledges. An unflinchingly honest account of her own intellectual and personal journey as a feminist academic and Southern scholar now based in the North and an important contribution to intersectional feminist and post-colonial studies."
Fiona Mackay, Professor of Politics at the University of Edinburgh
"Foregrounding intersectionality in feminist politics, this book is a wonderful exploration, quilting together field(s) – classroom, feminist NGO, urban villages and digital media. Govinda commits to an extremely important resource on feminist methodology, delving into the ‘troubles’ and promises of contemporary feminist knowledge creation."
Rukmini Sen, Professor of Sociology at Ambedkar University Delhi
