About the Book
A long and ongoing challenge for social justice movements has been how to address difference. Traditional strategies have often emphasized universalizing messages and common identities as means of facilitating collective action. Feminist movements, gay liberation movements, racial justice movements, and even labour movements, have all focused predominantly on respective singular dimensions of oppression. Each has called on diverse groups of people to mobilize, but without necessarily acknowledging or grappling with other relevant dimensions of identity and oppression. While focusing on commonality can be an effective means of mobilization, universalist messages can also obscure difference and can serve to exclude and marginalize groups in already precarious positions. Scholars and activists, particularly those located at the intersection of these movements, have long advocated for more inclusive approaches that acknowledge the significance and complexity of different social locations, with mixed success.
Gendered Mobilizations and Intersectional Challenges provides a much-needed intersectional analysis of social movements in Europe and North America. With an emphasis on gendered mobilization, it looks at movements traditionally understood and/or classified as singularly gendered as well as those organized around other dimensions of identity and oppression or at the intersection of multiple dimensions.
About the Author :
Jill Irvine is Presidential Professor of International Affairs and Area Studies at the University of Oklahoma. She is Vice Provost for Faculty.
Sabine Lang is Associate Professor of International and European Studies at the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies of the University of Washington.
Celeste Montoya is Associate Professor of Women and Gender Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder. She is Director of the Miramontes Arts and Science Program.
Review :
Gendered Mobilizations and Intersectional Challenges offers a most up-to-date and nuanced analysis on how intersectionality informs various themes of activism in North America and Europe. Engaging with premier political and social wedge issues, such as migration, racial justice, and democracy, this book expertly combines various otherwise competing strands of contemporary social movement theory into a convincing and cohesive voice. --Katalin Fabian, Professor, Department of Government and Law, Lafayette College
The top-notch contributors represent a range of countries, disciplines, and generations, joining to produce a must-read volume for those interested in how contemporary social movements succeed at intersectional praxis. The authors demonstrate how social movements respond to intragroup inequalities, give voice to those marginalized within their ranks, and form alliances with other movements - increasing their ability to achieve social justice.--Louise K. Davidson-Schmich, University of Miami
After long debates about intersectionality and transversal politics, this is an important and timely book. It represents forms of inclusive feminist activism in the face of exclusionary intersectional policies by right-wing populist actors and critically weighs the potential of these social justice movements. The comparative country focus and the systematic perspective on gendered social justice movements makes the volume a fundamentally important contribution to understanding current feminist movements as well as counter-movements against right-wing politics.--Birgit Sauer, Professor of Political Science, University of Vienna
Drawing on a wide range of European and North American cases, this urgently needed volume asks: what does social movement intersectionality look like, when is it employed, how, and to what end? The book tackles some of the biggest challenges facing social movements today, which find themselves under pressure from the economy, a perceived immigration crisis, and political forces that are tearing communities apart. This important book allows for new ways of thinking about how to build alliances across social identities in trying times.--Aili Mari Tripp, Wangari Maathai Professor of Political Science & Gender and Women's Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison
How to forge a politics of solidarity without suppressing difference is one of the urgent questions this wonderful collection addresses. In examining the opportunities and obstacles for intersectionality in social movements in a range of national, transnational and political contexts, this volume rigorously extends an intersectional analysis grounded in empirical evidence and praxis. Essential reading for scholars and activists alike.--Fiona Williams, Emeritus Professor of Social Policy, University of Leeds
Theorizing intersectionality as a social movement ethic and political practice as well as a research paradigm, this impressive collection illuminates dimensions of power obscured in mainstream political science and addresses persistent dilemmas that haunt efforts to recognize complex vectors of marginalization while attempting to mobilize coalitions for progressive political transformation.--Mary Hawkesworth, Distinguished Professor, Political Science and Women's & Gender Studies, Rutgers University
This book importantly enhances existing scholarship on gendered movements. It does so by jointly studying feminist and women's movements with mobilizations that are gendered but have another dominant focus (on race or sexuality), or that act at the intersections. It also presents a much needed theoretical and methodological framework for applying intersectionality theory to the study of social movements.--Karen Celis, Research Professor, Department of Political Science, Vrije Universiteit Brussel
This important volume--the first of its kind--brings into focus the challenges and opportunities of intersectional practices within gendered movements, and in a broad range of contemporary social movements, from Occupy, to Solidarity with refugees and BlackLivesMatter. Gendered Mobilizations and Intersectional Challenges is a crucial contribution for our understanding of intersectionality, that will help both scholars and activists identify and understand a plurality of intersectional voices.--Eléonore Lépinard, Associate Professor, Centre for Gender Studies, University of Lausanne
This is an impressive interdisciplinary work on "social movement intersectionality" by an international group of scholars. Cutting edge-theories, methods and concepts are developed and used to study gender-based and social justice movements. The framing introduction and the quality case analyses in North America and Europe provide an unprecedented study that contributes to understanding and theories of intersectionality in movement AND the application of intersectional approaches in research.--Amy G. Mazur, C.O. Johnson Professor of Political Science, Washington State University
This timely, innovative collection offers critical insights into the complex politics of intersectionality within gendered mobilizations. The chapters center the lived reality and resistances of those marginalized by multiple and imbricated structures of inequality. Deploying diverse methodologies in local, national, and transnational sites, the authors demonstrate the power--and necessity--of weaving intersectional analysis into mainstream social movement frameworks.--Elisabeth Jay Friedman, Professor of Politics, University of San Francisco
What does intersectionality look like in practice? By merging social movement and intersectionality theories the authors expose the intricate ways in which power functions across a myriad of identities and spaces in a beautiful and poignant way that exposes the cracks and solidarity of organizing across difference. This work exquisitely pushes the boundaries of intersectionality.--Julia Jordan-Zachery, Professor and Chair, Department of Africana Studies, University of North Carolina at Charlotte
This collection offers a vital and vivid account of the importance of intersectionality for feminist politics and activism in the 21st century. Its call to recognize and respect difference in order to develop a fully inclusive feminist movement is urgent. This book represents a very timely, significant and original intervention to understandings of gender, race, politics, social justice, globalization and social movements. It is a book that speaks fully to our political times.--Sally Hines, Professor of Sociology and Gender Identities, University of Leeds
