Inter-organizational relations in transnational environmental and women’s activism: multilateralists, pragmatists, and rejectionists

Dimensions of Transnational Feminism: Autonomous Organizing, Multilateralism and Agenda-Setting in Global Civil Society

“…Our focus on digital networks contributes to the research on transnational social movements by adding insight into another dimension of movement activity in online spaces, one that has been found to be critical for understanding contemporary movements (Jackson et al 2020;Wright et al 2022). 4 A particular advantage of social media data, especially Twitter data, is that it allows us to "see" online communication, capturing traces of social movement behavior that might be missed by studies focusing on organizations and relationships captured by, for example, the Yearbook of International Organizations (YIO), which tends to capture more formal and betterresourced organizations (Smith et al 2021).…”

“…This does not mean that autonomous organizations do not engage with these institutions, but rather suggests that they have their own organizational bases outside of these spaces. 3 Autonomous organizations often operate in multilateral settings and are not necessarily separatist or "rejectionist" organizations (Smith et al 2021); They may well hold consultative status for one or more intergovernmental organizations. But they are distinguished by the fact that their primary focus is conceptualized as an independent one, and the multilateral setting is only one of many possible spheres in which they intervene, and they may well reject it altogether.…”

“…On the international stage, there is no world government to which state feminist strategies might correspond, but there are strategies of integration into or opposition to international institutions. Smith et al (2021) call feminist organizations that are more tightly tied to officially defined agendas, structures, and issues "multilateral" organizations. Without taking on all the elements of the concept (for example, leaving aside questions about the ideological orientation of those engaging in this form of organizing) this concept captures a form of feminist mobilization that is more oriented towards participating in official activities and less focused on articulating independent priorities.…”

“…Distinguishing the different dimensions of transnational feminist organizing helps us understand the impact of transnational feminism as a political phenomenon. A form of social movement organization, transnational feminism is an important dimension of global civil society and democracy (Clark et al 1998;Moghadam 2005;Smith 2008;Smith et al 2021). Such movements are important avenues for representation for a wide range of groups and issues in both domestic and global civil society (Clark et al 1998;Keck and Sikkink 1998;Teivanen and Trommer, 2017;Weldon 2011).…”

“…We theorize the concept of movement autonomy in the transnational context and analyze the participation of organizations from the Global South in a series of online campaigns. 2 By way of contrast, we use the concept of multilateral feminism as a mode of nonautonomous feminist organizing in international spaces that is akin to the concept of state feminism employed in comparative feminist analysis (McBride and Mazur 2010;Smith et al 2021). We focus on participants from the Global South to get at issues of representation that confront marginalized groups in social movements.…”