Popular Feminism(s) Reconsidered: Popular, Racialized, and Decolonial Subjectivities in Contention

Abstract

This issue is concerned with the salience of "popular feminism" as an analytic category for naming the myriad contemporary forms of gendered awareness and agency appearing among Latin America's poor, working-class and racialized 1 communities. Although we have an analytic agenda, our underlying concern here is with the politics of feminism-the construction of intersectional feminist praxes of gender, race, and economic justice and their relation to other projects for social justice. Our focus on popular feminism addresses the relationship between the subaltern 2 subjectivities of marginalized women, their relation to feminist political agency, and the relation of both to mixed-gender efforts for social transformation on the broader left. Although it may be a current within them, popular feminism is distinct from the mass feminisms on the streets and online, the "feminisms of the 99 percent," that have gripped the continent in recent years. It is the feminism of the poor and the subaltern, whose concerns for gender justice are inescapably co-constituted with their collective struggles for material, cultural and psychic survival against racist violence, land dispossession, environmental despoliation, and economic deprivation. One well-known contemporary example of self-identified popular feminism is that of the Consejo Cívico de Organizaciones Populares y Indígenas de Honduras (Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras-COPINH) whose founder, Berta Cáceres, a recipient of the Goldman Environmental Prize, was assassinated in 2016. Her assassination signaled retribution for COPINH's hardfought struggle against the rapacious capitalist, patriarchal, and colonizing practices destroying the land, rivers, and lives of the Lenca people. COPINH activists recently participated in an International Feminist Organizing School involving 200 grassroots feminists from around the world organized by the World -a popular feminist initiative March of Women, among others. 3 Janet M. Conway currently holds the Nancy Rowell Jackman Chair in Women's Studies at Mount Saint Vincent University. She is a full professor of sociology at Brock University and former Canada Research Chair in Social Justice. Nathalie Lebon is an anthropologist and teaches women, gender, and sexuality studies at Gettysburg College. She is coeditor (with Elizabeth Maier) of Women's Activism in Latin America and the Caribbean: Engendering Social Justice, Democratizing Citizenship (2010) and De lo privado a lo público: 30 años de lucha ciudadana de las mujeres en América Latina (2006). The collective thanks them for organizing this issue.

Peasant Struggles in Times of Crises: The Political Role of Rural and Indigenous Women in Chile Today

“…Among the other 152 members, the two elected candidates from ANAMURI wrote a proposal for a political constitution for Chile and used a privileged position to ensure that the historical demands of the movement were heard and become a permanent reality in the country. In this context, the ideas of popular peasant feminism (Conway & Lebon, 2021b), ecofeminism (Mies & Shiva, 2014) and decoloniality (Infante, 2013;Kiran, 2013) are gaining momentum in the political discussion, offering alternatives toward a more socially and environmentally just future.…”

“…In Latin America, this ontological separation was brutally imposed in the colonial period, as the original inhabitants (now called indigenous) did not and do not necessarily share this ontology. Of course, over time this analytical distinction has been debated and complexified in a dialogical way, mainly by the decolonial perspectives that intend to offer meaning to the alternatives or subaltern cultures (Conway & Lebon, 2021b;Cusicanqui, 2018;Escobar, 2012;Espinosa Miñoso et al, 2014;Kiran, 2013;Kothari et al, 2019).…”

The Age of Transition: Postdevelopment and North-South Synergies

“…Since the 1990s, alternative production projects in the southern Pacific region of Colombia had incorporated the concept of buen vivir and were pioneers of the concept in Colombia (Mina Rojas et al, 2015). More recently, black women's movements have expanded the notion of buen vivir with the contributions of decolonial popular feminisms (Conway and Lebon, 2021). The women of the Yolombó community in Cauca had not been informed of plans for gold extraction when foreign companies first arrived on the banks of the Ovejas River.…”

Agency in Contexts of Violence and Crime: Coping Strategies of Women Community Leaders vis-à-vis Criminal Groups in Medellín, Colombia

“…There is much literature on women's agency in grassroots movements with social demands and political agendas (Alvarez 1990;Conway 2021;Conway and Lebon 2021;Molyneux 1985;Safa 1990;Stephen 1997). Agency is generally understood within the liberal tradition; it equates to freedom and autonomy (Mahmood 2001;Hume and Wilding 2020).…”