Rethinking Silence, Voice and Agency in Contested Gendered Terrains
Global and local contestations are not only gendered, they also raise important questions about agency and its practice and location in the twenty-first century. Silence and voice are being increasingly debated as sites of agency within feminist research on conflict and insecurity. Drawing on a wide range of feminist approaches, this volume examines the various ways that silence and voice have been contested in feminist research, and their impact on how agency is understood and performed, particularly in situations of conflict and insecurity.
The collection makes an important and timely contribution to interdisciplinary feminist theorizing of silence, voice and agency in global politics. Interrogating the intellectual landscape of existing debates about agency, silence and voice in an increasingly unequal and conflict-ridden world, the contributors to this volume challenge the dominant narratives of agency based on voice or speech alone as a necessary precondition for understanding or negotiating agency or empowerment. Many of the authors have engaged in field research in both the Global South and North and bring in-depth and diverse gendered case studies to their analysis, focusing on the increasing importance of examining silence as well as voice for understanding gender and agency in an increasingly embattled and complicated world.
This book will contribute to and deepen existing discussions of agency, silence and voice in development, culture and gender studies, political economy, postcolonial and de-colonial scholarship as well as in the field of International Relations.
Jane L. Parpart is Emeritus Professor and the former Lester Pearson Chair in International Development at Dalhousie University, Canada, as well as Adjunct Professor at Carleton University, University of Ottawa and University of Massachusetts Boston, USA.
Swati Parashar is Associate Professor in Peace and Development at the School of Global Studies, University of Gothenburg, Sweden and Research Associate, Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy, SOAS University of London. She serves as Visiting Faculty, Malaviya Centre for Peace Research, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, India and has previously been a Visiting Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), Delhi.
Gender in a Global/Local World
Series Editors: Jane L. Parpart
University of Massachusetts, Boston, USA
Pauline Gardiner Barber
Dalhousie University, Canada
and Marianne Marchand
Universidad de las Amricas, Puebla, Mexico
Gender in a Global/Local World critically explores the uneven and often contradictory ways in which global processes and local identities come together. Much has been and is being written about globalization and responses to it but rarely from a critical, historical, gendered perspective. Yet, these processes are profoundly gendered albeit in different ways in particular contexts and times. The changes in social, cultural, economic and political institutions and practices alter the conditions under which women and men make and remake their lives. New spaces have been created economic, political, social and previously silent voices are being heard. NorthSouth dichotomies are being undermined as increasing numbers of people and communities are exposed to international processes through migration, travel, and communication, even as marginalization and poverty intensify for many in all parts of the world. The series features monographs and collections which explore the tensions in a global/local world, and includes contributions from all disciplines in recognition that no single approach can capture these complex processes.
Mobilizing Transnational Gender Politics in Post-Genocide Rwanda
Rirhandu Mageza-Barthel
Women, Gender, Remittances and Development in the Global South
Edited by Ton van Naerssen, Lothar Smith, Tine Davids and Marianne H. Marchand
Gender Transitions Along Borders
Marlene Sols
Rethinking Silence, Voice and Agency in Contested Gendered Terrains
Edited by Jane L. Parpart and Swati Parashar
For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/Gender-in-a-Global-Local-World/book-series/ASHSER1179
Rethinking Silence, Voice and Agency in Contested Gendered Terrains
Edited by Jane L. Parpart and Swati Parashar
First published 2019
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ISBN: 978-1-138-74651-0 (hbk)
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Contents
Catherine Ali is a mediation researcher, trainer and practitioner, and a policy and practice consultant in mediation, gender, conflict trauma and restorative justice. Dr. Ali taught Mediation Studies at The University of The West Indies, Trinidad, and the BRICS/Global Unit for International Mediation, Rio de Janeiro; developed the Caribbean online mediation course for UWIOC, and researched Insight Mediation questions at BC Lonergan Institute, Massachusetts, Boston for use in psychological trauma and peacebuilding in Trinidad and Tobago. Dr. Ali directs the Eriutt Centre in San Fernando, Trinidad, using light therapy (photobiomodulation) to modulate physical and psychological pain, to make purposeful space for mediation.
Suzanne Bergeron is the Helen Graves Collegiate Professor of Womens Studies and Social Sciences, University of Michigan, Dearborn, where she teaches courses on sex, gender and development; development economics; and gender and globalization. Her current research traces out the implications of using neoclassical efficiency arguments to achieve gender equity in various areas of development policy, and examines the possibilities for fostering alternative economic practices.
Sudeshna Chatterjee is a doctoral candidate in Global Governance and Human Security at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. She is working on spaces of exception, disposable subjectivities and peripheral identities in International Relations. Her thesis particularly deals with sex workers movements and human trafficking in India. She is also engaged as adjunct faculty in several universities in the Boston area.
