Gender, Development and Social Change

This open access book gives insights into feminist methodologies in theory and practice. By foregrounding the experiential and embodied nature of doing feminist research, this book offers valuable tools for feminist research as a continuous praxis. Emerging from a rich collective learning process, the collection offers in-depth reflections on how feminists shape research questions, understand positionality, share research results beyond academe and produce feminist intersectional knowledges. This book reveals how the authors navigate theory and practice, candidly exploring the difficulty of producing knowledge on the edge of academia and activism. From different points of view, places and disciplinary positions, artistic and creative experiments and collaborations, the book provides a multi-layered analysis. This book will be a valuable resource and asset to early career researchers and interdisciplinary feminist students who can learn more about the doing of feminist researchfrom realistic, accessible, and practical methodological tools and knowledge.

This book emphasizes the significance of affects, feelings and emotions in how we think about politics, gender and sexuality in Latin America. Considering the complex and even contradictory social processes that the region is experiencing today, many Latin American authors are turning to affect to find a key to understand our present situation, to revisit our history, and to imagine new possibilities for the future. This tendency has shown such a specificity and sometimes departure from northern productions that it compels us to focus more deeply on its own arguments, methods, and critical contributions. This volume features essays that explore the particularities of Latin American ways of thinking about affect and how they can shed new light into our understanding of, gender, sexuality and politics.

Domestic violence, interpersonal violence, intimate partner violence, or gender-based violence continues to be a social problem that is rarely understood or discussed in many parts of society, worldwide. The same holds true in the Anglophone Caribbean. Most Caribbean societies are patriarchal in nature, as most men govern and create the political and economic landscape where citizens live. This edited volume brings together reputable scholars of rigorous academic research from various disciplines (e.g., political science, law, linguistics, criminology, nursing, social work and psychology) to clearly explain the conceptual definition of domestic violence within the Latin American and Caribbean region’s socio-political context. It will highlight who are the perpetrators as well as the victims of domestic violence and the consequences of allowing domestic violence to perpetuate in the region. This book is unique in the market today, as it is the only book grounded in the Caribbean providing a comprehensive overview of domestic violence with regards to the significance, victims, perpetrators, and the consequences.

This book examines the gender dimensions of large-scale mining in the oil industry and how oil exploitation has produced long-term economic, political, social and environmental risks and benefits in developing countries. It also shows that these risks and benefits have been unequally distributed between women and men. This project maps the ongoing dialogue between women’s issues and resource management, particularly, oil. The author attempts to answer the following questions: What are the impacts of oil projects on women in oil-rich countries? How can these impacts be explained? How can these impacts be reduced?

This book contributes to timely debates on the conditions of resistance and changes with the aim to offer a ray of hope in times of ecological, economic, social and democracy crisis worldwide. In the context of the crisis of social reproduction, impoverishment and growing inequalities, myriads of women-led grass-root initiatives are bubbling up. They reorganize social reproduction; redefine the meaning of work and value; explore new ways of doing economics and politics; construct solidarity-driven social relationships and combat their subordination. In doing so, these initiatives challenge the patriarchal, financialized and dehumanizing capitalist system and offer transformative, sustainable paths for feminist social change. Drawing on fine-grained ethnographies in Latin America and India, this book sheds light on women’s daily struggles, their difficulties, contradictions, fragilities, and also their successes and achievements. This book seeks to inspire activists, researchers and policy-makers in the field of feminism and solidarity economy to contribute to amplifying the movement, which rests on the articulation of the various initiatives.

This book analyzes women entrepreneurs in Muslim countries who are using Islamic values to develop and run small businesses. As a core case study, the authors are using Indonesia as it is the largest Muslim country in the world by population. The project examines supportive policies and economic programs in detail and considers their effects on the businesses of several women entrepreneurs. Additionally, the authors argue that this work-life balance is critical for the definition of a successful female Muslim entrepreneur. The monograph considers whether this new phenomenon indicates a change in the conception of ideal Muslim womanhood or whether it is a limited phenomenon with few impacts beyond Indonesia. The book will appeal to academic and practitioner audience interested in Islam, gender studies, Middle Eastern and South Asian politics, development, anthropology, and social policy.