Women in Movement and Feminisms in Latin America: Critical materialism, alliance building, and environmentalisms

Session Submission Type: Panel

Abstract

Both the left and the right in Latin America have opted for a model of extractive development based on over-exploitation of communities and the environment. The processes of migration (or expulsion) due to poverty and violence have been made even more dramatic by the effects of climate change and environmental destruction. To the limited efforts of democratization and consolidation of redistributive policies is added the growing expansion of religious fundamentalisms as extreme forms of the cultural expression of a hegemonic neoliberal development model. Faced with this onslaught and violation of life itself, whose effects reverberate unequally and harm the most vulnerable populations, old and emerging anti-capitalist feminist struggles in the region present new directions to rethink core elements of emancipatory politics under the current configurations of global entangled inequalities.

The panel discusses trends in how feminist intertwines with environmentalism. First, through a renewed critical materialism, feminist struggles in the region link body politics to diverse forms of labour and its exploitation, looking at various scales, such as communities, subaltern territorialities and various ecologies. Second, feminist struggles are increasingly intertwined with ecological ones. Third, feminist movements are engaging more in cross-movement alliances with non-feminist others, expanding their core agenda by including environmentalism, food sovereignty, while also bringing other movements to adopt feminist agendas. Fourth, situated knowledges, practices, mobilizations in Latin America show the diversity in feminisms in the region, intersecting not only of race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexual orientation, but also underconceptualized categories of difference such as nationality and spatialities.

Sub Track

• Gender and Feminisms

Session Organizers

• Veronica I Schild, University of Western Ontario

• Renata Motta, Freie Universität Berlin

Chair

• Veronica I Schild, University of Western Ontario

Discussant

• Veronica I Schild, University of Western Ontario

Individual Presentations

• Analytics of intersectionality and new materialist feminisms in Latin America - Janet Conway, Brock University

• Food sovereignty as a feminist issue - Renata Motta, Freie Universität Berlin