Bridging the activist-academic divide: feminist activism and the teaching of global politics

Our starting point in this article is the widespread belief that academia and activism are separate worlds, driven by contrasting aims and imperatives and governed by different rules. Such a view is based on a series of takenfor-granted and highly problematic ontological dichotomies, including mind/body, theory/practice, reason/emotion, abstract/concrete and ‘ivory tower’/ ‘real world’. Perhaps most fundamentally, these serve to set up thinking and reflecting in opposition to doing or acting. Thus in both activist and academic characterisations of what it is that they do, we find the frequent assumption that academics theorise and write, while for activists ‘action is the life of all and if thou dost not act, thou dost nothing’; academics exercise their cognitive skills, while activists are animated by passion; academics are impartial commentators on the world while activists are partisan, polemical advocates; academics work in elite institutions while activists are embedded in the everyday, ‘on the streets’ or at ‘the grassroots’

Feminist scholarship, bridge-building and political affinity

In this short essay we consider, first, the reasons why feminist IR academics should seek to build bridges with each other, with other academics and with those outside the university. Second, we develop some tentative guidelines for how we should go about the task of bridge-building, drawing on our research into feminist activism at the World Social Forum. Our intention in so doing is not to reinforce what we have elsewhere criticised as a false dichotomy between activists and academics, but rather to locate feminist IR scholars within a wider feminist community and their work within a shared political project. This paper could thus be seen as a form of bridge building in and of itself. Along the way, we hope to draw out some of the problems of and boundaries to coalition politics for feminist IR academics, thus contributing to a dialogue on the possible 'limits' of bridge-building from a feminist perspective

Reclaiming feminist futures : co-opted and progressive politics in a neoliberal age

This article engages with the influential narrative about the co-optation of feminism in conditions of neoliberalism put forward by prominent feminist thinkers Nancy Fraser, Hester Eisenstein and Angela McRobbie. After drawing out the twin visions of 'progressive' feminist politics that undergird this narrative — cached out in terms of either the retrieval of past socialist feminist glories or personal reinvention — we subject to critical scrutiny both the substantive claims made and the conceptual scaffolding invoked. We argue that the proleptic imaginings of all three authors, in different ways, are highly circumscribed in terms of the recommended agent, agenda and practices of progressive politics, and clouded by conceptual muddle over the meanings of 'left', 'radical' and 'progressive'. Taken together, these problems render the conclusions of Fraser, Eisenstein and McRobbie at best unconvincing and at worst dismissive of contemporary feminist efforts to challenge neoliberalism. We end the paper by disentangling and redefining left, radical and progressive and by sketching a contrasting substantive vision of progressive feminist politics enabled by this reconceptualisation

Contemporary political agency: theory and practice

Looking beyond categories including \u2018civil society\u2019, \u2018international institutions\u2019, \u2018international organizations\u2019 and \u2018new social movements\u2019 this book brings together an interdisciplinary dialogue on what constitutes political agency today. This book explores and critically reflects on the theory and practice of political agency in contemporary global politics, in light of the changing relationship between the state, the market and the society. The contributors authors focus on empirically mapping as well as comparing a range of forms of political agency; exploring their significance for the theory and practice of global politics; and reflect on the tensions and synergies generated by recent efforts to conceptualise them. Demonstrating an innovative approach this book will be of interest to students and scholars of international relations, sociology, political economy and political theory

Global justice movement

This chapter discusses the global justice movement. It is part of the two-volume Oxford Companion to Comparative Politics, which fills a gap in scholarship on an increasingly important field within Political Science

From the text to the frame : a frame analysis of the collective action frames of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation, 1980-1998

Despite the wealth of interest in South Mexico’s Ejercito Zapatista Liberacion Nacional (EZLN), few studies have attempted to deconstruct the discourse of the Zapatistas according to its component parts. Most scholars have so far addressed the Zapatistas from the standpoint of political theory, international relations or anthropology, and in so doing have tended to engage primarily with broader polemical agendas. Furthermore, in their determination to typologise the Zapatistas as ‘this’ or ‘that’ sort of movement, scholars have overlooked the nuances and shades of meaning that exist within the Zapatista discourse, as well as the evolution of those meanings over time. As a result, the content and ongoing construction of the Zapatistas’ message has been eclipsed by a more encompassing, contested, and ultimately chimeric quest to reify the movement’s ‘essence’ or ‘truth’. This thesis represents an empirical analysis of the EZLN’s collective discourse that focuses on the content and constructed nature of their collective action frames. Combining three strands of social movement frame analysis, it avers to draw-out the ever-changing detail of the EZLN’s discursive output and so add value to the debates that surround the Zapatistas. It also makes several theoretical contributions to social movement frame analysis.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceUniversity of ExeterGBUnited Kingdo

Constructing the anti-globalisation movement

This chapter asks a deceptively simple question: is there a transnational anti-globalisation social movement? Some critics of the movement have already produced its obituary. They point to the failure to rival the spectacle of the Battle of Seattle and, more fundamentally, to the ramifications of the September 11 attacks. The space for protest is understood to have closed down and the movement thrown into an identity crisis (see discussion in Martin 2003; Callinicos 2003a: 16-19). I am not responding in this chapter to such contentious claims, nor to the undoubtedly changing conjuncture for activism. Rather I want to interrogate the more basic proposition that there has ever been such a thing as 'an anti-globalisation movement'

‘Skeleton women' at the world social forum : feminist struggles for visibility, voice, and influence, 2001-5

This chapter looks at feminist struggles for visibility, voice, and influence in the World Social Forums of 2003-