Dilemmas of feminist practice in transnational spaces: Solidarity, personal growth, and potential solutions

• Published in: Gender, place and culture : a journal of feminist geography Vol. 26; no. 10; pp. 1345 - 1352
• Main Authors: Rajan, Hamsa, Thornhill, Kerrie
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Abingdon Routledge 03.10.2019; Taylor & Francis Ltd
• Subjects: Cultural groups; Culture; Feminism; feminist activism; feminist research; Feminist theory; gender studies; Inequality; Personal development; Positionality; qualitative research methods; Race; Racial differences; Social cohesion; Social privilege; transnational feminism; Transnationalism
• ISSN: 0966-369X; 1360-0524
• DOI: 10.1080/0966369X.2019.1618246

In this article, we introduce Revisiting Dilemmas in Transnational Feminist Research and Practice, a themed section of Gender, Place and Culture. Composed of four articles and this Introduction, the section builds from a core problem, documented in the literature, that feminist engagements between the global 'South' and 'North' can lead Northerners or outsiders to inadvertently essentialise the 'culture' of underprivileged groups and hold to paternalistic attitudes towards marginalised communities, even while attempting to confront and mitigate inequalities. While privilege can be an obstacle to solidarity work, how might solidarity be ethically and respectfully built, across chasms of race, class, nation, and other forms of difference? This themed section focuses primarily on this question, through evidence and researcher reflections from settings as disparate as southern Africa, Nigeria, Jordan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Canada. The articles also describe the uncomfortable circumstances encountered by researchers who occupy both an insider and outsider position in the communities they work with, but move beyond this description to discuss how this type of positionality can produce valuable insights. In this Introduction, we summarise and describe the four articles contained in the themed section, pointing to the ways in which the authors help to enhance our understanding of the problems inherent in transnational feminist work and potential solutions.