Third ISA Forum of Sociology (July 10-14, 2016)

374

Knowledge Production: Feminist Perspectives in the 21st Century

RC32 Women in Society (host committee)

Language: English

The last two-three decades have witnessed a resurging concern with the global politics of knowledge, transcending worries about unequal access and inequities of literacy, albeit important. Our contemporary concerns are about the nature of knowledge itself: the pathways of formation; whose voices are dominant; and the hegemonies of the dominant forms and voices. The implications, of course, are profound, as dominant discourses continue to determine global politics that marginalize diverse voices: women’s knowledge, Global South perspectives, youth voices.
These debates are not new to post-colonial and especially post-colonial feminist scholars of the Global South – and a rich literature and collections of anthologies abound that have advanced intellectual debates around the world. However, we are at a moment when alternative intellectual traditions and so-called “indigenous” knowledge are informing reconfigured decolonial epistemologies and methodologies in powerful ways not only in the so-called post-colony, but also at the “centre” as perspectives have influenced each other and alliances have formed.
This session calls for papers that undertake critical feminist reflections of knowledge production that consciously challenge dominant hegemonic discourses and methodologies. Questions we ask include, but are not limited to:

• What have been the interplays of indigenous and colonizing knowledges and how have global feminists responded?
• What, indeed, is indigenous knowledge? Is there indigenous knowledge in the North, and who qualifies to be a knower?
• How do epistemologies interact with social context and the now popular “lived experiences”?
• Which categories order knowledge about women’s lives?
• How do institutions of higher education mediate knowledge production in empowering or disempowering ways?
• Are there spaces of liberation in the academy and where and how do they operate (for example women’s studies programmes/centres)?
• What have been the forms and areas of responses from youth voices (aka 21st century feminists) especially via social media?

Posters: