Feminism and Protest Camps: Entanglements, Critiques and Re-Imaginings

Description

In the wake of a global wave of mobilisation, this book offers an unprecedented interrogation of protest camps as sites of gendered politics and feminist activism. Using international case studies from Europe, UK, US, Turkey, Brazil, Australia and Taiwan, diverse contributors from academia and activist circles bring to light the recurrence of gendered, racialised and heteronormative inequality and violence in many of these camps and the continued struggle to re-make camps as feminist spaces. Developing an intersectional feminist analysis of the possibilities and limitations of protest spaces, this book tells new and inspiring stories of feminist organising and agency. Contents Introduction: Feminism/Protest Camps - Catherine Eschle and Alison Bartlett Part I: Gendered Power and Identities in Protest Camps 2. Safe Spaces and Solidarity: Combating Gendered Violence in the US Occupy Encampments - Celeste Montoya 3. The Pu'u we Planted: Rebirthing Refuge at Mauna Kea - Mahealani Ahia and Kahala Johnson 4. 'You Can't Kill The Spirit' (But You Can Try): Gendered Contestations and Contradictions at Menwith Hill Women's Peace Camp - Finn Mackay 5. Women's Activism, Gendered Power and Postfeminism in Taiwan's 'Sunflower Movement' - Chia-Ling Yang Part II: Feminist Politics In and Through Protest Camps 6. The Feminist Movement in Turkey and the Women of the Gezi Park Protests - Yesim Arat 7. Feminism and Protest Camps in Spain: From the Indignados to Feminist Encampments - Emma Gomez Nicolau 8. 'Why the Compost Toilets?' Ecofeminist (Re)Generations at the HoriZone Ecovillage - Joan Haran Part III: Feminist Theorising and Protest Camps 9. Protest Camps as 'Homeplace': Social Reproduction In and Against Neoliberal Capitalism - Catherine Eschle 10. Project Democracy in Protest Camps: Caring, the Commons and Feminist Democratic Theory - Anastasia Kavada 11. Feminised and Decolonising Reoccupations, Re-Existencias and Escrevivencias: Learning from Women's Movement Collectives in North-Eastern Brazil - Sara C. Motta, Sandra Maria Gadelha de Carvalho, Claudiana Nogueira de Alcencar and Mila Nayane da Silva Part IV: The Feminist Afterlives of Protest Camps 12. Feminism on Aboriginal Land: The 1983 Pine Gap Women's Peace Camp, Central Australia - Alison Bartlett 13. Remembering an Eco/Feminist Peace Camp - Niamh Moore 14. Archiving US Occupy Encampments and their Feminist Tensions: Feminist Archiving for Contemporary 'Big-Tent' Social Movements - Heather McKee Hurwitz and Anne Kumer 15. Greenham Women Everywhere: A Feminist Experiment in Recreating Experience and Shaping Collective Memory - Kate Kerrow, Rebecca Mordan, Vanessa Pini and Jill (Ray) Raymond, with Alison Bartlett and Catherine Eschle 16. Conclusion: Rethinking Protest Camps, Rethinking Feminism - Catherine Eschle and Alison Bartlett

Catherine Eschle is Senior Lecturer in the School of Government and Public Policy at the University of Strathclyde. Alison Bartlett is Senior Honorary Research Fellow in the School of Humanities at the University of Western Australia.

"A smart and much-needed collection that takes seriously the feminist politics of encampment. This collection critically examines the feminist possibilities of occupation and how this work can be a portal to a new world or a cul de sac reproducing the worst of us." Akwugo Emejulu, University of Warwick "I rarely see feminist scholarship on social movements comprehensively consider the settler colonial, cisheteronormative, and otherwise exclusionary politics of protest sites. So, it is refreshing, urgent, and thrilling to read Eschle and Bartlett's carefully curated book. This co-edited collection privileges an intersectional feminist interrogation of protest camps with significant focus on the world-building struggles and strategies of indigenous, Black, and various precariously positioned communities. Each chapter is theoretically robust and steeped in rich details that are both troubling and enlivening to read. It is also a very cohesive book, a hard feat indeed given the wide variety of the case studies and author positionalities, that asks us to constantly rethink not only feminist politics but also how we use feminist frameworks to understand protest and resistance. I cannot wait to assign this book to my students!" Meghana Nayak, Pace University "Today when feminism is under attack everywhere, this book offers a rich and nuanced reminder of its vital and ongoing presence in contemporary women-only and mixed gender protest camps across several countries in the Global North and South. The authors' explorations of protest camps as simultaneously sites of gendered politics - where inequalities of power and gendered divisions of labour and spatial location get reproduced and where historically racialized, gendered, and sexed bodies are vulnerable to violence - and of feminist activism where those politics are contested and reconfigured is both sobering and exciting. Just the kind of 'skepticism of the intellect and optimism of the will' demonstrated by the chants of 'Women, Life, Freedom' in Iran and elsewhere." Manisha Desai, University of Connecticut