Introduction Popular Feminism(s): Pasts, Presents, and Futures

• DOI: 10.1177/0094582X211027870
• Published date: 01 September 2021
• Date: 01 September 2021
• Author: Nathalie Lebon,Janet M. Conway
• Subject Matter: Introduction

https://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X211027870

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 240, Vol. 48 No. 5, September 2021, 3

DOI: 10.1177/0094582X211027870

© 2021 Latin American Perspectives

3

Introduction

Popular Feminism(s)

Pasts, Presents, and Futures

by

Janet M. Conway and Nathalie Lebon

This issue constitutes the second part of our collection “Popular

Feminism(s): Pasts, Presents and Futures.” The first part appeared in July

2021, and our introduction to that issue, entitled “Popular Feminism(s)

Reconsidered: Popular, Racialized, and Decolonial Subjectivities in

Contention,” provides a thorough contextualization and analysis of all 12

published contributions to the double issue. We provide here only a sum-

mary of the key points made there.

The papers gathered in this collection highlight the multiplicity of subjec-

tivities in contention in popular feminist initiatives among economically mar-

ginalized women in Latin America. Contributors tease out the dual meaning

of “popular feminism” as describing, on one hand, gender-conscious agency

among grassroots women and, on the other, a politicized feminist identity

articulated to the broader left. They explore the ways in which the emergence

of popular feminist subjects relates to other actors, organizations, and institu-

tions, especially on the left. Finally, they lead us to reflect on the political

import of continuing to name the crucial work done by (self-identified) instan-

tiations of “popular feminism” for social justice, while also demonstrating the

need to racialize and decolonize popular feminism as both a concept and a

praxis. Some contributors interrogate the often racially unmarked practices of

the gender-class framework distinctive of (self-identified) “popular femi-

nism.” Others attend to rural, racialized, and indigenous women’s agency in

their own terms. “Popular feminism(s)” comes to be resignified to include the

defense of land, water, and ecosystems and resistance to dispossession—to be

concerned with survival, home place, and healing from state violence and

with tackling internalized oppression by constructing sovereignty of the self

in relation to a communal politics of autonomy vis-à-vis the modern state.

Janet M. Conway currently holds the Nancy Rowell Jackman Chair in Women’s Studies at Mount

Saint Vincent University. She is a full professor of sociology at Brock University and former

Canada Research Chair in Social Justice. Nathalie Lebon is an anthropologist and teaches women,

gender, and sexuality studies at Gettysburg College. She is coeditor (with Elizabeth Maier) of

Women’s Activism in Latin America and the Caribbean: Engendering Social Justice, Democratizing

Citizenship (2010) and De lo privado a lo público: 30 años de lucha ciudadana de las mujeres en América

Latina (2006). The collective thanks them for organizing this issue.

1027870LAPXXX10.1177/0094582X211027870Latin American PerspectivesConway and Lebon /

research-article2021