By Gertrude Dzifa Torvikey AbstractNeoliberal development projects have invaded multiple spaces. In rural areas, women’s livelihood activities are targets for interventions in the name of poverty reduction and this is often conveyed through commercial agricultural production schemes. These initiatives have become the source of tension between householdbased production and capitalist production systems. This qualitative research…
Category: Archive
“Cinderellas” of Our Mozambique Wish to Speak: A Feminist Perspective on Extractivism
By Teresa Cunha and Isabel Casimiro All in uniform. Some in army uniforms, others in administrator uniforms. (Pepetela, 2018) AbstractMozambique is currently undergoing an intense cycle of extractive activities, with most of the generated benefits being transferred to international corporations and local elites. This has given rise to extreme inequality, the emergence ofviolent conflicts, the…
“Walking into Slavery with Our Eyes Open” – the Space for Resisting Genetically Modified Crops in Nigeria
By Charmaine Pereira AbstractThis study focuses on genetic modification of cowpea, a food crop grown predominantly by poor men and women in Nigeria and an important source of protein for the poor. The official justification for genetic modification is that itpromotes resistance to the Maruca insect, which is said to be capable of destroying up…
Towards Building Feminist Economies of Life
By Donna Andrews Living in CrisisThis anthropocene1 era with its accompanying avarice has significantly contributed to the destruction of the ecological integrity of our planet. Mainstream neoliberal economics valorises economic growth and fosters the super exploitation of minerals, metals and nature by transnational corporations. Its associated policies severely undermine social and economic protection, with dire…
Tribute: Hajiya Bilkisu Yusuf and Her ‘Jihad’ of the Heart (December 1952–September 2015)
Born December 2, 1952 in Kano, Hajiya Bilkisu Yusuf passed away on the 24th of September 2015, in the process of performing the Holy Pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia. In the years between, she accomplished so much that it would be foolhardy to attempt to capture even the essence of her many achievements in one short…
Dreadlocks as a Symbol of Resistance: Performance and Reflexivity
Performance auto-ethnography, an interdisciplinary qualitative research praxis, combines auto-ethnography and performance studies as a system of enquiry. Auto-ethnography is an approach to research and writing that seeks to systematically describe and analyse personal experience, or autobiography, in order to understand a wider cultural context (Spry, 2001:707). Performance auto-ethnography takes the embodied form of narration and…
The weave as an ‘unhappy’ technology of black femininity
Black women everywhere seem to be in weaves these days. Afua Hirsh (2012) half-jokingly declaims that “the weave has invaded Africa on its march to world domination” while, referring to North America, Cheryl Thompson observes similarly that: “From Oprah to Janet Jackson to Tyra Banks and a slew of others, weaves have become a normative…
The Remaking of Social Contracts: Feminists in a Fierce New World. Edited by Gita Sen and Marina Durano for DAWN. London: Zed Books, 2014
DAWN – Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era – has produced a fine-grained, well-articulated vision in its latest offering, The Remaking of Social Contracts: Feminists in a Fierce New World. The book invites us to imagine what the authors characterise as a “fierce new world,” which is obviously a counterpoint or perhaps complement…
Regarding Muslims: From Slavery to Postapartheid. By Gabeba Baderoon. Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 2014.
Regarding Muslims: From Slavery to Postapartheid is a pioneering study that examines historical and contemporary representations of Islam and Muslims in South Africa. With intellectual sophistication and creativity, Gabeba Baderoon examines varying forms of visual, culinary, artistic and popular representations in ways that speak back to official historical and colonial records. She reads against the…
Liberated Threads: Black Women, Style, and the Global Politics of Soul. By Tanisha C. Ford. Durham: University of North Carolina Press, 2015
Liberated Threads: Black Women, Style, and the Global Politics of Soul spans four continents, eighteen countries and the socio-historical planes of black liberation struggles in the black diaspora, and in Africa to a lesser extent, to explore the ways in which black women’s resistance has been visible and concentrated not only in actions within political…