2017 Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, Genders and Sexualities

June 01 - 04, 2017

In the Global South, as elsewhere, law has become the dominant means for states and others institutions to enact and enforce social and economic changes. States, state agents and their laws often represent the interests of majorities, which are deeply gendered (and classed) in their assumptions, practices, and outcomes. Nonetheless, in response to (or despite) these interventions, women (and men) from minority groups have engaged in formal and informal collective actions to demand their rights, challenge injustices, and seek alternative modes of framing and pursuing justice. This interdisciplinary roundtable will compare a range of such collective actions by, for and on behalf of women and men in India, Nicaragua, South Africa, Tanzania and Mexico. Drawing from extended empirical studies, presenters will analyze the purpose, form, enactment, meaning, history, and context of such actions, addressing such questions as: What ideas of justice (and gender) are they promoting and producing?  How do these differ from dominant gender and legal regimes held by the state? Do these alternative framings shape state practices and institutions, and if so, how? What are their limitations and strengths?  How do they articulate with and express participants’ complex moral, political and social ideas and relations of, for example, respect, power, personhood, divine agency, and social interdependence? Together the presentations will contribute to current debates about gender justice, feminist activism, the contours and contexts of state power.