Call for Papers: Politics of Everyday Life: Feminisms and Contemporary Community Development

Posted by on November 9, 2009

[posted from Comm-Org]

The Politics of Everyday Life: Feminisms and Contemporary Community Development
Community Development Journal Special Issue
Call for Papers
http://cdj.oxfordjournals.org/

In 1977 Elizabeth Wilson set this challenge to British community development theorists and practitioners:

‘The time is long overdue to inject some feminism into the community work scene…What is it then that community workers have to learn from the women’s movement? In the first place that daily life is political—political in a deeper sense than most community workers understand.’

Wilson argues that despite the central role women play in building and maintaining relationships within communities and the unique position most women have to the local state in terms of negotiating and accessing social welfare provision for their families, women’s interests, voices and perspectives are often marginalised in dominant community development theories and social practices. In order for community development to be legitimate and relevant, Wilson asserts that community development must take seriously the challenge of understanding the politics of everyday life and how the issues of equality, democracy and social justice are not only to be struggled for in the workplace or in state structures but in the institution of ‘community’ itself.

The goal of this special issue is to revisit some of the challenges raised by Wilson about community development’s relationship to feminism, gender and the politics of everyday life by expanding the initial frame of British community development to understand the status of feminisms in other community development spaces, places and contexts around the globe. For the purposes of this special issue, feminism can be understood as a perspective (seeing the world through the lens of gender), a theoretical position (an analysis of social relations as it affects the distribution of power) and as a critique of other positions and practices that do not sufficiently take into account the position of women in society. This call for papers is seeking articles on the following issues:

§ The extent to which a gender analysis is embedded with a contemporary community development frame
§ The ways in which community development recognises, supports, silences or marginalises ‘women’ and ‘women’s issues’
§ The nature of contemporary feminist principles that underpin work focused on women’s issues
§ The relationship between gender, power and participation
§ The process of engendering institutions through grassroots-based activism

To be considered for publication, you should submit a 250-word abstract no later than Friday, January, 15 2010. If your abstract is accepted for publication, the deadline for receipt of 3,000-word papers is Friday, May 21, 2010.

Please send abstracts to:
Akwugo Emejulu, University of Strathclyde
a.emejulu@strath.ac.uk

and

Audrey Bronstein, Oxfam GB
abronstein@oxfam.org.uk