Call for Papers
Feminist Politics of Knowledge in Times of Globalisation:
Epistemologies, Strategies and Conditions
International Workshop
of the Chair of Sociology/Social Inequality and Gender
Ruhr-University Bochum (Germany), 01–02 December 2016
Contemporary societies are frequently described as ‘knowledge societies‘ where all kinds of knowledge are supposed to play an important role for the social, economic and political development under the conditions of globalisation. The system of knowledge production and dissemination as well as knowledge itself becomes more and more important for these societies. However, reflections about the ongoing changes and its influences on knowledge rarely pay attention to social and epistemic inequalities in knowledge production and dissemination.
This observation marks the starting point for the international workshop which will focus on feminist politics of knowledge in times of transnationalisation and globalisation. The term ‘politics of knowledge’ highlights the fact that knowledge, its production, dissemination and use, is always political. Due to its roots in and connections to the women’s movements, this is especially true for feminist knowledge: There is a long tradition of discussion about the epistemological status and methodological modes of feminist knowledge but also about questions of inclusion in and exclusion from feminist knowledge production and dissemination. There are also ongoing discussions on how feminist knowledge is used or misused for societal, economic and political purposes.
For the workshop, we welcome both theoretical as well as empirical submissions, in particular those concerning the following questions:
How does feminist knowledge production reflect the epistemological and methodological challenges of transnational and postcolonial developments? What about social and epistemic inequalities in this process? And how can concepts like intersectionality and/or queer be integrated in contemporary feminist epistemologies and methodologies?
What is the scientific, but also the societal meaning of feminist knowledge? What happens to feminist knowledge under conditions of societal, economic or political use, e.g. is it strengthened, weakened or translated, and if so, how and why? Is there a mobilisation of feminist knowledge for social development, and if so, why? Who are the mobilizing people, groups and/or institutions? What are the societal arenas where feminist knowledge is used?
How do the current material conditions of feminist knowledge production and dissemination suffer or profit from the neoliberalisation of universities and new academic governance all over the world? Where are alternative sites for feminist knowledge production and dissemination emerging and how do they look like?
Both junior and senior academics are invited to submit an abstract (between 500 and 800 words on the topic, objectives and research questions plus, if applicable, the empirical background of the paper) in form of a word- or pdf-document. Abstracts should also include FULL contact details, including your name, institutional affiliation, mailing address, and e-mail address. Abstracts should be sent until September 30th, 2016 to Heike Kahlert (conference-sozsug@rub.de or http://www.sowi.rub.de/sozsug/index.html.en). Deadline for notice of acceptance/rejection of the paper is October 15th, 2016.
Note: We apologize for the fact that no funding, fee waiver, travel or other bursaries can be offered for attending the workshop!
