Paper short abstract:

This study explores the multifaceted struggles of feminists in Nigeria for political representation and women's rights. Drawing on historical contexts, the research will highlight the foundation laid for contemporary gender parity struggles as exemplified by the Bring Back Our Girls (BBOG) movement

Paper long abstract:

This study will explore the intricate interplay between pre-colonial feminist activism and its enduring influence on the postcolonial feminist protest movements in Nigeria, as exemplified by the Bring Back Our Girls (BBOG) movement. The study will delve into the historical roots of feminist activism in pre-colonial Nigeria, focusing on the diverse ways in which women engaged in political representation struggles and fought for their rights before colonization. The primary objective of this study is to assess how pre-colonial feminist activism has shaped and inspired the strategies, goals, and discourse of Nigerian feminists in the postcolonial period via technologies. To achieve this, a critical analysis of the BBOG movement will be conducted, tracing its origins, key actors, and advocacy methods. This movement, which emerged in response to the abduction of 276 schoolgirls by Boko-Haram in 2014, serves as a contemporary case study through which we examine the legacy and relevance of pre-colonial feminist ideals in contemporary Nigeria. The study will reveal how pre-colonial female leaders, such as Queen Amina of Zazzau, Margaret Ekpo, and Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti as well as feminist movements like the Aba Women Riot have inspired contemporary Nigerian feminists. The study will utilize a qualitative case study methodology, employing extensive archival research, in-depth interviews and social media discourse. Conclusively, the study will argue that pre-colonial feminist activism, which was characterized by women's participation in political decision-making and resistance to patriarchal norms, has inspired contemporary feminist movements in Nigeria to demand greater political representation and advocate for women's rights.

Paper short abstract:

This research combines the sciences of Medical Anthropology and Ecofeminism to analyze the agricultural experiences of benniza'a women in Oaxaca, Mexico. It explores feminized strategies for responding to the health conditions that the Anthropocene produces and how these affect gender roles.

Paper long abstract:

Building from the approach of the Anthropocene, which is already suited to discussion in several fields of sciences, we assume the premise that “embodied inequalities of the Anthropocene” exist. Then, we aim to combine it with tools of Medical Anthropology to show the agricultural experience of the Zapotec women in the municipality of Villa Díaz Ordaz, Oaxaca, Mexico, based on field research. To this purpose, ecofeminist practices to confront local processes that evidence the anthropocene will be analyzed through ethnography in the field where they occur.

At the same time, we explore the strategies which have been feminized to respond to the different health conditions that the Anthropocene produces among the benniza'a population, at both in their daily life and on their agricultural practices, since these have affected some gender roles, essentially to those who have historically dedicated themselves to care in the family environment. Finally, we combine the disciplinary work of the both Anthropocene-Ecofeminist approaches to dialogue with conceptual tools from Medical Anthropology. They provide us with some reflections to identify how the Anthropocene is affecting the human and not human body, and how we can face it through different tools that might contribute to transforming the relationship between human-environment.

Paper short abstract:

Ecofeminists, such as Maria Mies, have drawn on Marx's concept "social reproduction" to analyze the appropriation of work done by women, nature, and colonies. Drawing on fieldwork among back-to-the-landers, this paper explores the analytical usefulness of the concept to understand ecological crisis

Paper long abstract:

In the 1970s and the 1980s, Marx’s term “social reproduction” was picked up by materialist feminists to think through the role of unpaid, invisibilised domestic labour in capitalist societies. It has further inspired the work of some ecofeminists -best represented by Maria Mies and her Subsistance Perspective - as well as Jason W Moore, a historian of the World-Ecology, to analyze how capitalism appropriates and essentially wastes the work of nature. This paper, drawing on fieldwork among back-to-the-landers in France, will analyze ecological labour, i.e., human work with nature for crafting ecologically sustainable livelihoods. It argues that “social reproduction” and “reproductive work” provide a useful framework for analyzing how human labour in capitalist societies is organized to systematically undermine the life-generating powers of humans and ecosystems.

Paper short abstract:

Examining local resistance to lithium mining, this paper reveals how communitarian practices challenge extractivist norms. Emphasizing women's pivotal role, it uncovers their crucial contribution to resistance and nurturing intimate connections between people and their more-than-human worlds.

Paper long abstract:

This paper focuses on the local resistance against Western Europe’s largest open-pit lithium mining project, owned by the British multinational Savannah Resources, and projected for the villages of Covas do Barroso, Muro and Romainho. These villages are in the mountainous region of Barroso, classified as World Agricultural Heritage by the UN. Drawing on extensive and collaborative fieldwork conducted in these rural villages, this paper will explore how communitarian, ancestral and place-based practices are challenging the hegemonic extractivist grammar of/on the territory, imposed by the State and by extractivist industries, in the name of the so-called “energy transition”. Focusing on the "baldios" (communal lands) and the "torna da água do povo" (an ancestral water-sharing system), this paper unveils how these embodied practices, deeply rooted in the territory, represent a unique form of rural organization that transcends Western dualist ontologies and challenges capitalist individualistic structures. In Barroso, the co-creation and reproduction of this complex system of practices, values, and knowledges are mostly undertaken by women, who play a central role in leading the resistance against mining and maintaining the daily care practices for land, water, animals, and the elderly. This paper illuminates how women, through their embodied actions, weave intimate relationships between social and economic activities and their environmental and ecological realities. I argue that these practices - and the subsistence agricultural model they are part of - create intimate relationships between people and their more-than-human worlds, strengthening their autonomy and land sovereignty, thus reinforcing the resistance against extractivist incursions.

Paper short abstract:

In this paper, based on my fieldowrk in the Autnomus Administration of North and East Syria (Rojava) I will discuss some of the entlagmentments of revolutionary politics based on social ecology and women's liberation and everyday life embeded in oil extractivism and state bureucracy.

Paper long abstract:

The rise of autonomy in regions of North and East Syria did not only involve the setup of new structures of democratic society envisioned and implemented by the Kurdish Freedom Movement, but also the opening up of a new space for activities undertaken by a large number of independent, NGO's, that could not function under the Syrian Baath Regime. The ideals of women's liberation and social ecology form one of the backbones of the project of Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria and have tremendous impact on social changes in North-East Syria after 2012 revolution.

This created an interesting space in which new forms of agency and subjectivity emerged, in a specific context of deconstruction of the structures of the authoritarian nation-state and the formation of new structures of governance in which mainstream notions of citizenship aren’t easy to apply. On the other hand Autonomus Administration relies on fossil fuels in its day to day economy and has to deal with difficult heritage of Syrian State and everyday violence of ongoing war.

The ecological issues create an interesting nexus in this web of relations in which the workings of different ideologies of nature and subject creation can be observed. Drawing on fieldwork in West Kurdistan (Rojava), I will discuss how the environmental initiatives create spaces of creativity and resistance, prompting activists to take more responsibility for shaping the future of the region and reconfiguring their relations with both the Kurdish Freedom Movement and with remnants of the Syrian State.