Paper short abstract:

This paper draws on feminist, decolonial, and ecological practices of collective struggle and organization. Decolonial ‘double translation’ compels human security theory and practice to centre the least-advantaged, and keep open a transnational feminist dialogue on universalism and vulnerabilities.

Paper long abstract:

This paper extends theorizing towards more ‘operational’ HS concerns, looking to progressive, but also highly contested expansions of universality and social solidarity, drawing from feminist, decolonial and ecological practices of collective struggle and organization (Davis 2016). The decolonial idea of ‘double translation’ (centring marginal perspectives, and engaging in multiple horizontal dialogues, Meghji 2023) challenges and exceeds the colonial fractures of race, gender and ecology (Ferdinand 2022). It compels human security theory and practice to centre perspectives from the least-advantaged, while keeping open a transnational feminist dialogue on universalism (Khader 2019) and vulnerabilities (Fineman 2017).

Practical strategies could then include engaging in horizontal or ‘pluriversal’ dialogue (Meghji 2023; Mignolo 2002), learning from social movement knowledge (Cox 2014), and anticolonial perspectives (Patel 2023), and using decolonial tools in education (Andreotti 2016) and social dialogues (Meghji 2023). Responses can be coordinated to minimize harm within communities of the already-disadvantaged (Whyte 2020), and consider essential resources required for care and social reproduction (Vergés, 2021; Bhattarcharya 2017). The discussion emphasises how colonial fractures constitute oppression, obstruct, and disable solidarity from the onto-epistemic realm outwards. It considers the role of political struggle, education, and ‘reverse tutelage’ (Meghji 2024), and not only policy and distributional strategies, to address the deep roots of insecurities that are unequally, viscerally, and vitally experienced.

References

Andreotti, V. (2016). The educational challenges of imagining the world differently. Canadian Journal of Development Studies/Revue canadienne d’études du développement, 37(1), 101-112

Bhattarcharya, T (2017) Social Reproduction Theory: Remapping Class, Recentering Oppression. London: Pluto Press

Cox Laurence. (2014). “Movements Making Knowledge: A New Wave of Inspiration for Sociology?” Sociology 48(5):954–71.

Davis, AY (2016) Freedom Is a Constant Struggle : Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement. London: Haymarket Books.

Ferdinand, M (2022) Decolonial Ecology: Thinking from the Caribbean World, translated by Anthony Paul Smith . Cambridge: Polity

Fineman, MA (2017) Vulnerability and Inevitable Inequality, Oslo Law Review 4,3, 133–149

Khader, S (2019) Decolonizing Universalism: A Transnational Feminist Ethic. Oxford: Oxford University Press

Khoo, S (forthcoming, under review) A Vital Sociology

Khoo, S (2023) Humane Security: Solidarity in Policy and Practice, Journal of Human Development and Capabilities, 24:2, 284-293, DOI: 10.1080/19452829.2023.2200241

Khoo, S (2022) Humane security and crisis epistemology - On (not) changing the referent subject, Paper presented at HDCA 2022 Antwerp, 21 September 2022.

Meghji, A (2024) From Public Sociology to Sociological Publics: The Importance of Reverse Tutelage to Social Theory, Sociological Theory