This open access book engages with the concept of reproductive justice by exploring case studies of struggles around abortion in the context of rising anti-genderism, religious fundamentalism, and ethno-nationalism. Based on rich qualitative data offering in-depth analyses from different geographical, political and cultural contexts, the book explores how reproductive justice is understood, contested and given meaning. Chapters further develop the Black feminist concept of reproductive justice in a critical dialogue with postcolonial theory and explore the strength of transnational feminist practices. This book thus offers a fresh approach to the issue of abortion by engaging with contemporary political and cultural processes, and it expands the narrow notions of women’s rights, particularly notions of property rights over bodies, towards an analysis of the political economy of social reproduction and how it affects bodies that can be pregnant. This volume will be of interest to scholars with interests in reproductive justice, anti-gender politics, and religious fundamentalism.

Into the twenty-first century, millions of disabled people and people experiencing mental distress were segregated from the rest of society and confined to residential institutions. Deinstitutionalization – the closure of these sites and integration of former residents into the community – has become increasingly commonplace. But this project is unfinished. Sites of Conscience explores use of the concept of sites of conscience, which involves place-based memory activities such as walking tours, survivor-authored social histories, and performances and artistic works in or generated from sites of systemic suffering and injustice. These activities offer new ways to move forward from the unfinished deinstitutionalization project and its failures. Covering diverse national contexts, this volume proposes that acknowledging the memories and lived experiences of former residents – and keeping histories and social heritage of institutions alive rather than simply closing sites – holds the greatest potential for recognition, accountability, and action.

Women Against Fundamentalism (WAF) was formed in 1989 to challenge the rise of fundamentalism in all religions. This book maps the development of the organisation over the past 25 years, through the life stories and political reflections of some of its members, focusing on the ways in which lived contradictions have been reflected in their politics. They explore the ways in which anti-fundamentalism relates to broader feminist, anti-racist and other emancipatory political ideologies and movements.

Paraguay is an under-examined, but remarkably fascinating country, where war, dictatorship, and elite capture have produced cycles of popular mobilization and repression. Yet, its social movements are less known to international audiences. This book analyzes Paraguay’s principal social movements since the transition to democracy and examines how, in the context of a weak state, authoritarian political elite, and a deficient democratization process, they contribute to progressive policy, socio-economic development, and democracy. Using critical perspectives in sociology, anthropology, geography, and political science, we bring together scholars, activists, and practitioners of social critique and community organizing. They reflect on movements involving peasant, indigenous and agrarian rights to land and livelihoods, LGBTQ and feminist struggles, labor union struggles, and student demands for access to quality education and social development, while exploring how the particularisms of Paraguay result in differences from other Latin American movements and how overarching regional tendencies may explain the similarities. This volume is the first English-language book on social movements in Paraguay. As such, it aims to provide a deeper understanding Paraguay’s principal social movements since the transition to democracy. This volume contributes to analyzing how social movements within the context of aweak state, authoritarian political elite, and a deficient democratization process contribute to progressive public policy, socio-economic development, and democracy. In addition, this book focuses on how Paraguayan social movements are similar to or different from their Latin American counterparts, how the particularism of Paraguay explains these variations and how overarching regional tendencies explain the similarities. The contribution of this volume is twofold: to provide new empirical examples in the study of Latin American social movements and their contribution to development and democracy, as well as to validate or challenge social movement theories by employing empirical studies of Paraguayan social movements. Each chapter delves into the background to a specific movement, while closely analyzing the movement in the post-Lugo era (2012-2021). Together the chapters in this book contribute to a better understanding of social movements in Paraguay and Latin America thus dialoguing with the existing literature and social movement theories and considering how such studies can further our understanding of social movements in Paraguay and in Latin America in general. Finally, the study of different social movements within the Paraguayan context takes into consideration the links that each movement has forged with other such movements in Latin America, including the contributions that Paraguayan social movements have made to regional networks.

This book examines human rights as political battlefields, spaces that are undergoing constant changes in which political conflicts are expressed by a translation process within networks of interactions. This translation, in turn, contributes to modifying the scope and understanding of human rights. Ultimately, these battlefields express the legitimacy encounter of different versions of human rights in contemporary political practices. The volume thus challenges both the tendency to minimize the changing nature of human rights as well as the struggles emerging from the use of human rights discourses as a legitimization tool. By shifting the focus on what stakeholders do instead of solely on the origin, nature or foundations of human rights, the authors reveal that human rights are not static objects: they are constantly transformed and, as such, affect the horizon of universal rights.

Draws on fieldwork and interviews with Muslims in places ranging from Lahore, Pakistan to Minneapolis, Minnesota to discuss contemporary opinions on the rise of fundamentalism in Islam and how it can be curbed.

This book describes the changing landscape of women’s politics for equality and liberation during the rise of neoliberalism in India. Between 1991 and 2006, the doctrine of liberalization guided Indian politics and economic policy. These neoliberal measures vastly reduced poverty alleviation schemes, price supports for poor farmers, and opened India’s economy to the unpredictability of global financial fluctuations. During this same period, the All India Democratic Women’s Association, which directly opposed the ascendance of neoliberal economics and policies, as well as the simultaneous rise of violent casteism and anti-Muslim communalism, grew from roughly three million members to over ten million. Beginning in the late 1980s, AIDWA turned its attention to women’s lives in rural India. Using a method that began with activist research, the organization developed a sectoral analysis of groups of women who were hardest hit in the new neoliberal order, including Muslim women, and Dalit (oppressed caste) women. AIDWA developed what leaders called inter-sectoral organizing, that centered the demands of the most vulnerable women into the heart of its campaigns and its ideology for social change. Through long-term ethnographic research, predominantly in the northern state of Haryana and the southern state of Tamil Nadu, this book shows how a socialist women’s organization built its oppositional strength by organizing the women most marginalized by neoliberal policies and economics.