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SP28 - Mind the gap(s)? Political economy of feminist knowledge production in women, gender and development studies across global south/north divides

Convened by Rosalba Icaza (International Institute of Social Studies (ISS), The Netherlands) and Rabbia Aslam (Quaid-i-Azam University Islamabad, Pakistan)

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As a group of critical feminist scholars within the field of development studies, we have conducted research on a characteristically unequal political economy of knowledge production in development studies that is sustained by the sub-alternization of feminized others and more than human-others. Faithful to Chandra Mohanty’s invitation decades ago, our scholarship has explored the entanglements of power across colonial divides and the emergence of strategies put forward to address and repair the socio-economic, temporal, and epistemic violence of misrepresentation, ventriloquism and erasure across places and temporalities. 

Our guiding question(s) - whose knowledge is valid and whose is not - seek to open a dialogue across world-regions in which South-South feminist theories-praxis are foregrounded. Through this dialogue, we seek to deepen our knowledge of each other and our understanding on how politically unstable societies both, welcome and marginalize women’s and gender studies in National Universities (Pakistan, Mexico, Philippines) and how in this challenging context, debates around plural understandings on gender, epistemology, and colonialism are taking place.  Furthermore, contributors will share their experiences in decolonizing curricula and in teaching with gender as coloniality in development studies in the Global North as part of a collective quest for epistemic justice in academia (Netherlands) and discuss white and mestiza feminist engagements with critical indigenous knowledges (Australia, Mexico).