Decolonial Feminisms, Power and Place

This book draws on participatory ethnographic research to understand how rural Colombian women work to dismantle the coloniality of power. It critically examines the ways in which colonial feminisms have homogenized the "category of woman,” ignoring the intersecting relationship of class, race, and gender, thereby excluding the voices of “subaltern women” and upholding existing power structures. Supplementing that analysis are testimonials from rural Colombian women who speak about their struggles for sovereignty and against territorial, sexual, and racialized violence enacted upon their land and their bodies. By documenting the stories of rural women and centering their voices, this book seeks to dismantle the coloniality of power and gender, and narrate and imagine decolonial feminist worlds. Scholars in gender studies, rural studies, and post-colonial studies will find this work of interest.

              

                

“The book is clearly structured to help the reader follow her process and decolonial praxis … . For those committed to the exploration of decolonial, anti-racism and feminist insurgencies, the book provides several tools and methodological choices … . Rodríguez Castro work is a valuable contribution to the research on rural Latin America … . Her feeling-thinking commitment inspires and provides possibilities of decolonizing the academic world from the very beginning of our place and reflexibility.” (Giovana Possignolo, KULT_online - Review Journal for the Study of Culture, Issue 64, December, 2021)

“An incredibly timely and relevant academic contribution to studies about women’s organization in moments of ongoing violence in Colombia … . offers important insights about gender, place, and culture, particularly as these are related to the ways in which we engage in feminist research. … The book feels honest in a way that is rare in the world of academia. The reader is invited to go behind the scenes and join Rodriguez Castro on her own journey of feeling-thinking, of sentipensando.” (Julia Margaret Zulver, Gender, Place & Culture, June 1, 2021)

“This book vividly demonstrates why Latin American feminisms have become the most vibrant arena of critical thought and struggle in Latin America at present. Throughout its pages, the reader is presented with the incredible richness of feminisms from below. Building on a careful analysis of women’s territorial struggles against territorial dispossession and extractivist projects, the author powerfully shows why ‘the epistemic force of place’ has become the preeminent foundation for a popular-communal feminist politics of place that confronts heteropatriarchal and racist relations while fostering relational modes of re-existence centered on justice, healing and care. Along the way, the book explores in depth the Latin American emphasis on sentipensar as a methodological, theoretical and political research approach appropriate to working with grassroots struggles and transformative initiatives. This farsighted book should be of great interest to students and activists in thosefields dealing with issues of gender, environment, development, rurality, and globalization.”
Arturo Escobar, Professor of Anthropology Emeritus, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, USA, author of Encountering Development and Designs for the Pluriverse

“Through sustained and nuanced ethnographic work and a critically informed reflexive lens, Rodriguez Castro draws on the voices of women in rural Colombia to offer a significant challenge to the dominant ‘white saviour’ narratives and neoliberal development agendas of colonial feminism. Framing her sophisticated analysis is a theory of place, bodies and territories which attends to questions of violence, recognises rural women’s resistance, and addresses crucial subjects for global equality, including food sovereignty and environmental degradation. It is thus a book which speaks powerfully to key contemporary debates not only in feminism, but also in rural geography and political studies.” 

Barbara Pini, Professor of Gender Studies, Griffith University, Australia

 

“Rodriguez Castro writes about the body and place, like Spivak, in ways that stir reflexivity. This beautifully written text troubles colonial feminisms and, at its core, is a collaboration with Colombian rural women whose biographies, experiences, sensations and imaginations come alive in this text. This book is a welcome and much needed contribution to studies of rurality and gender.”

Lia Bryant, Professor of Sociology and Social Work, University of South Australia

 

“A fascinating decolonial journey, operating on two relational scales: on a community level, exploring the struggles of rural women in Colombia, their experiences of violence and their demands for autonomy; and, on a personal level, reflecting on the positionality of an urban white-mestiza in the research, the academy and in the world. This is absolutely brilliant.”
Menelaos Gkartzios, Reader in Planning and Rural Development, Newcastle University, UK

 

“This meticulously researched and richly illustrated book uses detailed participatory engagement to offer critical insight into how we might think about the coloniality of gender and power. Through its pages, the book offers not only an important intellectual roadmap on deconstructing decolonial feminisms but also offers political relevance to all those seeking a more just world.”

Mark Riley, Reader in Geography, University of Liverpool, UK

Laura Rodriguez Castro is a Resident Adjunct Research Fellow at the Griffith Centre for Social and Cultural Research, Griffith University, Australia.