FEM 2109 Chapter Notes - Chapter 5: Critical Pedagogy
20 Aug 2016
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FEM2109
Connecting the Local with the Global: Transnational Feminism and Civic Engagement
by Laura Parisi
-global citizenship is cosmopolitan in nature and associated with a sense of openness toward
other people, places, and experiences
-stresses the moral and ethical commitments to a global community
-universities have prioritized civic engagement so that students become global citizens
-the problem with this is that majority of the civic engagement being done emphasizes
idealized concepts of democracy and citizenship
-it is not properly informed by historical and contemporary analyses of power and equality
-slogans such as âbe the changeâ imply that people in developing countries cannot be agents
of change themselves and are never able to achieve global citizenship
-the ability to affect change then becomes the concerns of Western, white, middle class
students in North America, who are charged with spreading knowledge to others
-the language of feminist activism can signal two feminist pedagogical goals:
-facilitating studentsâ deeper understanding of feminist issues
-developing studentsâ skills needed for building a powerful feminist movement
-global citizenship must be informed by critical pedagogy, cognitive justice, and decolonizing
methodologies
-applying a transnational feminist approach to international partnerships is an effective tool
for fostering student engagement with both global citizenship and global feminist
discourses
-civic engagement is deďŹned by Adler and Goggin as how an active citizens participates in the
life of a community in order to improve conditions for others or to help shape the communityâs
future
-includes social justice goals and community goals
-important aspects of adopting a transnational feminist approach to civic engagement
-focuses on ďŹows across borders and the differential gendered, racial, classes, and
sexualized impacts of these processes
-foregrounds the idea that the local and global are not deďŹned in terms of physical
geography but exist at the same time and constitute one another
-challenges the notion that international development is something that happens âover
thereâ as a discrete process that is separate from âover hereâ (the global North)
-the practices include forms of alliance, subversion, and complicity within which inequalities
can be critiqued
-key objective of feminist teachings is to teach students how to think critically about
hegemonic narratives
-mainstream development approaches like liberal and global feminists often assume that
women universally share the same patriarchal oppression and do little to recognize the vast
differences that exist between women
-ignore socioeconomic status, race, culture, religion, etc
-they legitimize a binary which position the Global North as a space of womenâs liberation,
equality and democracy, and the Global South as a space that needs to be saved and
modernized
-these rescue narratives frame women as the problem in developing countries and
objectiďŹes them rather than identify they as subjects of development
-Heron highlights the idea that development discourses are connected to patriarchal colonial
narratives which shape white womenâs subjectivities and makes them produce in their heads
the âotherâ
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Connecting the local with the global: transnational feminism and civic engagement by laura parisi. Global citizenship is cosmopolitan in nature and associated with a sense of openness toward other people, places, and experiences. Stresses the moral and ethical commitments to a global community. Universities have prioritized civic engagement so that students become global citizens. The problem with this is that majority of the civic engagement being done emphasizes idealized concepts of democracy and citizenship. It is not properly informed by historical and contemporary analyses of power and equality. Slogans such as be the change imply that people in developing countries cannot be agents of change themselves and are never able to achieve global citizenship. The ability to affect change then becomes the concerns of western, white, middle class students in north america, who are charged with spreading knowledge to others. The language of feminist activism can signal two feminist pedagogical goals: Facilitating students" deeper understanding of feminist issues.
