Abstract
A longstanding interest of North American and European feminist social scientists has been the inextricable connections between ideas of public and private, gender (in)equalities and notions of citizenship and democracy. Just one of many examples is a recent article in Urban Studies that explored the sexual entertainment industry in night-time England and Wales (Hubbard and Colosi, 2015).
Yet, despite much work that has contributed to new insights in these arenas, I suggest that Contesting Publics: Feminism, Activism, Ethnography offers something quite unique to this body of literature. This book asks new, important questions about the political meanings of public and private through nuanced examinations of particular places and social interactions. The book also demonstrates the power of an ethnographic approach, especially as in this case, when it is complemented by a sophisticated conceptual analysis, the inclusion of new perspectives and scholars and a willingness to revise previously assumed understandings in the light of new evidence.
Contesting Publics is an engaged and incisive reflection on feminist activism and meanings of public:private, informed by a Latin American context. Between 2006 and 2009, Lynne Phillips and Sally Cole conducted interviews with ‘feminist activists working in a variety of transnational networks and national democracy-building projects in Latin America’ and specifically in Brazil and Ecuador (p. viii): ‘We “followed”… the roots and routes of feminists’ activities in both countries and found ourselves entering increasingly diverse spaces and scales of political action … interviewed activists in union, in transnational networks and in small non-governmental organizations’ (p. viii).
Through these investigations, Phillips and Cole become increasingly aware of the political implications of deeming a particular concern or issue as public or as private and they also observe that feminists differ in their ability to influence such efforts. Both feminist achievements, as well ‘continuing re-inscriptions of gender inequalities in the new political spaces that are being produced despite (and at times through) feminist activism’ (p. viii) are vital data in their over-arching goal of highlighting the inevitably political nature of public:private relations and their gendered, classed and racialised implications.
The book is organised in six chapters, including four that are devoted to ‘stand-alone’ ethnographic examinations. As well as writing the theoretical introduction to the book, Cole and Phillips each contributed one of the ethnographic chapters. Supplementary to them is the work of two younger colleagues, Marie-Eve Carrier-Moisan and Erica Lagalisse. Three activist testimonies add depth to the first three ethnographic chapters. The final chapter is written by Cole, Phillips, Carrier-Moisan and Lagalisse.
In Chapter 1 (‘Towards an Ethnography of Publics’), Cole and Phillips draw on three conceptual frames: ‘the public as a sphere; the public as a scale; and the public as a cultural space’ (p. 1). Connecting these frames to on-going interactions with the market and the state, the authors demonstrate the manner in which ‘publics are being created, governed and contested in Latin America and beyond’ (p. 1). They highlight the pervasiveness of power in these interactions as well as its dynamic nature and they hint at the ways in which gender inequalities that are classed and racialised might be exacerbated or suppressed, depending on a variety of factors. Their analysis is a sophisticated one that lays out the conceptual ground for their ethnographic explorations.
Chapter 2 (‘Autoconstructed Feminist Publics: Household Matters in Northeast Brazil’), written by Sally Cole, explores the ‘unorganized’ ways that women in Cascavel ‘transform their lives by innovating new household forms and new gender discourses’ (p. 18). Cole highlights individual women’s efforts to strengthen their own economic autonomy, limit their susceptibility to partner abuse and widen opportunities for their children. Complementing this chapter, Mariza’s activist testimony illustrates, in a very concrete manner, what Cole is asserting more generally: that such women are almost entirely invisible in the public sphere (even among feminist activists who often employ domestic help to enable their activism) and that, as a result, their political power is extremely limited. Nonetheless, they are anything but victims. Their spaces of activism are at the level of the household, and feminists interested in gender equality need to examine this scale in order to fully appreciate its multiple socio-spatial dimensions.
Chapter 3, by Marie-Eve Carrier-Moisan, (‘Saving Women? Awkward Alliances in the Public Spaces of Sex Tourism’) engages with ideas of public spaces and activism through a sex tourism lens. She argues that sex tourism is a contested public and uses this approach in a two-fold manner: first, to identify the diverse claims and perspectives that motivate various actors and institutions, and second, to interrogate questions of inclusion and exclusion. Through these means, she demonstrates in a powerful manner, again echoed through activist testimony, that ‘[s]ex tourism is inevitably inscribed in the micro-politics of race and class that play out in a context of local and global inequalities’ (p. 74).
In Chapter 4, by Lynne Phillips (‘Feminism and “Post-Neoliberal” Publics: Working the Spaces of Ecuador’s Constitutional Reform’), the focus is on the diverse ways in which women’s organisations and movements responded to President Correa’s invitation to engage in a constitutional reform process that was framed in reaction to earlier (1998) ‘neoliberal’ frameworks. For feminists, the challenges were multiple. Many acknowledged that the 1998 process has resulted in rights-based gains on issues of gender equality, reproduction and violence against women. There were concerns about President Correa’s conservative stance on issues having to do with bodily autonomy and sexual freedom. Yet others felt that his otra societad (‘another society’) did not go far enough in recognising marginalised populations such as women prisoners whose main crime was being poor. Phillips’ ethnographic research details the diversity of public spaces where Constitutional matters were considered and responded to. In this case too, the activist testimonies of two women powerfully illustrate her analysis.
Erica Lagalisse’s Chapter 5 contribution (‘Gossip as Direct Action’), like that of Chapter 2, is set at the scale of the individual and the household. In this case though, the researcher reveals a perspective that is ‘close by’ that of her ethnographic subject: a Zapatista solidarity collective based in Montreal during the period in which she was an active member. Her powerful analysis documents her own growing realisation of sexism within the organisation and the thinking process that resulted in her concluding that gossip was a form of feminist ‘direct action’.
The final chapter of the book (‘A Pedagogical Conversation: Public Scholars and Public Scholarship’) is written by all four of the academic contributors. Although firmly located in their home discipline of anthropology, this chapter’s reflections on the meanings of public scholarship are relevant for scholars throughout the social sciences. They begin with a distinction that nicely captures the route they wish to pursue: not only an anthropology of publics (involving the study of publics) even though that was where they began, but rather public anthropology (involving research for social transformation). In keeping with the ideas outlined at the beginning of the text, they explore the meanings of public anthropology as a dynamic and on-going, open-ended pursuit, and raise additional questions. This chapter is a fitting end to this very thought-provoking and much appreciated contribution to feminist social science. I recommend it highly for those with an interest in these issues.