ABSTRACT
In this paper, I offer a descriptive and normative analysis of the requirements for effective transnational solidarity between southern NGOs and their northern partners. Drawing on interviews conducted with staff members of Senegalese women’s rights NGOs and a private international development foundation, I contend that existing theories of feminist transnational solidarity cannot allow us to properly acknowledge the power asymmetries and obstacles to solidarity that these NGOs are facing. After assessing the divisions related to gender interests and limited resources that characterize this NGO-ized development landscape, I develop a partial theory of transnational solidarity that would center power asymmetries in order to address practical and political obstacles to solidarity. I argue that an effective account of transnational solidarity must include a commitment to disrupting global hierarchies of power as well as to building practices of accountability and attentiveness to power structures.
Acknowledgements
I would like to express my gratitude to the people that helped me in several ways in Senegal in fall 2019. For their helpful feedback on earlier drafts of this manuscript, I would like to thank Samantha Brennan, Monique Deveaux, Polly Galis, Michael Goodhart, Valérie Grand’Maison, Candace Johnson, Dallas Jokic, Lori Keleher, Mary King, Serene J. Khader, Gus Skorburg, Renée Sylvain, and Theresa Tobin. Thanks also to two anonymous referees, as well as Christine Koggel, who helped me to clarify my arguments.
Notes
1 To describe the people I interviewed, I interchangeably use the terms NGO staff members and women’s rights activists. I recognize that these categories do not necessarily overlap, yet they did in my fieldwork.
2 As Alvarez notes, reflecting on the first decade of work on NGO-ization: ‘NGO-ization, in my view, entailed national and global neo-liberalism’s active promotion and official sanctioning of particular organizational forms and practices among feminist organizations and other sectors of civil society’ (Citation2009, 176).
6 Because the terms of my research’s ethics clearance prevent me from naming the national NGOs and organizations that partook in my research and to directly quote them, I will offer non-identifying details about the organizations surveyed as well as the broad Senegalese NGO landscape.
7 Because I was able to conduct interviews with people situated on the recipient side and on the donor side of development partnerships, I specify which side of the power imbalance they are situated when discussing a particular claim from an interviewee. I chose this terminology for the sake of clarity; I do not mean to deprive aid recipients of their agency by reducing them to the role of ‘passive recipients of dispensed benefits’ (Sen Citation1999, xii). I acknowledge that the power imbalance can sometimes shift such that the recipient of aid has the upper hand, but this dynamic did not appear as such in my fieldwork.
8 I have explored in more detail the limits of conducting fieldwork research in political theory and questions of positionality in (Lemay Citation2023).
10 The two zones of conflict I identified were not the only ones. Indeed, as expected, these divides primarily became apparent in the contexts of the rural and the urban divide, wherein rural communities experience a distance from organizations operating in Dakar. A development worker from a rural community expressed the need to advocate for a different strategy originating from local and rural concerns instead of following the leadership of Dakar-based organizations and agencies. However, for the sake of the argument, I set aside the rural and urban divide in order to focus on two divisions: a division in terms of gender interests and a division in terms of power.
11 Serene Khader defines missionary feminism in these terms: ‘Missionary feminism is […] characterized by a brand of universalism that is ethnocentric, justice monist (beholden to the idea that there is one possible set of gender-just cultural forms) and that is beholden to epistemic habits of idealization and moralism (the reduction of political actions to moral statements) that inure Western culture and Western intervention to criticism’ (Citation2018a, 7–8).
Alvarez, Sonia E. 2009. “Beyond NGO-Ization?: Reflections from Latin America.” Development, Suppl. Special Issue for the 11th AWID International Forum On 52 (2): 175–184. Alvarez, Sonia E. 1999. “Advocating Feminism: The Latin American Feminist NGO ‘Boom.’.” International Feminist Journal of Politics 1 (2): 181–209. https://doi.org/10.1080/146167499359880. Alvarez, Sonia E. 2009. “Beyond NGO-Ization?: Reflections from Latin America.” Development, Suppl. Special Issue for the 11th AWID International Forum On 52 (2): 175–184. Bernal, Victoria, and Inderpal Grewal, eds. 2014. Theorizing NGOs: States, Feminisms, and Neoliberalism. Next Wave. Durham: Duke University Press. Moeller, Kathryn. 2018. The Gender Effect: Capitalism, Feminism and the Corporate Politics of Development. First edition. Oakland, CA: University of California Press. Roy, Srila. 2015. “The Indian Women’s Movement: Within and Beyond NGOization.” Journal of South Asian Development 10 (1). SAGE Publications India: 96–117. https://doi.org/10.1177/0973174114567368. Roy, Srila. 2017. “The Positive Side of Co-Optation? Intersectionality: A Conversation Between Inderpal Grewal and Srila Roy.” International Feminist Journal of Politics 19 (2). Routledge: 254–262. https://doi.org/10.1080/14616742.2017.1291225. Roy, Srila. 2022. Changing the Subject: Feminist and Queer Politics in Neoliberal India. Next Wave. Durham: Duke University Press. Nussbaum, Martha C. 2000. Women and Human Development: The Capabilities Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Okin, Susan Moller. 1998. “Feminism and Multiculturalism: Some Tensions.” Ethics 108 (4): 661–684. https://doi.org/10.1086/233846. Jaggar, Alison M. 2005a. ““Saving Amina”: Global Justice for Women and Intercultural Dialogue.” Ethics & International Affairs 19 (3): 55–75. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1747-7093.2005.tb00554.x. Jaggar, Alison M. 2005b. “Global Responsibility and Western Feminism.” In Feminist Interventions in Ethics and Politics: Feminist Ethics and Social Theory, edited by Lisa H. Schwartzman, Barbara S. Andrew, and Jean Clare Keller, 185–200. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Khader, Serene J. 2018a. Decolonizing Universalism: Toward A Transnational Feminist Ethic. Studies in Feminist Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. McLaren, Margaret A. 2019. Women’s Activism, Feminism, and Social Justice. Studies in Feminist Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Stone-Mediatore, Shari. 2009. “Cross-Border Feminism: Shifting the Terms of Debate for US and European Feminists.” Journal of Global Ethics 5 (1): 57–71. https://doi.org/10.1080/17449620902765310. Aragon, Corwin. 2019. “Global Gender Justice and Epistemic Oppression: A Response to an Epistemic Dilemma.” Feminist Philosophy Quarterly 5 (2), https://doi.org/10.5206/fpq/2019.2.7294. Ackerly, Brooke A. 2009. “Feminist Theory, Global Gender Justice, and the Evaluation of Grant Making.” Philosophical Topics 37 (2): 179–198. https://doi.org/10.5840/philtopics200937211. Alvarez, Sonia E. 1999. “Advocating Feminism: The Latin American Feminist NGO ‘Boom.’.” International Feminist Journal of Politics 1 (2): 181–209. https://doi.org/10.1080/146167499359880. Alvarez, Sonia E. 2009. “Beyond NGO-Ization?: Reflections from Latin America.” Development, Suppl. Special Issue for the 11th AWID International Forum On 52 (2): 175–184. de Lima Costa, Claudia, and Sonia E. Alvarez. 2014. “Dislocating the Sign: Toward a Translocal Feminist Politics of Translation.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 39 (3): 557–563. https://doi.org/10.1086/674381. Bernal, Victoria, and Inderpal Grewal, eds. 2014. Theorizing NGOs: States, Feminisms, and Neoliberalism. Next Wave. Durham: Duke University Press. Jong, Sara de. 2017. Complicit Sisters: Gender and Women’s Issues Across North-South Divides. Oxford Studies in Gender and International Relations. New York: Oxford University Press. Lang, Sabine. 2012. NGOS, Civil Society, and the Public Sphere. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mosse, David, and Sundara Babu Nagappan. 2020. “NGOs as Social Movements: Policy Narratives, Networks and the Performance of Dalit Rights in South India.” Development and Change 52 (1), https://doi.org/10.1111/dech.12614. Hawkesworth, M. E. 2018. Globalization and Feminist Activism. Second edition. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. Roy, Srila. 2015. “The Indian Women’s Movement: Within and Beyond NGOization.” Journal of South Asian Development 10 (1). SAGE Publications India: 96–117. https://doi.org/10.1177/0973174114567368. Roy, Srila. 2017. “The Positive Side of Co-Optation? Intersectionality: A Conversation Between Inderpal Grewal and Srila Roy.” International Feminist Journal of Politics 19 (2). Routledge: 254–262. https://doi.org/10.1080/14616742.2017.1291225. Roy, Srila. 2011. “Politics, Passion and Professionalization in Contemporary Indian Feminism.” Sociology 45 (4). SAGE Publications Ltd: 587–602. https://doi.org/10.1177/0038038511406584. Prügl, Elisabeth. 2015. “Neoliberalising Feminism.” New Political Economy 20 (4): 614–631. https://doi.org/10.1080/13563467.2014.951614. Sen, Amartya. 1999. Development as Freedom. New York: Knopf. Lemay, Marie-Pier. 2023. “Engaged Solidaristic Research: Developing Methodological and Normative Principles for Political Philosophers.” Feminist Philosophy Quarterly 9 (4). Ackerly, Brooke A. 2009. “Feminist Theory, Global Gender Justice, and the Evaluation of Grant Making.” Philosophical Topics 37 (2): 179–198. https://doi.org/10.5840/philtopics200937211. Alvarez, Sonia E. 2009. “Beyond NGO-Ization?: Reflections from Latin America.” Development, Suppl. Special Issue for the 11th AWID International Forum On 52 (2): 175–184. Bernal, Victoria, and Inderpal Grewal, eds. 2014. Theorizing NGOs: States, Feminisms, and Neoliberalism. Next Wave. Durham: Duke University Press. Jong, Sara de. 2017. Complicit Sisters: Gender and Women’s Issues Across North-South Divides. Oxford Studies in Gender and International Relations. New York: Oxford University Press. Lang, Sabine. 2012. NGOS, Civil Society, and the Public Sphere. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. de Lima Costa, Claudia, and Sonia E. Alvarez. 2014. “Dislocating the Sign: Toward a Translocal Feminist Politics of Translation.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 39 (3): 557–563. https://doi.org/10.1086/674381. Moeller, Kathryn. 2018. The Gender Effect: Capitalism, Feminism and the Corporate Politics of Development. First edition. Oakland, CA: University of California Press. Mosse, David, and Sundara Babu Nagappan. 2020. “NGOs as Social Movements: Policy Narratives, Networks and the Performance of Dalit Rights in South India.” Development and Change 52 (1), https://doi.org/10.1111/dech.12614. Khader, Serene J. 2018a. Decolonizing Universalism: Toward A Transnational Feminist Ethic. Studies in Feminist Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Additional information
Funding
This work was supported by Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada: [Grant Number 767-2016-1810].
Notes on contributors
Marie-Pier Lemay
Marie-Pier Lemay is an instructor in the Philosophy Department at Carleton University, Ontario, Canada. Previously, she was a Postdoctoral Scholar in the Political Science Department of the University of Pittsburgh. Her research, funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and the Fonds de Recherche du Québec-Société et Culture, revolves around the challenges of practising solidarity in contexts of pronounced power inequalities.