“The River Told Me”: Rethinking Intersectionality from the World of Berta Cáceres

ABSTRACT

Inspired by the spiritual and political journey of Berta Cáceres (1973-2016), a fierce Lenca woman leader from Honduras who died in defense of sacred indigenous rivers, the essay aims to rethink the frame of intersectionality that is axiomatic in feminist theorizing and activism. Against the backdrop of the January 2017 Women’s March in the USA, I interrogate inclusionary accounts that equate intersectionality with a pre-existing unity among women that leaves power differentials intact. I recover the intersection as an index of invisibility and violence by drawing on the intimate connections that Berta foregrounded between multiple structures of domination. However, I argue that attending to the relational histories and geographies of patriarchy, colonialism and capitalism, is insufficient for imagining more just futures that are hospitable to subaltern horizons. Feminist praxis must also interrogate the Western liberal conceptions of agency and human-nature relations that undergird its intersectional analysis. Through an exploration of the indigenous cosmovisions and transnational grassroots solidarity that coalesce under Berta’s name, I point to the importance of cultivating a disposition to listening to incommensurable worlds where rivers tell stories and call upon us. This is an ecofeminist vision capable of rooting intersectional analysis within decolonizing relations and alternatives.     

Beyond “Socially Constructed” Disasters: Re-politicizing the Debate on Large Dams through a Political Ecology of Risk

Questions of dam safety and hazard potential most often do not take center-stage in contestations and articulations concerning large dams. Through a comparative study of two of Europe’s most emblematic dam disasters – Vajont (Italy) and Ribadelago (Spain) – and the ongoing conflict over the safety of the Lower Subansiri Hydroelectric Project in Northeast India, this article argues that the damage caused by dam disasters is often not unavoidable or unforeseen but instead allowed to happen. Our cases show that power relations, economic pressures and profit influence “risky” dam management decisions, often disregarding the vernacular knowledge of concerned communities and silencing critical voices that do not fit dominant narratives of modernization and progress. We posit that an essential requirement for re-politicizing the question of dam safety is to unpack the apolitical notion of “socially constructed disasters,” thinking instead about “capital-driven destructions.” By emphasizing resistance against dam projects and against dominant risk discourses across space and time, this article seeks to underline the legitimacy of past and ongoing struggles surrounding the construction of large dams.     

La Vía Campesina: the birth and evolution of a transnational social movement

The origin and evolution of the transnational peasant movement La Vía Campesina is analysed through five evolutionary stages. In the 1980s the withdrawal of the state from rural areas simultaneously weakened corporativist and clientelist control over rural organisations, even as conditions worsened in the countryside. This gave rise to a new generation of more autonomous peasant organisations, who saw the origins of their similar problems as largely coming from beyond the national borders of weakened nation-states. A transnational social movement defending peasant life, La Vía Campesina emerged out of these autonomous organisations, first in Latin America, and then at a global scale, during the 1980s and early 1990s (phase 1). Subsequent stages saw leaders of peasant organisations take their place at the table in international debates (1992–1999, phase 2), muscling aside other actors who sought to speak on their behalf; take on a leadership role in global struggles (2000–2003, phase 3); and engage in internal strengthening (2004–2008, phase 4). More recently (late 2008–present, phase 5) the movement has taken on gender issues more squarely and defined itself more clearly in opposition to transnational corporations. Particular emphasis is given to La Vía Campesina's fight to gain legitimacy for the food sovereignty paradigm, to its internal structure, and to the ways in which the (re)construction of a shared peasant identity is a key glue that holds the struggle together despite widely different internal cultures, creating a true peasant internationalism.     

Journeys of Candombe Federal by Martín Boneo. Their contribution to the social imaginary on Afro-Argentines

Among Martín Boneo's works, Candombe Federal is one of the most disseminated if we concentrate on its journeys through the visual imaginary; it depicts history books, memoirs, and academic research. This image combines aspects closely associated with negritude in our imaginary: the permanent link to Rosas (politician and army officer who ruled the Argentine Confederation almost uninterruptedly from 1829 to 1852), their immediate association with popular manifestations, specifically the candombe, and the relationship established by liberal writers at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century between this specific image and historical writings or memoirs. We believe that this conception about Afro-Argentinians becomes a stereotype and an invisibilization strategy whereby Afro-Argentinians are confined to the past, an abominable past which must not be repeated. Our purpose is to give an account on the use which was and is made of this image, because it fuels the social imaginary about Afro-Argentines.     

Book reviews

Love, power and political interests

Anna G. Jónasdóttir, Love Power and Political Interests. Towards a Theory of Patriarchy in Contemporary Western Societies. 255 pp. Örebro Studies 7, 1991.

The power of the Will. Natalie Zahle. A biography

Birgitte Possing, Viljens Styrke. Natalie Zahle. En biografi (The Power of the Will. Natalie Zahle. A biography.) 2 vols. 622 pp. Summary in English. Copenhagen: Gyldendal 1992.

Image of god and gender models in Judaeo‐Christian tradition

Kari Elisabeth Börresen, ed, Image of God and Gender Models in Judaeo‐Christian Tradition. Oslo: Solum forlag, 1992.

Rethinking change

Rethinking Change ‐ Current Swedish Feminist Research. Uppsala: Swedish Science Press, 1992.

On the politics of theorizing strangers

Julia Kristeva, Strangers to Ourselves. Transl. Leon S. Roudiez. Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991.

Julia Kristeva, Muukalaisia itsellemme. Transl. Paivi Malinen. Gaudeamus, 1992.

Julia Kristeva, Främlingar för oss själva. Transl. Ann Runnqvist‐Vinde. Natur och kultur, 1991.

The state, mothers and day care for children

Arnlaug Leira, Welfare States and Working Mothers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.     

Dispositional empathy in neglectful mothers and mothers at high risk for child physical abuse

This study investigates whether mothers who are neglectful and at high risk for child physical abuse present a deficit in empathy. Participants were neglectful mothers (n=37), mothers at high risk for child physical abuse (n=22), and nonmaltreating mothers (n=37). The Interpersonal Reactivity Index, a self-report measure assessing specific dimensions of empathy, was used to assess dispositional empathy. No differences between neglectful and non-neglectful mothers were found for perspective taking, empathic concern, and personal distress. High-risk mothers reported less perspective taking and more personal distress than nonmaltreating mothers. No difference between groups was found for empathic concern. The present study supported the hypothesis that parents at high risk for child physical abuse show a deficit in particular aspects of dispositional empathy: personal distress and perspective taking. However, no differences were found between neglectful and nonmaltreating mothers in any dimension of dispositional empathy.     

Mediación y jurisdicción voluntaria en el marco de la modernización de la justicia. una aproximación a la legislación española

The legal maxim Justice delayed is justice denied, but is now a reality. People demanding agility and require a solution promptly and fairly close to its interests, it is fitting that in a world dominated by technology, legal and administrative bureaucracy around the delivery of justice to maintain a slow pace. At the international level seek ways of economic and prompt settlement of disputes in this way are promoted among various legal means, first voluntary jurisdiction otherwise the mediation, it is both streamline procedures, however the legal for each is different. The analysis of the article focuses on the legal experience and valuing Spanish first draft Voluntary Jurisdiction Act and the Act on civil and family mediation to establish its various functions in search of an agile and real justice.     

Capital Accumulation,Hegemony and Socio-ecological Struggles: Insights from the ENTITLE Project

This special issue presents findings and reflections of scholars who participated in the European Network of Political Ecology (ENTITLE). By mobilising conceptual frameworks from several strands of Marxist and post-structuralist theory—and empirically engaging with a range of historico-geographical processes—the articles in this issue contribute to debates in political ecology in two main ways. First, they critically analyse the political economy and ecology of contemporary capitalism, with an emphasis on accumulation strategies associated with the uneven expansion and crisis of neoliberalism. Specifically, they unpack and critically extend the frameworks of “accumulation by dispossession” and “nature's neoliberalisation” to engage with, among other cases, the political ecology of “austerity” in Southern Europe; historical and contemporary cases of “capital-driven disasters”; and political ecological dynamics taking place around relationships of “rent”. Second, the authors of this special issue analyse new and re-emerging forms of socio-ecological resistance and contestation, including both distributional struggles and movements against “commons' enclosures”. Moreover, they focus on how struggles can (and do) move from contesting capitalist forms of dispossession towards creating alternative “hegemonic” projects and blocs, by critiquing received “common sense” and constructing and performing alternative political ecological imaginaries informed by principles of solidarity and “commoning”. Taken together, the articles in this special issue present new ways of thinking and enacting political and ecological struggles outside established scholarly traditions and conventional disciplines.     

Risk Factors and Drivers of Financial Sustainability in Local Government: An Empirical Study

The current international crisis in public finances has made financial sustainability a key issue for governments. Although the European Union (EU) and other international organisations have recommended governments to monitor demographic and economic variables, few studies have considered the influence of these variables on financial sustainability. This paper seeks to identify and analyse the drivers and risk factors that influence the financial sustainability of local government. The findings identify both risk factors (unemployment and population aged under 16 years) and drivers (budgetary outcome) of financial sustainability, which may constitute a useful basis for decision-taking by managers and policy-makers.     

Filling in the Gaps: The Transnational Administration of the COVID-19 Pandemic in Peru

Diverse sources have constructed a common narrative of individual and isolated responses by countries and their leaders to the global coronavirus pandemic, akin to sálvese quien pueda (every man for himself). This article suggests that this is a simplification of the governance of the COVID-19 pandemic in Peru. Peru's governance story is one of domestic public and private action closely interwoven with crucial elements of transnational administration out of sheer necessity. The struggle against the pandemic has generated a domestic and transnational administrative symbiosis, involving authorities at multiple levels in efforts to fill a series of interconnected domestic, regional, and global governance gaps.