Feminism and Protest Camps

""The first of its kind, this global collection brings together feminism and protest camps, looking at activist histories to help us reflect on today’s urgent questions—from aboriginal rights to climate change. Featuring both prominent feminist scholars and new researchers from around the world, the chapters examine creativity, care and what it means to organise, act and live collectively. This book is both a pleasure to read and a truly innovative and interdisciplinary text. Using methods ranging from interviews to ethnography, Feminism and Protest Camps reminds us of the importance of looking both at what is documented and what gets left out of the archives. In drawing together stories so often left untold, it brings powerful voices and practices of resistance into the canon of social movement history. Feminism and Protest Camps will be essential reading for feminists, social movement students, scholars and activists alike."" Anna Feigenbaum, Bournemouth University “Excavating diverse feminist engagements with peace and protest camps around the globe, this volume provides fascinating insights into the politics of memory and erasure, the politics of inclusion and exclusion, and the politics of language and knowledge production. It illuminates the arduous work of critique and social transformation and probing the history of and prospects for feminism and participatory democracy in the contemporary era.” Mary Hawkesworth, Rutgers University ""A smart and much-needed collection that takes seriously the feminist politics of encampment. This collection critically examines the feminist possibilities of occupation and how this work can be a portal to a new world or a cul de sac reproducing the worst of us."" Akwugo Emejulu, University of Warwick “I rarely see feminist scholarship on social movements comprehensively consider the settler colonial, cisheteronormative, and otherwise exclusionary politics of protest sites. So, it is refreshing, urgent, and thrilling to read Eschle and Bartlett's carefully curated book. This co-edited collection privileges an intersectional feminist interrogation of protest camps with significant focus on the world-building struggles and strategies of indigenous, Black, and various precariously positioned communities. Each chapter is theoretically robust and steeped in rich details that are both troubling and enlivening to read. It is also a very cohesive book, a hard feat indeed given the wide variety of the case studies and author positionalities, that asks us to constantly rethink not only feminist politics but also how we use feminist frameworks to understand protest and resistance. I cannot wait to assign this book to my students!” Meghana Nayak, Pace University ""Today when feminism is under attack everywhere, this book offers a rich and nuanced reminder of its vital and ongoing presence in contemporary women-only and mixed gender protest camps across several countries in the Global North and South. The authors’ explorations of protest camps as simultaneously sites of gendered politics - where inequalities of power and gendered divisions of labour and spatial location get reproduced and where historically racialized, gendered, and sexed bodies are vulnerable to violence - and of feminist activism where those politics are contested and reconfigured is both sobering and exciting. Just the kind of 'skepticism of the intellect and optimism of the will' demonstrated by the chants of 'Women, Life, Freedom' in Iran and elsewhere."" Manisha Desai, University of Connecticut ""Over forty years since the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp was at its peak, and with protest camps now firmly established in the global repertoire of social movements, this collection is a timely and important intervention in the analysis of feminist political action. Ranging across the world and over time, the contributors provide vivid accounts of numerous instances in which women have formed communities of resistance outside conventional politics. This is a must-read book for everyone interested in contemporary feminism and methods of collective action."" Sasha Roseneil, University of Sussex