Feminist Activist Ethnography

Christa Craven is the chair of the Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies program and anassistant professor of anthropology and WGSS at the College of Wooster. She is the author of Pushing for Midwives: Homebirth Mothers and the Reproductive Rights Movement. Craven has also published articles for both scholarly and popular audiences on midwifery and reproductive rights activism in journals and newsletters such as Citizens for Midwifery News, American Anthropologist, Medical Anthropology Quarterly, Feminist Studies, and Feminist Formations. She is the former co-chair of the Society of Lesbian and Gay Anthropologists (now the Association for Queer Anthropology).Dána-Ain Davis is the associate chair of the Graduate Program in Urban Studies at Queens College, City University of New York. Her work is predominately concerned with examining how people “live policy.” The issues that interest her include neoliberalism, poverty, race, gender, reproductive justice, domestic violence, and HIV/AIDS. Additionally, she also writes on activist/feminist anthropology. Davis is the author of Battered Black Women and Welfare Reform: Between a Rock and a Hard Place (2006) and contributing author to Beyond Reproduction: Women’s Health, Activism, and Public Policy by Karen Baird with Kimberly Christensen. Davis is the co-editor with Aimee Cox of Transforming Anthropology, the journal of the Association of Black Anthropologists, and serves as chair of the New York Foundation.

Feminist Activist Ethnography connects long-standing concerns of feminism and activist anthropology with a focus on neoliberalism in the North American context. This volume provides substantive critiques of neoliberalism that are at once diverse, cohesive, and ethnographically grounded, offering an excellent corrective to the many unmoored or generalized discussions of neoliberalism within anthropological scholarship over the last ten years. The most useful contribution of this volume, however, is the way that it addresses the unique challenges that neoliberalism has posed for feminist activist ethnographers as they attempt to develop relationships and produce knowledge that destabilizes and challenges structures of power. . . .[T]he volume is well suited for courses on anthropological ethics, methods, and theory, as well as topical courses on feminist anthropology, activism, community organizing, nongovernmental organizations, women’s rights, urban anthropology, and North America. . . .I would also strongly recommend this book for teaching about neoliberalism in the United States because of the rich repertoire of ethnographic cases. . . .Feminist Activist Ethnography provides a crucial road map for activist anthropologists, demonstrating how historical feminist ethnography shapes where we have been, where we are now, and where we are going, whether postneoliberal or not-so-postneoliberal.

• Foreword: Navigating Feminist Activist EthnographyFaye HarrisonAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Feminist Activist EthnographyChrista Craven and Dána-Ain DavisPart 1: The Intimacies of Feminist Ethnography1. Border Crossings: Intimacy and Feminist Activist Ethnography in the Age of NeoliberalismDána-Ain Davis2. Learning Social Justice and Activist Ethnography from Women with Breast CancerMary K. Anglin3. Feminist Ethnography with Domestic Violence Shelter Advocates: Negotiating the Neoliberal EraJennifer R. WiesReflection: Fearlessly Engaging ComplicityScott Lauria MorgensenPart 2: Feminist Ethnographer as Critic4. Seeking “Marriage Material”: Rethinking the U.S. Marriage Debates Under NeoliberalismMichelle Marzullo5. Reproductive Rights in a Consumer Rights Era: Toward the Value of “Constructive” CritiqueChrista Craven6. Fracturing Feminism: Activist Research and Ethics in a Women’s Human Rights NGOBeth A. UzwiakReflection: Committing to ChangeKhiara M. BridgesPart 3: Disruptive Strategies7. Negotiating Different Worlds: An Integral Ethnography of Reproductive Freedom and Social JusticeIris López8. Women, Food, and Activism: Rediscovering Collectivist Action in an Individualized WorldTabitha Steager9. Moving the Field: Young Black Women, Performances of Self, and Creative Protest in Postindustrial SpacesAimee Cox10. The Neoliberal Institutional Review Board, or Why Just Fixing the Rules Won’t Help Feminist (Activist) EthnographersElizabeth ChinReflection: The Work That RemainsGina PérezClosing QuestionsChrista Craven, Dána-Ain Davis and Faye HarrisonReferencesIndexAbout the Contributors?