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Feminisms and Psychologies: Multiple Meanings, Diverse Practices, and Forging Possibilities in an Age of Globalization

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Handbook of International Feminisms

Part of the book series: International and Cultural Psychology ((ICUP))

Abstract

Feminist scholars have produced a large literature problematizing the unitary categories “woman” and “feminism” (e.g., Burman, 1998; Capdevila, Ciclitira, Lazard, & Marzano, 2006; Fraser & Nicholson, 1990; hooks, 1981; Mohanty, 1988; Riley, 1988). Many of these critiques highlight the fluidity, situatedness, locality, contingency, and intersectionality that are required to theorize and understand women’s experiences, especially in a postcolonial, transnational, context. Given this rich literature, to what extent are scholars working under the broad umbrella of feminist psychology aware of and informed by developments outside their own local (national, regional) contexts? Such an awareness has the potential to combat the myth of universalism characteristic of much of psychology (at least in some parts of the world), overcome intellectual isolationism, increase international communication, forge transnational linkages, and at the very least enrich our understanding of the challenges and exhilarations of the feminist process as it is being enacted all over the world.

Building global feminisms and transnational linkages is a complex process when there is no one “local”, “national”, or “global” woman, nor any single universal “feminist” approach.

(Flew et al., 1999, p. 402)

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Correspondence to Alexandra Rutherford .

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Rutherford, A., Capdevila, R., Undurti, V., Palmary, I. (2011). Feminisms and Psychologies: Multiple Meanings, Diverse Practices, and Forging Possibilities in an Age of Globalization. In: Rutherford, A., Capdevila, R., Undurti, V., Palmary, I. (eds) Handbook of International Feminisms. International and Cultural Psychology. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-9869-9_1

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