Negotiating Contextually Contingent Agency: Situated Feminist Peacebuilding Strategies in Kenya

Citation:

Collier, Mary Jane, Brandi Lawless, and Karambu Ringera. 2016. “Negotiating Contextually Contingent Agency: Situated Feminist Peacebuilding Strategies in Kenya.” Women’s Studies in Communication 39 (4): 399–421.

Authors: Mary Jane Collier, Brandi Lawless, Karambu Ringera

Abstract:

This study identifies an emergent framework for situated feminist peacebuilding based on interviews with representatives of community-based organizations in Kenya. We offer situated examples and firsthand accounts of how these women navigate different challenging spaces, wrestle with the relationships between macro-, meso-, and microcontextual factors, and negotiate agency- and systems-level change within patriarchal and politically changing contexts. We also demonstrate the necessity for international collaborators to apply critical reflexivity throughout all phases of research praxis. Our analysis has important implications for studying feminist peacebuilding situated in Kenya in particular, as well as for analyzing agency, structural and systemic change, patriarchy, the navigation of intersectional cultural differences, and intercultural relations more generally.
 

Keywords: agency, Kenya, peacebuilding, situated feminism

Topics: Feminisms, Gender, Women, Gendered Power Relations, Patriarchy, Intersectionality, Peacebuilding Regions: Africa, East Africa Countries: Kenya

Year: 2016

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