Abstract

Through ethnographic case studies and activists' narratives, Contesting Publics analyses the challenges feminists face as they seek to engage with new spaces of participatory democracy in Latin America.

Lynne Phillips and Sally Cole analyse how new silences, exclusions and re-inscriptions of inequalities have emerged alongside these new spaces of participation. They re-examine the relationship between public and private and address a larger theoretical question: what is the meaning of 'the public' within democracy projects?

Contesting Publics considers current debates among feminists from different generations on the merits of a variety of strategies, goals and issues, drawing out vital lessons for students, researchers and activists in anthropology, gender studies and Latin American studies.
'Breathes new life into the public/private debate, showing how it remains crucial to thinking about the lives of women'
Lindsay DuBois, Associate Professor, Sociology and Social Anthropology at Dalhousie University and author of The Politics of the Past in an Argentine Working-Class Neighbourhood (2005).
'This is a thought-provoking volume that promises to appeal to students and scholars, and also to a broader public of activists and intellectuals'
Florence E. Babb, Vada Allen Yeomans Professor of Women's Studies, Affiliate Professor of Anthropology and Latin American Studies, University of Florida