Ambivalent Gender Knowledge

‘Culture’ as a Field of Conflict for Feminist Initiatives in Post-migrant Society

Issues such as ‘forced marriage’ and ‘female genital mutilation’ have become an increasing focus of feminist activism in Europe in the 1990s. These forms of gender-specific violence are negotiated as ‘culturally determined’ and primarily localised in the group of migrant women. Feminist initiatives that are directed against such issues are therefore central to the production, negotiation and reproduction of knowledge about the relationship between gender and cultural difference. This gender knowledge (Dölling 2003, 2005) is the subject of this ethnographic research project, which aims to contribute to research into feminist practices and discourses in a post-migrant society (Foroutan 2019). The question of the significance of cultural difference for the constitution of gender relations and the associated debates on othering processes, intersectionality and racism have also become a deeply divisive conflict in academia, activism and practice since the 1990s at the latest – especially in connection with the integration debate – and have received renewed attention in the media and public sphere since New Year’s Eve in Cologne in 2015/16. A number of cultural and social science studies comprehensively describe and criticise gendered images and ideas about ‘cultural others’ as well as the entanglements of feminism with nationalist, colonial and racist politics. But how does this gender knowledge emerge in concrete practices? How is it produced and negotiated situationally? And how is this knowledge positioned in political action? These questions form the starting point of this project. The empirical research project focusses on the issues of ‘forced marriage’ and ‘female genital mutilation’ as fields of feminist engagement. The perspectives of the actors of feminist initiatives from different cities in Germany who are active in this field – their self-understandings, interpretations and ambivalences as well as their practices – are at the centre of the investigation.

In co-operation with Gabriele Dietze (Humboldt-Universität Berlin), Begonya Enguix-Grau (Universitat Oberta de Catalunya Barcelona) and Sabine Hess (Georg-August-Universität Göttingen)

People: