Everyday life and women’s (communicative) practices: notes towards a politics of listening

Seminar

Date: Friday 17 March 2023

Time: 14.00 – 15.30

Location: Library of the Institute of Latin American Studies (House B, Floor 5)

Florencia Enghel, Associate Professor in Media and Communication Studies at Jönköping University - NILAs research seminar

In this presentation I will introduce findings from a 3-years research project that investigates the everyday communicative practices of Argentinian women for gender justice in the context of neoliberal capitalism, digital(ized) but precarious citizenship, and the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing on data gathered in 2021-2022 (online survey and semi-structured interviews), I will show how women attempt to get the state's attention as they go about their everyday lives in the face of inequality, gender violence and other dysfunctional/broken elements of democracy that affect them disproportionally. Based on this data-driven empirical description, I will analyze how women perceive their attempts to get the state’s attention within a range that goes from ‘successful’ to ‘failed’. In which ways do their (communicative) strategies lead to the democratic justice they claim? And what do their experiences tell us about whether government agencies listen to them? I define listening not merely as the discursive acknowledgment of women's claims typical of government officers, but as the concrete steps to be taken by government agencies should to redress specific forms of gender injustice (Rodríguez, 2019; Kay, 2020; McRobbie, 2020). The analysis contributes to expanding the notion of a politics of listening (Bickford, 1996; Bassel, 2007) from the perspective of gender justice.

Florencia Enghel, Associate Professor in Media and Communication Studies at Jönköping University, is an Argentinian scholar based in Sweden. A Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellow for 2020-2023, she studies the relationship between communication, citizenship, and social change. Since 2015 she serves as a member of IAMCR’s Clearinghouse on Public Statements.

The research seminar on Latin American studies is open to scholars interested in Latin American issues. It welcomes the presentation of papers from researchers and PhD students from different social science disciplines. The seminar takes place on Fridays 14:00 – 15:30 every second week (odd numbers) at the Library of the Institute of Latin American Studies (House B, Floor 5). For further information on the research seminar please contact: researchseminars.nilas@su.se

Organizer of the seminars: Andrés Rivarola Puntigliano