New Books in Science, Technology, and Society

Firuzeh Shokooh Valle, "In Defense of Solidarity and Pleasure: Feminist Technopolitics from the Global South" (Stanford UP, 2023)

Jul 4, 2024

Firuzeh Shokooh Valle discusses the inclusion of women in technology from the Global South, exploring the coopting nature of technology narratives. She emphasizes feminist technopolitics focusing on solidarity and pleasure as opposed to profit-driven agendas. The podcast delves into challenges faced by feminist activists advocating for legal provisions and highlights cooperative structures empowering women in a capitalist society.

Ask episode

Chapters

Transcript

Episode notes

Intro

00:00 • 2min

Feminist Advocacy and Technology in the Global South

02:06 • 17min

Exploring Feminist Technopolitics and Gender Entrepreneurship

18:57 • 1min

Neoliberal Feminist Agenda in Gender and Technology

20:17 • 7min

Empowering Women through Cooperative Structures

26:49 • 14min

Navigating the Dilemma of Advocating for Legal Provisions

40:52 • 7min

Solidarity, Pleasure, and Care in Feminist Techno-Politics

48:12 • 15min

Including women in the global South as users, producers, consumers, designers, and developers of technology has become a mantra against inequality, prompting movements to train individuals in information and communication technologies and foster the participation and retention of women in science and technology fields.

In In Defense of Solidarity and Pleasure: Feminist Technopolitics from the Global South (Stanford UP, 2023), Firuzeh Shokooh Valle argues that these efforts have given rise to an idealized, female economic figure that combines technological dexterity and keen entrepreneurial instinct with gendered stereotypes of care and selflessness. Narratives about the "equalizing" potential of digital technologies spotlight these women's capacity to overcome inequality using said technologies, ignoring the barriers and circumstances that create such inequality in the first place as well as the potentially violent role of technology in their lives. In Defense of Solidarity and Pleasure examines how women in the Global South experience and resist the coopting and depoliticizing nature of these scripts. Drawing on fieldwork in Costa Rica and a transnational feminist digital organization, Shokooh Valle explores the ways that feminist activists, using digital technologies as well as a collective politics that prioritize solidarity and pleasure, advance a new feminist technopolitics.

Firuzeh Shokooh Valle is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Franklin and Marshall College. Previously, she was a journalist in Puerto Rico covering violence against women, the LGBTQI+ community, migration, racism, and social movements, and earned numerous national awards for her investigative work.

Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Twitter.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society