Postsecular Feminisms: Religion and Gender in Transnational Context

Description

Postsecular Feminisms explores the contested relationship between feminism and secularism through a series of case studies, featuring perspectives from the global North and South. It offers insights beyond those of the Abrahamic traditions, and includes multiple examples from South Asia. By decentering the European experience, Postsecular Feminisms shows how secularism and feminism have been constituted in North America, South Asia, and Anglophone West Africa. The book asks: can postsecular feminism offer a way to think about religion and gender so as to support women in all the variety of their lived experiences? The contributors show that postsecular feminism is a variety of feminism that is not necessarily either secularist or anti-secular. Rather it is feminism informed by a history of secularist bias within liberal feminism. Postsecular Feminisms explores both the potentials and pitfalls of postsecular feminisms, with some authors arguing that a contextually grounded praxis is possible, while others make a strong case against postsecular feminism as theory and practice. Contributor biographies Acknowledgements 1. Introduction, Nandini Deo (Lehigh University, USA) Part One: Provincializing Western Secularisms 2. Postsecular Feminisms in Historical Perspective, William J Bulman (Lehigh University, USA) 3. Re-Enchanting Feminism: Challenging Religious and Secular Patriarchies, Alka Arora (California Institute of Integral Studies, USA) 4. The Crisis of Secularism and Its Aftermath, Neera Chandhoke (Jawaharlal Nehru University, India) Part Two: Feminists Navigate the Religious 5. A New Variety of Anti-Secularism?, Khurram Hussain (Lehigh University, USA) 6. Predicaments of Islamic Feminism in India: Some Reflections, R. Santhosh (IIT Madras, India) 7. Dalit Feminism as Postsecular Feminism, Timothy J. Loftus (Temple University, USA) 8. (Not so) Well-behaved Women: Piety and practice among 21st century Mainstream Mormon Feminists, Christine L. Cusack (University of Ottawa, Canada) Part Three: Postsecular Feminism and Materialism 9. The Intersection of Feminism, Religion and Development in the Discourses of 'Gender Workers' in Ghana, Nana Akua Anyidoho (University of Ghana, Ghana) 10. Why I Am Not A Postsecular Feminist: Pakistan, Polio and the Postsecular, Afiya Shehrbano Zia (University of Toronto, Canada) Bibliography Index