SLU news

SLU researcher hosts panel on Nordic Africa Days 2018

Published: 26 March 2018

During this year's Nordic Africa Days on African mobilities 19-21 September, SLU researcher Johanna Bergman Lodin, from the Department of Urban and Rural development and SLU Global, hosts a panel about Rethinking gendered mobilities and immobilities.”

In many cultures, social norms surrounding mobility in public spaces add to the physical constraints induced by underdeveloped mobility-scapes by particularly curtailing women’s freedom to move outside their residential compounds and beyond. Marital status, ethnicity and class are examples of other social identities negotiating individual mobility. Constrained mobility may also influence access to important resources and services, consequently impacting social mobility over a life course.

Mobility is often conceptualized as revealed movement and used as an indicator of agency and empowerment. However, not all forms of movement are empowering and reflect agency. Norms can also induce mobility pressures on already time-constrained gendered subjects, e.g. linked to constructions of masculine responsibility for provisioning. The everyday or permanent movements of women and men may therefore also reflect their disempowerment within their households and or communities.

The panel invites contributions revisiting the mobility concept by exploring its gendered meanings and power relations, and or interrogating the multiple ways gender and mobility in rural and urban Africa intersect, including causes and effects of gendered mobility's and immobility's.

Topical questions include but are not limited to:

  • How can we theorize mobility in a gender-sensitive way, which also accounts for other intersecting social identities?
  • How do social norms shape patterns of gendered mobility and immobility?
  • How are gendered mobility's and immobility's influencing women’s and men’s empowerment and livelihoods in specific contexts?
  • What role is there for virtual mobility in relation to this? To what extent can it substitute for physical mobility?
  • To what extent should power, agency, identity and subjectivity be considered as not only gendered dimensions relating to mobility but as constituted in mobility/immobility per se?
Submission of paper proposals

Paper abstracts should include a description of the topic not exceeding 300 words, in Word format (not Pdf), name, affiliation, and contact details of the author(s). Indicate clearly in your submission, by panel number and title, the panel for which you are submitting your proposal. The conference only accepts one paper per participant.

Paper proposals should be submitted to Johanna Bergman Lodin no later than 20 May 2018. Authors will be notified on acceptance by early June.

More information about the conference.

Facts:

The Nordic Africa Days is the biannual conference of the Nordic Africa Institute organised for the past 17 years in the Nordic countries, with participants representing the state of the art in African Studies and Africa-related knowledge production. The Nordic Africa Days 2018 has a thematic focus on African mobilities.


Contact

SLU Global supports SLU's work for global development to contribute to Agenda 2030.

SLU Global
Vice-Chancellor's Office

Agricultural Sciences for Global Development
PO Box 7005, SE-750 07 Uppsala
Visiting address: Almas Allé 7
global@slu.se    www.slu.se/slu-global 
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