[Air-L] Online Book Talk, In Defense of Solidarity and Pleasure: Feminist Technopolitics from the Global South

[Rafael Grohmann]

   Hello AoiRers,
   Nov 10, 2PM ET, I'll host an online book talk with Firuzeh Shokooh
   Valle, author of "In Defense of Solidarity and Pleasure: Feminist
   Technopolitics from the Global South" (Stanford University Press,
   2023).
   This will happen via DigiLabour YouTube
   channel: [1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5su09ILfgQ
   Check your time zone, especially due of the end of daylight saving
   time.
   About the book:
   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 this book, 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.
   About the author:
   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.


   --

   dr. Rafael Grohmann

   Assistant Professor of Media Studies

   [2]Department of Arts, Culture and Media

   [3]Faculty of Information
   University of Toronto


   Leader, [4]DigiLabour

   Principal Investigator, [5]Fairwork[6] Brazil

   International Experts Coordinator, [7]Platform Work Inclusion Living
   Lab

References

   1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5su09ILfgQ
   2. https://www.utsc.utoronto.ca/acm/rafael-grohmann
   3. https://ischool.utoronto.ca/profile/rafael-grohmann/
   4. https://digilabour.com.br/
   5. https://fair.work/
   6. https://fair.work/
   7. https://pwill.eu/