In this essay, I use the domestication framework to explore the integration process in which reusable menstrual management technologies become part of the everyday life of users. Drawing on interviews, focus group discussions and observation in online and offline sites in Argentina, this study sheds light on how technologies and users co-construct each other in the context of an emerging menstrual activism. By listening to the stories of the participants of this study, I show the potential of women's agency in transforming technology. New and not foreseen uses and meanings were assigned to the reusable menstrual technologies, however, this happens while the identities of users are also transformed in the process of domestication, illustrating how the identity of being a menstruating woman and technologies are coshaping each other.

No abstract

On the basis of interviews, observations and archival analysis, this article explores the controversies surrounding the Yachay project case in Ecuador and unveils three ideological processes behind its conception and implementation. First, we show how the new elite in the government used this project to produce and reproduce a new power structure using a symbolic strategy based on propaganda and on an imaginary of techno-scientific modernization. Second, we unveil the material and symbolic reproduction of a cosmopolitan elite of international experts that profited from the Ecuadorian public funds in exchange for their name and prestige, thanks to a discourse based on cosmopolitanism, urgency, and voluntarism. Finally, we explain how the Yachay project has triggered the reconfiguration of the local symbolic sphere according to the new conditions of reproduction of the world system by reshaping the local imaginaries around technology and innovation. We conclude that Yachay, like other similar projects that have emerged at the same time in other parts of the world, is part of a global process of reconfiguration of the ideological and institutional conditions that accompany the deployment of the latest wave of technoeconomic transformations in the global system.

No abstract

No abstract

The editors set out what the book seeks to trouble and what we are troubled by when speaking about feminist methodologies. We highlight the commonalities and differences across the book showcasing the many methodologies feminism has inspired and shaped. We delve into the patterns we saw woven across the chapters and the major themes that emerge in the book. We reflect on what we learned, what surprised, and what delighted us, as well as the ways in which the creative tensions and the inevitable silences invited us to reflect on what we could not do, the queer art of failure that is also part of our feminist method.

In this chapter, I describe my journey of becoming a user of menstrual tracking apps. I explore how my positionality and the different encounters I have had prior to and during this journey have shaped my understanding and experience of using the app. I am reflexive about how my standpoint constituted my meaning-making processes. I emphasize that through the journey of self-tracking, knowledge was developed in conversation with other users of these apps. I reflect on the tensions I face with regards to giving away personal data to the health app about my body while questioning the advertised possibilities to build body awareness and knowledge through digital traces. My chapter concludes by assessing my methodological choices, stressing the possibilities and limitations of a reflective writing.

No abstract