Feminist Politics: An Interview with Sara Ahmed

Tuori, Salla; Peltonen, Salla

doi:10.1080/08038740701691941

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 2 publications

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“…In particular, a self-identified lack of whiteness, which can be seen as both racial and ethnic distinctiveness in a contemporary urban Canadian context, challenges racial and ethnic minority youths who travel across neighbourhood boundaries to attend affluent neighbourhood schools with a strong middle-and upper-class European-Canadian presence. Racial and ethnic minority students described experiences of feeling out of place and being strangers at West High, which they perceive as a "Caucasian school" because of its relatively high number of Caucasian students compared to other parts of Vancouver and also because of its location in a largely white European-Canadian neighbourhood (Ahmed, 2000;Tuori & Peltonen, 2007).…”

Section: Racialized Socialization and Border Anxietymentioning

confidence: 99%

Being Chosen and Performing Choice: Young People Engaging in Imaginative and Constrained Secondary School Practices in Vancouver, BC, Canada

Yoon

2018

Structuring the Thesis

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Over the last three decades, the political project of school choice policy, promoted by the Vancouver School District and the BC Ministry of Education, has been contentious.Many have contended that school choice further contributes to the fragmentation and associated hierarchies of the education system and of social structures in the urban context of Vancouver, a major city with rapidly rising ethnic diversity and socio-economically polarizing urban redevelopment. To shed further light on these concerns about school choice, in this study I investigate the ways in which young people, ages 11-19, positioned at various social, racial, and geographic locations and with varied social experiences, make sense of school choice policy. Here I focus particularly on the ways in which young people imagine, experience, and form certain modes of social, spatial, and racial identification and groups, as well as on the relationships between these groups under the mechanism of school choice.Between 2009 and 2010, I carried out a multi-sited ethnographic study from a critical sociophenomenological perspective. I conducted 59 semi-structured interviews with students in transition (Grades 7, 8, and 12), observed 16 school information evenings and two secondary schools over a six-month period, and analyzed media discourses and policy texts as they pertained to broader social, urban, and political changes. I drew upon an interdisciplinary analytical framework of critical policy studies and youth studies and focused on three theoretical concepts: the imaginary, the imagination, and imaginary capital. These three concepts provide a key analytical framework for understanding the ways in which school choice complicates young people's classification struggles and distinction-making (Bourdieu, 1984) within the widely circulating dominant social, urban, and national imaginary. I iii conclude that while current local policies of school choice can provide enriched alternative programs, they do so for only highly selective and competitive groups of students. Overall, my research findings point to the reality that school choice deepens existing social, spatial, and racial divisions, aggravates tensions, and ultimately worsens existing inequalities while producing new forms of social and educational stratification in the rapidly diversifying global city of Vancouver.iv

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Section: Racialized Socialization and Border Anxietymentioning

confidence: 99%

Being Chosen and Performing Choice: Young People Engaging in Imaginative and Constrained Secondary School Practices in Vancouver, BC, Canada

Yoon

2018

Structuring the Thesis

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“…Our queer curricular ‘subject’ needs therefore to consciously involve a re-doing of the knowledges we encounter and place on curricula. The ambitions of such re-doing can be contextualised as part of a wider project of making ‘a range of texts “out of place”, to deviate, to turn texts round, into something else, something creative’ (Ahmed, 2007: 263, in Tuori and Peltonen, 2007). We see this in the expansion of feminist and queer articulations beyond sex, sexual and gender differences to location within a more complex social ecology which acknowledges a broader range of identity-constituting or identity-fracturing discourses.…”

Section: Queer–feminist Pedagogymentioning

confidence: 99%

Improbable frequency? Advocating queer–feminist pedagogic alliances within Irish and European higher education contexts

Quilty

2016

European Journal of Women's Studies

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Heterosexist ideology underpins education policy and practice almost universally. It has the effect of rendering invisible and disrespecting practitioners and students of other sexual and non-gender conforming identities. Much explicitly queer work has challenged this normalising and frequently oppressive higher education terrain. To maximise this queer potential this article proposes re-positioning queer within and through a practice and pedagogy of feminism. The broad-based identity politics of feminism and the antiidentitarian politic of queer may appear a slightly improbable alliance. The article argues, however, that intersectional approaches which reinforce queer integrity, challenge oppressive social norms and simultaneously re-emphasise the importance of the political through an identity politics heavily influenced by feminism, are not just possible but necessary. In seeking to explore what unites feminism and queer educationally, the article makes three observations relating to history, pedagogy and activism. It references two particular LGTBQ Irish and European educational programmes, which it argues highlight this sense of the probable in terms of queer-feminist educational alliances. Such alliances can continue to challenge in material ways sustained educational constructions of heterosexuality as normal, natural and moral and in so doing provide a platform for empowerment and change.

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“I Liked Girls and I Thought They Were Pretty”: Initial Memories of Same-Sex Attraction in Young Lesbian and Bisexual Women

2015

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There is little research on what is meant by the concept of "feeling attracted" and even less about what same-sex attraction looks and feels like for individuals. Without insight into the phenomenon of same-sex attraction, researchers risk misunderstanding the role of sexual attraction in sexual identity development and risk mis-categorizing individuals in research designs that compare LGBTQ and heterosexual samples. The current study draws from semi-structured interviews (n = 30) with young lesbian-, bisexual-, and queer-identified women (ages 18-24) about their initial memories of same-sex attraction. Two questions were pursued using qualitative analytic strategies. We examined the age that participants remembered first experiencing same-sex attraction using content analysis. Two age groups emerged as distinct: those with experiences of same-sex attraction in childhood and those with initial attractions in later adolescence. We also examined key elements in participants' descriptions of early same-sex attraction using thematic analysis. The role of embodied feelings, relationships with other young women, and social environments including media images emerged as central to initial experiences of attraction. Findings highlight how early experiences of same-sex attraction produced different types of interpretations within individuals and, in turn, these interpretations informed how participants did or did not take up LGBTQ identity labels. These findings may help guide the development of more refined measurement tools for researchers hoping to sample sexual minorities and can contribute to developing more effective supports for individuals who experience same-sex attraction but may not adopt LGBTQ identity labels and, as a result, are routinely missed in outreach efforts.

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Feminist Politics: An Interview with Sara Ahmed

Cited by 3 publications

References 2 publications

Being Chosen and Performing Choice: Young People Engaging in Imaginative and Constrained Secondary School Practices in Vancouver, BC, Canada

Being Chosen and Performing Choice: Young People Engaging in Imaginative and Constrained Secondary School Practices in Vancouver, BC, Canada

Improbable frequency? Advocating queer–feminist pedagogic alliances within Irish and European higher education contexts

“I Liked Girls and I Thought They Were Pretty”: Initial Memories of Same-Sex Attraction in Young Lesbian and Bisexual Women

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