The Ethics of Transnational Feminist Research and Activism: An Argument for a More Comprehensive View

Abstract

An Argument for a More Comprehensive View T he ethics of feminist research and activism undertaken by global Northerners operating in the global South has been a topic of ongoing debate for a number of years. 1 Research or commentary undertaken by individuals from or based in the global North into issues such as rape, domestic violence, forced marriage, honor killings, the seclusion or veiling of women, or female genital cutting occurring in the global South is fraught with ethical questions around the misunderstanding of local viewpoints and the ethnocentric imposition of alien norms. 2 Scholars have noted that the notion of individual rights does not necessarily accord with the cultural values of a number of societies, in which conceptions of the individual do not rest on ideas of deep autonomy and relative detachment from one's community (Kalev 2004;Abu-Lhugod 2013). Others argue that fighting for women's rights or gender equality is not necessarily what their communities need. 3 However, as Alison Jaggar notes, outsiders' desire to refrain from criticizing specific practices in the name of cultural relativism may reveal "misplaced concern for 'the community' as a whole at the expense of some women within it." In the end, "ignoring the plight of such women [may be] racist or ethnocentric, insofar as it suggests a moral double standard according to which high levels of abuse and exploitation are regarded as 'culturally acceptable' for some women but not for others" (Jaggar 1998, 10).Much has been written about these dilemmas and about how to ethically engage in transnational feminist research and practice. In this article, I describe and interrogate the various arguments that have been proposed. I then propose an alternative argument, drawing on the most promising positions of other scholars and adding to these to arrive at a more comprehensive proposal.Categories such as "global North" and "global South" themselves warrant problematization, as such conceptions do not always reflect the reality

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