New book: Feminist Digital Citizenship in Africa
 

Feminist Digital Citizenship in Africa: transformative online feminism. Edited by Dr. Tanja Bosch and Dr. Tony Roberts. 
A collected edition for Zed Books for publication in 2024.

Call for abstracts: 
We invite abstract submissions for chapters to be included in a collected edition book on digital feminist citizenship in Africa towards a book proposal for submission to Zed Books. 

In recent years, we have seen a renewal in feminist politics “that emerge from the interface of digital platforms and activism today” (Baer, 2016). Women increasingly use participatory digital media to network and organize in various ways, including against sexism and rape culture (Mendes et al., 2019). Digital feminist protest culture has facilitated the emergence of digital feminist citizenship, whereby women use digital technologies to claim their rights as citizens and challenge structures that limit their participation in the public sphere.

Feminists have, however argued that the discourses and practices of citizenship “are deeply gendered and racialized”; as well as “deeply ambiguous and exclusionary” (Ackelsberg, 2009, 119-120), as it has generally been accepted that citizenship occurs in the public domain, thus excluding private or domestic activities and those located in those areas, e.g., women. Moreover, feminist scholars have highlighted the failure of citizenship rights vested in liberal democracies to meet the needs of women and other minority groups, including those who are socially or economically marginalised (Lister, 1997).

We invited you to submit a 200-word abstract by 31st August 2023. Please include a short CV, including a bibliography, along with your submission. We welcome submissions from activists and practitioners as well as emerging and established scholars.

We encourage case studies located in various parts of the continent, empirical work, as well as theoretical reflections, which contribute toward an exploration of contemporary feminist protest and digital feminisms. 

Possible topics for the volume include, but are not limited to:

• The role of digital technologies in shaping feminist citizenship in Africa
• Algorithmic culture and online identity
• Case studies of digital feminist campaigns/online activism
• Other manifestations of digital feminist citizenship
• The interplay between offline and online feminist citizenship practices
• Transformational feminist digital citizenship

Sbmit your abstract to Tanja.Bosch@uct.ac.za and T.Roberts@ids.ac.uk with “Digital Feminist Citizenship” in the subject line. If our proposal is accepted, we will ask for an extended abstract of 1500 words by mid-September and a first draft of 2500-3000 words by the end of November. Full final papers of 6,000 – 7,000 words will be due in Jan-Feb 2024.

This volume is expected to make an important contribution to the growing body of scholarship on digital citizenship and digital activism in Africa, and we look forward to receiving your submissions.citizens