Contingent meanings, shifting practices: grandmother to grandmother solidarity as transnational feminist praxis

Abstract

While ‘solidarity’ is frequently evoked in transnational feminisms, it is less clear how this concept is understood and practiced among different actors in different contexts. This article addresses this limitation by investigating a movement of some 10,000 older Canadian women who, drawing on longstanding commitments to feminist advocacy, have mobilized over the past decade in solidarity with ‘grandmothers’ impacted by AIDS in southern Africa. The article investigates one pivotal development within this movement as an entry point to consider the productive friction surrounding transnational feminist practice more broadly: the splintering of the campaign in 2011 into separate advocacy and fundraising networks. Drawing on archival materials and interviews, the analysis depicts how changing perspectives on advocacy within the movement, which became most evident in this splintering, provide critical insights into thinking about the complexities of ‘solidarity’ as transnational feminist praxis. In particular, it extends existing scholarship on solidarity-building, suggesting that theorizing ‘solidarity’ in this context requires an understanding of its contingent practices. It also draws on older Canadian women’s reflections to challenge notions that ‘Second Wavers’ do not adequately grapple with how differences in power and privilege shape and inform their movements.

Keywords:

• Transnational feminism
• solidarity
• advocacy
• older women
• Canada
• grandmothers’ movement
• South Africa

Acknowledgements

I would like to extend deep thanks to all of the women who participated in this research. In particular, I extend my thanks to members of the Grandmothers Advocacy Network (GRAN) and the Grandmothers to Grandmothers Campaign. I am especially grateful to Pat Evans and Hillary Elliot, who provided feedback on earlier drafts of this article, and to GRAN’s current and former Leadership Team members who have remained integral to my research. Melissa Baldwin and Jesse Whattam provided invaluable research assistance on this piece. I acknowledge the anonymous reviewers, the editorial team at Gender Place Culture, as well as section editors Hamsa Rajan and Kerrie Thornhill, who all worked with me to strengthen my argument and bring this to publication. This research was funded and supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the P.E. Trudeau Foundation, the Canada Research Chairs program, Carleton University, Trent University, and the Health Economics and HIV/AIDS Research Division at the University of KwaZulu-Natal.