Negotiating Contextually Contingent Agency: Situated Feminist Peacebuilding Strategies in Kenya

ABSTRACT

This study identifies an emergent framework for situated feminist peacebuilding based on interviews with representatives of community-based organizations in Kenya. We offer situated examples and firsthand accounts of how these women navigate different challenging spaces, wrestle with the relationships between macro-, meso-, and microcontextual factors, and negotiate agency- and systems-level change within patriarchal and politically changing contexts. We also demonstrate the necessity for international collaborators to apply critical reflexivity throughout all phases of research praxis. Our analysis has important implications for studying feminist peacebuilding situated in Kenya in particular, as well as for analyzing agency, structural and systemic change, patriarchy, the navigation of intersectional cultural differences, and intercultural relations more generally.

KEYWORDS:

• Agency
• Kenya
• peacebuilding
• situated feminism

Acknowledgment

A previous version of this essay was presented in the Intercultural Communication Interest Group’s Top Paper panel at the Western States Communication Association’s Annual Convention in March 2016.