books | Manuela Picq

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Indigeneity has shaped the development of the modern state. Savages and Citizens argues that indigeneity is a political identity relational to modern nation-states and that Indigenous politics, although marking the boundary of the state, are co-constitutive of colonial processes of state-making. In showing how indigeneity is central to how the international system of states operates, the book forefronts Indigenous peoples as political actors. With insights drawn from diverse global contexts, this work advocates for the relevance of Indigenous studies within political science and argues for an ethnography of sovereignty in anthropology. (30% off with code AZFLR / Open Access)

Picq muestra que las mujeres indígenas son actoras políticas dinámicas que moldean la política latinoamericana. Su investigación empírica en Ecuador muestra que durante la reforma constitucional de 2008 mujeres Kichwas defendieron con éxito la participación de las mujeres en la administración de justicia indígena, creando la primera constitución de América Latina que garantiza explícitamente los derechos de las mujeres indígenas, y la primera en el mundo que exige la paridad de género en la administración de justicia. Ellas utilizan estratégicamente las normas internacionales para definir formas locales de autoridad, construyendo lo que la autora denomina soberanías vernáculas. Esta obra interdisciplinar entrelaza las perspectivas feministas con los estudios indígenas para ampliar los debates conceptuales sobre la soberanía.

Manuela L. Picq shows that Indigenous women have long been dynamic political actors that have partaken in international politics and have shaped states in Latin America. Her research on Ecuador shows that Kichwa women successfully advocated for their participation in the administration of Indigenous justice, creating in 2008 the first constitution in Latin America to explicitly guarantee the rights of Indigenous women, and the first worldwide to require gender parity in the administration of justice. Picq argues that Indigenous women strategically use international norms to shape legal authority locally, defying Western practices of authority as they build what the author calls vernacular sovereignties. Weaving feminist perspectives with Indigenous studies, this interdisciplinary work expands conceptual debates on state sovereignty.

The politics of sexuality are radically transformed during the process of translation. Language allows us to make sense of things, ourselves, and the universe we inhabit. Yet, time and again, our selves are lost, displaced, and reinvented in the process of translation. Flows of sexual translation are anything but random. Translation happens usually from dominant to dominated languages, from hegemonic centres to subaltern peripheries – not from the periphery to the core. Translating sexuality in world politics forces us to confront issues of emancipation and colonisation, intervention and sovereignty, in which global narratives are locally embraced and/or resisted. Translating sexualities from the core to the periphery is a political act entangled in power politics. This is what this book focuses on: the entanglements of sex and tongue in international relations.

This collection offers critical reflections shared at the Fifth Queering Paradigms International Conference (QP5). The authors use a queer perspective to address colonialism as localized in the Global South. This book is distinct because 1) its content is a rare blend of original scholarly pieces with internationally acclaimed art, 2) it blends theoretical debates with policy praxis, filling a gap that often tends to undermine the reach of either side at play,3) sexual politics are put in direct dialogue with post-colonial debates, 4) the book brings to the forefront voices from the Global South/non-core to redefine a field that has been largely framed and conceptualized in the Global North/core.

As LGBTQ claims acquire global relevance, how do sexual politics impact the study of International Relations? This book argues that LGBTQ perspectives are not only an inherent part of world politics but can also influence IR theory-making. LGBTQ politics have simultaneously gained international prominence in the past decade, achieving significant policy change, and provoked cultural resistance and policy pushbacks

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