Abstract:

How can we understand the multiple, intersecting webs of oppression that Palestinian women activists face in their everyday organizing? The talk is going to illuminates the context and complexity of the lived experiences of women activists in Palestine, aiming to contribute to feminist perspectives on organizing and how activists’ daily practices and interactions ‘inhabit’ institutions, creating, maintaining and transforming them. The analysis exposes a ‘simultaneity of oppressions’ which highlights the challenges faced by Palestinian women attempting to organize to challenge the social structure, within their quasi-state, settler-colonized context. The talk aims to uncover multiple intersecting inequalities produced by dominant institutional and societal structures, yet experienced differently by women activists, in an oppressed, colonized setting. This distinctive political context, aligned with the collaborative security setting with the occupier, elucidates how violations of the quasi-state, colonizer and other social structures like patriarchy and family manifest and intersect institutionally to violate and undermine women. Dr. Nazzal challenges the singular monolithic analysis of patriarchy, revealing how different patriarchal positions towards women expose different modes of oppression, while serving at times as a protective, supportive system.

Bio: Amal Nazzal is an Assistant Professor at Birzeit University, Palestine. She received her PhD from the University of Exeter, looking at the relevance of Bourdieu’s theory of practice for relationally capturing various organizational practices, mechanisms and dynamics in socio-cultural organizations, in particular social movements. Her research interests include intersectionality theory, feminist organizing, social capital, social networking theory and new social media in organizations. Her research is driven by constructing realities, and the perceptions of agents and social actors, through incorporating different interpretive methods, such as in-depth interviewing, and participant observation. She is also interested in new research methods such as digital ethnography and social media content analysis.