Between Social and Scholarly Mobilization

At a conference on Critical Knowledge Production in Social Sciences and Feminist Studies in Iraq, scholars debated whether Iraq’s Tishreen Movement was feminist and shifted social perceptions of gender. As activists or critical observers, the movement prompted them to reconsider gender dynamics, feminism, and pedagogy. This paper focuses on women social scientists in Iraq and their activism and/or scholarship in the Tishreen Movement. The paper hypothesizes that, while Iraqi women social scientists may see the movement differently, it unites them towards radical Iraqi pedagogy and scholarship over the long term. This paper takes a structuralist approach and examines the intersection between women’s political and academic struggles against institutionalized patriarchy. This paper borrows from bell hooks’ feminism framework, Maya Mikdashi’s “sextarianism,” Henry Giroux’s critical pedagogy framework, and relies on a select number of interviews with Iraq-based social scientists

Consciousness · Critical consciousness · Feminism · Feminist epistemology · Feminist philosophy · Knowledge production · Politics · Scholarship · Social activism · Social movement · Gender Diversity and Inequality · Gender, Security, and Conflict · Qualitative Research Methods and Ethics