History of Gender Commons^™

Invited And Invented Spaces Of Participation: Neoliberal Citizenship And Feminists' Expanded Notion Of Politics., Faranak Miraftab

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

This short conceptual piece calls for a careful rethinking of what feminist scholars have articulated as an expanded notion of politics: the notion that rejects the binary constructs of formal/informal, and demonstrates the significance of community-based activism as an informal arena of politics and citizenship construction. Introducing the interacting and mutually constitutive concepts of “invited” and “invented” spaces of citizenship, this essay urges recognition of the full range of spaces within the informal arena where citizenship is practiced. It warns of the risk arising from the literature’s limited focus on strategies of survival: namely, the likelihood of a bifurcated conceptualization …