Recentring Gender and Politics Research from Asia and the Pacific: Decolonising methodologies and epistemologies

Abstract

This panel will explore the opportunities and challenges inherent in problematising gender and politics research from Oceanic and Asian perspectives. Using an ‘Author meets Reader‘ framing, the panel will draw on the co-chairs’ recent edited publication Gender and Politics Reimagined: Centring Oceanic and Asian Lenses (ANU Press) to provide epistemological, theoretical and methodological reflections on how knowledge is produced and by whom. The collection reflects a coming together of academics, gender and development practitioners and activists to reflect on the gendering of politics. By centring Asia and Oceania and traversing numerous disciplines, the volume disrupts the illusion of certainty and clarity as to what is known about gender and politics. The contributions collectively demonstrate the possibilities for theorising from Asia and Oceania to address the lack of diversity in political representation and leadership on a global scale, in which gender, race, class, caste, (dis)ability and sexual identity are powerfully interconnected. Through an interactive discussion with gender and politics scholars from both the majority and minority worlds (our ‘readers’), the authors will reflect on the politics of research sovereignty and the operationalisation of key gender and politics concepts such as intersectionality. The panel will begin by interrogating who determines the questions that drive gender and politics research, particularly in the majority world, in whose voice and through what methods is it executed. The panel will consider examples of both quantitative and qualitative methodological approaches adopted by diverse authors represented in the collection.

Title	Details
Reading from the majority world: lessons in sharing new perspectives	View Paper Details
Reading from the minority world: lessons in changing mainstream practice	View Paper Details
Overview of the collection	View Paper Details