Projects / Programmes
Emancipatory Politics of Women's Social Movements and the Postsecular Turn in Feminism
| Code |
Science |
Field |
Subfield |
| 6.03.00 |
Humanities |
Anthropology |
|
| Code |
Science |
Field |
| 5.04 |
Social Sciences |
Sociology |
menstrual activism; the Red Tent movement; religious, spiritual and secular feminism; social movements
Data for the last 5 years (citations for the last 10 years) on
April 18, 2024;
A3 for period
2018-2022
Data for ARIS tenders (
04.04.2019 – Programme tender,
archive
)
| Database |
Linked records |
Citations |
Pure citations |
Average pure citations |
| WoS |
7 |
6 |
5 |
0.71 |
| Scopus |
7 |
22 |
17 |
2.43 |
Researchers (1)
| no. |
Code |
Name and surname |
Research area |
Role |
Period |
No. of publicationsNo. of publications |
| 1. |
35532 |
PhD Polona Sitar |
Anthropology |
Head |
2021 - 2024 |
121 |
Organisations (1)
Abstract
The project focuses on researching the menstrual activism of the Red Tent movement in Slovenia. This social movement is linked with challenging the imagery associated with periods and menstrual blood, which is still regarded as a taboo in many places all over the world. The sphere of feminist-spiritualist menstrual activism is striving to reclaim menstruation as a healthy, spiritual, empowering and even pleasurable experience for women. Previously marked by a predominantly secular orientation, one can recently refer to a ‘post-secular turn’ underway in feminist theory, which involves reconsidering the positive agentic potentialities of religion and spiritual practices for women. The project aims to show how post-secular femininities are advancing into the everyday life and the former male dominated public and secular sphere, rather than being a marginal or alternative phenomenon outside of mainstream society. Fourth-wave feminism signals a “coming of age” for feminist theology and spiritualities as a vibrant research future and this project takes this into account as it tackles current gender debates. In order for research to adequately follow set research objectives, it will be based on methodological pluralism derived from qualitative methods of anthropological research (semi-structured interviews, participant observation in the Red Tent gatherings) and also document analysis, netnography and Critical Discourse Analysis. The project will study in which way global menstrual movements are challenging and changing the existing social order in the world today by focusing on the understanding of how post-secular femininities can be analyzed and critically assessed pertaining to the key debates on power, subjectivity and agency in contemporary feminist theory. While highlighting the ways in which spiritualities sometimes tend to reproduce the very ideological constructs they criticise (neoliberalism, patriarchy), the objective of the research is also an upgrade of this theoretical model while paying attention to the important contributions they make in terms of female empowerment and rendering certain problems visible. The project will study the role of the Red Tent as a menstrual movement in regards to abolishing the menstrual taboo and contribute to the better understanding of the reasons behind growing need for establishing the Red Tent gatherings. Also, it will explore the intersections between spirituality, religion and secularism in the spiritual menstrual movement the Red Tent. The project opens up new research directions as it questions to what extent spiritualities and well-being practices under examination are grounded in the cultural and especially class homogeneity of their participants. It addresses the following research questions: Is there any effort to draw in women who do not hold the perspective of middle-class, college-educated, feminist-identified women activists, which unintentionally constructs menstrual activism as inaccessible for many women? Does the Red Tent movement challenge essentialist constructions of womanhood and the hegemony of the essentialized gender binary or does it continue with traditional conservative gender essentialisms as it is the case in many religions?
