“Feminist Internationalism and Resistance to Neoliberal Globalisation” is the eighteenth session of SFF’s Political Economy Teach-in Series. It was held on November 21, 2024, and delivered by Professor Sylvia Tamale.

Professor Sylvia Tamale is a leading African feminist and scholar. She recently retired from Makerere University’s School of Law where she served for 36 years and was the first female Dean of Law in the country. She has been a visiting professor at several academic institutions globally and has served on several international human rights boards. She has numerous publications to her name including the award-winning book, Decolonization and Afro-Feminism (Daraja Press, 2020). She is a co-editor of the journal, Feminist Africa. She holds a Bachelor of Laws from Makerere, a Masters in Law from Harvard University, and a Ph.D. in Sociology and Feminist Studies from the University of Minnesota. Tamale also holds two Honorary Doctorates of Law from the University of Pretoria and Rhodes University.

In her teach-in, Professor Sylvia presents an analysis of neoliberal globalisation as a form of neo-imperialism and neo-colonialism mobilised through finance capitalism. It is rooted in centuries-long institutionalised racism and heteropatriarchal capitalism, and centres around Western belief systems and values. Its political economy is based on privatisation, profit, and the dominance of private financial institutions. These Western and capitalist belief systems collude to form a world order where resources are extracted and labour is exploited, and where communal life, holistic ecosystems, and resource-use not centred around the accumulation of individual wealth are dismantled.

Bringing the attention back to women’s exploitation under these systems, she dissects how women-centred NGOs neatly fit into the neoliberal framework—whether because they’re supported by its very institutions, or because their own continuity requires for disenfranchised communities to be dependent on them—yet adopt feminist language in their focus on “women’s empowerment”. But by depoliticising women’s oppressions and focusing on the individual neoliberal rights rather than dismantling oppressive power structures, they are advancing the neoliberal and neo-imperial project. This is often referred to as “white feminism” or “liberal feminism” by decolonial feminists. Prof. Sylvia thus argues that feminist internationalism is a necessary approach to combat these global structures of domination and the additional harm that “feminist” NGOs are imposing in the global majority. 

In this interview, conducted after the teach-in, Professor Sylvia delves more specifically into questions that centre around feminist internationalism: what does it mean, and what does our engagement with, or away from, existing structures look like—conceptually and strategically? What movements exists or can we imagine, and from where do we draw sustenance and hope? While her teach-in largely covered the structures of neoliberal globalisation, and focused on developing a nuanced understanding of its workings, the thoughts she shares in the following interview relate to her large body of work around decolonial feminism, and particularly afro-feminism—speaking to her very point that we need to understand how systems of power operate, and what institutionalised oppressions they are rooted in, to be able to develop sustainable resistance against them.

On Neoliberal Globalisation

Q: What should individuals working in the international development sector understand about the sector’s relationship to neoliberalism, imperialism and globalisation?

A: I can think of two main points here. First, because the international development sector is largely located in global minority countries and rooted in imperialism and neoliberal globalisation, it is crucial that individuals working in this industry become self-aware of the power dynamics at play. Many of them view their work as that outmoded “civilising mission”, which was really a coded cover for cultural imperialism. Thus, it is important for them to completely shed the colonial idea that Western knowledge, culture, and social systems are superior to those which exist elsewhere, or the neo-imperial view that global majority countries can lift themselves out of underdevelopment through mimicking Western modernity and its forward-movement blueprint. 

Secondly, they should understand that the sector (including its adjusted frameworks such as the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals) is extremely political and heavily shaped by power and by Western belief systems. The undergirding moral basis, the identification of the problems, the strategies to alleviate those problems, and the monitoring and evaluation approaches—all are conceived from rationalisations and perceptions rooted in Western onto-epistemological (community + knowledge) frameworks alien to the global majority regions that they intend to “develop”. Take their understanding of the concept of “poverty”, which is reduced to a materialistic neo-classical economic interest based on the calculation of gross domestic product (GDP). Years back, I conducted a study where I asked ordinary Ugandans for their understanding of “poverty”, which revealed a more complex understanding than simply economic deprivation. For most of them, lack of poverty was viewed from the historical-cultural lens (as do most people from the global majority); that is, the general wellbeing of an individual rooted in peaceful communitarian co-existence with no asymmetries of power.  In Africa, it is known as Ubuntu and the Latin American equivalent is vivir bien (or buen vivir). Both hold the meaning of “living well among ourselves”: you cannot live well, if others do not. It is about belonging to a community and being protected by it, as well as about living in harmony with nature and sustainably enjoying its bounty.

In brief, however well-intentioned you may be as an employee within the international development sector, the very framework and concepts that you are using are mismatched and inappropriate to lift anyone from conditions of “poverty” created by structural dispossession and deprivation. 

Q: How do governments respond to these corporations, and to what extent are its policies influenced by austerity measures imposed by the Bretton Woods institutions [the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank]?

A: As I explained in the webinar, with neoliberal globalisation and increased integration into the global financial system, the power of the state (particularly in organising the economic and social sectors) was usurped by neoliberal market forces. Such evolution weakened governments in the sense that they have very little control and privatisation is pretty much driving the national agenda. It is not uncommon for the Bretton Woods institutions and bilateral agencies to impose generic policies and laws (standardised for globalisation) on governments as a condition for them to access “aid” (read: loans). So, from the 1980s, global majority governments have been forced to partner with the private sector in a bid to “deepen development projects”. As it turns out, aligning public resources with private capital typically favours corporations, not the public. Add corruption, patronage, and authoritarianism into the mix and any meaningful development flies out of the window. 

Q: Are there significant grassroots movements in Uganda (or other contexts) resisting privatisation and corporate extraction?

As the saying goes… wherever there is oppression, there is resistance. And just as colonised people resisted the imperialisms of old, so do they continue to fight back against neo-colonial, extraction-based “development” spearheaded by transnational corporations and authoritarian states. It does not require rocket science to understand why the most naturally-resourced countries in global majority regions exhibit the slowest socio-economic growth and suffer the most armed conflicts. The so-called “resource curse” is directly linked to neoliberal extraction, exploitation, and manipulation. 

The strategies employed to challenge the hegemony of neoliberal globalisation range from academic theorisation, to sporadic protests, to social movement-driven push-backs. What South Feminist Futures is doing through its political education teach-in webinars (confronting hegemonies, reimagining development, and building a new knowledge base) is a good example of theorisation for praxis. The Amuru women’s protest against land grab that I talked about in northern Uganda represents sporadic protests. And a good example of a social movement-led protest is the Kenyan Green Belt Movement founded in 1977, which has planted millions of trees to conserve biodiversity, including areas that had been designated for commercial expansion.

On Feminist Internationalism & Resistance to Neoliberal Frameworks

Q: How can feminist internationalism address the co-optation and dominance of white feminism, particularly in issues affecting the global majority?

A: I take it that the reference to “white feminism” in this question may be read as “liberal feminism”. As I emphasised in the webinar, we need to develop a new critical decolonial consciousness in order to gain clarity and a deeper understanding of how liberal feminism capitulates to globalist and neoliberal ideologies and discourses. As part of Western “modernity”, liberal feminism glosses over structural power; it oversimplifies and flattens the complexities and contradictions inherent in patriarchy, racism, and cis-heteronormative inequalities. Co-optation can be avoided if we examine issues affecting the global majority through a more nuanced, non-Western, intersectional, and decolonial feminist lens. Hindsight is 20/20; African feminists have surely learnt that liberal feminism is grossly inadequate to deal with the adverse intersectional effects of neoliberal globalisation. As the Chicana feminist Gloria Anzaldúa implored women of colour decades ago, we must develop our own reality-based theories and avoid the ways that Western theories limit our thinking and practice.

Q: If we disengage [from neoliberal frameworks], how do we address the risk of far-right actors exploiting the resulting vacuum?

A: Nobody is talking about total disengagement. Once we have gained clarity on what it is that we must oppose and challenge, then the real hard work begins. Rather than being complacent in naturalising neoliberal frameworks, we should be thorns in the “belly of the beast” to try to mitigate some of the worst effects of structural violence and intersectional dehumanisation of global neoliberalism.

Q: In terms of strategy, to what extent do you believe neoliberal frameworks—such as the United Nations Climate Change Conference, the International Criminal Court, or the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, for example—are worth engaging with?

A: The intrinsic problem with all neoliberal frameworks is that they are underpinned by ideals and characterised by processes that are incapable of delivering substantive social justice and transformation.  All are based on the market logic motivated by: individualism (of social issues and ignoring the relational welfare of the community & nature); universalised standards (disregarding multiculturalism and nuances of social power relations); dualism (promoting either-or arguments to the exclusion of both-and); quantitative metrics (to assess accountability, value, and excellence); competitiveness, work overload, and unrealistic time pressures (increasing anxiety and stress levels); etc. Engaging with frameworks such as the International Chamber of Commerce and the Climate Change Conference with the expectation that somehow socio-economic transformation will come to our parts of the world, would be fruitless as their processes focus on corporate private interests at the cost of ordinary folks and the environment. In the same way, liberally-conceived human rights have proven to be grossly inadequate in securing liberties and justice for the oppressed and downtrodden.

Fruitful engagement with such frameworks would involve persistent punching holes in their diagnoses of and prescriptions for the problems that lead to underdevelopment. How to engage with such frameworks? Question and challenge the neoliberal foundation on which they stand; and expose their pseudo-scientific discursive acts, their false and manipulated statistics, the criminal acts and disguised profiteering by finance capital, etc.

Q: How can feminist civil society and progressive actors engage with the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the 2030 Agenda [the aim for the 17 SDGs to be fully met by 2030] in a way that challenges the neoliberal paradigm?

A: The fact that the Sustainable Development Goals are firmly anchored in liberalised “development” and Western modernity clearly shows that they legitimise the capitalist-patriarchal world order. Rather than challenge structural power relations, the SDGs reinforce them (for example, how women’s economic empowerment is circumvented to the neoliberal paradigm under the SDGs). In fact, SDGs help in globalising the dominant model of “development” which is based on inequality, pollution, and unsustainable use of resources.  

In my view, the 2030 Agenda rhetoric of “leaving no one behind” should be the starting point of engaging with the SDGs. For example, conduct legitimate participatory studies to gather data from grassroots women and other marginalised groups on their lived realities and their views on the existing “development” strategies. Increase their visibility and amplify their voices in an inclusive way (for example through the media). Challenge the duty-bearers to integrate these views into their strategies and hold them accountable to their core promises. Task the duty-bearers to address their ineffectual processes (such as the technocratic template of quantitative goals-targets indicators, or the neglect of intersectional oppressions) that can hardly deliver the “transformative potential” of the agenda. Expose the yawning gaps between these processes (e.g., monitoring progress) and what is actually on the ground at the grassroots level. Most of all, challenge the deeply political process that characterises the implementation of SDGs. In Uganda, for example, terms like “inclusion” and “diversity” have been banned from some official government policy documents based on homophobic and transphobic sentiments!

Q: Should resistance focus entirely on building alternative structures outside these [neoliberal] frameworks?

A: Absolutely. The “path of progress” that global majority countries need is not the materialist modernist one that was excavated through dominant Western ideologies, discourses, and frameworks. They are grossly inadequate to address the glaring geopolitical inequities. We need an alternative path, one that follows a totally different conceptual model of “development”, informed by the lived experiences and ways of knowing of our people. 

It will take a radical reimagining and fundamental reconstructions of concepts such as “wealth”, “poverty”, and “development”, and a sweeping transformation of the underlying political economy. Hence, it is crucial for global majority countries to collectively dismantle capitalist/colonial relations of production, including markets, extractive practices, export of natural resources and dependence on finance capital. These changes point to the monumental challenge that the global majority countries face in effectively shaking off the well-entrenched capitalist production relations and the colonial matrix.

On Hope

Q: What is the role of hope in sustaining resistance movements?

A: Religions sustain hope through promises of everlasting happiness in the afterlife. But what feminist internationalism needs to cultivate here is a much more critical and radical perspective of hope for engendering transformational change. Critical hope provides the agentic energy that fuels social movements to face the oppressive machinery of the state.

After one understands the operations and processes of neoliberal globalisation and its adverse effects on our world, one may not help but feel a sense of despondency and frustration… hopelessness about the future. The strength of systems like neoliberal capitalism lies in capturing mindsets through the colonial construction of what I call “The Big Lie”. Using institutions like education, religion, law, and the media, The Big Lie tries to convince the world that there is one universal way of being human, that the Western way of thinking, of being and of doing is the one-size-fits-all model and mandates universal conformity to its ways of understanding and interpreting the world. I think that freeing yourself from The Big Lie by decolonising your mind is really the first giant step towards optimism and redemption. Such optimism is anchored in the reality of your current unfavourable condition that you desire to change.

Q: How do we nurture and sustain hope as a vital resource for long-term change?

A: The political sustenance of critical hope is a vital resource for people to maintain a realistic perception of a better future and long-term change. As scholars like Paulo Freire and bell hooks suggested decades ago, such mental willpower can be cultivated through decolonised education and conscientisation; that is, to acquire a critical attitude that not only enables us to understand the reality of our oppression, but also the willpower to transform it. Processes of decolonising education and implementing disruptive pedagogies of hope already exist throughout non-Western countries, including China, South Africa, Australia, etc.

If you have always thought that the reason your country is “less developed” because your people somehow lack the qualities of Western modernisation, and then you get this Aha! Moment of conscious transformation… you are sitting on the pinnacle of hope. The more it becomes clear to us that it is the unjust integration and subjugation of our economies into the world capitalist system through globalisation that deepens our underdevelopment, the more likely it is for collective resistance to grow. It will also increase the likelihood for us to unlearn and relearn, to construct counter-narratives, to reconceptualise home-grown economic development models, and to engender transformative change. 

Interview edited by Talah Hassan

Talah lives in Beirut and works in feminist knowledge production, from research, writing, and editing to conceptualizing and coordinating creative projects and workshops. She is trained in medical anthropology, with specific interests in sexuality and sexual health, politicized notions of care, embodiment, and the medical / mental health industrial complex. She is skilled in qualitative research methodologies, especially oral history and research ethics, and in qualitative data analysis. She co-founded and organizes with a local queer mutual aid group in Lebanon, alongside other feminist, leftist groups when possible.