Bringing Yourself with You: Learning from Older Women’s Activism in Postcolonial Ireland
Author: Paula M Flanagan, pmflan@hotmail.com
Department: Education and Society, School of Humanities, Social Sciences and Law
University: University of Dundee, United Kingdom
Supervisor: Dr Fernando Fernades
Year of completion: 2023
Language of dissertation: English
Keywords:
Feminism and ageing
, Activism
, Community Development
, Postcolonial Ireland
Areas of Research:
Community Research
, Political Sociology
, Social Movements, Collective Action and Social Change
Abstract
This inquiry had several aims, which developed and evolved as the research progressed. The initial aim was to create a research project that focused on working alongside a group of women who, in defining themselves as older activists, offered articulations on their activism that came to be foundational to the creation of a critical feminist collaborative process. Through this process a framework was created that was relevant, not only to the ongoing work of a feminist community development organisation, namely the Women’s Centre, but aided the Centre to progress discussions relevant to the future of the rural border area where it is situated. In getting to the heart of this inquiry, the context – a postcolonial, patriarchal, and neoliberal Ireland – is also fully explored as the historical, social and cultural backdrop to the research with a feminist theory lens. As I continued working alongside this group of activist women, a further aim developed where key insights into the value of their activism offered a way through the crisis for community development practices in Ireland. This crisis, while not unique to Ireland, is now acknowledged as deeply embedded into Ireland’s particular neoliberal landscape. A landscape where national partnerships and professionalisation, key aspects to a new public management process, have relied upon a de-politicised community and voluntary sector. Taking these aims together, a critical feminist epistemology and methodology was employed using face-to-face interviews and two collaborative discussion groups. These methods resulted in both the creation of individual narrative portraits and a critical feminist framework that recognised the women’s lived experiences and ongoing critical values foundational to their activism. These values are offered as a means of re-politicising community development practices. Threaded throughout this thesis, is my ongoing reflexivity, an approach and practice I came to value not only in recognising my position as a community worker and activist, but as a critical feminist researcher bedding in the tools and understandings of her trade to capture and renew my own learning.
