International Sociology and International Sociology Reviews

‘Discourses on gender’ is our Topic of the Month for November 2024. On this topic, enjoy this month Free Access to this article by José Manuel Morán Faúndes (Universidad Nacional de Cordoba, Argentina) published in International Sociology, The geopolitics of moral panic: The influence of Argentinian neo-conservatism in the genesis of the discourse of ‘gender ideology’. Read on to know more about the author’s trajectory and work.

José Manuel Morán Faúndes

Why are you working on this topic? Could you share an experience, a fact or a person who made you get engage on that research?

J.M. Morán Faúndes: I have been working on issues related to neoconservative activism and opposition to sexual and reproductive rights in Latin America for about 15 years. I was originally interested in the way in which different religious sectors, mainly Catholics and Evangelicals, managed to articulate and generate alliances around the defense of a conservative sexual order, despite the differences and tensions that historically existed between them. Today, I am interested in analyzing the changes that activism in opposition to sexual and reproductive rights has undergone. Today, it is not only religious sectors that are mobilizing for this agenda. New ultra-right political parties, NGOs that present themselves as representatives of civil society, influencers who mobilize neoconservative and extremist discourses on social networks, etc., are also doing so. I am also interested in understanding how neoconservative activisms went from being movements articulated and mobilized mainly around religious ideas, to a secular and anti-progressive movement where moral ideas of religious origin converge with extreme right-wing agendas that seek to institute not only a moral order, but also an economic and political one.

What would you emphasize about your academic trajectory? Can you highlight which have been your academic positions, universities, awards, departments and research centers please?

J.M. Morán Faúndes: I am currently a researcher at the Scientific and Technical Research Council of Argentina (CONICET), and professor of Legal Sociology at the Law School of the National University of Córdoba. I am also a researcher at the Sexual and Reproductive Rights Program of the National University of Córdoba.