Transnational Contact Zones
Rethinking Gender and Sexuality in Africa and India
Vasu Reddy editor Ahonaa Roy editor
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Taylor & Francis Ltd
Publishing:28th Nov '25
£39.99
This title is due to be published on 28th November, and will be despatched as soon as possible.
This book explores gender, sexualities, labour, migration and coloniality in Africa and India in an attempt towards transnational understanding and ways of rethinking gender. It scrutinises the nuances, textures, taxonomies and architectures of gender and sexuality in the mediated encounters between the two regions.
Amidst the current climate of great global fragmentation and geopolitical conflict, this volume brings new readings from Africa and India to surface points of contact and departure. As a counter to ruptures and alienation that often characterize geopolitical borders, this book advances new epistemologies from both the internal and external borders of the modern (and colonial) world-system. In fresh and incisive essays, the volume offers ideas to build solidarity and collaboration through the lens of ‘contact zones’ that open up prospects for transcultural dialogues across continents, contexts, regions, nations, identities and disciplines. It contributes to transnational understanding, highlights complex diversity and resists the idea of a single, unified set of experiences of gender and sexuality in non-Western contexts. Rather than representing mainstream trends, it advances the idea of interracial solidarity that is linked to the revolutionary momentum of confronting imperialism as a consciousness that reifies oppressive domains of thinking.
The book will be of interest to scholars of gender and sexuality, anthropology, cultural theory, sociology, human geography, development studies, cultural and media studies, film studies, linguistics, curriculum studies, political science, land and migration studies. It will also be of interest to activists working in these domains.
‘Combining interdisciplinary and deterritorialised methods, contributors to this volume open up new ways of thinking about sexuality and gender through multiple forms of hierarchies such as race, class and caste. The volume is a unique contribution to the re-fashioning of knowledge production through discussions that yoke the politics of intimacies with that of sociality.’
—Sanjay Srivastava, Distinguished Research Professor, Department of Anthropology and Sociology, SOAS University of London, UK
‘Combining interdisciplinary and deterritorialised methods, contributors to this volume open up new ways of thinking about sexuality and gender through multiple forms of hierarchies such as race, class and caste. The volume is a unique contribution to the re-fashioning of knowledge production through discussions that yoke the politics of intimacies with that of sociality.’
—Sanjay Srivastava, Distinguished Research Professor, Department of Anthropology and Sociology, SOAS University of London, UK
'Audacious in scope, grounded in urgent politics, Transnational Contact Zones is a powerful collaborative volume traversing the terrains of diaspora, rurality, migration, caste, and queerness, drawing methodological and analytical practices from both Africa and India to imagine new grammars of border thinking, gender and sexuality. What emerges is a textured conversation that foregrounds the lived realities of queer and trans communities - whether in the rural Eastern Cape, the diasporic kitchens of South African Indians, or the intimate solidarities of hijra life in India. The essays in this volume do not simply theorize the South, they dwell within its contradictions, respond to its urgencies, and imagine new transnational possibilities.
An indispensable decolonial resource for those committed to critical thinking across and beyond borders.'
—Zethu Matebeni, Independent Scholar, Nelson Mandela University
'What theories of gender and sexuality are made possible through research centered in the ideas of people in the Global South? Moving across continents, Transnational Contact Zones is a vital contribution to thinking about the geopolitics of gender and sexuality between the intimately linked worlds of South Asia and the African continent. Moving through and beyond borders, this powerful collection offers insights into novel transnational research on the visions of women, queer, and trans studies. The volume explores wide-ranging issues, including rural sexualities, gender and food, land contestations, the politics of embodiment, human rights, and the gendered dimensions of international relations in India and Africa.'
—Durba Mitra,author of Indian Sex Life (2020) and The Future That Was (2026), Richard B. Wolf Associate Professor of Women, Gender, and Sexuality, Harvard University
ISBN: 9781041081302
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
204 pages