We are delighted to announce that the winner of this year’s FTGS book prize is Professor Rauna Kuokkanen for Restructuring relations: Indigenous self-determination, governance, and gender, OUP, 2019. The book conceptualises indigenous self-determination as a foundational value, in particular its ability to restructure relations of power – the author couples that contention with an investigation of gender regimes within indigenous self-government institutions. Moreover, Kuokkanen investigates the links between indigenous self determination and gender violence against indigenous women, emerging from statist structures and interpersonal physical and sexual violence. The study is based on detailed and extensive fieldwork and conversations with indigenous women in Canada, Greenland, and Sápmi. Kuokkanen draws upon indigenous and feminist political and legal theory, which enables her to identify new forms of self-determination. Through interviews across the aforementioned three indigenous spaces the author proposes that indigenous self determination is a foundational value, closely linked to individual integrity (freedom from bodily harm and violence) and the integrity of the land.
Special mention to runner-up Joanna Allan for her book Silenced Resistance: Women, Dictatorships and Genderwashing in Western Sahara and Equatorial Guinea, The University of Wisconsin Press, 2019. The book provides a persuasive study of everyday forms of resistance and the significance of providing voice to those who are silenced as well as uncovering unrecognized practices. The employment of scholarship on everyday resistance and conceptions of hegemony provide theoretical rigour to the argument. The book rests on extensive fieldwork and pronounced theoretical grounding.
Many congratulations to our winner and runner-up, Raunna and Joanna!
From FTGS book prize committee 2020-21: Annika Bergman Rosamond (Chair), Amya Agarwal, Catherine Goetze and Itiziar Mugica
Gendering World Politics 