Intersecting “Race and Sexual Diversity” in Transnational Advocacy: Local and Global Opportunities and Constraints in Latin American and Caribbean Activism

• Applicant: Vinicius Pedro Correia Zanoli, Ph.D.
• Subject Area: African, American and Oceania Studies ; Social and Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology
• Term: from 2020 to 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 447662871

• Final Report Year: 2023

Final Report Abstract

This research investigated the usage of “intersectionality” in advocacy within transnational organisations, with particular attention to the production of an intersectional frame that encompasses, (re)produces, and disputes meanings of “intersectionality.” It analysed a transnational network of activists and organisations that orient their political action by an intersectional approach, the Afro-LGBTI Network of Latin America and the Caribbean. The investigation focused on the political trajectories of the activists that idealised the Network and the national organisations of which they are members, their advocacy in the Organization of the American States (OAS) and their actions in their home country. The focus was on understanding the activists’ perceptions about intersectionality, the use of this notion by advocates in an international context and the impacts of an intersectional frame in transnational political action. The research contributes to social movement studies and debates on intersectionality by understanding why and how activists frame intersectionality in transnational advocacy to achieve their goals and form alliances with other movements. Additionally, the research wanted to understand how interpretations and uses of intersectionality differ at the individual, collective (local), and transnational levels and how the meanings are negotiated and (re)produced within global human rights organisations and networks. The qualitative methodology comprised in-depth biographical interviews (online and offline), digital ethnography, offline participant observation and documentary analysis.

Publications

• Cultura, política, sexualidade e gênero na América Latina. Autografia: Rio de Janeiro.
  Freitas, E., Pinto, R. & Zanoli, V.
  
• ‘Ativismos LGBT em Campinas (SP): Fragmentos de uma trajetória’, in E. Freitas, R. Pinto, and V. Zanoli (eds.). Cultura, política, sexualidade e gênero na América Latina. Autografia: Rio de Janeiro: 67-96. ISBN: 978-85-518-4873-9
  Zanoli, V.
  
• ‘Cultura, política, sexualidade e gênero na América Latina’, in E. Frietas, R. Pinto & V. Zanoli (eds.). Cultura, política, sexualidade e gênero na América Latina. Autografia: Rio de Janeiro. ISBN: 978-85-518-4873-9
  Freitas, E., Pinto, R. & Zanoli, V.