At the Corner of Policy and People: Engaging with the Transnational Activity System of Women’s Rights in Germany and Senegal

Abstract

This project utilizes ethnographic research methods (interviews and participant observation) and generic activity system analysis to explore transnational women’s advocacy in two countries (Germany and Senegal). By interviewing the individuals who conduct this work on a daily basis, this study will illuminate how women mediate discursive policy and public action in order enact social change in localized contexts. These organizations are sites of transnational feminist praxis that demonstrate the public work of rhetoric. I argue that rhetorical scholars must expand their research initiatives into transnational discourse communities and the social practices involved in those communities. My project aims to explore the diverse strategies involved in transnational women’s advocacy work and the possibilities of negotiating multiple constraints on that work. This study seeks to understand the material capacity of transnational rhetorical practices to alter or transform the rhetorical and social contexts of the members of advocacy organizations.