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The introductory chapter presents the two main arguments of the study. First, as a result of both the Trujillo and Balaguer regimes’ efforts to uphold the Dominican Republic’s international reputation as stable and project an image of a progressive and progressing nation, women found and expanded spaces of global and transnational activism that advanced basic political rights and paved the way for the late 20^th century feminist movement. Second, while the paternal constructs of rule upheld by Trujillo and Balaguer did advance women’s roles in certain arenas of society and politics, they also paradoxically enforced a superstructure that maintained a traditional understanding of women’s innate abilities as maternal public figures. It elaborates on the historiographies of Dominican women’s history, transnational feminism, and dictatorship, and lays out the structure of the subsequent chapters.

This chapter discusses transnational lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) activism at the international European level and on the ground in Central and Eastern Europe. LGBT activists have imagined a new sociopolitical European community, challenging the frontiers of exclusion and the modes of belonging of the liberal nation-state. These activists are not simply extending a liberal notion of rights to an unrecognized group. By imagining Europe as, in part, defined by the inclusion of LGBT people, they are redefining “rights” and forms of citizenship that transcend the bounded nation-state. LGBT activism in Central and Eastern Europe, then, contributes to rebuilding the meaning of Europe from the ground up. Yet, borders remain when these efforts created new hierarchies among activists and paradoxically reinforced a distinction between the “modern West” and the “homophobic East.” This underscores the importance of bringing together the analysis of internal and external dynamics of border construction and resistance to develop more comprehensive understandings of material and symbolic border politics.

The introduction asks how individuals and communities respond to transnational activism that pits international norms against local norms. It highlights the theoretical significance of research on norm change among nonstate actors and the substantive significance of research on the practices of female genital mutilation (FGM) and early marriage. In addition, this chapter provides an overview of the argument and describes and justifies the research design (including issue selection, case selection, and research methods). It defines keyterms—norms, FGM, early marriage—and discusses conceptual and practical issues associated with these definitions. It further describes variation in the practice of FGM and early marriage worldwide, as well as the evolution of transnational activism against them.

This chapter considers how the worldly orientation of Du Bois's political thought might inform political theory as it turns toward the global. The central text in this case is an unlikely one. While scholars increasingly appreciate the extent of Du Bois's transnational activism and writing in the mid-20th century, this chapter concentrates on The Suppression of the African Slave-Trade the United States of America, 1638–1870 (1896). It argues that Du Bois's first book, although thoroughly American, nonetheless demonstrates the impossibility of constructing a theory of democracy that restricts its concern within US boundaries. Using a contrast between “black world” and “white nation,” it suggests how a close reading of Suppression in conjunction with Martha Nussbaum's For Love of Country reveals the unacknowledged racial politics of recent appeals to cosmopolitanism, on the one hand, and civic nationalism, on the other.

This chapter examines black women health activists’ contributions to an intersectional reconceptualization of health that links gender health equity and racial health equity. The analysis explores the development of black women’s organizations in Brazil and their advocacy and policy work related to reproductive health, female sterilization, and HIV/AIDS. The analysis also focuses on black women’s local, national, and transnational activism, particularly related to the 2001 World Conference Against Racism. The chapter argues that black women’s efforts to promote the development of non-universalist health policies underscores the importance of activists, scholars, and the Brazilian state reconceptualizing health disparities in ways that acknowledge the interrelationship among racial, gender, and socio-economic inequalities.

This chapter explores the competing and often overlapping narratives that have been used to interpret the murders of women. At the same time, these narratives expose the subject that is constructed within each account. The chapter begins with a description of the killings and violence against women in Ciudad Juárez and the media attention it garnered. It looks at the state's responses to gender violence, which were negation and disaggregation, and other accounts of feminicide. It demonstrates how the discourse of globalism elides the many structures of oppression in the lives of women and provides an explanation for the killings. Cultural representations that have been informed by the discourse of globalism, transnational activism on the border, and a discussion of Señorita extraviada, a film by Lourdes Portillo about the feminicide in Ciudad Juárez, are included.

The conclusion finds that a comparative study of transnational activism underlines the importance of justice claims to global environmental governance. It links debates on international environmental justice with literature on environmental regime effectiveness and neoliberal ecological economics. When networks generated a consensus, socialized with policymakers and invoked norms consonant with local justice, they were more likely to persuade policymakers. Absent one or more of the variables, conservation projects were implemented poorly, or simply rejected by states. Therefore, issues of fairness or justice go to the heart of effective management. They reflect the important normative questions behind biodiversity management, including what biodiversity consists of, what it is being managed for, and for whom it is being conserved.

This chapter lays out a new theoretical framework for understanding how transnational activism and the specific strategies of international organizations might translate into various degrees of policy development or domestic responsiveness to social issues, particularly violence against women. This framework places a heavy emphasis on the distinction between reform as policy rhetoric and reform as changes in practices. It outlines different patterns of interaction between international and domestic actors that may emerge based on variations in domestic circumstances (i.e., women’s movements, institutional advocates, and government responsiveness). It also discusses the different types of strategies that international organizations might employ to mitigate obstacles or shortcomings at the local level to improve domestic responsiveness.

This chapter examines how India's activists employed transnational mobilization to protest Coca-Cola's exploitation of groundwater in the production of bottled drinks amid a growing national crisis of water scarcity in the country. It describes this transnational activism as a powerful critique of corporate globalization and Indian neoliberalism as well as a stark reminder of the dispossession of the resources of the rural poor for consumption by those on the other side of a widening economic divide in India's new freer marketplace. It also considers how the activists' struggle for “water for life, not for profit,” launched via a network of disparate sites of protest against Coca-Cola and distant allies, transformed the symbolic capital of the company's heavily branded products and its corporate world system more generally.

This chapter focuses on the transnational nature of the women's movements. “Transnational” here is referred to as the movement of ideas about women's status and rights across national borders, as well as the across-the-border organizing between women activists from different countries. The chapter argues that some activists' decisions to locate themselves in the interstices has proved to be an effective strategy. Straddling national borders allows them to have a continuing dialogue with feminists of all color, injecting Philippine perspectives into international women's movements, and in so doing affecting international feminist debates and international activism on behalf of all women. Transnational activism also has an impact on the perspectives of Filipina activists who have developed an international outlook.

The epilogue concludes with an assessment of the gendered politics of the final three years of Balaguer’s rule within the context of both the increasing attention to global feminism and the democratic transition to President Antonio Guzman in 1978. It looks specifically at the event surrounding the International Women’s Year (1975) and the ways the women in the opposition pushed forth a more active and gender-conscious agenda. Although the shifts were subtle, a clear difference in tactics manifested itself across the political spectrum as women advocated a more aggressive and cross-partisan platform of feminist rights. Through these transformations the grounding of modern Dominican feminism is then visibly linked to its early predecessors of the 1920s pre-Trujillo period while also embedded in the fifty years of engagement with authoritarianism and transnational activism.

Chapter 5 explores how brownness appeared in Harlem Renaissance fiction as an index of growing sentiments around transnational activism. Focusing on W. E. B. DuBois’s novel, Dark Princess: A Romance (1928), this chapter analyzes the novel’s narrative device of brownness with a focus on the representation of an Asian Indian princess as the main female protagonist and love interest of the African American male hero. This chapter also explores DuBois’s intellectualizing on the “race concept”; it highlights the political, social, and legal shifts in understandings of race while considering how these meanings shaped views of New Negro womanhood.

This chapter deals with the issue of why scholars have been such prominent actors in so many movements in history, as well as how their positions in society affect their roles and contributions to social movements. It presents a study on transnational activism in an effort to translate models of activism from the global political arena into a local context. The choice to identify as a scholar activist is part of a larger collective process of strategizing on how to better familiarize oneself with movements. Considering the dynamic process of learning, articulating, and adapting strategies, social movement scholars should not be asking whether or not engaged scholarship is a legitimate practice. Instead, scholars should ask the question of whether understanding, analyzing, and contributing to discourses about strategy is attainable without research designs.

This chapter traces the relational position of civil society through the history of three key organizations: Baikal Environmental Wave, the Tahoe-Baikal Institute, and the Great Baikal Trail. The development of local environmental civil society around Lake Baikal in the post-Soviet years was conditioned by two important changes. First, the Soviet collapse opened the door to global interaction. Local civil society was inextricably linked to global networks and forces that shaped the course of its development. Second, civil society’s strength and independence shifted along with the status of other power holders in the larger field. In the 1990s, the economy and the state were in crisis and collapse. Civil society was then most free to define itself and take aggressive positions. As the two opposing powers recover in the 2000s, accommodation to economic and political power is preferred.

Villagers around Lake Baikal are known for their doubt, suspicion, apathy, and resistance to change. When activists from Baikal Environmental Wave seek to engage them, they put on a display of disinterest and non-involvement. But when the same organization conducts a series of webinars between these villagers and activists at Lake Tahoe in California, the people become increasingly enthusiastic and involved. This suggests that transnational activism can help break down mental barriers that come from domestic conditions that inspire fatalism. “Defamiliarization” helps locals see their own circumstances in a new light. However, expectations can dampen the experience of defamiliarization, and insincerity in collaboration can result in disappointment and disillusionment. Nevertheless, through defamiliarization, globalization can help augment civil society’s power, which is directly drawn from voluntary public engagement.