Feminist politics, drones and the fight against the ‘Femicide State’ in Mexico

Authors

  • Marcela Suarez Estrada Dr. Marcela Suarez Estrada Research Fellow Freie Universität Berlin Lateinamerika-Institut Rüdesheimer Str. 54-56 14197 Berlin, Germany http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2412-5214

Keywords:

drones, collective action, femicide, socio-digital networking, counter-culture strategies, Mexico

Abstract

This article analyzes the ways in which social collectives in Mexico have been developing socio-digital networks (combining socio-material agencies and technologies such as the Internet and unmanned aerial vehicles [UVAs] commonly known as drones) to open new spaces of political participation and intervention in public spaces to confront violence against women in Mexico. The article seeks to arrive at a better understanding of the role that digital technologies play in promoting new forms of digital engagements, political action, and counter-culture strategies. It considers both the Internet and drones as pivotal instruments in a larger network of technologies through which social collectives seek to mobilize knowledge, create awareness, and contest power in order to combat violence against women in Mexico. By drawing on feminist technoscience literature, the article seeks to provide new insights into the literature on digital politics and to go beyond the "digital divide" by showing the networked feminist strategies operating within political participation, developing new understandings of contemporary civilian disputes over both aerial and digital environments as public spaces.

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Author Biography

  • Marcela Suarez Estrada, Dr. Marcela Suarez Estrada Research Fellow Freie Universität Berlin Lateinamerika-Institut Rüdesheimer Str. 54-56 14197 Berlin, Germany

    Marcela Suarez is a Research Fellow at the Lateinamerika-Institut from the Freie Universität Berlin. She is specialized in the interdisciplinary field of Science and Technology Studies on topics of knowledge networks, dynamics of new technologies such as nanotechnology and artificial intelligence particularly drones as a socio-digital technology, the role of non-state actors in the science and technology policy and digital qualitative research. She was a guest editor of the journal CROLAR (Critical Review on Latin America Research) in the special issue of asymmetries of knowledge in Latin America.

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Published

20-11-2017

Issue

Section

Special Issue: Political objects: Prescriptions, injustices and promises of material agents

How to Cite

Feminist politics, drones and the fight against the ‘Femicide State’ in Mexico. (2017). International Journal of Gender, Science and Technology, 9(2), 99-117. https://genderandset.open.ac.uk/index.php/genderandset/article/view/502