Making,contesting and governing the local: Women’s labour and the local state

Abstract

This article explores how women’s activism contributed to the generation of local capacities and resources (‘making’ the local); how women attempted to subvert or co-opt emerging patterns of local governance (‘contesting’ the local); and engaged with strategies of governing and managing local communities (‘governing’ the local). In elaborating these themes the article draws on empirical research that suggests how these practices succeeded each other within different political-governmental regimes, but also how they were entangled in individual working lives. The article then draws on the analysis to show how it might speak to the present regime of cuts, retrenchment and the closure of many of the spaces of power that previous generations of women had forged.