As announced here, from August 23rd to 27th, 2013 a second round of the Sexuality Research and Political Change Training Program was held in Buenos Aires immediately before the 9th IASSCS Conference. Sixteen researchers and activists from countries as diverse as Argentina, Brazil, Chile, China, Ecuador, India, Mexico, Nigeria, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Kyrgyzstan, Ukraine, and the United States composed the new group of participants. Richard Parker, Sonia Corrêa, and Rosalind Petchesky coordinated the Buenos Aires Course in collaboration with Rafael de la Dehesa, Professor of Political Science at CUNY, who is a close collaborator of SPW. As in Rio the workshop also counted with the collaboration of a number of resource persons, few of whom have also been part of the Rio program: Gloria Careaga, who is a professor at UNAM in Mexico, co-secretary general of ILGA and also a member of SPW Steering Committee; Mauro Cabral, Argentinean philosopher and trans activists, co – director of GATE (Global Action for Trans Equality), Vivek Divan, Indian lawyer who is a policy officer for HIV/AIDS at UNDP, Akshay Khana, Indian professor and researcher at the Institute for Development Studies from Sussex University in the UK and of Mario Pecheny and Ernesto Meccia, professors of political science and sociology, respectively, at the University of Buenos Aires.
Participants were selected from both the applications received by SPW in 2012 and the list of researchers selected as presenters for the IASSCS conference. As in Rio the workshop combined lectures and horizontal sharing amongst participants. The program included sessions devoted to theoretical and methodological discussion around the intersections between sexuality and change as well as few analyses and learning from relevant frontlines of change in sexual politics. As to follow suggestions made by participants of the Rio training the Buenos Aires course has given greater emphasis was given to theoretical and methodological dimensions. Once again the frontline cases of the Battle against Article 377 of the Indian Penal Code and the approval of the Argentinean Gender Identity Law were closely examined. But this time the political struggles around abortion in the US and Mexico — and their losses, repetitions and gains – were also subject to scrutiny. One session was devoted to the examination of how Argentinean institutions have absorbed or reacted to the recent legal and cultural transformations of the country’s sexual politics landscapes.
In the course of the next few weeks further insights on the workshop process and outcomes will be posted here!
>> Check the full album of workshop pictures in our fan page on Facebook!
>> Read Kate Hawkins’s article in which she brings some reflections about the Conference.