Critical Reflection of Section Three

Conversing with Dutt’s and Dutta’s chapters suggests that activist scholars in psychology seeking to accompany women as they construct more just and inclusive communities might benefit from engaging dialogically with critical transitional justice, toward articulating and performing a more holistic “bottom-up” vernacularization of intersectional human rights. Within distinctive geographic and historical sites with contrasting possibilities vis-à-vis women’s protagonism and leadership, Dutt and Dutta share a commitment to engage with local women to document and understand multiple experiences of violence and violation in their everyday lives. Both authors collaborate with women in rural and/or remote areas of Nicaragua (Dutt) and India (Dutta) where women’s lived experiences are constrained by racialized and gendered economic and political structures that frequently exclude them from accessing their basic needs. Both authors help us to discern distinctive possibilities of women’s political engagement through the lens of civic participation (Dutt) and protagonism in the everyday (Dutta).