LGBTI organizations navigating imperial contexts: the Kaleidoscope Trust, the Commonwealth and the need for a decolonizing, intersectional politics

Waites, M. (2017) LGBTI organizations navigating imperial contexts: the Kaleidoscope Trust, the Commonwealth and the need for a decolonizing, intersectional politics. Sociological Review, 65(4), pp. 644-662. (doi: 10.1111/1467-954X.12424)

Abstract

This article presents the first sustained social analysis of the Kaleidoscope Trust, the UK's leading social movement organization on LGBTI issues internationally, and its engagement with the Commonwealth – particularly through forming The Commonwealth Equality Network, comprising national NGOs. A contribution is made to sociological and critical analysis of transnational LGBTI movements, through argument for a new analytical framework combining the sociology of human rights with a decolonizing, intersectional approach – beyond the division between optimistic theories extending Western LGBTI progressive politics, or pessimistic postcolonial queer analyses. To investigate organizations' strategies leading to the Malta 2015 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, the research utilizes sources of data including event observation and website sources, initiating analysis of online environments. The analysis deploys social movement theory to examine how and why Kaleidoscope selected the Commonwealth as a political opportunity structure to engage through strategies of framing and articulation of human rights. Invention of The Commonwealth Equality Network, shaped online and offline by imperial relations between core and periphery, is analysed via transnational public sphere and critical theories and argued to indicate a significant restructuring of global queer politics. It is contended that a consistently decolonizing and intersectional articulation of human rights is needed.

• Item Type: Articles
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Waites, Dr Matthew
• Authors: Waites, M.
• College/School: College of Social Sciences > School of Social and Political Sciences > Sociology Anthropology and Applied Social Sciences
• Journal Name: Sociological Review
• Publisher: SAGE Publications
• ISSN: 0038-0261
• ISSN (Online): 1467-954X
• Published Online: 25 January 2017
• Copyright Holders: Copyright © 2017 SAGE Publications
• First Published: First published in Sociological Review 65(4): 644-662
• Publisher Policy: Reproduced in accordance with the copyright policy of the publisher