How (not) to “Hollaback”: towards a transnational debate on the “Red Zora” and militant tactics in the feminist struggle against gender-based violence

Abstract

The Red Zora was formed in the mid-1970s as a subgroup within the militant leftist network Revolutionary Cells. Like other militant leftist groups in West Germany, the Red Zora deemed the use of physical force against property, and in some cases people, to be a necessary part of national and international political interventions. But the group had a radical feminist philosophy. Between 1977 and 1995, the Red Zora carried out dozens of attacks with an explicitly feminist agenda. This paper gives a brief overview of the activities of the Red Zora and of feminist responses to the group. Against the background of Germany’s fascist past and political violence in the FRG, feminist activists in Germany were understandably reluctant to discuss ideas and activities that could associate the women’s movement with left-wing “terrorism.” This article shows that “Hollaback!,” #aufschrei and other recent campaigns by feminist activists in Germany have reinforced rather than challenged the feminist silence on the Red Zora. While German feminists have only begun to document the history of the group, activists in other countries show that one does not have to agree with the tactics of the Red Zora to productively engage with the activities of this group.     

Food Self-Provisioning in Czechia: Beyond Coping Strategy of the Poor: A Response to Alber and Kohler’s ‘Informal Food Production in the Enlarged European Union’ (2008)

Food systems are of increasing interest in both research and policy communities. Surveys of post-socialist countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) show high rates of food self-provisioning. These practices have been explained in terms of being ‘coping strategies of the poor’. Alber and Kohler’s ‘Informal Food Production in the Enlarged European Union’ (2008) offers a prominent account of this argument, supported by quantitative data. However, evidence from our case study of food self-provisioning in one CEE state–Czechia–contradicts their findings. Newly commissioned survey data, as well as a fresh look at the data they were working from, demonstrate that rather than being motivated by poverty, these widespread practices serve as a hobby and as a way of accessing ‘healthy food’. With food self-provisioning becoming an increasingly prominent subject in advanced industrial countries, in terms of both health and environmental policy, we propose that much greater care is taken in researching and interpreting the reasons for differences in food systems. Our findings are that environmentally sustainable and healthy self-provisioning in Czechia is motivated by a range of reasons, and practised by a significant proportion of the population across all social groups. This conclusion questions linear narratives of progress that figure ‘western’ practices as advanced or complete or automatically desirable, and contributes in a modest way to a decentring of narratives of progress.