“IT’S NOT FAIR!”: Discursive Politics, Social Justice and Feminist Praxis SWS Feminist Lecture NANCY A. NAPLES University of Connecticut, USA In developing strategies to contest the systematic efforts to dismantle progressive social and economic policies generated through decades of activism, it is important to under- stand how discursive frames that were significant in social justice organizing in the United States have come to be subjugated, delegitimated, or co-opted, and have lost their power for social justice activism. Using a materialist feminist approach, I first examine the pro- cesses of subjugation and explore how movement actors choose frames within bounded discursive fields that become institutionalized, but lose critical feminist or progressive intent. I then discuss the delegitimation of a citizen’s right to government support and the co-optation of progressive movement frames by conservative groups. I conclude with a materialist feminist call to attend to the multiple institutions (i.e., the state, law, market, and media) that contour the discursive field and the everyday practices of social movement organizations. This is a call for collective research, since no single case can attend to all of these dimensions and processes. Keywords: sexuality; politics/state/nationalism; class/stratification; collective behavior/ social movements; community; race; class; gender; research methodology; qualitative; historical/comparative AUTHOR’S NOTE: Many thanks to the Sociologists for Women in Society for the honor of serving as Feminist Lecturer. Thanks to Mary Bernstein for many helpful discussions and inspired feedback on previous versions of the article. My gratitude to Joya Misra, Judy Rohrer, and Cathy Schlund-Vials for their helpful comments and Cameron Kiely Froude for her valuable editorial assistance. I would also like to thank Clare Weber and Cynthia Anderson for hosting my SWS Feminist Lecture. Special thanks to the students at California State University–Dominquez Hills and Ohio University for their warm recep- tion and enthusiastic response to my campus visit. Finally, thanks to Myra Marx Ferree for her ongoing support and insightful analyses of feminist praxis. Correspondence con- cerning this article should be addressed to Nancy Naples, University of Connecticut, 354 Mansfield Road, Storrs, CT 06269-2181, USA; e-mail: nancy.naples@uconn.edu. GENDER & SOCIETY, Vol. 27 No. 2, April 2013 133-157 DOI: 10.1177/0891243212472390 © 2013 by The Author(s) 133 at UNIV OF CONNECTICUT on September 7, 2015 gas.sagepub.com Downloaded from