Activist Localities in the Queer South

Abstract

Cultural anthropologist Arjun Appadurai’s theories about place link together various surrounding contexts: technology, media, economics, and ideology. He sees locality as a “complex phenomenological quality” (1996, p. 178) that we should not look at as context, but instead focus on how contexts define the boundaries of localities. Appadurai’s theories help to link global and local by taking into account the various surrounding contexts: technology, media, economics, and ideology. This paper uses Appadurai’s theory as a basis to explore how localities emerge in grassroots queer activist practices that combine offline and online tactics in their organizing. I use participant observation, in-depth interviews, and content analysis to gain an understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of networked locality created by LGBTQ activists physically located in Southern United States.