Gendered & postmodern political economy

International Political Economy Click to edit Master subtitle style Prof. Amado Mendoza, Jr., Ph.D. UP Political Science Department

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The critical theory family

Feminism & postmodernism belongs to the broader critical theory family Critical theory spans through the arts and sciences Feminism/gender theory draw from political practice of womens movements Postmodernism is a movement in a different sense; the discourse is 2/20/13 political

(BIG) caveat

Like other isms,

no single or monolithic feminism/gendered theory no single postmodernism

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some authors refused to be called postmodernists

Feminist and gender theory

Gender, not sex, is the key concept Gender as a socially constructed identity/role Masculine and feminine roles (not exhaustive) Feminine men and masculine women (e.g. Margaret Iron Lady Thatcher) Patriarchy: dominance of the

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Gendered political economy

Distinguishes between production and social reproduction Both are necessary processes in capitalism

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Social reproduction

biological reproduction provision and maintenance of labour social provisioning, including care of children and elderly unpaid production in the home reproduction of culture, ideology and values provision of sexual services
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Other social reproduction activities

Informal economic activities Subsistence ALL SOCIAL REPRODUCTIVE ACTIVITIES ARE NOT COUNTED IN 2/20/13

Social reproduction & capitalist production

Continuum from the household to the capitalist workplace Unpaid social reproductive activities produce and reproduce male workers Capitalist workers pay workers at wages lower than what is need to produce them
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Consequences

Feminists want socially productive activities (SPAs) recognized To be given monetary value? If recognized in this manner, arent SPAs commodified? Isnt commodification against feminist philosphical values? Isnt commodification masculine?
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Possible resolutions

Housewife wage ala kasambahay law Household wage Raise male worker wage (reinforces patriarchy)

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Females in the capitalist workforce

Females join the workforce as supplementary breadwinners Discrimination wages, firing, and hiring, etc. Female workers are docile

Will not organize/join labour unions Will not participate in strikes

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Female workers still do household

Hierarchies within capitalism

Realism: international hierarchy within anarchy Dependency/world system: international hierarchy Marxism: class hierarchy

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Hierarchies within capitalism

Feminism: patriarchy Neo-Gramscian: hegemony Postcolonialism: race, class, and postcolonial status

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No (theoretical) hierarchies?

Post-structuralism:

No single meaning of text Meaning ascribed by author is not superior Truth is determined by power relations

Postmodernism:

Incredulity (mistrust, scepticism, disbelief) of grand narratives, of the 2/20/13

Postmodernism

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What is Postmodernism?

Postmodernism became one of the most influential and controversial theories and trends in the humanities, the social sciences, and the applied 2/20/13 science

Modern vs. Postmodern

Postmodern: Modern: Historicity, socio-cultural Linear progress in history locatedness of moments in history Boundaries, social class, race and gender Critical study of class, race, and gender Formality, emphasis on authority Intertextuality, self-reflexivity, montage, pastiche Scientific rationality Signs, image, seeking real essences Essentialism, reproductive social order Local accounts Grand narrative Description Prescription Geneaological, Archaeological Normative

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Difficulties of defining postmodernism

Post-modernism has many interpretations and no single definition is adequate. Different disciplines have participated in the postmodernist movement in varying ways in architecture, traditional limits have become indistinguishable, so that what is commonly on the outside of a building is placed within, and vice versa. In literature, writers adopt a self-conscious intertextuality sometimes verging on pastiche, which denies the formal propriety of 2/20/13

Postmodernism & science

Postmodernity (involves) the end of an overarching belief in scientific rationality and a unitary theory of progress, the replacement of empiricist theories of representation and truth, and increased emphasis on the importance of the unconscious, on freefloating signs and images, and a plurality of viewpoints a shift from a `productive' to a reproductive social order, in which simulations and models -- and more generally, signs -increasingly constitute the world, so that any distinction between the appearance and the real is lost.
(David Jary and Julia Jary. eds. The Harper Collins Dictionary of Sociology. New York: HarperCollins, 1991. 375-6)
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Rejection of essentialism
Among the characteristic gestures of postmodernist thinking is a refusal of the totalizing or essentialist tendencies of earlier theoretical systems, especially classic Marxism, with their claims to referential truth, scientificity, and belief in progress.

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The PoMo way

Postmodernism, on the contrary, is committed to modes of thinking and representation which emphasize fragmentations, discontinuities and incommensurable aspects of a given object, from intellectual systems to architecture

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Postmodern treatments of medicine & incarceration

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Samples of postmodern IR

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Postmodern IR

Power & knowledge in study of IR Postmodern textual approaches/strategies Postmodernism & the state Rethinking what is political 2/20/13

Power & knowledge in IR

Modern

Knowledge is immune from influence of power

Postmodern

Knowledge production is normative and political Sovereignty is constitutive of man and state

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Genealogy

Style of historical thought which exposes and registers significance of power-knowledge relations Concerned with writing counterhistories w/c expose cases of exclusion w/c make possible teleological stories From a genealogical perspective, there is not one single grand history but many interwoven histories varied 2/20/13 in power-knowledge effects

Masters of genealogy

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Zehfuss genealogical analysis of 9/11

What is 9/11?

Attack on West? Is Western identity unambiguous? Didnt some Western countries harbor the terrorists? Are all Westerners behind war on terror?

Cause and effect?

Is 9/11 an uncaused cause of the war on terror? 2/20/13

Postmodern textual strategies

James Der Derian contends that post modernism is concerned with exposing the textual interplay behind power politics.

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What is text?

Jacques Derrida did not limit text to the realm of ideas. The world is or is constituted like a text and one cannot refer to it except in an interpretive experience. We need to interpret interpretations more than to interpret things.

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Double reading

First reading is commentary or repetition of dominant interpretation (produces stability effect). Demonstrates how text appears coherent Second reading unsettles first by applying pressure on those points of instability within a text and exposes internal tensions showing that it is less than stable 2/20/13

Ashleys double reading of anarchy problematique

Why should power politics follow from lack of central rule? 1st reading: outlines AP in conventional terms 2nd reading: questions the selfevidence of IR as anarchical realm of politics 2/20/13

Ashleys double reading

Deconstruction of sovereigntyanarchy dyad

Sovereignty is valorized; anarchy takes on meaning only as opposite Both are not mutually exclusive/exhaustive

Dichotomy is tenable only if states are indeed sovereign internally; internal dissent (transversal struggles) undermines the stability of 2/20/13

Problematizing sovereign states

Genealogical question: how is the state instituted as the normal mode of international subjectivity (or loyalty)? How is the sovereign state made possible, how is it naturalized and how is it made to appear as if it had an essence?
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State boundaries

How was global political space partitioned? Boundary marking is a political act as it produces and delimits political space; establishes opposition between sovereignty and anarchy Geography is the product of histories of struggle between competing authorities over the power to 2/20/13 organize, occupy and administer

PM Analysis of the state

Modern states origins in violence Boundary inscription Deconstruction of identity Revised interpretation of statecraft
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Violence and the modern state

Modern political thought see reason rather than violence as measure of power & legitimacy PoMo analysts see a paradox since violence is behind state power but citizens must be protected from the same violence Others argue that states used violence to constitute themselves as 2/20/13 states; to impose differentiations

State boundaries

How was global political space partitioned? Boundary marking is a political act as it produces and delimits political space; establishes opposition between sovereignty and anarchy Geography is the product of histories of struggle between competing authorities over the power to 2/20/13 organize, occupy and administer

Identity

How has the territorially-defined self been constructed (as opposed to a THEATENING OTHER)? Norm of community in times of war: ONTOPOLOGYa desire for a coherent, bounded, monocultural community All forms of political community, insofar as they require boundaries, 2/20/13 prone to some degree of violence are

Statecraft

Sovereign state is NOT natural Sovereign states became the hegemonic ideal Quasi- & failed states reinforce ideal Model must be replicable to be hegemonic Traditional view: statecraft refers to what fully-formed states do in world arena 2/20/13

Rethinking the political

Paradigm of sovereignty: impoverished our political imagination; reduced understanding of dynamics of world politics The PoMo alternative

Conceptualize world politics in terms of political prosaics

Multitude of flows/interactions Deterritorialized modern political life Activities that stabilize paradigm of

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Influence of Deleuze & Guattari

Reterritorialization: associated with paradigm of sovereignty; identity, order, & unity Deterritorialization: associated with mobile logic of nomadism and its ability to transgress boundaries; difference, flows, lines of flight; can help make sense of the impact of various non-state actors on state sovereignty 2/20/13

Rethinking political community & identity

Modern political life need not be caught between the inside (the state) and outside dichotomy Identity must not be exclusionary Difference not antithetical to identity Men-citizen opposition must not privilege citizens claims above claims of humanity
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Need to move beyond paradigm of

Structuralism

Language and society are essentially ordered Both share similar formal features and structures Societies can be conceptualized as symbolic systems; not detached from social context
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All societies have common structures

PM & PS IPE

Constructivist IPE theory is new PM/PS IPE theory is younger PS IPE theory relies on plausibility
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Post structuralism: Althusser

Society is a relational entity, in which the economic, political and ideological domains are jointly articulated into a mode of production Ideological state apparatus (ala Gramsci): schools, mass media, church, etc. Social structures guide actors only to certain degree because structures 2/20/13 themselves contingent as well are

What is discourse?

Discourse is constitutive for politics and social reality Discourse is a certain (and always precarious) structuring within a discursive field Within a discourse, action and meaning are closely connected Discourse is a relational structure
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If (as some authors opine), discourse

Post-structural political economy

Discourse constructs political and economic reality The constructed character of actors in politics and society is the contingent result of competing, conflicting, and often contradictory discourses No strong subjects (actors); agency is 2/20/13 always bound within social structure

Discourse and PE institutions

Institutions do not have prediscursive meaning even if they exist No meaningful reality outside discursive field The economic sphere is produced through competing discourses

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Basic theoretical assumptions

Economic relations are just one principle of social organization like religion, patriarchy, etc The economy is a relation The economy is form not substance (it follows that there does not exist an abstract and universal economic sphere per se, but only concrete and spatio-temporal-specific forms of the 2/20/13 economy.

Theoretical assumptions

the concrete temporarily and precariously stabilized forms of the economy neither arise by accident nor do they stem from a certain system-immanent necessity. They are the contingent result of previous historical negotiations. the political, the economic, and the social respectively cannot be separated unambiguously. 2/20/13

A new IPE

a new IPE sensitive to fluid boundaries, territorial and institutional and with less emphasis on order a radical political economy that begins from the premise that the economy is essentially prone to subversion and reconstruction in 2/20/13 respect of other hegemonic-

Empirical studies

post-structural inquiries focus e.g. on identity, cultural representation, discourse, everyday life, the ambiguity of political dissent, and performativity. studies on financial flows and crises, technological processes, materialisation of discourses (e.g. in the body, in border fences, in military weapons), security politics, welfare 2/20/13

De Goedes article on financial regulation after 9/11reversal of the While many have predicted a
liberalizing tendencies of the previous decades, de Goede argues with reference to Foucaults biopolitics that a risk-based approach to combating the financing of terrorism emerged. Banks are required to monitor suspicious financial transactions, but they enjoy considerable flexibility in carrying out this task. By separating banking customers into normal and abnormal groups, the burden is shifted especially to marginalized populations, such as migrants. In a similar fashion, financial actors are trying to maintain their privileged position in the turmoil of the current economic crisis by trying to draw a line between responsible and irresponsible bankers.
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Rethinking political economy

Globalization (postmodernity) as compression of space and time Territoriality defeated by Internet (property rights, taxation, copyright, etc) State sovereignty is undermined esp. By mobile capital
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Critique of PoMo

Trash talk: epistemological hypochondria and anarchy Banging on open door: orthodox IR had been criticized for problems of positivism Just muddying the waters: pure polemics Complete nihilistic relativism
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Nihilistic relativism

By declaring any theory a fabrication without legitimate grounding, we are left with no mechanism to assert one theory over another

PoMo ultimately negates itself: how can deconstruction and its other methodologies be defended as 2/20/13 correct?

PoMo response

This question only makes sense in a positivist framework PoMo does not seek to prove with absolute certainty what it proposes but to demonstrate uncertainty and harm of absolutist claims

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Critique of PM/PS IPE theory

Cannot ignore the inescapable reality of material needs Confusion on how social realm is composed of discourses If reality is discursive, can it be created at will?
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Putting PoMo in its proper place

Political nihilism or continued commitment to emancipation? No momentous contribution to study of IR Insufficient communication between PoMo accounts in IR Not yet a school? Will it be a school? Should it be a school?
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Point of unity

The primacy of the political Every objective relation (economic, technological, religious) has political roots Stressing the discursive and nonobjective character of reality implies that power relations are reflected 2/20/13

Now its your turn

Comments? Questions?

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