Bice Maiguashca

Reclaiming Feminist Futures: Co-Opted and Progressive Politics in a Neo-Liberal Age

This article engages with the influential narrative about the co-optation of feminism in conditions of neo-liberalism put forward by prominent feminist thinkers Nancy Fraser, Hester Eisenstein and Angela McRobbie. After drawing out the twin visions of ‘progressive’ feminist politics that undergird this narrative – couched in terms of either the retrieval of past socialist feminist glories or personal reinvention – we subject to critical scrutiny both their substantive claims and the conceptual scaffolding they invoke. We argue that the proleptic imaginings of all three authors, in different ways, are highly circumscribed in terms of the recommended agent, agenda and practices of progressive politics, and clouded by conceptual muddle over the meanings of left’, ‘radical’ and ‘progressive’. Taken together, these problems render the conclusions of Fraser, Eisenstein and McRobbie at best unconvincing and at worst dismissive of contemporary feminist efforts to challenge neo-liberalism. We end the article by disentangling and redefining left, radical and progressive and by sketching a contrasting vision of progressive feminist politics enabled by this re-conceptualisation.

Bridging the activist-academic divide: feminist activism and the teaching of global politics

Our starting point in this article is the widespread belief that academia and activism are separate worlds, driven by contrasting aims and imperatives and governed by different rules. Such a view is based on a series of takenfor-granted and highly problematic ontological dichotomies, including mind/body, theory/practice, reason/emotion, abstract/concrete and ‘ivory tower’/ ‘real world’. Perhaps most fundamentally, these serve to set up thinking and reflecting in opposition to doing or acting. Thus in both activist and academic characterisations of what it is that they do, we find the frequent assumption that academics theorise and write, while for activists ‘action is the life of all and if thou dost not act, thou dost nothing’; academics exercise their cognitive skills, while activists are animated by passion; academics are impartial commentators on the world while activists are partisan, polemical advocates; academics work in elite institutions while activists are embedded in the everyday, ‘on the streets’ or at ‘the grassroots’.

Pulling together in a crisis? Anarchism, feminism and the limits of left-wing convergence in austerity Britain

In this article, we examine three key, recently emergent sites of anti-austerity activism in Britain – Left Unity, the People’s Assembly and Occupy – in order to explore to what extent and in which ways the traditional British left is in the process of reconfiguring itself. More specifically, we explore the ‘points of contact’ being developed, or not, amongst feminist, anarchist and Marxist/socialist activists. We argue that if we are seeing a mutation of the left at present, it concerns a noticeable (if partial and contested) ‘feminist turn’ in terms of the composition, ideas and practices of these sites.

Looking Beyond the Spectacle: Social Movement Theory, Feminist Anti-globalization Activism and the Praxis of Principled Pragmatism

The purpose of this article is to critically interrogate, from a feminist perspective, the manner in which the politics of dissent, in general, and the collective practices that constitute it, in particular, have been portrayed and conceptualized within the field of social movement theory (SMT). To this end, the first part of the article offers a brief sketch of Political Process Theory, one of the most well-established conceptual frameworks within the field, before moving on to examine its impact on prevailing depictions of the ‘global justice movement’, often taken as the exemplar of contemporary dissent in this field of study. The second part then goes on to develop a critical review of this narrative, along with the theoretical commitments that sustain it, based on field research into the collective practices of feminist anti-globalization activists. Turning to feminist scholarship for help, the article concludes by elaborating on an alternative way of conceptualizing what activists do and how they do it. El propósito de este artículo es de interrogar críticamente, desde una perspectiva feminista, la manera en la cual la política de disidencia en general y las prácticas colectivas que la constituyen en particular, se han representado y conceptualizado dentro del campo de la Teoría del Movimiento Social (SMT, por sus siglas en inglés). Para este fin, la primera parte del artículo ofrece un breve bosquejo de la Teoría del Proceso Político, uno de los marcos conceptuales mejor establecidos dentro del campo, antes de pasar a examinar su impacto sobre las descripciones predominantes del ‘movimiento de justicia global’, frecuentemente tomado como el ejemplar de la disidencia contemporánea en este campo de estudio. Luego, la segunda parte pasa a desarrollar una reseña crítica de esta narrativa, junto con los compromisos teóricos que la sostienen, basado en la investigación de campo dentro de las prácticas colectivas de las activistas feministas de la antiglobalización. Recurriendo a estudios feministas de ayuda, el artículo concluye con la elaboración de una forma alterna de conceptualización sobre lo que los activistas hacen y cómo lo hacen. 本文的目的，是从女性主义的视角，批判性地质问异议政治在总体上，特别是构成异议政治的集体实践，在社会运动理论（）领域被描述和概念化的方式。为此，文章的第一部分提供了政治过程理论的简概，这是该领域里建构得最好的概念框架之一，然后考察了它对“全球正义运动”盛行描述的影响，在该研究领域中，此运动常被视为当代异议的典范。第二部分以对女性主义反全球化活动家集体实践的实地研究为基础，对这种陈述以及支持它的理论依据进行了批判性的评论。文章转向求助于女性主义的学术研究，并以详细阐述活动家做什么和怎么做的另一种概念化方式结束。

Theorising feminist organising in and against neoliberalism: beyond co-optation and resistance?

This article reviews contemporary academic debates about feminist organising in and against neoliberalism, which we see as structured by a co-optation/resistance dichotomy. We outline three narratives: a high-profile ‘strong’ co-optation thesis; a more nuanced co-optation discourse; and an emergent counter-narrative of resistance. While sympathetic to the latter two, we critically unpack the account of neoliberalism, of feminist protagonists, and of where feminist activism takes place, in all three. We sketch out ways in which neoliberalism and the ‘who’ and ‘where’ of feminism might be considered differently, and argue overall for the need to move beyond the co-optation/resistance dichotomy.

Book Review: Deborah Stienstra, Women's Movements and International Organizations (London: St. Martin's Press, 1994, 201 pp., £35.00 hbk.). Frankie Wilmer, The Indigenous Voice In World Politics (London: Sage Press, 1993, 247 pp., no price given)

resulted in a proliferation of publications on the subject. Although most excitement has been generated in the field of sociology, the topic has caught the imagination of other scholars. In very recent years, the themes of transformational politics, in general, and social movements, in particular, have penetrated the confines of International Relations. Two books which reflect this trend are Wilmer’s The Indigenous Voice in World Politics and Stienstra’s Women’s Movements and International Organizations. Choosing particular sets of movements as case studies, both authors attempt to combine empirical analysis with theoretical reflection. In the case of Wilmer’s book, an initial inspection leaves the reader somewhat disconcerted by the enormity of the project and the apparent lack of a logic around which these themes are explored. Chapter 1 serves to set the context and, despite its title, ’Fighting Back: Fourth World Peoples in the World System’, provides more of a history of European colonisation and its impact on indigenous peoples than a description of the ways in which they have organised politically to resist oppression. Chapter 2 explores what seems to be the central argument of the book, ’that world politics during the twentieth century has undergone a profound transformation-from struggles over power and its tangible manifestations to struggles over normative issues’ (p. 40). Instead of examining how the indigenous peoples’ movement is representative of this kind of struggle, however, the author takes us on a surprise detour as she launches into a great number of generalisations about the multi-ethnic nature of modern states, their assimilationist policies, the role of modernisation in intensifying the interaction of