Suzanne Bergeron

Economics, Performativity, and Social Reproduction in Global Development

Over the past decade, international development policy has paid increased attention to social reproduction. While this offers an improvement over past practices in which care work was all but ignored, these policy frameworks continue to fall short of feminist goals. One reason for this is the way that dominant economic representations of social reproduction continue to rest on a universalizing portrayal of the household economy and family life as mired in patriarchal tradition, which fails to capture the diversity of economic and affective arrangements in which reproductive labor takes place at the local level. In this paper, I develop an alternative conceptualization of economic and affective life that challenges dominant understandings of the distinctions between market and non-market activity, paid and unpaid labor, and work and intimacy to provide space for new feminist conceptualizations of economy and care that can capture the diversity of its sites and practices. Durante la última década, la política internacional sobre el desarrollo ha dado mayor énfasis a la reproducción social. En la medida que esto ofrece una mejoría en las últimas prácticas, en donde el trabajo de cuidados ha sido casi ignorado, estos marcos políticos siguen sin alcanzar los objetivos feministas. Una de las razones es la forma en que las representaciones económicas dominantes de la reproducción social continúan apoyándose en una descripción universalizada de la economía del hogar y de la vida familiar, como atascada en una tradición paternalista, que falla en conseguir la diversidad de los acuerdos, en los cuales el trabajo reproductivo toma lugar a nivel local. En este artículo desarrollo un planteamiento distinto de la vida económica y afectiva, que reta a los entendimientos dominantes de las distinciones entre la actividad comercial y no comercial, la obra de mano pagada y no pagada, y el trabajo y la intimidad, para dar espacio a nuevas conceptualizaciones feministas de economía y cuidado, que pueden captar la diversidad de sus lugares y sus prácticas. 过去十年，国际发展政策已日益关注社会再造。在过去的实践中，关爱社会的工作几乎被完全忽视。这一状况现已有所改善，同时政策框架仍未达到女性主义目标。原因之一在于有关社会再造占主导地位的经济学陈述方式仍立基于一个日益普遍化的描述，即家庭经济和家庭生活深陷家长传统的沼泽之中，未能抓住经济和情感安排的多样性，在这些多样安排中，再生性劳动发生于地方层次。在本文中，我发展了一个关于经济和情感生活的替代性概念，挑战了对市场和非市场活动间、付酬和不付酬劳动间，以及工作与私人关系间各种区别的主导性理解，为女性主义者有关经济和关爱的新观点提供了空间，它能抓住地点和实践的多样性。

Shape‐shifting neoliberalism and World Bank education policy: a response to Steven Klees

I am pleased to be part of this symposium on Steven J. Klees’ ‘A Quarter Century of Neoliberal Thinking in Education: Misleading Analyses and Failed Policies’. In this article, Klees provides a rich account of how educational policy has been influenced by a shift towards neoliberal economic thinking since the 1980s. He also effectively demonstrates the negative impact of this experiment in conservative economics on equitable educational access and the quality of education services in transitional and developing economies. The article provides a framework for understanding the economic rhetoric behind World Bank education policy, and enriches our understanding of discursive shifts in neoliberal global governance more generally. Despite recent talk that development institutions like the Bank are now focused on equity and inclusion, and that the Washington Consensus has been ‘dead for years’ (Wolfensohn 2005, 475), Klees’ analysis makes it clear that an emphasis on markets and efficiency continues to dominate development initiatives even in social policy areas such as education. In my contribution to the symposium, I will focus on Klees’ portrayal of the trajectory of development education policy discourse since the early 1980s. While I generally agree with the analysis he offers regarding the hegemony of neoliberal approaches during the entire period, I would nonetheless mark a distinction between the Washington Consensus approach that dominated the 1980s and early 1990s and the revised discursive and policy framework that has been emerging during the past 10 years. In the earlier Washington Consensus phase, the neoliberal agenda was linked to macro-level structural adjustment policy conditionalities aimed at expanding the role of market forces and constraining the role of the state. By the mid-1990s, however, as a range of critics demonstrated that these policies were eroding safety nets, widening inequalities, and leading to corruption and instability, the Washington Consensus became a ‘damaged brand name’ (Williamson 2003). As a result, institutions such as the World Bank took a turn away from strict market fundamentalism and towards what many have labeled a post-Washington Consensus (e.g. Stiglitz 1998). This post-Washington Consensus discourse of development represents a shift from the economistic, growth-centred rhetoric of the earlier era. It highlights improving health, education, and environmental sustainability as key goals of development alongside economic growth. It also imagines a role for the state in institution building, and articulates a broader set of goals and instruments than the narrow framework of the 1980s had allowed. Klees only briefly mentions this post-Washington Consensus shift in development discourse in his article, where he portrays it as a welcome (although small and somewhat

Rebuilding Bridges: Toward a Feminist Research Agenda for Postwar Reconstruction

As feminists who think about war and peacebuilding, we cannot help but encounter the complex, entwined political economic processes that underlie wars’ causes, their courses, and the challenges of postwar reconstruction. For us, then, the increasing academic division between feminist security studies (FSS) and feminist (international) political economy (FPE/FIPE) has been a cause for concern, and we welcomed Politics & Gender ’s earlier Critical Perspectives section on efforts to bridge the two (June 2015). We noticed, however, that although violence was addressed in several of the special sections articles, war made only brief and somewhat peripheral appearances, and peacebuilding was all but absent. While three contributions (Hudson 2015; Sjoberg 2015; True 2015) mentioned the importance of political economy in the analysis of armed conflict, the aspects of war on which the articles focused were militarized sexualities (Sjoberg 2015) or conflict-related and postwar sexual and gender-based violence (Hudson 2015; True 2015).

Expose, oppose, propose: alternative policy groups and the struggle for global justice, by William K. Carroll

fessional ethics” (173) that builds on practitioner as well as theoretical feminist knowledge. I found the book to be nuanced and carefully argued, well set out and therefore useful for feminist scholars teaching development studies in practice and also with clear narratives in the case studies that I imagine would encourage gender trainers to stick to their feminist principles when encountering resistance. My one disappointment was that although intersectionality was signaled in the opening chapter as one of the main issues to be addressed, as a practice it was not applied or discussed systematically in the book. The focus remained very much on gender training. More work is required, as the editors suggest in their conclusion, in order to integrate feminist thinking on intersectionality with gender training – going beyond diversity arguments and to see intersectionality as a transformative approach for gender and other inequalities.

Transgressing Gender and Development: Rethinking Economy Beyond ‘Smart Economics’

This chapter provides a critical rereading of recent gender and development initiatives that emphasises the ‘cracks’ that are opened up by their attention to equity and economic difference. While acknowledging that many progressive ideas are co-opted when institutions such as the World Bank reduce gender equity to ‘smart economics’, the chapter highlights the ways that the contradictions and contestations that emerge from these cracks can never be entirely co-opted.

Sciences From Below: Feminism, Postcolonialities, and Modernities, by Sandra Harding. Chapel Hill, NC: Duke University Press, 2008. 296 pp. ISBN-13: 978-0-8223-4259-5 (hbk.). US

Bellville, South Africa: Programme for Land and Agrarian Studies, School of Government, University of the Western Cape. Kandiyoti, Deniz. 2003. ‘‘The Cry for Land: Agrarian Reform, Gender and Land Rights in Uzbekistan,’’ in Shahra Razavi, ed. Agrarian Change, Gender and Land Rights, pp. 225–56. Oxford: Blackwell. Razavi, Shahra, ed. 2003. Agrarian Change, Gender and Land Rights. Oxford: Blackwell. Tanner, Christopher and Sergio Baleira, with Ângelo Afonso, João Paolo Azevedo, João Bila, Constantino Chichava, Altino Moisés, Carlos Pedro, and José Santos. 2006. Mozambique’s Legal Framework for Access to Natural Resources: The Impact of New Legal Rights and Community Consultations on Local Livelihoods, Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Livelihood Support Program Working Paper 28, FAO, Maputo. Tinker, Irene and Gale Summerfield, eds. 1999. Women’s Rights to House and Land: China, Laos, Vietnam. Boulder CO: Lynne Rienner.

84.95; ISBN-13: 978-0-8223-4282-3 (pbk.). US

This article examines the pedagogical benefits associated with teaching globalization from a feminist perspective. In addition to its focus on the often neglected gender dimensions of globalization, the feminist approach provides a less abstract and disempowering understanding of global processes than that found in many political economy accounts. The article uses a variety of examples to show how this perspective helps students make the connection between their daily lives and these complex processes.