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FEMINISM. 14 JUNE 2010. What is the Theory of Feminism?. Introduced gender as a relevant empirical category and analytical tool for understanding global power relations as well as a normative position from which to consider alternative world orders. Example of Influential Feminism Approach.
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FEMINISM 14 JUNE 2010
What is the Theory of Feminism? • Introduced gender as a relevant empirical category and analytical tool for understanding global power relations as well as a normative position from which to consider alternative world orders.
Example of Influential Feminism Approach • Cynthia Enloe: • Where are the women? (1988) : women often there, even where we might not expect them. • Bananas, Beaches, and Bases (1989), exposed how international politics frequently involves intimate relationships, personal identities and private lives.
Strategic Claim • Women experiences are systematically different from men’s. • All social relations are gendered.
Variant Politics of feminism • Liberal feminism : seeking an end to women exclusion from under representation in office, power and employment • Radical feminism: see women’s subordination as universal, sex class. • Cultural feminism: see women more nurturing and peaceable. • Socialist feminism: Put together class and gender.
Variant Politics of feminism • Socialist feminism: Put together class and gender. • Third World feminists: accused white feminist of ignoring race, culture, and colonial relation as affecting women, too. • Post-modern feminists.: who speaks for women?
The development of Feminism in IR Theory • Flourished since mid 1980’s. • Until the 1980’s IR studies the causes of war and conflict and global expansion of trade and commerce with no particular reference to people. • Gender relations were rarely a necessary part of the analysis. • In the Third debate (post positivist).
The development (Cont) • First generation of Feminism in IR late 1980’s: • Contested the exclusionary, state-center and positivist nature of the discipline primarily at a meta-theoretical level. (Tickener, 1992, Pettman 1996) • Second generation: • Developed feminist IR by making gender a central analytic category in studies of foreign policy, security and global political economy. (Moon 1997, Whitworth 2004, Stern 2005)
Example of Feminism research • Gender and international security • Feminist analysis of the gendered impacts of war and peace • Quantitative analysis using gender as a variable to explain aspects of state behaviour and international conflicts • Alternative methodological approaches to research on global politics
Typology • (1) Empirical feminism: focus on women and /or explore gender as an empirical dimension of international relations; • Documented how male bias in the development process has led to poor implementation of projects and unsatisfactory policy outcomes. • Women are not only victim they are empowered by it.
variant • (2) analytical feminism, that uses gender as a theoretical category to reveal the gender bias of international Relations concepts and explain constitutive aspects of international relations. • Deconstruct the theoretical framework of IR • Undermines the division between individual, state and international system
Variant (Con…) • Normative feminism, that reflects on the process of theorizing as part of a normative agenda for global social and political change. • Bring s the experiences of women’s activism to bear on debates about international ethics, humanitarian aid and intervention and human rights instruments.
Contribution (Claim) • Dispels the assumption that Powers is come out from barrel of the gun, or ensues from the declaration of the statesman. • to reinterpret power suggest that international relations scholars have underestimated the pervasiveness of power and precisely what it takes, at every level and every day, to produce a grossly uneven and hierarchical world order (Enfloe 1997)
Contribution (Cont…) • Feminism reconceptualizations of power and attention to the margin of global politic have allowed IR to recognize and comprehend new political phenomena • More inclusive view of globalisation
Critics • Analytic use of gender as a concept have forms of oppression prevalent in global politics. • Universal concept of gender cannot be applied globally. • No feminist ‘high ground’ from which to theorise about international relations. • Feminist identity and solidarity are problematic.
Sourcess: • Jacqui True, 2009, Feminism, in Scott Burchill and Andrew Linklater (eds.) Theories of International relations, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, • Jan Jindy Pettman, 1998, Gender Issues in John Baylis and Steve Smith (eds), The Globalization of World politics, pp.483-496. • Ann Tickner and Laura Sjoberg, 2007, Feminism,in Tim Dunne et,all (eds), International Relations Theories, New York: Oxford University press, pp.185-202