Gender Hierarchies Research Articles

A Matter of Moral Justice: Black Women Laundry Workers and the Fight for Justice by Jenny Carson

Reviewed by: A Matter of Moral Justice: Black Women Laundry Workers and the Fight for Justice by Jenny Carson Eric Arnesen (bio) A Matter of Moral Justice: Black Women Laundry Workers and the Fight for Justice. By Jenny Carson. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2021. Pp. xi, 289. $125.00 cloth; $28.00 paper) Over the past half century, historians of race and labor have produced a substantial body of scholarship on various occupations, unions, and race relations that collectively reveals the complexity of working-class race relations, traditions of Black activism, and labor movement practices. While fewer such studies have appeared in recent years, Jenny Carson's new book reminds us that this historiographical genre continues to have much to offer. Focusing on the greater New York City laundry industry, A Matter of Moral Justice brings to life the on-the-job conditions experienced by a largely female labor force and its struggles for dignity and economic advancement. It also explores just how profoundly unionization transformed life on the job for the better and, at the same time, underscores just how limited that transformation proved to be. [End Page 436] New York's early twentieth-century laundry industry relied on a heterogeneous labor force that became increasingly African American and female. Despite low wages, poor working conditions, and abusive treatment, unionization efforts were sporadic and unsuccessful. Only in the late 1930s and early 1940s did sustained trade unionism finally take off, the result of efforts of Black women shopfloor activists, women reformers, and various Communist and Socialist organizers. Under the banner of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America (ACW) during the upsurge of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), laundry worker unionization brought significant improvements to workers' lives. But, Carson insists, those gains were limited—laundry work remained poorly paid, racial and gender inequality persisted in the workplace, and the disproportionately male and white union bureaucracy resisted sharing power with women or African Americans. Advances notwithstanding, Carson argues that the outcome proved "disappointing" (p. 8). At the heart of her story is the activism of Black workers like Charlotte Adelmond, a Trinidadian immigrant, and Dollie Robinson, a migrant from North Carolina, whose aspirations and struggles Carson carefully reconstructs. As leaders of the "democratic initiative," they tenaciously but only sometimes successfully challenged their employers and union leaders with an agenda centered on racial and, to a lesser extent, gender equality (p. 127). Her considerable attention to intra-union battles that pitted these Black women activists against ACW officials makes clear that the union prioritized the preservation of "white male privilege in all its forms" (p. 197). As important as the "democratic initiative" was, however, the degree of rank-and-file Black workers' participation in this oppositional culture remains unclear, as does the extent to which the civil rights unionism pursued by these activists extended beyond union affairs. The story Carson tells is an important one that highlights the obstacles to successful organization and the role played by grassroots activists in overcoming them. She effectively draws out the complexities of [End Page 437] a powerful CIO union which, while ostensibly committed to interracialism, often blocked the efforts of its Black women activists to overturn entrenched racial and gender hierarchies. Her restoration to the historical narrative of the previously little-known efforts of Adelmond and Robinson suggests that the ranks of Black grassroots activists is larger than historians generally realize and that their inclusion into the history of American labor genuinely enriches our understanding of race, civil rights, and protest in the first half of the twentieth century. Eric Arnesen ERIC ARNESEN is the Teamsters Professor of History at the George Washington University. He is currently completing a biography of A. Philip Randolph. Copyright © 2021 Kentucky Historical Society

“Half a wit is better than none”: Race, Humor, and the Grotesque in Fran Ross’s Oreo

ABSTRACT This article focuses on race and humor in Fran Ross’s satirical novel Oreo, about a half-Black, half-Jewish young woman named Oreo, who goes on a quixotic quest to find her absentee father. I argue that Oreo blends high and low forms of comedy, the intellectual and the grotesque, into a complex and irreverent sense of humor that highlights the absurdity of racial and gender hierarchies. I demonstrate how the novel uses representations of animated, mechanized bodies as a site for much of its comedy and as commentary on the racial and gender politics of its moment. The novel’s comedic sensibility finds its parallel in Oreo’s hybrid identity, which allows her to traverse boundaries and situates her as a cyborg-like figure that resists being sexualized, discriminated against, or humiliated. Ross takes these issues up further on the level of form and aesthetics, creating a carnivalesque world in which racial stereotypes are inverted and structures of power are destabilized. In the end, Ross’s simultaneous mastery and bastardization of the comedic form of the satirical novel destabilizes the rigid binaries typically associated with race, gender, and comedy.

Beyond the New Deal Order: U.S. Politics from the Great Depression to the Great RecessionCapitalism Contested: The New Deal and Its Legacies

Beyond the New Deal Order: U.S. Politics from the Great Depression to the Great RecessionCapitalism Contested: The New Deal and Its Legacies

Review of Holy Science: The Biopolitics of Hindu Nationalism

Review of Holy Science: The Biopolitics of Hindu Nationalism Sunhay You (bio) Banu Subramaniam’s Holy Science: The Biopolitics of Hindu Nationalism, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2019 Building on the insights of feminist, queer, postcolonial, science and technology, and religion studies, Holy Science deconstructs the binary between science and religion to reveal their entangled formations and uneven effects—the consequences of colonial legacies that privilege science over religion as a universally objective mode of knowledge production. In present-day postcolonial India, Hindu nationalism takes shape through the rhetoric of science to consolidate and integrate India’s past with its future destiny. The five case studies and chapters that make up the book present thick descriptions delineating how the rhetoric of science and religion come together to both clarify and amplify the hindutva of Hindu nationalism, an ideology that naturalizes “a great and grand Hindu past where science, technology, and philosophy thrived” (7). In this imaginary, Hinduism coheres with modern capitalism, neoliberalism, Western science, and technology to beckon a return to India’s prosperous past in the present. Offering analyses of scientific studies that undergird and extend the goals of Hindu nationalism, Subramaniam engages in an “experimental humanities,” a methodological approach that brings together the “empiricism and analytic conventions of experiments from the sciences and the rhetorical and contextual analyses from the humanities” (34). For instance, in her fourth chapter, “Biocitizenship in Neoliberal Times,” Subramaniam delineates how state investments in Indigenous medical systems (IMS) such as Ayurveda seek to establish the scientific basis of India’s ancient spiritual healing practices. Advances in Western science are to affirm what has already been discovered and intuited in India through more spiritual means of inquiry. Notably, using science to legitimize India’s cultural and historical authority has contradictory effects. While disrupting [End Page 278] colonial hierarchies of knowledge, the medicalization of Ayurveda also fortifies a vision of a unified Indian people with shared genetic origins and health concerns. Hindu nationalism ends up reinforcing the disenfranchising structures of the neoliberal and bionational governance that propounds the biological basis of nationhood and individuated citizenship. In this manner, studies in genomics and IMS can amplify essentialist politics of difference that buttress hierarchies of caste and sex in biological terms. India’s Vedic tradition, upon which Hinduism and Indigenous medical systems are based, valorizes India’s origins and serves as the basis of what Subramaniam terms “archaic modernity.” The “archaic” becomes synonymous with “modernity” as the past becomes the way of the future. The first chapter, “Home and the World: The Modern Lives of the Vedic Sciences,” reviews how the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) mobilized archaic modernity to gain state control and majority support at the dawn of the new millennium. However, this revamped image of Hinduism as synonymous with scientific and technological advancement reinvests in an essentialist gender hierarchy. These competing forces collide in the revival of Vaastushastra, an ancient Indian science for harmonizing living spaces in accordance with the five elements (water, earth, fire, air, and space). Subramaniam notes that this architectural science and style, marketed toward women, has gained much traction as a status symbol. As a gendered site of neoliberal consumerism, Vaastushastra redomesticates women as the bearers of tradition within the home and nation. In chapter 2, “Colonial Legacies, Postcolonial Biologies: The Queer Politics of (Un)Natural Sex,” Subramaniam delves into the Judeo-Christian roots of the biological sciences, especially those that dictate the organic basis of sexual difference and heteronormative sexual reproduction. This legacy lives on in the Indian Penal Code 377 (IPC 377), which identifies any form of “unnatural” intercourse as a criminal offense. Despite its colonial roots, the IPC 377 has garnered the support of Hindu nationalists, who align with its historical investments in eugenics and in identifying and penalizing “undesirable” citizen subjects along the lines of caste, religion, and class. Hindu nationalist lawyers have gone on to defend the code in court, describing nonheteronormative sex acts as abject markers of British and Muslim degeneracy, complicity, and anti-nationalism. While the code has changed to permit consensual gay sex and acknowledge a third gender for transgender people, it sustains the religious-scientific language of the “unnatural” as a...

Gender roles or gendered goals? Women's return to rural family business

PurposeThis paper aims to add to the theorization of the gender dynamic in rural areas by investigating the motives of women who join their family firm (or their spouse's family firm) and thereby defy the demographic trend of rural flight. The context of this study is the depopulation of rural areas with the closing of basic services and relocation of the younger population, and educated women in particular, to urban areas. Consequently, rural family businesses risk failing to find successors and suffering forced closure or relocation. The empirical site of the study is rural family firms in Sweden, a context characterized by a high level of gender equality in legislation and culture but gender-conservative business structures in rural regions.Design/methodology/approachThe empirical case in this paper builds on a qualitative study of nine (9) life course narratives of women entrepreneurs in a rural region of Southern Sweden who have returned to rural areas to join their family business. The authors follow the view established by gender scholars that women are active agents in navigating their lives, and their life story narratives offer insight into the considerations that inform their choice to stay or return to rural locations. In Sweden, the setting for the study, gender equality is widely supported by legislation, policy and institutional frameworks and popular understanding of gender relations. In contrast to the gender-progressive policies of Sweden at large, women's entrepreneurship in rural regions of Sweden tends to follow traditional gender hierarchies and face similar constraints as in rural areas of other countries. The juxtaposition of these competing sets of ideals makes Sweden an important and interesting place to study and draw insights from the experiences of women entrepreneurs.FindingsThe findings reveal that women who choose to join rural family firms view them primarily in a positive light and see this choice as aligned with their need for professional flexibility and assertiveness, rewarding relationships, and a calm, secure, well-balanced life. Theoretically, the study implies that women choosing to engage in rural family firms seek non-material benefits, such as work–life balance and social support, and may be driven in part by a sense of psychological ownership that extends to the rural community.Originality/valueThe findings provide novel insights on women as active agents in navigating their lives and the intrinsic (e.g. alignment of personal values) and extrinsic (e.g. community support) motives that inform their decisions. The study also raises questions regarding how women perceive themselves as “fitting in” to rural settings and to what extent the sense of security within these settings that the women describe may be contingent upon factors such as their families' embeddedness within the community as well as their conformity to the local social norms.

Fragmented Voices with Guilt and Apologies: Interrogating Narratives on Ordination of Women in Nagaland Churches

The category ‘women’ is one of the majority members in the Nagaland churches of Northeast India. Institutionalization of associations and churches according to denominations has contributed to the bureaucratization of churches, arranging the church positions in vertical hierarchy. Today, churches in Nagaland struggle with complex gender hierarchies. Women are underrepresented in church leadership in Nagaland. Historically, Naga Women theologians have been absent in the process of licencing and ordination. This article attempts to explore both the structural dynamics and local practices in the process of gendered licencing and ordination. The study assesses two associations and churches within those two associations under Nagaland Baptist Church Council. Narrative from the two associations brings out the tacit but visible practices of differentiated licencing requirements between men and women theologians in Nagaland churches. The almost exclusive ‘Reverend’ title reserved for men in Nagaland demonstrably explains the near absence of ordained women in most of the Nagaland churches.

Shadow Trials, or a History of Sexual Assault Trials in the Jim Crow South

Based on an immense and heretofore underutilized archive of trial transcripts and legal briefs, this Article provides the first holistic study of sexual assault trials in the Jim Crow south. It reveals that, rather than merely procedures for determining legal guilt or innocence, these trials were also (and often primarily) rituals for discerning which member or members of a community had violated that community’s social mores in such a way as to warrant violence—the violence of ostracism, incarceration, or death. Sexual assault certainly represented a violation of the Jim Crow south’s social mores, but to many it was not the most significant such violation. Rather, transgressing the race, sexual, gender, and class hierarchies on which Jim Crow society depended was the far greater crime. To juries in the Jim Crow south, a white woman behaving promiscuously or a Black woman refusing to act subordinately might be more deserving of punishment than her rapist. Likewise, a white man who acted too effeminately or a Black man who acted too familiarly with white women might deserve punishment regardless of whether he had committed a rape; indeed, his violation of these social mores might be more significant to his neighbors than rape.For generations, scholars have closely examined sexual assault trials. Undergirding nearly all of their analyses is the presumption that these trials represent sites where adversaries debate whether the interaction between the accused and the accuser was, in fact, sexual assault. According to this idea, attorneys and witnesses in such trials seek to persuade jurors that their version of the facts is actually true, and jurors seek to determine whether a sexual assault actually occurred. In other words, implicit or explicit in nearly all of the voluminous scholarship on sexual assault trials is the idea that, for all of the problems with these trials, the pursuit of truth—the resolution of the question of what actually happened—is their impetus, or at least one of their animating features. Even scholars that argue that jurors rely on dominant cultural myths or narratives in deciding rape trials appear to presuppose that jurors do so in order “to assess what ‘really happened’” or decide whom they will “ultimately believe.” Likewise, even those scholars a generation ago that approached trials (sexual assault trials or otherwise) from a “legal storytelling” perspective—rejecting the idea of a unitary, objective truth and arguing that decisionmakers choose among truths—still presumed that jurors seek a truth.This Article suggests that, at least in a particular place and at a particular moment in time, this idea is wrong—or, rather, that it is incomplete, reflecting only a fraction of what was happening. It posits that sexual assault trials at this place and time, in fact, consisted of two distinct yet complementary procedures: an inquiry to determine whether a sexual assault had occurred (called the “surface trial”) and an inquiry to determine whether the accuser or the accused deserved punishment for violating a rigid but unwritten social code (called the “shadow trial”). In the shadow of the surface trial was a simultaneous inquisition in which community members adjudicated violations of social mores. Shadow trials were largely unconcerned with the demands of procedural or substantive law, but nonetheless featured highly ritualized hearings for assessing perceived wrongdoing. These shadow trials took place in courthouses, featuring lawyers and a judge, but they were fundamentally not legal procedures; nor were they lawless. They were, rather, procedures for determining the guilt or innocence of multiple parties in an extralegal sense. Often, the shadow trial supplanted the surface trial as the primary inquiry; often, the outcome of the shadow trial informed the verdict of the surface trial. This “shadow trial” model challenges legal scholars to think more expansively about how trials—and the law itself—are part of broader systems and structures of oppression; about how ostensibly neutral legal procedures serve to reinforce society’s punitive hierarchies; and about how the language of the law can obscure this reality.

‘Real men grill vegetables, not dead animals’: Discourse representations of men in an online vegan community

This article critically examines discourse representations of men in a large online vegan community. The analysis reveals a set of discourses which provide oppositional representations of vegan and non-vegan men, wherein the former is aligned with hegemonic masculine norms and the latter represented as transgressing or falling short of these norms. We interpret these discourses as providing means for the forum members to resist societal-level discourses which frame veganism and vegan men as feminine or ‘unmanly’, while also performing a social support function of reassuring posters who express concerns about how their veganism may impact how others perceive them and their masculinity. However, we also argue that such discourses can be considered problematic from an ecofeminist perspective, as they orient to and reinforce a hegemonic gender hierarchy which has enabled, and continues to enable, gender oppression, animal exploitation and the broader destruction of the natural world.

Exploring Ageism as a Structure of Consciousness Across the Female Life Course Through the Work of Simone de Beauvoir.

Drawing on the work of Simone de Beauvoir, this paper considers ageism as a structure of consciousness, with important convergences with, as well as departures from, those associated with gender. Specifically, it explores the double consciousness through which the self is experienced negatively as old, at 2 points in a woman's life course, namely midlife and "old age." The first kind of ageism works through the double standard of aging and the gender hierarchy, whereby women can no longer successfully comply with the objectification of the male gaze. This is a moment of intense age consciousness, tainted by a gendered narrative of decline, working jointly from the outside in and from the inside out. The second form of ageism has its source in the social world, in the reactions of other people to old age, resulting in an uneasy dialectic between one's own sense of an ageless or youthful self and the alien view of self as old. The paper proceeds as follows. After a brief account of Beauvoir's general philosophical approach, I compare and contrast the doubled consciousness associated with aging as a woman and with aging in a more general sense as described in The Second Sex and The Coming of Age, respectively. I then flesh out this conceptual framework by drawing on fiction and autofiction written by Beauvoir herself. Together, this approach vividly illuminates the important interconnections and intersections between ageism and sexism, the way they work together, as well as separately, across the female life course.

‘Deterrence can be boring’: boredom, gender, and absence in Britain’s Cold War military

ABSTRACT Boredom was an integral part of Cold War experience in western Europe and its manifestations and management were key political, military and social considerations during this long conflict, for militaries in particular. Using over 60 original oral history interviews (both individual and group) with a wide range of former residents of British military bases in West Germany, this article explores the presence and articulation of boredom within militarized communities. Its existence among soldiers was widely acknowledged, expressed and managed, but boredom was also refracted through prevailing gender and social hierarchies, permitting particular forms of boredom to be expressed, while silencing others. Through an examination of both soldierly boredom and the testimonies of military wives, this article suggests not only that boredom needs to be included in social histories of the Cold War – and conflict more broadly – but that we must understand boredom as a social phenomenon embedded within specific historic contexts. Its articulation is deeply affected by cultural and societal norms, particularly for groups with limited ‘agency’, with long-term implications for historical researchers looking for its traces. This article finishes by suggesting productive ways in which oral history can address militarized boredom and what, in turn, scholars of boredom might learn from oral history practices.

Gender and craft drinks

AbstractWhile it is well established that alcohol consumption is a gendered practice, the supposedly more progressive ethos of the emerging craft drinks sector suggests the possibility for great gender equality. However, as a growing body of research shows, craft drinks cultures, and that of craft beer in particular, remain heavily gendered with a number of features working to establish and maintain both the consumption and production of craft drinks as a masculine domain. In relation to consumption, research shows that assumptions about tastes and style preferences are informed by gender stereotypes, whilst branding and marketing of craft drinks products have drawn heavily on sexist imagery. The physical spaces of craft drinks consumption, such as beer festivals, brewpubs and taprooms, are heavily masculinised spaces. Similarly, the production of craft drinks is framed with reference to masculinity and imagery and language used reinforces a gendered hierarchy where female workers in the sector receive less recognition and validation. However, recent changes are noted, with a range of both online and offline initiatives seeking to empower female workers in the craft drink sector whilst challenging entrenched sexist prejudices.

What does Intermarriage Say about Immigrant Integration in Japan? The Maintenance of a National and Gender Hierarchy through Marriage Norms

Using 2010 Japanese census data, we critically interrogate the idea of integration through marriage in Japan. Intermarriage has been seen as a result of integration but the patterns of intermarriage and integration might depend on existing intersecting power structures in the receiving society. We explore assortative mating patterns in bi-national marriages in order to understand how citizenship status, race, gender, and educational level intersect and affect the patterns of intermarriage in Japan. We argue how ‘integration’ through bi-national marriage only perpetuates the structural hierarchy that premiers and maintain the status of the (male) native Japanese majority over Asian immigrants.

Between Westminster and Brussels: Putting the “Parliament” in Parliamentary Ethnography

AbstractGender and politics scholars are increasingly making appeals to ethnographic methodology to bring important contributions to understand the reproduction of gender, gender hierarchies, gendered relations, and their redress in parliamentary settings. This article draws upon fieldwork conducted in the U.K. House of Commons and the European Parliament and finds distinctive gendered cultures and norms in debating and working parliaments. Focusing on one dimension of this distinction—the parliamentary debating chamber—the article argues that parliamentary ethnography provides novel empirical insights into this conceptual distinction and into empirical understandings of gendered debating and working parliaments. While parliamentary ethnography is a fruitful innovation, the article discusses the drawbacks of this methodology and provides feminist reflection on ways to make it more accessible.

‘C’est grave’: Raw, cannibalism and the racializing logic of white feminism

This article addresses the racializing logic of white feminism and its alignment with white heteronormative registers of human life. It does so by considering Julia Ducournau’s (2017) film Raw in relation to cannibalism’s intersections of gender, sexuality and race. The film invokes feminist pleasures, centring on female desire and pitting Justine’s compulsive appetites against an inflexible social hierarchy of gender and species. However, its articulation of cannibal consumption and female subjectivity is dangerously ambivalent. By focusing on the colonial history and racializing logic of the cannibal, this article reads Raw as symptomatic of the subjective formations and social violence of white feminism. Raw portrays cannibalism as a feminist practice of posthuman resistance, but its seductive appeal also produces a troubling ambivalence around non-white and queer bodies, which resonates with black critiques of posthumanism’s reproduction of whiteness. The film invites us to inhabit our raw desires as a monstrous resistance, but what genres of human and nonhuman haunt this politics of monstrosity?

The irony of (romantic) harmony: Heterosexual romantic relationships can drive women’s justification of the gender hierarchy

Even though gender inequality is evident across life domains, women often justify the gender hierarchy. We examined whether the very closeness that heterosexual women share with their male romantic partners predicts their justification of gender inequality. We drew on intergroup-related research, showing that positive perceptions that minority groups develop within harmonious intergroup interactions, generalize to affect their views of group-based inequality. We expected that to the extent that women experience their romantic relationships positively, they will be more accepting of gender inequality within their homes, and these perceptions will generalize to predict justification of macro-level gender inequality. Five correlational and two experimental studies supported this prediction. The more women rated (or were primed with) their relationship as positive, the more they justified the gender social system. This was mediated by women’s perception of their housework division as fair, and was less pronounced among feminists. Implications regarding social change are discussed.

Between old and new unionism: Race, professionalism, and resistance in a district of market reforms

This article centers a group of teachers who participated in a multi-day strike and a statewide walkout in Colorado. We examine whether their experience with contention signaled important shifts in views of market-based educational policies, teacher professionalism and the role of unions. Qualitative methods and critical theories of educational policy guided the research design and analysis of data. Findings include divergent experiences with contention among teachers, shaped by race and racism, and enduring ideas of professionalism tied to hierarchies of class and gender. These tensions complicated coherent interpretations and critiques of market policies and strained solidarity for sustained resistance. We discuss the implications of findings for efforts to shift traditional teacher unions toward expansive ideas of professionalism premised on anti-racism, collective action, and social justice for and with communities of color.

I will help you survive but not thrive: Helping decisions in situations that empower women

This research examines gender-based helping behavior from a social dominance perspective. We focused on the interplay between the gender of a prospective donor and the gender of the recipient in shaping donation decisions in contexts that either empower recipients or not. In two studies ( N = 866), male (but not female) donors chose to donate less often (Study 2) and to give lower amounts (Studies 1–2) to women in need than to men when donations were made in a potentially empowering context – a business context (e.g., donating to a person whose shop burned down), than in a nonempowering context – a domestic context (e.g., donating to a person whose house burned down). Lack of empathy for the female recipient among men partially mediated this gender–donation bias effect (Study 2). These findings suggest that men are less likely to help women in situations that empower women and challenge the existing gender hierarchy.

Family Functioning in Humanitarian Contexts: Correlates of the Feminist-Grounded Family Functioning Scale among Men and Women in the Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo

In humanitarian contexts, family functioning may have a positive influence on outcomes of mental health and wellbeing for both children and adults. This study sought to adapt and explore an existing family functioning measure for use in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. Cross-sectional data were collected from 394 respondents (196 men and 198 women) in North Kivu, DRC. The Feminist-Grounded Family Functioning Scale was developed through qualitative research and cognitive testing which conceptualized a healthy and functioning family as one without gender and power hierarchies. Generalized linear mixed models stratified by gender assessed the association between family functioning and demographics, conflict experiences, and correlates of interest including gender attitudes, acceptance of harsh discipline, positive parenting, and power sharing. In the final adjusted models, family functioning among women was associated with positive parenting (β = 0.32, p = 0.009) and power sharing (β = 0.24, p < 0.001), but attitudes around gender and harsh discipline did not retain their significant association. Similarly, men’s family functioning was significantly associated with positive parenting (β = 0.41, p = 0.011) and power sharing (β = 0.16, p = 0.014). Results suggest that family functioning is positively associated with behaviors indicative of non-violent and equitable relationships between family members, but that behaviors might be attenuating the influence of attitudes on family functioning, as the significant association between attitudes and family functioning in the univariate models was not retained in the full models accounting for both behaviors and attitudes. Further research is needed to capture the context-specific nuances of family functioning and to understand the influence of gender and power hierarchies for families in conflict settings.

Technologies of Visibility

Technologies of Visibility

What’s missing when we think about Global Political Economy?

Global Political Economy (GPE) and especially International Political Economy (IPE) remain relatively silent about three critical and nested issues: the nature of empire as a form of global order, control over the enterprises that structure much quotidian life, and the distribution of profits. Each issue in different ways also highlights heterogeneity across units and actors in the GPE, providing clues to what should be Critical Political Economy’s object of investigation: the structure of power in the global economy. This commentary connects empire, corporate control and the sources of profits to show the connections in the GPE across macro, meso- and micro-levels and how these relate to the racial and gender hierarchies sustaining that structure of power, in the hope of opening up more systematic debate and treatment.