Beyond the “Helpless Nepali Woman” versus the “Fierce Maoist Fighter”: Challenging the Artificial Security/Economy Divide

2017 ◽  
Vol 13 (04) ◽  
pp. 733-739 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rahel Kunz
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Life Stories ◽  
Life Experiences ◽  
Security Studies ◽  
Global Political Economy ◽  
Holistic Analysis ◽  
Similarities And Differences ◽  
Nepali Women

Recent discussions over similarities and differences between feminist security studies (FSS) and feminist global political economy (FGPE) approaches invite us to reflect on the underlying assumptions about knowledge production within feminist international relations (IR) more broadly (Allison 2015; Enloe 2015; see also the introduction to this forum). I use Nepali women ex-combatants’ life stories to make two specific points relating to these discussions. First, I illustrate how the separation of security and political economy issues cannot fully account for their life experiences. Second, and by way of overcoming this separation, I show how by beginning with life stories, we can develop a holistic analysis that challenges the broader Eurocentric politics of feminist IR knowledge production.

From the Colonial to Feminist IR: Feminist IR Studies, the Wider FSS/GPE Research Agenda, and the Questions of Value, Valuation, Security, and Violence

2017 ◽  
Vol 13 (04) ◽  
pp. 739-746 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna M. Agathangelou
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Research Agenda ◽  
International Politics ◽  
Security Studies ◽  
Global Political Economy ◽  
Personal Lives ◽  
Ir Studies ◽  
The World ◽  
Forms Of Violence

International relations (IR) feminists have significantly impacted the way we analyze the world and power. However, as Cynthia Enloe points out, “there are now signs—worrisome signs—that feminist analysts of international politics might be forgetting what they have shared” and are “making bricks to construct new intellectual barriers. That is not progress” (2015, 436). I agree. The project/process that has led to the separation/specialization of feminist security studies (FSS) and feminist global political economy (FGPE) does not constitute progress but instead ends up embodying forms of violence that erase the materialist bases of our intellectual labor's divisions (Agathangelou 1997), the historical and social constitution of our formations as intellectuals and subjects. This amnesiac approach evades our personal lives and colludes with those forces that allow for the violence that comes with abstraction. These “worrisome signs” should be explained if we are to move FSS and FGPE beyond a “merger” (Allison 2015) that speaks only to some issues and some humans in the global theater.

scholarly journals (Re)integrating Feminist Security Studies and Feminist Global Political Economy: Continuing the Conversation

2017 ◽  
Vol 13 (04) ◽  
pp. 710-715 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amanda Chisholm ◽  
Saskia Stachowitsch
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Global South ◽  
Comprehensive Approach ◽  
Security Studies ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Global Political Economy ◽  
Global North ◽  
Critical Perspectives

Considerations to integrate feminist security studies (FSS) and global political economy (GPE) were first systematically reflected in the Critical Perspectives section of the June 2015 issue of this journal. That collection presented engaging essays on how the divide between the two fields has evolved and ways we can seek to overcome it—or, indeed, whether we should attempt to bridge the divide. This debate has gained momentum in workshops and conference panels attempting to build bridges between the two feminist subfields. Given the richness of scholarship associated with the two fields, we aim to continue this productive conversation by bringing new voices and ideas into the debate and by engaging in further possibilities for theoretical, methodological, and empirical advancement that allow for a more comprehensive approach to global gendered inequalities and hierarchies—one that is not disciplined by academic boundaries. With this, we hope to challenge the constructed and sometimes violently sustained borders between public and private, domestic and international, political and economic, Global North and Global South, as well as disciplinary “camp structures” (Parashar 2013) that too often shape academic, and also feminist, knowledge production.

White Man’s IR: An Intellectual Confession

2016 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 1112-1122 ◽  
Author(s):  
David A. Lake
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Life Stories ◽  
Life Experience ◽  
Life Experiences ◽  
Explanatory Power ◽  
White Male ◽  
Professional Practices ◽  
Good Work ◽  
The World

Drawing largely on my own career in academia, I elaborate on the need for greater gender, racial and other forms of diversity in International Relations. Although theories are thought to be “objective,” what goes into those theories and, in turn, their explanatory power is ultimately shaped by subjective, lived experiences. Different individuals with different life stories will develop different intuitions about how the world “works,” and thus will write different theories to capture those intuitions and, in turn, larger patterns of politics. I explain here how my life experience as a privileged white male has shaped the intellectual contours of my work on international hierarchy. Building from this foundation, I then explore how professional practices elevate as gatekeepers individuals with generally similar life experiences and, thus, intuitions about what constitutes “good” work in the field, which in turn reinforces those professional practices and priorities. The final section focuses on problems of eroding the disciplinary hierarchy and broadening the pipeline into the profession.

Feminist Global Political Economy and Feminist Security Studies? The Politics of Delineating Subfields

2017 ◽  
Vol 13 (04) ◽  
pp. 727-733 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Stern
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Feminist Research ◽  
Security Studies ◽  
Global Political Economy ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Critical Perspectives

When considering possible conversations, synergies, overlaps, similarities, conflicts, and distinctions between two subfields or “camps” (Sylvester 2010), the question of limits looms large. Where, why, and how are the limits of feminist security studies (FSS) and feminist global political economy (FGPE) currently being drawn, and to what effect? Building upon previous conversations about the relationship between FSS and FGPE, particularly as they were discussed in the Critical Perspectives section in Politics & Gender (June 2015), as well as those about FSS and FGPE more generally, I briefly touch on a few central points regarding the politics of boundary drawing and the practices of feminist research.

scholarly journals Capitalizing Asian Studies: Critical Scholarship and the Production of Knowledge in a Globalizing World

2004 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tim Oakes
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Economic Globalization ◽  
The United States ◽  
Asian Studies ◽  
Area Studies ◽  
Global Political Economy ◽  
Critical Scholarship ◽  
Globalizing World ◽  
Geographic Knowledge

This paper explores the implications of the related trends of economic globalization and the corporatization of higher education in the United States for Asian area studies scholarship. It argues that the scales at which geographical knowledge is produced are increasingly in flux due to the shift in global political economy. Area studies scholarship is subsequently left scrambling to both understand this shift and make its knowledge production somehow relevant and valuable in an arena in which knowledge about Asia is being produced and diffused from an increasingly diverse array of sources. In response, the paper suggests that more attention to the production of scale is needed if area studies scholars are to comprehend the changing relationship between our categories of geographic knowledge and global political economy.

Continuing the Conversation … Some Reflections

2017 ◽  
Vol 13 (04) ◽  
pp. 747-751
Author(s):  
Juanita Elias
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
International Relations ◽  
International Security ◽  
International Political Economy ◽  
Feminist Perspective ◽  
Security Studies ◽  
Security Governance ◽  
Women's Lives ◽  
Governance Institutions ◽  
The Relationship

The diverse collection of short reflections included in this Critical Perspectives section looks to continue a conversation—a conversation that played out in the pages of this journal (Elias 2015) regarding the relationship between two strands of feminist international relations scholarship: feminist security studies (FSS) and feminist international political economy (IPE). In this forum, the contributors return to some of the same ground, but in doing so, they bring in new concerns and agendas. New empirical sites of thinking through the nexus between security and political economy from a feminist perspective are explored: war, women's lives in postconflict societies, and international security governance institutions and practices.

scholarly journals From Latin American International Political Economy to Latin American Global Political Economy

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 7-33
Author(s):  
Ernesto Vivares ◽  
Raúl Salgado Espinoza
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Doctoral Programs ◽  
International Political Economy ◽  
World Order ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Global Political Economy ◽  
Sociological Approach ◽  
Global Challenges

This paper focuses on the differences between International Political Economy (IPE) versus Global Political Economy (GPE) in Latin America. It explores how IPE tends to be taught and researched beyond mainstream IPE but in dialogue with it. It engages with the main literature of this field to discuss the contours and extension of a transition in teaching and research. It rests upon a historical sociological approach and employs a qualitative analysis of syllabi and curricula of various masters and doctoral programs on International Relations/Studies and underlying disciplines, and is complemented with semi-structured interviews with leading scholars of IPE from across the region. The paper argues that there is a shift from mainstream IPE to a new Latin American GPE as the result of a revitalization of the field and as a response to the new regional and global challenges. New dynamics of development, conflict and a changing world order coexist with old problems, pushing our field to find new responses, demonstrating the limits of the traditional knowledge, and requiring the development of new contributions. While the shift may be minor, it is constant and steady, and is neither homogenous nor dominated by a unique vision of the field, but it is defined by heterogeneity and plurality.

Private Power and Global Authority: Transnational Merchant Law in the Global Political Economy

2005 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 259-260
Author(s):  
Adam Harmes
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Private Sphere ◽  
Commercial Law ◽  
Global Political Economy ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
Historical Materialist ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
Global Power ◽  
Private Power

Private Power and Global Authority: Transnational Merchant Law in the Global Political Economy, A. Claire Cutler, Cambridge Studies in International Relations; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003, pp. xiv, 306In Private Power and Global Authority, Claire Cutler presents a theoretically rich and historically detailed account of the interrelationship between transnational merchant law and broader patterns of restructuring in the global political economy. More specifically, she draws upon an historical materialist framework to demonstrate how “fundamental transformations in global power and authority are enhancing the significance of the private sphere in both the creation and enforcement of international commercial law” (1). In doing so, Cutler reveals the power relations and political implications inherent to this seemingly functional realm. At the same time, she looks through the other end of the telescope to show the broadly constitutive role that transnational merchant law has played in the transformation and legitimation of the emerging neoliberal order. In this sense, the changes that Cutler identifies in transnational merchant law both reflect, and help to constitute, broader changes in the global political economy.

Macroeconomic Interventions and the Politics of Postwar Justice

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-6
Author(s):  
Daniela Lai
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Bosnia And Herzegovina ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Economic Security ◽  
Security Studies ◽  
Feminist Critique ◽  
Physical Security ◽  
Multiple Dimensions ◽  
Critical Perspectives

This essay connects feminist political economy and critical/feminist transitional justice through the analysis of macroeconomic interventions in postwar Bosnia and Herzegovina. Previous contributions to Critical Perspectives have argued for the need to establish a dialogue and bring down divides between feminist security studies and political economy in feminist International Relations (Elias 2015; Chisolm and Stachowitsch 2017) and to look at the spaces where security and political economy intersect as a productive line of research (Sjoberg 2015). To build these connections, feminist scholars have stressed the importance of multidimensional concepts and questioned their unidimensional use whenever relevant. Security is certainly one of the concepts benefiting from a feminist critique that has opened up its meaning, with reference to its referent objects as well as its multiple dimensions (e.g., to include women's economic security alongside physical security; see Chisolm and Stachowitsch 2017; True 2015). Another concept that has been productively reframed as multidimensional by feminist scholars is violence (Bergeron, Cohn, and Duncanson 2017; Elias and Rai 2015; True 2012).

Is Strategic Studies Rationalist, Materialist, and A-Critical? Reconnecting Security and Strategy

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 494-510
Author(s):  
Pascal Vennesson
Keyword(s):  
Problem Solving ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
International Security ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Security Studies ◽  
The Past ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Thomas Schelling ◽  
Strategic Studies

AbstractBetween the 1940s and the 1960s, strategy was at the heart of security studies and closely intertwined with International Relations (IR). Over the past three decades, however, the study of strategy has been relegated to a secondary position in the international security subfield and marginalized in IR theorizing. One important source of this disconnect is the challenge mounted by critical security advocates, who sought to reorient the study of security away from strategic studies. They reached into the philosophy of science and pulled out three familiar dichotomies, rationalism/constructivism, materialism/idealism, and problem-solving/critical theorizing, that they could utilize within security debates. Specifically, they argue that strategic studies leaves out too much of what is really important for security and world politics because it is rationalist, materialist, and retains an uncritical view of knowledge production. In this article, I turn the critical security conventional wisdom on its head and show that strategic studies, exemplified by the ideas of Carl von Clausewitz and Thomas Schelling, actually transcends these dichotomies and hence offers an indispensable source of insights for both security studies and IR.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document