Suchergebnisse

The purpose of this article is to offer a feminist critique of populism, not as a distinct mode of politics, but as an analytical and political concept. As such, it seeks to redirect our attention away from populism, understood as a politics 'out there', towards the academic theoretical debates that have given this analytical term a new lease of life and propelled it beyond academic circles into the wider public discourse. In this context, the article develops two broad arguments. The first is that the two prevailing conceptions of populism are marred by anaemic conceptions of power, collective agency and subjectivity and, as such, are unable to present us with a convincing account of why this form of radical politics emerges in the first place, who its protagonists are, and how they come together in collective struggle. The second is that our current frenetic deployment of the term as a blanket descriptor for radical politics of all persuasions does not bode well for feminism politically. For both reasons, I conclude that feminists need to resist the current 'populist hype'.

Despite the proliferation of works on the 'global justice movement' (GJM) in recent years, surprisingly little has been written on the intersections between feminist and anarchist strands within this 'movement of movements'. In an effort to rectify this gap in the literature, this article seeks to explore in what ways and to what extent anarchist and feminist renditions of revolution, within the context of the GJM, are conceptually compatible and thereby potentially politically reinforcing. In order to ascertain the degree of convergence between these two radical projects, in the first part of the article I examine what each camp is fighting for and against and whether their struggles for social justice are ideologically consonant. In the second part, I turn my attention to the types of practices being enacted and defended by these two activist constituencies and ask how they see their respective revolutions being brought about. What notions of social change are at work here and are their political practices, and the different temporalities sustaining them, reconcilable? After arguing in the first two parts of this article that anarchism and feminism are more compatible than is often acknowledged and that the considerable synergies between feminist notions of social justice and social change and anarchist conceptions of revolution merit far more attention than they currently receive, I end the piece by reflecting on some of the points of tension that still militate against merging their respective political imaginaries. I do so in an attempt to identify what I see as the conditions of possibility for a more integrated, mutually collaborative feminist anarchist revolutionary politics.

For several decades after International Relations (IR) became a fully-fledged field of study at British and American universities, it worked with a relatively simple conceptualisation of 'politics' as such. In the international context, 'politics' involved an ongoing struggle for power among sovereign states, with war the worst-case outcome of this struggle. Power itself was defined essentially in terms of military and economic 'capabilities'. The fundamental structural condition of international anarchy meant that, in the absence of the kinds of constraints upon conflict that operate within states, only such crude mechanisms as a balance of power, or fragile institutions such as diplomacy or international law, served to impose some degree of order upon the system as a whole. While the Cold War brought an additional, ideological dimension to this struggle for power, in other respects it also simplified it by making it bipolar. Hence although much more was seen to be at stake in this contest than, for example, the nineteenth-century struggle for power in Europe, which gave the Cold War confrontation a zero-sum quality, the nature of the political processes at work was conceptualised in relatively straightforward terms. The 'high politics' of the global strategic contest between the superpowers not only transcended the 'low politics' of issues such as trade, they subsumed and gave a particular shape to numerous lesser conflicts in the Third World, which were frequently characterised as Cold War 'proxies'.

"This book explores and critically reflects on the theory and practice of political agency in contemporary global politics. In light of the changing relationship between the state, the market and the society, it seeks to map both theoretically and empirically contemporary forms of global political agency. This book reflects on the theory and practice of political agency in contemporary global politics. More specifically, it empirically analyses a range of different forms of political agency and explores their significance for understanding and enacting global politics. Reflecting the efforts of scholars from a variety of disciplines from political theory and Sociology to Geography and International Relations, it brings into conversation a wide spectrum of theoretical approaches including Marxism, feminism, post-structuralism and historical institutionalism. The contributors compare a range of forms of political agency; exploring their significance for the theory and practice of global politics; and reflect on the tensions and synergies generated by recent efforts to conceptualise them. Demonstrating an innovative and interdisciplinary approach Contemporary Political Agency will be of interest to students and scholars of international relations, sociology, political economy and political theory"--

Challenging the neglect of feminism in accounts of the global justice movement, this book explores the origins, ideas, and practices of what Catherine Eschle and Bice Maiguashca term Ofeminist antiglobalization activism.O Drawing on fieldwork undertaken at the World Social Forum, the authors argue that feminists constitute a distinct, if diverse, sector of the global justice movement. Taking feminism seriously, the authors conclude, points us toward a richer and more theoretically nuanced understanding of the global justice movement and its struggle to create other possible worlds. Their book

AbstractThis article examines Corbynism's gender politics, and its relationship with feminism. We note that in the early years of the Corbyn period there were starkly opposed positions on the gender dynamics and feminist‐friendliness of the Corbyn project. This, in turn, reflected wider factional divisions, often mapping onto different articulations of the relationship between feminism, race/whiteness, and trans rights. We then describe how initial prospects for the cultivation of a more gender‐sensitive left politics were ultimately undermined by two key developments: first, a discursive terrain in which feminism increasingly became pitted against the Corbynite left; and second, a defensiveness within the Corbyn project that made it resistant to immanent critique. We conclude by arguing that the failure of pro‐Corbyn feminists to gain much traction must be contextualised within the dynamics of personalisation, instrumentalisation and polarisation that increasingly shape our political culture.