Political Economies

Citation:

Johnston, Melissa Frances. 2020. “Frontier Finance: The Role of Microfinance in Debt and Violence in Post-Conflict Timor-Leste.” Review of International Political Economy, April, 1–25. doi: 10.1080/09692290.2020.1733633. 

Author: Melissa Frances Johnston

Abstract:

Microfinance programs targeting poor women are considered a ‘prudent’ first step for international financial institutions seeking to rebuild post conflict economies. IFIs continue to visibly support microfinance despite evidence and growing consensus that microfinance neither reduces poverty nor breaks the cycle of domestic violence. In the case of Timor-Leste, a feminist political economy approach reveals how microfinance engendered debt allows for the control, extraction, and accumulation of profits and resources by an elite class and exacerbates gender-based violence. Timorese elite classes have benefitted from microfinance during the Indonesian occupation and in today’s post-conflict regime. Extractive debt relations between elite classes and ordinary citizens are enabled by a gender order that is regulated by brideprice and characterized by gendered circuits of violence. Brideprice weds the exchange of women to the class system in which the (violent) control of women is paramount to retaining political power. Microfinance adds liquidity and high interest rates to the debt relations of brideprice helping to create the very conditions for poor women’s disempowerment in a fragile state. Thus, the success of microfinance is predicated on systems of gender inequality and gendered circuits of violence, debt, and the exchange of women.

Keywords: microfinance, debt, feminist political economy, peacebuilding, brideprice, gender-based violence

Topics: Class, Coloniality/Post-Coloniality, Economies, Domestic Violence, Feminisms, Feminist Political Economy, Gender, Women, Gender-Based Violence, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, International Financial Institutions, Political Economies, Post-Conflict, Violence Regions: Oceania Countries: Timor-Leste

Year: 2020

Citation:

Tickner, J. Ann. 1993. “States and Markets: An Ecofeminist Perspective on International Political Economy.” International Political Science Review / Revue Internationale de Science Politique 14 (1): 59–69.

Author: J. Ann Tickner

Abstract:

This article examines the way in which the interaction between states and markets since the seventeenth century has depended on the exploitation of nature. The accumulation of wealth and power by the early modern state depended on the enlightenment ideology that saw nature as a resource to be exploited for human progress. An expansionary Eurocentric state system imposed this ideology on other cultures through imperialism and the globalization of capitalism. Feminists believe that this attitude toward nature has also been associated with the exploitation of women and other cultures. While environmentalists look to international regulation to solve ecological problems caused by the development of the international system, feminists and social ecologists claim that not until all these forms of exploitation are ended can an ecologically secure future be achieved.

Topics: Economies, Environment, Feminisms, Ecofeminism, Gender, Globalization, Political Economies

Year: 1993

Citation:

The WoMin Collective. 2017. “Extractives vs Development Sovereignty: Building Living Consent Rights for African Women.” Gender & Development 25 (3): 421-37.

Author: The WoMin Collective

Abstract:

This article focuses on the right of consent for women and their communities in respect of extractives and large-scale (or ‘mega’) infrastructure projects that affect their access to, and control over, land and natural resources indispensable to their lives and livelihoods. As we point out, the right of consent is determined by prevailing deeply unequal power structures. Poor women confront a double exclusion from power and decision-making about land and resource use – on the basis of both their class and gender. The political economy of power and vested interest surrounding these projects at all levels from the community to the international spheres mean that communities, and women within them, rarely enjoy the right of consent on a free, prior, informed, and ongoing basis. In addition, women are locked out of rights of land ownership in communities living under common property and this, combined with other patriarchal power relations in family and community, inhibits their voice and influence in community decision-making. This is the second exclusion they suffer, this time on the basis of their gender. Consent, even if legislated or institutionalised in policy and systems of state, corporate, or multilateral bodies is rarely granted but rather won through struggle and demand. The article will present an inspiring case in the South African context where unequal power has been inverted and a unique community, with women playing a leading role, has claimed the right of consent in practice through struggle. It concludes with some suggestions for the work needed to strengthen women’s rights of consent in respect of mega ‘development’ projects in Africa.

Keywords: resource extraction, land, Rights, women, Gender, inequality, consent, development, exclusion, social struggle

Topics: Class, Extractive Industries, Gender, Women, Gendered Power Relations, Patriarchy, Gender Hierarchies, Gender Equality/Inequality, Infrastructure, Livelihoods, Political Economies, Rights, Land Rights, Property Rights Regions: Africa, Southern Africa Countries: South Africa

Year: 2017

Citation:

Mellor, Mary. 2009. "Ecofeminist Political Economy and the Politics of Money." In Eco-Sufficiency and Global Justice: Women Write Political Ecology, edited by Ariel Salleh, 251-67. London: Pluto Press.

Author: Mary Mellor

Annotation:

Summary:
"So how can the capitalist market be challenged in a way that provides a feasible alternative at a systematic level? As the exploration of externalities shows, the market system places a boundary around certain limited activities and functions that are defined by their value in money terms. Ecofeminist political economy points to the dualist construction of the modern market economy and the way in which economic valuing and the social dominance of men are directly connected. This chapter will explore first the basis of that dualism and then explore the critical question of money issue and circulation that has largely been ignored by both radical and conventional economists" (Mellor 2009, 252).

Topics: Economies, Environment, Feminisms, Ecofeminism, Feminist Political Economy, Political Economies

Year: 2009

Citation:

Banwell, Stacy. 2015. “Globalisation Masculinities, Empire Building and Forced Prostitution: A Critical Analysis of the Gendered Impact of the Neoliberal Economic Agenda in Post-Invasion/Occupation Iraq.” Third World Quarterly 36 (4): 705–22.

Author: Stacy Banwell

Abstract:

Adopting a transnational feminist lens and using a political economy approach, this article addresses both the direct and indirect consequences of the 2003 war in Iraq, specifically the impact on civilian women. Pre-war security and gender relations in Iraq will be compared with the situation post-invasion/occupation. The article examines the globalised processes of capitalism, neoliberalism and neo-colonialism and their impact on the political, social and economic infrastructure in Iraq. Particular attention will be paid to illicit and informal economies: coping, combat and criminal. The 2003 Iraq war was fought using masculinities of empire, post-colonialism and neoliberalism. Using the example of forced prostitution, the article will argue that these globalisation masculinities – specifically the privatisation agenda of the West and its illegal economic occupation – have resulted in women either being forced into the illicit (coping) economy as a means of survival, or trafficked for sexual slavery by profit-seeking criminal networks who exploit the informal economy in a post-invasion/occupation Iraq. 

Keywords: globalisation masculinities, post-colonialism, neoliberalism, gender-based violence, transnational feminism, political economy

Topics: Armed Conflict, Occupation, Economies, Informal Economies, Feminisms, Gender, Women, Masculinity/ies, Gendered Power Relations, Globalization, Infrastructure, Livelihoods, Sexual Livelihoods, Political Economies, Security, Trafficking, Sex Trafficking Regions: MENA, Asia, Middle East Countries: Iraq

Year: 2015

Citation:

Author: Martin Hultman

Annotation:

Topics: Environment, Climate Change, Gender, Masculinity/ies, Political Economies

Year: 2017

Citation:

Suchland, Jennifer. 2015. Economies of Violence: Transnational Feminism, Postsocialism, and the Politics of Sex Trafficking. Durham: Duke University Press.

Author: Jennifer Suchland

Annotation:

Topics: Economies, Feminisms, Feminist Political Economy, Gender, Women, International Organizations, NGOs, Political Economies, Rights, Human Rights, Women's Rights, Trafficking, Sex Trafficking

Year: 2015

Citation:

Shiva, Vandana. 2009. “Women and the Gendered Politics of Food.” Philosophical Topics 37 (2): 17-32. 

Author: Vandana Shiva

Abstract:

From seed to table, the food chain is gendered.

When seeds and food are in women's hands, seeds reproduce and multiply freely, food is shared freely and respected. However, women's seed and food economy has been discounted as "productive work." Women's seed and food knowledge has been discounted as knowledge.

Globalization has led to the transfer of seed and food from women's hands to corporate hands. Seed is now patented and genetically engineered. It is treated as the creation and "property" of corporations like Monsanto. Renewable seed becomes nonrenewable. Sharing and saving seed becomes a crime. Diversity, nourished by centuries of women's breeding, disappears, and with it the culture and natural evolution that is embodied in the diversity is lost forever.

Food, too, is transformed in corporate hands. It is no longer our nourishment; it becomes a commodity. And as a commodity it can be manipulated and monopolized. If food grain makes more money as cattle feed than it does as food for human consumption, it becomes cattle feed. If food grain converted to biofuel to run automobiles is more profitable, it becomes ethanol and biodiesel.

Topics: Economies, Gender, Women, Globalization, Political Economies, Security, Food Security

Year: 2009

Citation:

Authors: Raj Patel, Rachel Bezner Kerr, Lizzie Shumba, Laifolo Dakishoni

Abstract:

The Group of Eight Countries (G8) launched the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition to improve nutritional outcomes through private sector involvement in agricultural development. The accession of Malawi to the Alliance reveals the assumptions behind the intervention. We show that while the New Alliance may seem to have little to do with nutrition, its emergence as a frame for the privatization of food and agriculture has been decades in the making, and is best understood as an outcome of a project of nutritionism. To highlight the failings of the approach, we present findings from the Soils, Food and Healthy Communities Initiative in northern Malawi, which has demonstrated success in combatting malnutrition through a combination of agroecological farming practices, community mobilization, women’s empowerment and changes in intrahousehold gender dynamics. Contrasting a political economic analysis of the New Alliance alongside that of the Soils, Food and Healthy Communities Initiative shows the difference between a concern with the gendered social context of malnutrition, and nutritionism. We conclude with an analysis of the ways that nutrition can play a part in interventions that are inimical, or conducive, to freedom. 

Keywords: New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition, agroecology, nutritionism, Gender, Malawi, Africa, food security, food sovereignty

Topics: Agriculture, Development, Gender, Political Economies, Privatization, Security, Food Security Regions: Africa, Southern Africa Countries: Malawi

Year: 2015

Citation:

Brennan, Teresa. 1997. “Economy for the Earth: The Labour Theory of Value without the Subject/Object Distinction.” Ecological Economics 20 (2): 175–85. 

Author: Teresa Brennan

Abstract:

Topics: Economies, Feminisms, Feminist Political Ecology, Feminist Political Economy, Political Economies

Year: 1997