Gendering the Merchant Economy
Multiple armed conflicts – the highest number since the end of the Cold War - are
rapidly shifting
world’s security and economic landscape. Less visibly, they are also - like other
wars before -
transforming gender relations, especially as the existing women's rights are already
being
challenged and rolled back, including in Europe and in the United States. In this
talk, Hozic follows
bodies, rather than money or states, to illustrate how women’s and feminist perspectives
allow us
to see wars differently, shifting and loosening their temporal and spatial boundaries.
Situated
within feminist political economy of conflict and post-conflict recovery, the talk
highlights two
aspects of war that are not always sufficiently recognized by scholars of international
relations and
international security. First, feminist political economists emphasize continuums
and circuits of
violence, thus questioning the usual dichotomies of war and peace, economy, and security,
domestic and international, public and private. Second, feminist scholars stress enduring
and
transformative aspects of wars, analyzing ways in which wars make and remake men,
women,
sexualities, and gender relations more broadly. Thus, from a feminist perspective,
wars – and their
aftermath – are integral to the global political economy and its gendered and racial
hierarchies. By
looking at wars in the post-Cold War period, the talk explores the relationship between
the global
merchant economy, perpetual political instability, and identity politics, thereby
addressing lasting
effects of wars and militarization on gender relations, political representation,
and processes of
social reproduction.
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