Abstract
In an international system filled with tensions, analysts are keenly interested in questions of continuity and discontinuity. States persist as key political entities, as does a world capitalist system of commodity production and exchange. At the same time, new actors, technological capabilities and ecological factors impinge on the state, and a new international division of labour reshapes capacities within and between zones of the global economy. These and other cross-cutting tensions have been examined by our contributors.
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Notes
Dennis C. Pirages, ‘Technology, Ecology and Transformations in the Global Political Economy’, introduction to this volume, p. 1.
Sandra Harding, The Science Question in Feminism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986) p. 15.
For a review of realist literature, see Robert Gilpin, ‘The Richness of the Tradition of Political Realism’, International Organization (Spring, 1984) and Richard Mansbach and John Vasquez, In Search of Theory (New York: Columbia University Press, 1981). Original realist writings include: E.H. Can, The Twenty Years’ Crisis, 1919–1939 (London: Mac-millan, 1946); John Herz, Political Realism and Political Idealism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951); Hans Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations (New York: Knopf, 1978); Kenneth Thompson, Political Realism and the Crises of World Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1960).
For a review of transnationalist literature, see Richard Mansbach and John Vasquez, In Search of Theory. Original writings include: Dennis Pirages, Global Ecopolitics (North Scituate, Mass.: Duxbury Press, 1978); Seymour Brown, New Forces in World Politics (Washington, DC: Brookings, 1974); Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye, Power and Interdependence (Boston: Little, Brown, 1977); Ernst Haas, M.P. Williams, D. Babai, Scientists and World Order (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977).
Duncan Snidal, ‘The Game Theory of International Politics’ World Politics, vol. 35, no. 2 (January, 1983) p. 39. See other articles in that issue; Kenneth Waltz, Theory of International Relations (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1979) and Robert Keohane (ed.), Neorealism and Its Critics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986).
John Ruggie, ‘Continuity and Transformation in the World Polity’, in Keohane (ed.), Neorealism and Its Critics, p. 140, referring to Kenneth Waltz, Theory of International Relations (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1979).
Ruggie, ‘Continuity and Transformation in the World Polity’, pp. 151–2.
Ruggie, ibid. Also see Alexander Wendt, ‘The Agent-Structure Problem in International Relations Theory’, International Organization, vol. 41, no. 3 (Summer, 1987).
Ernst Haas, ‘Is There a Hole in the Whole? Knowledge, Technology, Interdependence, and the Construction of International Regimes’, International Organization, 29 (Summer, 1975). Robert Keohane, After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985). Robert Gilpin, War and Change in International Relations (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981). Arthur Stein, ‘The Hegemon’s Dilemma: Great Britain, the United States, and the International Economic Order’, International Organization, 38 (Spring, 1984).
See Richard Ashley, ‘The Poverty of Neorealism’ and Robert Cox, ‘Social Forces, States and World Orders: Beyond International Relations Theory’, in Keohane (ed.), Neorealism and Its Critics. Also Bradley Klein, Strategic Discourse (New York: CUNY, the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, 1987). R.B.J. Walker, ‘Realism, Change, and International Political Theory,’ International Studies Quarterly, 31, 1, 1987.
The outlines of a promising exception can be seen in Bradley Klein, ‘Textual Strategies of Military Strategy: Or, Have You Read Any Good Defense Manuals Lately?’, and Richard Ashley, ‘Living on Border Lines: Man, Poststructuralism, and War’, in John Der Derian and Michael Shapiro (eds), International Intertextual Relations (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1989).
W. Ladd Hollist, ‘Anticipating World System Theory Synthesis’, in Hollist and James Rosenau (eds), World System Structure: Continuity and Change (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1981) p. 291. For other discussions of world systems, see Immanuel Wallerstein, The Modern World System I (New York: Academic Press, 1974) and ‘The Rise and Future Demise of the World Capitalist System: Concepts for Comparative Analysis’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 16 (September, 1974), Christopher Chase-Dunn and Richard Rubinson, ‘Toward a Structural Perspective on the World-System’, Politics and Society, 7 (no. 4, 1977) and other contributions to the Hollist and Rosenau volume.
Wallerstein, ‘The Rise and Future Demise of the World Capitalist System’.
Hollist, ‘Anticipating World System Theory Synthesis’, p. 291.
Wallerstein, The Modern World System I, p. 86. A new contribution edited by J. Smith, J. Collins, T. Hopkins and H. Muhammad, entitled Racism, Sexism, and the World-System (New York: Greenwood Press, 1988) offers numerous examples of women both as antisystemic agents and as victims of structure. Nonetheless, there is a tendency in this work to see the twin evils of racism and sexism as emanating from one system united and functional in its dialectics.
Cox, ‘Social Forces, States and World Orders’, in Keohane (ed.), Neorealism and Its Critics, p. 206.
Stephen Resnick, John Sinisi and Richard Wolff, ‘Class Analysis of International Relations’, in W. Ladd Hollist and F. LaMond Tullis (eds), International Political Economy Yearbook, vol. 1 (Boulder: Westview, 1985) p. 97.
Keohane, ‘Theory of World Politics: Structural Realism and Beyond’, in Keohane (ed.), Neorealism and Its Critics, p. 182.
Ibid.
Harding, The Science Question in Feminism.
Jane Flax, ‘Postmodernism and Gender Relations in Feminist Theory’, Signs, vol. 12, no. 4, 1987, p. 629.
Carol Gilligan, In A Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982). Of course, it is noteworthy that Gilligan’s female subjects are from relatively privileged racial and class groups.
Harding, The Science Question in Feminism, p. 86. This section of her work raises again issues discussed in Marcia Millman and Rosabeth Moss Kanter (eds), Another Voice: Feminist Perspectives on Social Life and Social Science (New York: Anchor Books, 1975).
Contrast Joanne Gowa’s discussion of positive and negative altruism in ‘Anarchy, Egoism and Third Images: The Evolution of Cooperation and International Relations’, International Organization, 40 (Winter, 1986) with Robert Keohane’s critique of rational choice as abstracting individual decision making from ‘irrational’ social influences, in ‘Review of Mancur Olsen, The Rise and Decline of Nations: Economic Growth, Stagflation, and Social Rigidities’, Journal of Economic Literature, 21 (June, 1983).
See discussion by Martin Staniland in What is Political Economy: A Study of Social Theory and Underdevelopment (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985) chap. 2.
Harding, The Science Question in Feminism, p. 87.
Maria Mies, Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale: Women in the International Division of Labour (London: Zed, 1986).
Ibid., p. 126.
See James Rosenau, ‘Interpreting Aggregative Processes in the International Political Economy: Third World Demands as Empirical Data’, in Hollist and Rosenau (eds), World System Structure.
Harding, The Science Question in Feminism, p. 87.
See discussion in Mies, Patriarchy and Accumulation, chap. 3.
See Nancy Hartsock, Money, Sex, and Power: Toward a Feminist Historical Materialism (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1985) and Jean Bethke Elshtain, Women and War (New York: Basic Books, 1987).
Kathleen Staudt, Women’s Politics, the State and Capitalist Transformation in Africa’, in Irving Leonard Markovitz (ed.), Studies in Power and Class in Africa (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987). Also, Mies, Patriarchy and Accumulation.
Elshtain offers this description of Victorianage women in Women and War.
Hartsock, Money, Sex, and Power, p. 203.
Elshtain, Women and War, pp. 90–1.
Hartsock, Money, Sex, and Power, p. 117. This is a point Cox raises as well in ‘Social Forces’: Theory is always for someone and for some purpose ... The world is seen from a standpoint definable in terms of nation or social class, of dominance or subordination ...’ (p. 207). His list of standpoint-constitutive influences, however, does not include gender.
Harding, The Science Question in Feminism, p. 26.
Mary Daly, Pure Lust: Elemental Feminist Philosophy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1984) p. 161n. Daly’s use of capitals is, in her words, ‘capitally irregular: it is intended to convey my meaning rather than to conform to standard usage’ (p. 31).
Ibid., p. 163.
Harding, The Science Question in Feminism, p. 131.
Nancy Chodorow, The Reproduction of Mothering (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978) p. 39.
Hartsock, Money, Sex, and Power, p. 241.
Susan Bordo, ‘The Cartesian Masculinization of Thought’, Signs, vol. 11, no. 3, 1986, p. 451, paraphrasing Evelyn Fox Keller, Reflections on Gender and Science (New York: Yale University Press, 1985).
Hartsock, Money, Sex, and Power, p. 242.
See discussions in Sarah Ruddick, ‘Pacifying the Forces: Drafting Women in the Interests of Peace’, Signs, vol. 8, no. 3, 1983; Birgit Brock-Utne, Educating For Peace: A Feminist Perspective (New York: Pergamon Press, 1985); Betty Reardon, Sex and the War System (New York: Teacher’s College, Columbia University, 1985).
See discussions in Hartsock, Money, Sex, and Power; and Gilligan, In a Different Voice.
Adrienne Rich, Of Women Born (New York: Norton, 1976).
Hartsock, Money, Sex, and Power, p. 246.
Marilyn French, Beyond Power: On Men, Women, and Morals (New York: Summit Books, 1985) p. 499.
Arguably, the European Communities have similar potential as a model of mutual-attraction political economy, so long as the tendency to resort to traditional power plays diminishes.
Robert Axelrod, The Evolution of Cooperation (New York: Basic Books, 1984) and Axelrod and Robert Keohane, ‘Achieving Cooperation Under Anarchy’, World Politics, vol. 38, no. 1 (October, 1985) and special issue of World Politics on Continuity and Transformation in the World Polity, January, 1983.
Gowa notices the problem of system-dominant sources of state behaviour and outcomes in Axelrod (see ‘Anarchy, Egoism and Third Images’) and says it ‘circumscribes his book’s utility for students of the field’ (p. 168). She does not go on, however, to tie her very interesting discussion of state altruism to feminist theoretical frameworks.
See Wendt, ‘The Agent-Structure Problem in International Relations Theory’, for a similar query. Wendt asks researchers to conceptualise states as having internal organisational structures which condition perceptions and responses, and which experience, absorb and perhaps change in response to the intended and unintended actions of other states and agents. Both neorealists and world-systems analysis, he says, should explore ‘the social structural organizing principles which generate the state as a particular kind of social actor’ (p. 366). Yet he uses both the master-slave and the child-parent dyads to illustrate co-determining entities. If mainstream researchers take Wendt’s advice but do not consult feminist literature, they may fail to expose dominating sides of some only apparently co-determined entities.
Flax, ‘Postmodernism and Gender Relations in Feminist Theory’, p. 622.
Ibid.
Ibid, pp. 633–4.
Harding, The Science Question in Feminism, p. 189. Some standpointers share this position and speak of multiple standpoints. See Nancy Hartsock, Money, Sex and Power. Also, see discussion in Christine Sylvester, ‘Some Dangers in Merging Feminist and Peace Projects’, Alternatives, vol. 12, no. 4 (October 1987).
Harding, ibid., p. 192.
Ibid., p. 193.
Ibid., p. 247.
Elshtain, Women and War, p. x.
Ibid., p. xi.
Ibid., p. 91.
Ibid., p. 10.
Ibid., p. 166 (emphasis in original).
Ibid., p. 171.
See discussions in Sylvester, ‘Some Dangers in Merging Feminist and Peace Projects’, Alternatives; and ‘Patriarchy, Peace, and Women Warriors’, in Linda Forcey (ed.), Peace: Meanings, Politics, Strategies (New York: Praeger Press, 1989).
Elshtain, Women and War, p. 171.
Flax, ‘Postmodernism and Gender Relations in Feminist Theory’, p. 640.
Quoted in Alison Jaggar and Paula Rothenberg, Feminist Frameworks: Alternative Theoretical Accounts of the Relations Between Women and Men (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1984) p. 81.
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© 1990 Dennis C. Pirages and Christine Sylvester
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Sylvester, C. (1990). The Emperors’ Theories and Transformations: Looking at the Field Through Feminist Lenses. In: Pirages, D.C., Sylvester, C. (eds) Transformations in the Global Political Economy. Macmillan International Political Economy Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-10373-7_9
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