Modernization,under development,uneven development: Prospects for a theory of third world formations

Taken as a whole, the two books considered in this review article ‐ David Lehmann, ed., Development Theory: Four Critical Studies, Frank Cass: 1979, £9.50, £4.95 (paperback) and John G. Taylor, From Modernisation to Modes of Production: A Critique of the Sociologies of Development and Underdevelopment, Macmillan: 1979, £12.00, £4.95 (paperback) ‐ give a concise but comprehensive picture of the complex debates and the various theoretical impasses of today's ‘Third World’ studies. The four essays edited by David Lehmann are a critical review of both the old orthodoxies (development economics and modernisation theories) and the newer ones (neo‐Marxist theory of underdevelopment); whereas John Taylor's work is an ambitious attempt to go beyond the neo‐Marxist paradigm by laying the foundations of a mode‐of‐production approach to the study of third‐world formations.

Since I believe that the most lively and interesting debates in this field today focus on the various shortcomings of the neo‐Marxist approach, and on attempts within Marxism itself to overcome them, this review will pay particular attention to Henry Bernstein's article “Sociology of underdevelopment vs. Sociology of development?” and to Taylor's book.     

Under development and modes of production: A reply to Nicos Mouzelis

What follows is a reply to a number of points raised by Nicos Mouzelis in his review of my book, From Modernisation to Modes of Production: A Critique of the Sociologies of Development and Underdevelopment (Macmillan 1979, £4.95 paper) in The Journal of Peasant Studies, Volume 7, No. 3, April 1980. I focus on Mouzelis’ arguments that my framework for analysing Third World societies is ideological and reductionist. I try to show how the analysis put forward in my book can be used to analyse what for me is the central problem of ‘development ‘ ‐ namely the relations between the restricted and uneven capitalist development characteristic of Third World societies, their class structures, forms of state and development strategy. I also examine the relevance of Mouzelis's alternative ‐ of inter‐relating structuralist and action perspectives ‐ and suggest that the framework put forward in my work can deal more adequately with the issues raised by Mouzelis in his review. I agree with Mouzelis that the most fruitful debates in the Sociology of Development currently centre on the relevance of the Marxist approach, and view my comments here as part of this wide‐ranging, continuing debate, of which my work forms a part.     

Postmaternal,Postwork and the Maternal Death Drive

ABSTRACT

The term ‘postmaternal’ has recently emerged as a way to articulate the effects of neoliberalism on the public devaluing of caring labour [Stephens, Julie. 2011. Confronting Postmaternal Thinking: Feminism, Memory, and Care. New York: Columbia University Press]. This term suggests a valorisation of values associated with care and mothering that have traditionally been gendered and rely on a heterosexist matrix for their intelligibility. Marxist feminist writers during the 1970s struggled with the question of the particular form of care that reproduction entails, and this feminist archive has been recently extended to a discussion of ‘post-work’ [Weeks, Kathi. 2011. The Problem with Work: Feminism, Marxism, Antiwork Politics and Postwork Imaginaries. Durham: Duke], in which calls for the valuing of unpaid work as a viable form of labour have been reanimated. In this article I examine the relation between these two analytic categories – ‘postmaternal’ and ‘postwork’. Both categories require that we re-think some of the most trenchant issues in feminist thought – the sexual division of labour, the place of ‘reproduction’ in psychic and social life, and the possibilities for a new feminist commons.     

Perspectives in Marxist Anthropology∗

Perspectives in Marxist Anthropology, by Maurice Godelier. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977. Pp. v+243; £9.20, £3.00 paper. (Translated by Robert Brain.)     

‘The Synthesis is in the Machine’: An Interview with Silvia Federici

ABSTRACT

In this interview Marxist feminist theorist Silvia Federici discusses the following: the relationships between accumulation and reproduction; biotechnology; the recent resurgence of social reproduction theory as exemplified by work in Endnotes and Lies; the mystification of gendered labour; the disciplining of productive bodies; the sites and technologies of primitive accumulation in the present; and the reproduction of feminism and other social movements in the twenty-first century.     

Reciprocity and rape: Blackness and the paradox of sexual violence

This essay expands Saidiya Hartman's unflinching paradigmatic analysis in Scenes of Subjection of the modes of historical continuity in which Black women are barred from reciprocity, recognition, and incorporation ab initio (Hartman, Saidiya V. 1997. Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth-Century America. New York: Oxford University Press.). By engaging the works of key Marxist feminist theorist Leopoldina Fortunati, I will demystify the ways in which these three homologies which non-Black women depend upon for the coherence of their complaint are parasitic on the flesh of Black women and men.     

Deepening,and repairing,the metabolic rift

This paper critically assesses the metabolic rift as a social, ecological, and historical concept describing the disruption of natural cycles and processes and ruptures in material human-nature relations under capitalism. As a social concept, the metabolic rift presumes that metabolism is understood in relation to the labour process. This conception, however, privileges the organisation of labour to the exclusion of the practice of labour, which we argue challenges its utility for analysing contemporary socio-environmental crises. As an ecological concept, the metabolic rift is based on outmoded understandings of (agro) ecosystems and inadequately describes relations and interactions between labour and ecological processes. Historically, the metabolic rift is integral to debates about the definitions and relations of capitalism, industrialism, and modernity as historical concepts. At the same time, it gives rise to an epistemic rift, insofar as the separation of the natural and social worlds comes to be expressed in social thought and critical theory, which have one-sidedly focused on the social. We argue that a reunification of the social and the ecological, in historical practice and in historical thought, is the key to repairing the metabolic rift, both conceptually and practically. The food sovereignty movement in this respect is exemplary.     

Game of Thrones,Rape Culture and Feminist Fandom

Throughout its run, HBO's adaptation of George RR Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire book series, retitled Game of Thrones (GoT), has attracted controversy for its depiction of nudity and graphic sex and violence. But a particular recent scene, in which a brother rapes his sister, caused outrage in media and fan commentary. This article considers the scene in question, and feminist responses to it, in the context of wider cultural debates about rape culture and the media representation of sexual violence. Following Sarah Projansky's argument that rape is a ‘particularly versatile narrative element’ that ‘often addresses any number of social themes and issues’, I read GoT and its online fan responses alongside literary theories of the fantastic, to examine how dominant rape culture discourses are both reproduced and challenged in fan communities. In particular I argue that fan narratives both reproduce discourses of masculinity and futurity that contribute to rape culture, but also provide a potential space for change through speaking out about silenced experiences of trauma.     

‘Lovers of liberty’?Prostitution and the Politics of Choice in Emma Donoghue’s Slammerkin

This article explores the way in which Emma Donoghue’s novel Slammerkin (2000) reflects long-standing feminist debates surrounding prostitution. We argue that not only does Donoghue’s portrayal of prostitution resist the pro versus anti dichotomy in which feminist perspectives on sex work are so often narrowly situated, but Slammerkin also foregrounds the complexity with which the politics of choice intersects with women’s decision to sell their bodies.     

‘Philosophical vacuity and political ineptitude’: the freewoman's critique of the suffrage movement 1

The Freewoman has commonly been read as an example of New Woman periodical publishing, through its focus on women's sexuality and autonomy from men. The journal appears to offer a more daring, twentieth-century and modern ‘new woman’, more willing than even her 1890s counterpart to embrace free unions or sexual experimentation. The Freewoman's extraordinary discussions of sexuality have tended to distract historians' attention from other elements of the debates it engendered. In particular, the political argument found within its pages has received insufficient attention; the journal tends to be misread as a socialist publication. Placing the journal as part of the New Woman narrative lends itself to an alternative view of the political subject of The Freewoman; the New Woman focus on individuality, autonomy and creative genius plays an important part in the distinctive political debates found within the journal. Although the suffrage struggle dominated Edwardian feminist activism, many Freewoman contributors rejected the vote entirely. In aperiod when new liberal or Fabian conceptions of an increasingly interventionist state appeared to sit comfortably with feminist demands for a more inclusive and socially responsible state, The Freewoman took an anti-statist stance. Rejecting the common suffragist metaphor of the state as the home writ large, Freewoman contributors saw the state as machine-like. The author explores the motivations for these positions, and the development of an individualist-feminist, or even egoist stance. Specifically, she outlines contributors' rejection of militant suffrage activism, and their contestation of the citizen as a rights-holding and consenting political subject, and maps the alternative political structures suggested within The Freewoman, and the manner in which concepts of individuality found within New Woman discourse served to construct a disturbingly elitist and even coercive feminist politics.     

Old conservatism in ‘new’ clothes

This review article considers two books about development theory and practice informed by what is variously referred to as an ‘impasse'/'post‐impasse'/'post‐Marxist’ framework. The latter, its adherents maintain, is a new approach to development that transcends economic reductionism and instead recognises/celebrates cultural ‘difference’, ‘diversity’ and ‘choice’. By contrast, it is argued here that many of the allegedly ‘new’ claims/arguments advanced by the postmodern ‘impasse’ are those traditionally made not just by populism but also by conservatism.

Beyond the Impasse: New Directions in Development Theory, edited by F.J. Schuurman. London: Zed Books, 1993. Pp.ix + 233. £13.95 (paperback). ISBN 1 85649 2109

Rethinking Social Development: Theory, Research and Practice, edited by D. Booth. Harlow: Longman Scientific & Technical, 1994. Pp.ix + 319. £19.99 (paperback). ISBN 0 582 234972     

Na shariram nadhi, My body is mine: The urban women’s health movement in india and its negotiation of modernity

This article explores the Indian women’s health movement for productive insights into current debates on the “travelling” meanings of modernity. Taking the feminist demand for bodily autonomy as a starting point for the exploration, the article traces the trajectories described by some of modernity’s central concepts: choice, freedom, autonomy, rights, and [developmental versions of] progress. The journeys described here take place not only between the “global” and the “local,” but between metropole and colony in the colonial period, and between the nation-state and the women’s movement in the postcolonial period. As the case example of the controversy over amniocentesis (used in India in the identification and abortion of female foetuses) illustrates, terms such as choice and development have become central to contestations between the women’s movement, the state, and the professional middle classes.     

Authoritarian populism in rural Belarus: distinction,commonalities, and projected finale

ABSTRACT

The paper inspects how agrarian debates apply to rural Belarus. Following the ‘persistence versus disappearance’ debate, it finds the moral economy alongside request for change. Pursuing the ‘adaptation versus resistance’ debate, it spots adaptability and exclusion of those failing to adapt. Here ‘lukascism’ surfaces resting on constructing the ‘other’. A rare case of agrarian populism employed by top authority, lukascism is otherwise humdrum. Proclaiming some principles of the moral economy while disregarding others, inconsistent lukascism undercuts the ‘coexistence scenario’ of households with large-scale farming. Change avoidance is a commonplace foretelling lukascism’s finale: its appeal is limited by the older generation..     

Soy states: resource politics,violent environments and soybean territorialization in Paraguay

Soy production has radically transformed the social, ecological, territorial and political form of Paraguay. This paper traces waves of sojización – soy territorialization – to analyze how soybean resource politics are changing environmental governance and state–society relations in Paraguay. I argue that political, social and ecological ruptures mark each territorialization: agrarian reforms that reconfigured land control, the introduction of genetically modified soy varieties, and most recently a ‘parliamentary coup’ preceded by spectacular acts of violence against campesinos. The violent rejection of post-neoliberal politics espoused by former President Fernando Lugo marked the beginning of a third wave of sojización defined by the increasing influence of the soy industry, campesino and indigenous dispossession, and violent environments. Paraguay reveals unexpected consequences and contradictions of the Left Turn in Latin America. The country’s experiment with post-neoliberal politics created conditions that eventually broadened and deepened neoliberalizations of nature. The term ‘soy states’ indicates three conjunctures of soy production and how they reconfigure state–society relations and conceptions of ‘the state’ in Paraguay vis-à-vis soy production. My arguments draw from extensive qualitative field research and applied work in Paraguay coupled with secondary source analysis, contributing to debates about neoliberalizations of nature, plant territoriality, agrarian political ecology and state formation.     

Where angels fear to tread?: ‘Third world women’ and ‘development’

Male Bias in the Development Process, edited by Diane Elson. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1991. Pp.viii + 215. £29.95 (hardback). ISBN 0 7190 2555 9

Gender, Development and Identity: An Ethiopian Study, by Helen Pankhurst. London: Zed Books, 1992. Pp.216. £29.95 (hardback); £12.95 (paperback). ISBN 1 85649 157 9 and 158 7

Where Women are Leaders: The SEWA Movement in India, by Kalima Rose. London: Zed Books, 1992. Pp.286. £32.95 (hardback); £12.95 (paperback). ISBN 1 85649 083 1084 X

In debates between feminists from South and North it has been argued that Western feminists implicitly disparage ‘third world women’ by representing them as ‘sexually oppressed’. Further, it has been argued, ‘third world women's’ political struggles are trivialised when these women are discursively homogenised. It is argued here that while there is some truth in these assertions. Southern feminists should beware of cultural ‘fundamentalism’. However, their emphasis on the importance of socio‐cultural analysis is applauded, especially if we are to understand Southern economic contexts. Socio‐cultural analyses do not lead away from economic issues: they provide more explanatory variables and more complex models.     

‘Beauty isn't all a matter of looking glamorous’: attitudes to glamour and beauty in 1950s women's magazines

This article analyses representations of glamour in two British magazines during the 1950s: Home and Country and Woman's Outlook, the publications of the National Federation of Women's Institutes (NFWI) and the Women's Co-operative Guild (WCG) respectively. Both publications shared many traits with best-selling women's magazines of the period but they also had certain distinctive characteristics, such as a relative lack of advertising for beauty products, which make them particularly interesting subjects for a study of glamour. Through its exploration of the diverse and even contradictory attitudes towards glamour evidenced in these publications, the article contributes to continuing feminist debates about women and beauty as well as offering fresh insights into the NFWI and WCG. Its findings demonstrate heterogeneous understandings of femininity, thus challenge the stereotypes of 1950s womanhood that continue to abound, and add another case study to the growing body of revisionist literature on women in the post-1945 period.     

Reframing Gender Equality in Finnish Online Discussion on Immigration: Populist Articulations of Religious Minorities and Marginalized Sexualities

Gender equality is an essential part of Finnish self-understanding. The public discussion on equality does not, however, only focus on gender; it is also used to promote anti-immigration-minded, homophobic opinions. In the article, the coexistence of contradictory discourses on gender equality is interpreted as populist rhetoric. The articulations of gender equality in online debates on gender, sexuality, and immigration are analysed. The main questions are: How is gender equality reframed in anti-immigration-minded online debate? How are the notions of sexuality and gender fixed in order to oppose immigration? How are gender, sexuality, and immigration articulated intersectionally? The investigation focuses on an article on Muslim homosexuals, published in the Finnish newspaper Helsingin Sanomat in March 2013, and the discussion that followed on blogs and in online discussion fora. The logic of the articulation in the empirical material is analysed by identifying five discursive modes for discussing gender equality in opposing Muslim immigration: The Finns Party as defenders of sexual and gender equality; Equality for Muslim women; “The Tolerant” as scapegoats in risking achieved equality; Othering Islam; and Equality for the Westerners. The analysis indicates how the subjects of sexual and gender equality are produced, and illustrates the ability of populist rhetoric to adopt topics, agendas, and ideologies from other discourses and reframe them to promote its political aims. The article discusses how equality is used changeably, referring to varying groups of people. In populist rhetoric, the themes traditionally associated with sexual and gender equality in the Nordic welfare states can be ignored; the concept is detached from all its emancipatory meanings. In populist rhetoric, equality becomes a tool used to promote hegemonic power relations.     

Introduction: New directions in agrarian political economy

For four decades, The Journal of Peasant Studies (JPS) has served as a principal arena for the formation and dissemination of cutting-edge research and theory. It is globally renowned as a key site for documenting and analyzing variegated trajectories of agrarian change across space and time. Over the years, authors have taken new angles as they reinvigorated classic questions and debates about agrarian transition, resource access and rural livelihoods. This introductory essay highlights the four classic themes represented in Volume 1 of the JPS anniversary collection: land and resource dispossession, the financialization of food and agriculture, vulnerability and marginalization, and the blurring of the rural-urban relations through hybrid livelihoods. Contributors show both how new iterations of long-evident processes continue to catch peasants and smallholders in the crosshairs of crises and how many manage to face these challenges, developing new sources and sites of livelihood production.     

Diamela Eltit: Clearing space for critical performance

Reggaeton's success in the international music scene has incited heated debates about the genre's genealogy. The dominant framework for discussing reggaeton's origin often relies on and reifies nation-based claims to the genre, overlooking how reggaeton resists being fixed to any single locale. In this paper I discuss the emergence of the reggaeton subgenre bhangraton (a mix of bhangra pop and reggaeton) and point to some of the ways that it challenged nationalist claims to reggaeton. Reggaetonera and Hindi-vocalist Deevani, in particular, complicates claims about racial, ethnic, and sonic purity that circulate within reggaeton by highlighting how race, gender, and affinity are performed and felt and by calling attention to the genre's multiple circuits outside the nation.     

Miss Reading

Against the backdrop of western culture's strong investment in gendered clothes, Stockton looks at clothing's intricate relations to shame and, for some queer women and men, the surprising value of these humiliations, especially in the service of sexual attraction. The word 'martyrdom', with its associations to bodily wounding and psychic pain, is not too strong for the acts of clothing and sartorial preference she discusses. Working through concepts that emerge from Sigmund Freud on femininity, Georges Bataille on sacrifice and Leo Bersani on debasement, along with debates among feminist thinkers about the New Woman, Stockton takes up 'martyrs' from three distinct histories, martyrs as diverse as the mannish lesbian of Great Britain's 1920s, American butches and femmes of the 1960s, and even the sailors of post-war France. How public self-betrayal and self-debasement in terms of clothes can offer creative social formations is the focus of this article. The highly famous novels of three queer authors provide the means for this surprising look: Radclyffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness, Leslie Feinberg's Stone Butch Blues and Jean Genet's Querelle.