This paper asserts that research on gender and livelihood
(production and social reproduction in feminist thought of
the mid-late 20th century) remains central to efforts to understand
gendered in/equity in any given socio-historical context,
as well as internationally. Two relatively recent theoretical
trends distracted attention from livelihood studies. Discourses
of globalisation imperiously dominate in western academies,
at best producing new insights about global economic power
but typically neglecting to question whether and how livelihoods
change for most “global subjects”.
Equally distracting yet contradictory are discourses of post-modernity
attending to the interpretive limitations of language and
the fluid nature of social identities. Important as these
reminders are, particularly for feminist thinking about gendered
subjectivities, their enthusiastic embrace arguably discourages
research linking material conditions to the social and power
relations which lie at the heart of so-called global processes.
Even in gender and development studies, a focus upon empowerment
is often at the expense of material realities and gender main-streaming
promises to sidestep differential material realities. “Post-modern”
perspectives may have run their course as the unwitting foil
to global abstractions; modernity flourishes and local gendered
contradictions abound. Still, the global discursive turn demands
our critical attention.
Here, I argue that research about the material and cultural
politics of livelihood - its gendered, class and social
complexities, context by context - is necessary for
understanding gendered inequities within and between
nations. In the paper, examples are drawn from current
research about migration and development leading to
transnational livelihoods and politics. Is this modernity
disguised as globalisation?
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