+Announcements Questions on syllabus/course? Presentation groups posted on course website Midterm Paper due M 8/19

prompts will be posted on course website

+

Gender, Race, GlobalizationThe Feminization of Transnational Labor

+Questions

How do we define gender?How are gender and race related?What is globalization?Why is globalization a powerful factor

in the migration of women?

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gender

How do we define “gender”? How is it different from sex?

“gender ideology produces the epistemological framework within which sex takes on meaning rather than the other way around” (Halberstam 117)

Gender is (118): “a marker of social difference” “a bodily performance of normativity and

the challenges made to it” “a social relation that subjects often

experience as organic, ingrained, ‘real,’ invisible, and immutable”

“a primary mode of oppression that sorts human bodies into binary categories in order to assign labor, responsibilities, moral attributes, and emotional styles”

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race

What is the relationship between race and gender? Race and gender both “render the body

into a text upon which histories of [(racial)] differentiation, exclusion and violence are inscribed” (Ferguson 192)

Biological inheritance vs racial formations naturalization of subjugation vs analyses of freedom & power

“’[Race] has established who can be imported and who exported, who are immigrants and who are indigenous, who may be property and who are citizens; and among the latter who get to vote and who do not, who are protected by the law and who are its objects, who are employable and who are not, who have access, and privilege and who are (to be) marginalized’” (192)

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intersectionality

Parallel processes of racialization and gendering should not blind us to the fact that anti-racist projects can uphold patriarchy and heteronormativity

Race can never be divorced from gender; gender can never be divorced from race

“’We need to articulate the real class situation of persons who are not merely raceless, sexless, workers, but for whom racial and sexual oppression are significant determinants in their working/economic lives’” (Ferguson 195)

Gendered and racialized bodies are marked for certain forms of labor; certain forms of labor become defined by gendered and racialized assumptions

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globalization

How does Prof. Lowe define globalization? The late 20th century conditions of

“economic, social, and political interdependence across cultures, societies, nations, and regions precipitated by an unprecedented expansion of capitalism on a global scale” (Lowe 120)

Why is globalization a powerful factor in the migration of women? the feminization of transnational labor

Flows of globalization depend on rootedness of global city = explosion in low-skilled, invisible, service & informal industries

Debt burden, structural adjustment programs, foreign investments, austerity measures (cuts to public programs) in developing nations forge survival circuits = women bear burden of holding up developing nations

+Cycle of Globalization

Survival Circuit:• Previously

colonized countries• Debt burdens• Structural

adjustment • Foreign investment• Austerity measures

Global cities• Directs

movements of global capital

• Depends on low-skilled, invisible, informal & service labor

+How NOT to do it… “oppression olympics” vs “oppression uniformity” “feminist-as-tourist”

Add brown women and stir White women saving brown women from brown men “The effects of this strategy are that students and teachers

are left with a clear sense of difference and the distance between the local (defined as self, nation, and Western) and the global (defined as other, non-western, transnational” ie. the US is always the norm

“feminist-as-explorer” The orientalist mode of seeing the world “Distance from

‘home’ is fundamental to the definition of the international” Cultural relativism makes impossible studies of

interconnections and analyses of power

+(Re-)Considering Terms First world – capitalized, industrialized nations of

the West (primarily US and Western Europe) Second world – socialist, communist,

industrializing nations of the USSR-PRC bloc Third world – recently de-colonized nations forced

to choose between 1st and 2nd world alliances/subordinations (Asia, Africa, Latin America, Oceania)

Global North/South “a metaphorical rather than geographical

distinction, where North refers to the pathways of transnational capital and South to the marginalized poor of the world regardless of geographical distinction”

+

End of Cold War and entry of PRC into global capitalism calls into question 3-world system

Global North and South

+1/3 versus 2/3 of the world 1/3 of the world = social minority

“the haves” anywhere in the world Enjoy modern Western life and high standard of living Employed in formal sector Beneficiaries of globalization Citizens of the global city

2/3 of the world = social majority “the have nots” anywhere in the world No regular access to to the goods/services that define

average standard of living Employed in informal and service sectors Necessary to but marginalized by globalization Invisible workers of the global city

+politics of location“I am clearly located within the One-Third World… I straddle both categories. I am of the Two-Thirds World in the One-Third World. I am clearly a part of the social minority now, with all its privileges; however, my political choices, struggles, and vision for change place me alongside the Two-Thirds World. Thus, I am for the Two-Thirds World, but with the privileges of the One-Third World. I speak as person situated in the One-Third World, but from the space and vision of, and in solidarity with, communities in struggle in the Two-Thirds World.”

+Questions to consider What does it mean according to Mohanty to engage in

anticapitalist transnational feminist practice? What does it mean to possess “place consciousness”

and why is it so important to Mohanty? Does Rosa Linda Fregoso and demonstrate “place consciousness”? Why or why not?

What does it mean to recognize “common differences”? And how does it become the basis of feminist solidarity?