Post Feminist Practices Subjectivities And Intimacies In Global Context

Post-feminist practices, subjectivities and intimacies in global context

Changing the Subject

In Changing the Subject Srila Roy maps the rapidly transforming terrain of gender and sexual politics in India under the conditions of global neoliberalism. The consequences of India’s liberalization were paradoxical: the influx of global funds for social development and NGOs signaled the co-optation and depoliticization of struggles for women’s rights, even as they amplified the visibility and vitalization of queer activism. Roy reveals the specificity of activist and NGO work around issues of gender and sexuality through a decade-long ethnography of two West Bengal organizations, one working on lesbian, bisexual, and transgender issues and the other on rural women’s empowerment. Tracing changes in feminist governmentality that were entangled in transnational neoliberalism, Roy shows how historical and highly local feminist currents shaped contemporary queer and nonqueer neoliberal feminisms. The interplay between historic techniques of activist governance and queer feminist governmentality’s focus on changing the self offers a new way of knowing feminism—both as always already co-opted and as a transformative force in the world.

Critical Methods in Political and Cultural Economy

Critical Methods in Political and Cultural Economy offers students and scholars the first methods book for the critical school of International Political Economy (IPE). What does it mean to ‘do’ critical research? How do we write about the evidence we present? This volume explores our shared critical ethic to demonstrate how methods are transformative and reimagines research strategies as both an embodied practice and a social process. By presenting methodologically informed ways of researching, enriched by real-life accounts from academics doing empirical research, the volume seeks to forge a new collaborative path that builds a critical ethic and modes of inquiry within International Political Economy. Substantive chapters advance the pluralism of the critical school of cultural political economy and seek to articulate its nascent research ethic. Short autobiographical vignettes articulate the professional journeys of contributors who ‘do’ critical political economy. There is practical advice on how to develop evidence from an iterative reflexive research strategy. Using this innovative format offers a guide to methods in critical political economy by engaging directly with the people doing research, not only as technical practice but also as lived experience. The combination of research and practice presented throughout the book offers an extensive and authoritative framework for evaluating how methods are part of critical research and will be essential reading for all students and scholars of IPE.