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Locating Globalization: Feminist (Re)readings of the
Subjects and Spaces of Globalization*
Richa Nagar
Department of Women's Studies, University of Minnesota,
Minneapolis, MN 55455
nagarOOl@tc. umn. edu
Victoria Lawson
Department of Geography, Box 353550, University of Washington,
Seattle, WA 98195-3550
lawson@u.washington.edu
Linda McDowell
Department of Geography, University College London, 26 Bedford Way,
London WClH OAP, UK
l. mcdowell@geog.ucl.ac. uk
Susan Hanson
School of Geography, Clark University, Worcester, MA 01610
shanson@clarku.edu
Abstract: The literatures on economic globalization and feminist understandings of

global processes have largely remained separate. In this article, our goal is to bring
them into productive conversation so that research on globalization can benefit from
feminist engagements with globalization. In the first section, which focuses on the
conceptual challenges of bringing the economic globalization literature into conver-
sation with feminist analysis, we identify several key exclusions in that literature
and propose parallel inclusions that a feminist reading of globalization suggests. Our
suggested inclusions relate to the spaces, scales, subjects, and forms of work that
research on economic globalization has largely neglected. The second section takes
up several key themes in the large body of feminist research on global economic
processes, which is also largely absent from the economic globalization literature:
the gendering of work, gender and structural adjustment programs, and mobility
and diaspora. In the final section, we address the implications of feminist episte-
mologies and methodologies for research on economic globalization. Here we argue
for grounded, collaborative studies that incorporate perspectives of the south as well
as the north and that construct understandings of place and the local, as well as space
and general global processes; we point to the coconstitution of different
geographic scales and highlight the need for studies that cut across them. The article
demonstrates how a feminist analysis of globalization entails far more than recog-
nizing the importance of gender; it requires substantial rethinking of how to concep-
tualize, study, and act in relation to economic globalization.
Key words: economic globalization, feminist geography.
* The authors collaborated fully in concep- an ancient feminist custom, we chose to list the
tualizing, writing, and revising this article, and authors in order of age. We thank the reviewers
we wish to acknowledge the pleasures and and David Angel for helpful comments on an
enrichments of this collaboration. Following earlier draft.
257
258 ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY
The literatures on economic globalization ization suggests. Our focus is on what each
and feminist understandings of global inclusion can bring to globalization research.
processes have, for the most part, remained In the second section, we examine some of
separate ( Koffman and Youngs 1996; the major themes in the large body of empir-
Marchand and Runyan 2000a are key excep- ical work on gender and global processes
tions). Our goal is to bring these two litera- that the literature on economic globalization
tures into productive conversation so that has not yet absorbed. In the final section,
research on globalization can benefit from we address the implications of feminist epis-
feminist theoretical, epistemological, temologies and methodologies for research
methodological, and empirical engagements on economic globalization. Joan Scott (1989,
with globalization. We begin by noting that 680), a feminist historian, pointed out that
globalization is not new. Political and the writing of women's history raised the
economic relations at the global scale have question of who has the power to produce
long histories, rooted in colonialism, impe- "social consensus about the meanings of
rialism, and the discourses and practices of truth." She asked, "By what process have
the development industry (Escobar 1995; men's actions come to be considered a norm,
Katz 2001). The recent outpouring of work representative of human history, generally,
on globalization has emphasized globalizing and women's actions overlooked, or
tendencies in the discourses and practices consigned to a less important, particularized
of corporate actors, in global financial and arena?" (Scott 1993, 242). We raise similar
trade flows, in transnational networks of questions about the writing of economic
activists, and in the rescaling of gover- globalization: How is it that only certain parts
nance (through treaties and institutions, such of the process have entered the lexicon while
as the World Trade Organization (WTO), others remain neglected? How are under-
North American Free Trade Agreement, the standings of economic globalization dimin-
European Union, and the International ished as a result of this neglect? Scott's ques-
Monetary Fund (IMF)). This body of tion points to "the politics of knowledge
research has linked globalization to the production" (Scott 1993, 236) and under-
historically specific (post-1989) hegemony scores the inseparability of epistemology
of neoliberal discourse that is reworking from conceptual and empirical issues.
nation-state power and the rhetorics and A number of cross-cutting themes, which
practices of development. In this article, we reflect our feminist position, run throughout
call attention to a large body of feminist work this article. The only other explicitly femi-
on gender and global processes that comple- nist treatment of gender and globalization
ments many of these insights but has been of which we are aware, Marchand and
neglected in the literature on economic glob- Runyan's (2000a) Gender and Global
alization. Restructuring, proposes that gender analysis
The article is organized into three sections is well suited for developing understandings
that discuss (1) theoretical and conceptual of globalization that go beyond the narrowly
issues, (2) feminist empirical work, and (3) economistic renditions that are character-
epistemological and methodological issues. istic of the mainstream economic global-
Because these three topics are closely inter- ization literature. 1 What are some of the hall-
twined, the organization reflects a matter of
marks of a feminist approach that render it
emphasis, not a strict partitioning. In the
first section, which focuses primarily on
the conceptual challenges faced by bringing 1 Marchand and Runyan's (2000a) edited collec-
the economic globalization literature into tion develops complementary arguments about
conversation with feminist analysis, we iden- gender and global restructuring; however, their
tify several key exclusions in the economic work differs from ours in that geographic scale
globalization literature and propose parallel and concepts of place are not central to the book's
inclusions that a feminist reading of global- message.
LOCATING GLOBALIZATION 259
so useful in analyzing global processes? growing visibility of "women's" issues on a
Briefly, the themes that thread through all global stage ( e.g., international confer-
three sections of this article reflect these ences on women's health, reproductive
hallmarks: the recognition that gender is "a rights, women and war, violence, rape, and
focal point both of and for [global] restruc- refugees); the significance of women's
turing" (Marchand and Runyan 20006, empowerment as an agent of develop-
18); a focus on power relations at various ment; the theoretical refocus among geog-
geographic scales; a suspicion of binaries raphers from analyses at local, regional, or
or dualisms and a corollary preference for national scales to a multiscalar focus on the
understanding connections and interde- connections, relations, and processes across
pendencies, which feminists often refer to cultures that constitute geographic uneven-
as relational analysis (see, e.g., Alexander ness; and, finally, the continuing insistence
and Mohanty 1997) or relational thinking that feminism, as a movement and a theo-
(Marchand and Runyan 20006); a concern retical position, is about a serious engage-
for justice; the need to comprehend the ment with the possibilities for trans-
cultural construction of difference and forming inequalities, about connecting
boundaries; and a desire to build grounded, women's struggles in different places, about
contextual understandings of global mobilizing across cultural and national
processes. 2 Particularly in its focus on gender borders, and about building solidarity among
and its concern for grounded, contextual, women. In this last point, feminist work
empirical work, feminist analysis differs from differs from postmodernist analysis in its
other critical approaches, such as Marxism, continuing commitment to progressive ideals
which may share with feminism an interest of justice and ethics, democracy and equality,
in, for example, power relations and justice. albeit in ways that involve challenges to
The contemporary focus in feminist schol- conventional liberal definitions of justice
arship on the ways in which globalization (Young 1990; Hartsock 2001).
both connects women into networks across
varied spaces and plays on and reconstitutes
differences among them, as well as inequal- Theorizing Economic
ities between women and men, has, we Globalization: Toward a More
believe, been influenced by the coincidence Inclusive Account
of a number of material and theoretical
shifts. Such shifts include the impact of the A number of authors in geography and
mobility and movement of Third World related fields have critiqued the literature
women to the West on feminist scholar- on economic globalization, but, for the most
ship and the women's movement; the part, these critiques have not seriously
engaged feminist thinking. In this section,
we seek to build a framework for a conver-
2 Despite our outline of some key features of
sation between those who are critiquing
feminist analyses of globalization, feminism as a economic globalization scholarship and femi-
body of scholarship is distinguished by its epis- nists who have developed a large body of
temological and methodological pluralism. The work on gender and global processes. Both
theorization of gender as a performance, for the critiques we engage and our own femi-
example, is not necessarily accepted by or rele- nist analysis take as a backdrop celebratory
vant to all forms of feminist work. Indeed, renditions of globalization from boosters,
Wiegman (2000, 356) suggested that "the impos- such as Toffler and Toffler (1995), Ohmae
sibility of coherence [is] the central problematic
(1990, 1995), Fukuyama (1992), and
and most important feature of feminism as a
knowledge formation in the contemporary Gingrich (1995). For these authors, "glob-
academy." For analysts of globalization, this alization is conceptualized as an inevitable
lack of coherence is both an exhilarating and leap into friction-free flows of commodities,
daunting challenge. capital, corporations, communication, and
consumers all over the world .... Eroding mentally masculinist in its exclusion of the
away fixed in-state places into fluid un-stated economic, cultural, and political spheres
places now preoccupies the neo-liberal (often casual or informal) that operate in
managers of globalizing enterprises" (Luke households and communities; in daily
and Tuathail 1998, 76). practices of caring, consumption, and reli-
Critiques of globalization complicate gion; and in networks of alternative politics
this celebration of a borderless world of where women's contributions to globaliza-
flows, assertions of the end of the nation- tion are often located. We see these informal
state, and the imminent unbundling of terri- spheres as key sites for understanding
torial sovereignty. Scholars have critically globalization processes in their own right
examined new spatialities of power; asser- because of their crucial roles in society and
tions about the flows, flexibility, borders, and because it is precisely these spheres and
fixities of globalization; shifting scales of activities that underwrite and actively consti-
governance; and the shifting terrains and tute the public spheres of globalization. As
rhetorics of geopolitics (Herod, Tuathail, Nancy Folbre (2001, vii), an economist,
and Roberts 1998; Castells 2000; Giddens noted, "Markets cannot function effectively
2000; Greider 1997; Mittelman 2000; Kelly outside the framework of families and
1999; Luke and Tuathail 1998). This is a rich communities built on values of love, oblig-
and important literature, and we aim to ation, and reciprocity."
extend these critiques by pointing out that Much of the analyses of globalization fore-
they tend to deal with (1) economic grounds a limited set of public sphere,
processes in the formal sector, (2) only economic and political processes (see, e.g.,
certain places and scales, and (3) only certain Bello, Cunningham, and Rau 1994; Korten
actors. Our feminist analysis identifies these 2001; Greider 1997). For example, political-
biases as underlying three key exclusions in economy critiques understand the rise of
the globalization literature; in the rest of this globalization's current form as a series of
section, we discuss each of these exclusions, structural shifts in the form oflate-modem
along with the parallel inclusions that a femi- capitalism, underwritten by the breakup of
nist analysis suggests. In describing the inclu- the Bretton Woods system of exchange-rate
sions we advocate, we draw upon feminist controls, fallout from the OPEC crisis, inter-
nationalization of manufacturing and
work on gender and global processes-work
finance, and the reframing of governance
that is discussed in greater detail in the
through international institutions, such as
second section.
the IMF, World Bank, and WTO (Korten
2001; Mittelman 2000). These events are
Exclusions and Inclusions linked to crises of capitalist accumulation in
Exclusion 1: Casual and informal spheres (of the West, and economic globalization is
economies, cultures, and politics). represented as the next (perhaps inevitable)
iteration of Eurocentric capitalist develop-
Although many of the critiques of glob- ment. This focus on formal-sector economic
alization begin from geopolitical and cultural processes reinscribes the centrality of corpo-
perspectives (e.g., Herod, Tuathail, and rations, markets, and financial and devel-
Roberts 1998; Thrift 1998; Castells 2000; opment institutions even as they are
Kelly 1999; Koffman and Youngs 1996), they critiqued and, in so doing, neglects gendered
focus primarily on public and formal spheres processes that are taking place in other sites
of economy and politics. These spheres and alternative circuits such as households,
encompass corporations, national political communities, cooperatives, and transnational
arenas, multilateral institutions, the produc- networks (Hatch 2000; SEEDS 2000;
tion and dissemination of knowledge, and Sparke forthcoming).
global media (Kelly 1999). This emphasis on We advocate starting from these informal
the formal spaces of globalization is funda- spheres in which women and men are
marginalized under global capitalism as a time, the reworking of gender shapes the
strategic way to reveal how informal range of potential forms that global restruc-
economies of production and caring subsi- turing can assume.
dize and constitute global capitalism through A gendered analysis of globalization would
cheapening production in sweatshops and reveal how inequality is actively produced
homework (Mitter 1986; Beneria and Roldan in the relations between global restructuring
1987; Lawson 1995, 1999). Gender is central and culturally specific productions of gender
to the operation of this subsidy. First, as prof- difference. In a similar fashion, neoliberal
itability crises encourage restructuring, a states are subsidized through the informal
series of spatial shifts (from factory to sweat- provision of housing, food, health care, and
shop to home) and ideological shifts (from education. As neoliberal states withdraw
family-wage work to poorly paid feminized from the provision of social services, this
work) cheapen production costs for global work is most often assumed by women in
investors and producers. Although these the feminized spheres of household and
processes take particular forms in specific community. Women's disproportionate role
places, feminist research has illustrated the in social reproduction is intelligible only in
ways in which cultural ideologies of domes- relation to gendered ideologies of caring and
ticity, femininity, masculinity, and sexuality domesticity (Moser 1987; Folbre 2001).
play out in defining who works where and Despite the centrality of gender to these
for what rewards (Lawson 199,5, 1999; reworked forms of capitalism, feminist
Hanson and Pratt 1995; Pringle 1989; analyses of global restructuring processes
McDowell and Court 1994). have been neglected.
Melissa Wright's (1997) work illustrates
A closely related point is that studies of
how a discourse of "disposable women"
globalization focus on some networks and
has underwritten the success of maquiladora
types of flows (technological, financial,
production in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.
corporate, trade, and production) and not
Transnational firms have sought a large
others (e.g., activists who are concerned
number of women, who are constructed,
about environmental and health issues and
through discourses of femininity, as being
in the workforce only temporarily and as transnational networks of indigenous and
working for "lipstick" (as opposed to a family women's groups). In debating the very
wage). Because these female workers are existence of globalization, authors focus on
discursively constructed as temporarily in volumes of trade, investment, and migration
the labor force, firms have not invested in flows across the globe as key indicators (e.g.,
educating, training, and promoting them. Hirst and Thompson 1996; Smith 1997;
Their resultant low wages and dead-end jobs, Greider 1997; Weiss 1997; Kelly 1999).
justified through the gender ideologies Scholars also debate the nature of global-
that they are working only for their own ization through attention to the existence of
amusement or for "pin money" and that they qualitative shifts in the relations among
will soon leave the workforce for family markets, states, and territories but still focus
reasons, reinforce the notion that they are on the functional integration of economic
disposable women and, in the process, justify activities across the globe (Kelly 1999).
their low wages in the service of global Castells (2000, 1) termed this the age of
capital accumulation. In their detailed study informationalization and globalization in
of work in Worcester, Massachusetts, Susan which "a technological revolution, centered
Hanson and Geraldine Pratt (1995) demon- around information, transformed the way
strated the power of the same processes in we think, we produce, we consume, we
delineating economic opportunity in older trade, we manage, we communicate, we live,
industrialized places in the north. Processes we die, we make war, we make love ....
of gendering shape who has access to various Space and time, the material foundations of
forms and sites of work, and, at the same human experience, have been transformed,
262 EcoNOMIC GEOGRAPHY
as the space of flows dominates the space of discourses to the neglect of other discourses
places." (as in Thrift 1998). Nonetheless, we value
Instead of seeing the spaces of globaliza- this work on the cultural and discursive
tion as consisting only of formal economic production of globalization because these
and political spheres and being constituted discourses have legitimized neoliberal poli-
only by abstract flows, we advocate analyses cies and politics and so have reproduced the
that attend to the relations between and political conditions for globalization itself.
among flows emanating from different places As Kelly(l999, 380) argued, "by constructing
and circuits (e.g., the linkages among debt a particular vision of global space and the
repayments, state withdrawal from the provi- 'place' of individuals, national economies and
sion of health care, and the rise of neigh- so on within it, it has been argued that the
borhood clinics or relations between global idea of globalization forms part of the
media and transnational movements of rhetoric to legitimize certain political strate-
indigenous identity formation). We argue gies. Thus ... globalization can also be
that analyzing the interdependencies seen as a myth, a construction, a discourse."
between formal and informal circuits of glob- For example, global institutions, such as
alization can reveal the ways in which glob- the IMF and World Bank, have reframed
alization depends on both gendered debates over development in terms of
processes of marginalization and emergent neoliberal doctrine and are opening
processes of gendered resistance. For economies around the world to the freer flow
example, feminist scholarship has illustrated of capital and commodities (Kelly 1999;
how global indebtedness, structural adjust- Piven 1995). Scholars have also analyzed the
ment policies, and the hegemony of neolib- discourses of globality that are promulgated
eral development strategies have directly by the private sector, business schools, and
intensified women's triple roles in produc- management gurus. These practices
tion, reproduction, and community manage- construct a historically and culturally specific,
ment (Beneria and Feldman 1992; but intensely powertul spatial and political
Marchand and Runyan 2000a). Even as imaginary (Thrift 1998; Scholte 1996).
women's poverty has deepened under these Seeing globalization as socially constructed-
globalized regimes, women have often rather than as an inevitable, inexorable,
collectivized their gendered work, such as materialist process-is valuable because it
the provision of food and struggles for opens up space for alternative readings of
community infrastructure. In some cases, globalization. Nonetheless, these analyses
their collective work politicizes their roles remain focused on a top-down, global sphere
and gives rise to local activism in response of corporate strategies, managerial practices,
to globalization (Jelin 1991; Lind 2000). geopolitical discourses, and the global
Without attention to how people experience economy.
globalization processes in their communi- We argue, along with Roberts (2001) and
ties and homes, these politics do not come Gibson-Graham (1996), that research and
into view, and our understanding of global- discourses on globalization are peculiarly
ization is incomplete. Much research on masculinist in that they serve to construct
globalization has either paid scant atten- the spaces, scales, and subjects of global-
tion to gendered experiences of globaliza- ization in particular ways. Specifically,
tion (see, e.g., Hirst and Thompson 1996) discourses of global capitalism continue to
or has argued that globalization is leading to position women, minorities, the poor, and
the incorporation and emancipation of southern places in ways that constitute glob-
women (see, e.g., Giddens 2000, 72-74; alization as dominant. Images of passive
83-84). women and places (frequently southern, but
Even those who highlight the importance also deindustrialized places in the north) are
of discourse to the processes of globaliza- constructed and simultaneously serve to
tion have focused on certain public-sphere construct discourses of globalization as capi-
talist, as Western-centric, and as the only of these jobs-i.e., making them powerless,
possible future for the "global economy." invisible, super-exploited. (p. 14)
The result is "capitalist myopia," by which
researchers assume that global capitalism We build from her insights to argue the
is all encompassing and they cannot see, or importance of considering diverse subjects
consider salient, other noncapitalist, whose social location within cross-cutting
nonpublic spheres and actors. relations of difference (age, ethnicity, race,
gender, and so forth) shape their experiences
Inclusion 1: Attention to casual and informal of globalization. It is precisely the relations
spheres (of economies, cultures, and politics). between high-skill and low-skill work,
between formal and casualized economies,
This shift in focus enables analyses of between production and caring work,
the linkages between multiple spaces and between globalized and marginalized places
subjects. Inclusion 1 is twofold. First, we (in south and north) that have allowed global
consider how gendered processes that capitalism to assume its contemporary forms
devalue certain waged jobs and certain (Hartsock 2001; Krause 1996; Mittelman
groups of workers, as well as the work of 2000; Sassen 1998). Our feminist approach
caring for households and communities, builds a relational understanding of global
serve to underwrite and constitute global- capitalist processes through an analysis
ization. Second, we theorize the openings that starts from the lives of those who are
that can arise from the crucial insight that marginalized by globalization-and the
economic globalization is not inevitable but, informal spheres that are key to their lives.
rather, a contingent and constructed This analysis not only reveals how multiple
discourse about capitalism. oppressions constitute the contemporary
First, the central questions and problem- system, but also suggests new openings for
change. ·
atics of globalization research shift when we
Second, recognizing that globalization is
begin from the standpoints of marginalized
a contingent and constructed discourse
people and economic spheres. In particular,
opens up the possibility of different read-
such a shift reveals the ways in which
ings of and responses to globalization. Our
contemporary globalization is intimately tied
feminist approach theorizes that globalized
to gendered and racialized systems of capitalisms are historically and culturally
oppression. Nancy Hartsock (2001) argued contingent and engage with people in places
that understanding the situation of women to generate diverse and contradictory
is a key strategic move in grasping the outcomes. Feminist scholarship has high-
dynamics of capitalism in a global context. lighted conflictual interactions among
She noted that theorizing from women's lives capitalist economic restructuring, house-
and experiences of work and oppression holds, and the state. Women and men in
helps us see some fundamental dynamics marginalized places engage in complex and
that support global capitalism. These contradictory ways with globalized capi-
dynamics include talisms (Ong 1987; Kondo 1990; Lim 1983;
Mohanty 1991a, 19916). This work has
the devaluing of jobs, the shift from full time revealed how neoliberal austerity has
to part time, the shift from jobs with upward
reworked class processes and transformed
mobility to dead end jobs, the increasing infor-
mality/casualization of the labor force-all are
gender relations and identities in households
related to the feminization of employment in (Beneria and Feldman 1992; Beneria and
these jobs. I would want to stress that femi- Roldan 1987; Lawson 1995).
nization of the labor force refers both to the Victoria Lawson's (1995, 1999) work in
increasing numbers of women in these jobs- Ecuador, for example, demonstrated that
especially the low-end jobs. But it also refers faced with a crisis of profitability, garment
to the feminization of anyone who holds one manufacturers who had previously employed
factory workers shifted to subcontracting employ; it is not surprising, in view of

work to women homeworkers. In the context women's generally inferior labor market
of a historic compromise between the state position, that this desire is more likely to
and patriarchal labor unions, women had motivate women's entrepreneurship than
been excluded from factmywork and unions. men's. Second, one of the specific ways that
As a consequence of these exclusions and women business owners (to a far greater
powerful gendered discourses about degree than male business owners) improve
women's "primary responsibilities," women working conditions is to provide greater
now constitute a nonunion, cheap workforce time-space autonomy and flexibility; that
that enables companies to elide the state- is, the owners and their employees have
union compromise. At the same time, we more choice than they had in their previous
should not assume that these new forms of jobs in deciding the times and places of paid
work result in uniformly oppressive and work and caring work. Often women seek
subordinating experiences within the house- this greater time-space flexibility as a way to
hold. As several homeworkers remarked achieve some kind of balance between their
during in-depth interviews, they felt reaf- paid employment and their unpaid work in
firmed as independent and powerful people, the family because women's reproductive
as household heads, as mothers who were labor does not diminish with their business
successful in keeping their families together. ownership. Third, because new businesses
Even as the new source of homework serves emerge out of people's labor market expe-
the interests of garment producers and so riences, which are not only gender specific
facilitates economic globalization, the gender but also largely anchored in the places where
identities of the women in this study had people start their new businesses, women's
shifted as the women came to feel empow- and men's businesses have different impacts
ered through their access to an income inde- on the places in which they are located.
pendent from other household members Hanson (2000) showed that women-owned
(Lawson 1995). businesses are particularly important to
When we view economic globalization the survival and re-creation of Worcester,
from the standpoint of women's lives, we Massachusetts, as it struggles to redefine
uncover the complex and contradictory ways itself after deindustrialization. Only through
in which globalization reworks class attention to the interdependencies between
processes and positions in ways that expand formal and informal, paid and unpaid labor
women's entrepreneurship and their polit- do we see how globalization is reshaping
ical activism (Mies 1982; Tiano 1994). In women's and men's lives in this place, as well
response to deteriorating conditions of work as the place itself, which is not a major desti-
in established firms in the United States nation for global capital.
(which can be linked to increasing compe- Similarly, Lind's (2000) research in
tition associated with global markets), many Ecuador illustrates how women activists are
women and men are turning to self-employ- remaking their claims on the state in the
ment and entrepreneurship. Because, as we context of neoliberal austerity. Lind argued
briefly noted earlier, women and men are that women's organizations are not merely
positioned differently within the family passive recipients of neoliberal policies;
and within the workplace, gender shapes rather, they challenge both the masculinist
these processes of business creation in inter- exclusion of women's claims as citizens and
esting ways (Hanson 2001). We touch the neglect of women's particular concerns,
upon three of these ways here. First, many such as the provision of social welfare (see
who leave waged or salaried employment to also Radcliffe and Westwood 1993; Pearson
start their own businesses explain that an 2000). Feminist research has revealed that
important motivation for doing so is the corporate attempts to situate regions,
desire to create a better workplace, not only governments, and workforces as passive
for themselves, but also for those whom they recipients of corporate domination are met
by a range of responses that are framed in with global cities, most of which are located
diverse cultural contexts and that may resist, in OECD countries, and Cox's (1997) edited
accommodate, or acquiesce to the script of collection focuses on the scales of global-
passivity and control. We argue that these ization and questions of territorialization
blind spots in much of the research on while emphasizing corporations and flows
economic globalization result from the exclu- of commodities, capital, and information (the
sion not only of casual and informal spheres, chapters by Herod and Low are exceptions).
but also of key spaces, places, scales, and Accordingly, these important volumes
actors through which globalization is lived, continue to construct the south and dein-
created, and acted upon in different histor- dustrializing places in the north as the
ical and geographical settings. passive, victimized, or invisible "other" to
global spaces and processes. We argue that
Exclusion 2: Certain spaces, places, and scales. research on globalization would be substan-
tially enhanced by attention to critical devel-
The second element of our feminist opment studies' research on gender and on
engagement with existing critiques of the feminization of southern countries
research on globalization concerns the ways (and deindustrialized spaces in the north).
in which the spaces and scales of globaliza-
We discuss this surprising lack of engage-
tion are framed. Specifically, this research ment more fully in the second section.
has emphasized abstract spaces of global-
Globalization research has also empha-
ization; certain scales, such as the suprana-
sized certain scales (especially those of the
tional or the nation-state (as in Koffman
nation-state and supra- or multinational orga-
1996); or certain public or formal spaces and
nizations) but ignored others. Much work
sites, such as institutions, corporations,
on globalization has, ironically, reinscribed
regions, and global cities (as in Sassen 1998;
the centrality of nation-states by conceptu-
Thrift 1998). We examine not just which
alizing globalization processes as they relate
places and scales are included or excluded,
to nation-state spaces, thereby excluding
but also how they are included or excluded.
other crucial scales of analysis (as argued by
We challenge the ways in which certain
Sassen 1998; Escobar 2001). These concep-
places are constructed as marginal (for
tualizations frequently frame the nation-state
example, southern places and deindustrial-
as subordinate, but even so, this focus on the
ized places in the north) and as passive recip-
nation-state encourages the neglect of other
ients of, or as irrelevant to, globalization. The
scales, such as the household, community,
focus of much globalization research is major
and body (Mountz 2001; Hyndman 2001).
cities in advanced economies, with their
This global-national focus reinforces notions
reach and networks extending from the West
of space as discrete, bounded, and sepa-
sometimes to reach non-Western places
rate and works against imagining transna-
( Sparke 2001). Southern places are
tional connections or the salience of
constructed (if they even appear) in this liter-
ature as mere recipients of globalization, processes emanating from finer scales, such
rather than as being able to act on and trans- as communities, local organizations, and
households (Escobar 2001). It also works
form this global complex. Much of the liter-
ature on globalization engages in a double against the notion that the scales of global-
marginalization: Women are sidelined, as ization are socially constructed, relational,
is gender analysis more broadly, and and open to reframing. As Kelly (1999,
southern countries are positioned as the 381-82) stated:
feminized other to advanced economies. To speak of local, regional, national, or even
In Herod, Tuathail, and Roberts's (1998) global processes is meaningless-social rela-
book, the case studies cover the United tions are in fact played out across scales rather
States, Australia, Canada, and France, along than confined within them. Consequently, it
with globalized spaces. Sassen (1998) deals makes little sense to privilege any scale as a
primary referent for analyzing particular social actors (such as global corporations, global
processes .... Establishing in this way that financial markets, international institutions,
scale can be viewed as both constructed and and treaties), opening vulnerable economies
political enables us to think about globaliza- and pushing a large number into casual-
tion in a different light. ized work-with the poor, women, and
minorities disproportionately represented in
Inclusion 2: Spaces and scales of globaliza- these marginal sectors (e.g., Lawson 1999;
tion as multiple, intersecting, and socially and Sas sen 1998). On the other hand, this
politically constructed. reworking of sovereignty has challenged a
historically masculinist framing of scJVer-
Building on our arguments about the rela- eignty at the nation-state scale. As both
tions among economic, political, and cultural Sassen (1998) and Hyndman (2001) pointed
spheres of globalization, we advocate out, nation-state sovereignty claimed that
thinking of multiple geographic scales as they national territory is immune to international
are socially constructed and politically law. With globalization and the reworking
charged (Kelly 1999; Cox 1997). Hyndman of sovereignty, the state is no longer the
(2001) pointed out that feminist analysis exclusive representative of its population
incorporates a multiplicity of scales that in the international arena; nongovernmental
are both larger and smaller than the nation- sectors and transnational networks of
state, including the body and supranational activists-including women's groups and
organizations. We consider not only a feminist organizations-are also active
broader range of scales as relevant to glob- players now (Escobar 2001; Radcliffe
alization (including transnational, commu- 2001; Sassen 1998). This rise of transnational
nity, household, and bodily scales), but civil society, and the role of feminist orga-
also how scales are conceptualized in rela- nizations within it, creates new openings for
tion to social, political, and cultural women to have visibility and political voice
processes. Cindi Katz (2001, 1214) argued (Roberts 1997; Kelly 1999; Mittelman 2000;
for a topographical research approach that Pearson 2000).
"carr[ies] out a detailed examination of some We emphasize that globalization processes
part of the material world, designed at any are embedded in community and household
scale from the body to the global, in order scales. Recent feminist scholarship by geog-
to understand its salient features and their raphers has illustrated "how attention to
mutual broader relationships." Our analysis processes at multiple geographical scales
of globalization recognizes the particulari- allows us to understand the nuanced ways
ties of places, but also traces the ways in in which neocolonial relations of power
which they are deeply interconnected with and political economic structures of domi-
processes of globalization, to reveal "a local nation and subordination combine to
that is constitutively global" (p. 1214). shape gendered politics of inequalities,
Sassen (1998) focused on processes of difference, and resistance" in specific
globalization at the supranational scale and communities (Nagar 2000, 685). Similarly,
the ways in which they instantiate gender in Afshar and Barrientos (1999, 6) contended
complex ways. With others (Sparke and that
Lawson 2001; Agnew 1999; Roberts 1997)
Sassen noted that globalization has unbun- [T]he impact of globalization on women has
often been complex and contradictory, both
dled sovereignty with the rise of governance
in terms of their "inclusion" and "exclusion."
without government in the supranational To be understood it needs to be analyzed not
sphere; this unbundling of sovereignty has only at the global but also at the local and
complex effects with key implications for household levels [italics added]. Feminists have
gender. On the one hand, the rise of transna- been disaggregating the specificities of
tional governance (Gupta 1998; Ong 1999) women"s experiences in the context of the
has strengthened the claims of powerful global process, but this work has yet to find its
LocATINc G1.0BALIZATION 267
way into much of the core debate over glob- (Pratt 1999), and gendered and racialized
alization. subjectivities. Pratt, for example, looked at
how three discursive constructions of
Feminist scholars have shown how the emer- "Filipina"-as "supplicant pre-immigrant";
gence of transnational religious and popular as inferior "housekeeper"; and, within the
cliscourses have produced new racialized and Filipino community, as "husband stealer"-
class-based sexual and labor practices at local work to structure Filipinas' labor market
and communal scales, giving rise to new experiences in Vancouver. Pratt's analysis
geographies of exploitation and struggle. demonstrates what poststructuralist theories
Analyses that recognize spaces, places, and of subject and discourse analysis can bring
scales inhabited by embodied and socially to theories of labor market segmentation and
embedded actors allow for engagement with how material geographies of survival and
a series of critical social practices that are resistance are often written into popular
dramatically reshaped by global processes. discourses.
A few examples follow. Finally, Nagar analyzed the racially
Focusing on a village in central eastern charged religious debate over Mut'a (tempo-
Sudan, Katz (2001, 1215) offered "a nonin- rary marriage) in a South Asian Shiite
nocent topography of globalization and its community in Tanzania, where the
entailments in one place as a vehicle for increasing economic prosperity of Shiite
developing a gendered oppositional poli- businessmen since the liberalization of trade
tics that moves across scale and space." in the 1980s and 1990s has led to the
She wrote: development of intimate ties with Islamists
in Iran, as well as with South Asian Shiites
Without romanticizing the local scale or any in the United States, the United Kingdom,
particular place, I want to get at the speciflc Canada, Pakistan, and India. Nagar (2000,
ways globalization works on particular grounds 661) extended analyses of difference, sexu-
in order to work out a situated, but at the same
ality, and postcolonialism by demon-
time scale-jumping and geography crossing,
political response to it. Tracing the contour
strating how "(a) processes at local, national,
lines of such a "counter-topography" to other and transnational scales intersect to define
sites might enable the formation of new the heterosexist communal norms that regu-
political-economic alliances that transcend late women's bodies in a particular context;
both place and identity and foster a more effec- (b) the ways in which women confront,
tive cultural politics to counter the imperial, defend, or negotiate the terms of this regu-
patriarchal, and racist integument of global- lation; and (c) the implications of this regu-
ization. (p. 1216) lation for women of different backgrounds
in a place where gender hierarchies are
Rachel Silvey (2001) analyzed similar enmeshed with religious, racial, and class-
multiscaled political responses in examining based distinctions." In all these examples,
how Islam shapes the experiences and prac- feminist research on the intersectionality
tices of Indonesian domestic laborers of processes at multiple scales (global,
working in Saudi Arabia. She located national, community, household, and so on)
women's shifting sense of power and reli- has revealed how diverse social practices,
gious subjectivities by engaging simultane- ideologies of gender, and the shifting power
ously with the policies and attitudes of the of the subjects of globalization are restlessly
Indonesian state, the working conditions in being reworked.
Saudi Arabia, and the sociopolitical activism As Nagar's research illustrates, the body
of domestic workers on their return to is also a key site for understanding gender
Indonesia. and globalization. Globalization processes
Pratt (1999) and Richa Nagar (2000) occur in concert with a range of changing
explored further connections among transna- meanings of gender roles and identities and
tional migrations, "discursive geographies" struggles over masculinity and femininity
(NACLA 2001). In this context, the body is ical and economic institutions, such as corpo-
constituted as "a multidimensional and rations and multilateral and financial insti-
complex object of political struggle-a tutions (World Bank, IMF, WTO), and
'cultural battleground' on which a wide array national governments (Greider 1997; Herod,
ofissues are fought out" (NACLA 2001, 12). Tuathail, and Robert 1998). Broadly
These struggles occur over issues of the speaking, people as subjects are absent from
commodification of sexuality and desire globalization research, including the
(Franco 2001; Hodge 2001) and reproduc- critiques we mentioned at the outset of
tive rights as emblematic of women's citi- this section; instead, these institutions are
zenship and self-determination (Lamas the ones with power over the global
2001). Salzinger (2001) showed how a economy, as is evident in Greider's (1997,
discourse of femininity sustained on the shop 24-25) characterization of four competing
floor shapes gendered, disciplined workers power blocks:
inside the maquiladora. Gender identities
and performances are constructed in the The biggest, most obvious loser ... is labor. ...
context of labor-control strategies in the National governments, likewise, have lost
ground ... most governments have become
factory, and women learn to manipulate
mere salesmen ... multinational corporations
male supervisors by deploying their desir- are, collectively, the muscle and brains of
ability to avoid some aspects of strict this new system, the engineers who are
managerial control (see also Oglesby 2001; designing the brilliant networks of new rela-
Wright 1997). tionships .... [The] principles [of finance
In the cities of advanced industrial capital] are transparent and pure: maximizing
countries, the discourse of an embodied return on capital without regard to national
deferential femininity is a significant part of identity or political and social consequences.
the restructuring oflocal economies and the (italics added)
growth oflow-wage, low-status, often casual
jobs, for which women are seen as ideal By characterizing corporations and finance
recruits. Bourgois (1995) and McDowell capital as consciously engineering the global
(2002) showed how the impact of this economy, Greider turned institutions into
discourse constructs young men as unsuit- actors such that processes of trade and
able workers, disadvantaged by their gender investment appear to have agency, if not
and a specific embodied performance of a conspiratorial power. In addition to
macho working-class masculinity. The conflating institutions with people, this focus
dramatic rise in women-owned businesses on formal institutions foregrounds the
in these countries (e.g., from 5 percent of specific roles that certain people (e.g.,
all privately owned U.S. businesses in 1972 managers, not workers) play in those insti-
to 34 percent in 1992) can be seen, in part, tutions, rather than examining the multiple
as a resistance to the discourse that valorizes and cross-cutting aspects of subjectivity and
deferential femininity and construes entre- identity that shape people's experiences of
preneurship as a masculine activity, most globalization.
appropriate for fashioning self-made men. Some critical analyses of globalization
In all these sites and spaces of globalization, do attend to the people in institutions, but
the form and character of economic glob- these people are often conceptualized as
alization can be fully understood only by one-dimensional individuals, categorized as
attention to gendered social relations, "global managers" and "business gurus" (as
discourses, and processes. in Thrift 1998). As Roberts (2001, 25)
pointed out, globalization processes operate
Exclusion 3: Certain subjects and actors. through the construction of these masculinist
subjects (such as global managers), who
The actors of economic globalization are are conceptualized as powerful actors who
frequently conceptualized as formal polit- view markets and workers as objects to be
controlled. Hence, even when people are complex and contradictory experiences of,
incorporated into the analysis, they are elite and in response to, global processes (see the
agents of capital, acting in universal fashion next section for an elaboration of this point).
in the service of globalization. Andy Herod We argue that richer and more complex
(1997, 1998) broadened these conceptual- understandings of globalization will emerge
izations by providing situated analyses of the if analysts conceptualize its subjects as
ways in which organized labor has interacted people who are embedded in social relations
with processes of globalization. His work of gender, class, race, and so on, as well as
emphasizes the contingent nature of capital- in multiple networks for coping with,
labor relations, varying from cooperative to reforming, or resisting global processes
conflictive, depending on time and place. It (including unions, feminist organizations,
also points to some workers whose agency and environmental social movements).
has influenced the integration of the global
economy in various ways. Herod's focus on Inclusion 3: Analyses that incorporate subjects
unionized workers, however, neglects those and actors that the economic globalization liter-
who are excluded from the labor movement ature has neglected and that view these actors'
(such as domestic workers, immigrants, and subjectivities as multiple and contextual.
undocumented workers) and neglects the
diverse ways in which these individuals We agree with Herod (1997, 192) that
engage with globalization in different realms economic geography would benefit from a
of their lives (as family members, commu- more sustained engagement with situated
nity members, and so on). One-dimensional agents: "[W]hereas economic geographers
renditions of people in globalization obscure have traditionally relied on understanding
the multiple oppressions that differentiate the dynamics of capital to explain patterns
subjects in relation to production, politics, of economic geography (e.g., theory of the
and daily life (Hartsock 2001; Roberts 2001; firm, circuits of capital circulation, capital
Gibson-Graham 1996). switching, and the like), [the preceding]
Even those who consider gender relevant analysis suggests the need to take labor's role
to understanding globalization frequently in actively creating geographies much more
reduce their analyses to discussions of seriously." We take a similar stance in advo-
women as passive victims in poor countries cating a focus on the lives of people who are
(e.g., Krause 1996). Mittelman (2000, 76), marginalized by globalization to reveal the
for example, argued that "although there complex and contradictory ways in which
may seem to be nothing particularly people engage with global processes. This
masculinist about the ideology of globaliza- stance resonates with the work of scholars
tion, its specific articulation with gender who have focused on an emergent bottom-
ideology sustains the marginalization of up politics in resistance to the violences of
women ... [T]he gender division of labor globalization and have argued that a recom-
is actually one of the factors that makes glob- position of civil society is emerging (Roberts
alization possible" (italics added). 1997; Falk 1995; Mittelman 2000). Although
Mittelman's work is important in that it high- this work makes a key contribution by
lights the ways in which subjects of global- foregrounding a "people-level globalization"
ization are always embedded in gender rela- (Mittelman 2000), it focuses on people
tions. His analysis, however, does not engage who are engaged in political organizations
with women as subjects per se, constructs and so emphasizes only resistance. A
women as victims, and reduces gender to grounded, feminist approach starts from the
women. Constructing women as universally lives of a variety of people with diverse rela-
exploited by global capital and neoliberal tionships to globalization, including unor-
policies obscures the ways in which gendered ganized workers, undocumented immi-
subjects in particular historically and grants, and those who are not involved
geographically specific places engage in with political movements. This broadened
view attends to the range of social loca- India as complex actors that are shaped by
tions (gender, class, ethnicity, race, and sexu- processes at multiple geographic scales, on
ality) that refract globalization processes and the one hand, and by interlocking hierar-
to the multiple ways in which globalization chies of gender, class, caste, and religion, on
is lived, created, accommodated, and acted the other hand. The authors connect the
upon in different historical and geographic interwoven processes of empowerment and
settings. disempowerment in poor women's lives with
Our Inclusion 3 challenges the ways in the ways in which pressures from interna-
which certain actors-both individual and tional donors have increasingly led to
collective-are ignored or constructed reshaping organizational structures, hierar-
only as passive victims of global processes or chies, and agendas through mainstreaming
agents of resistance. One example comes and professionalization. Such changes,
from Hanson's (2000, 2001) study of owners however, are laden with immense contra-
of small business in a U.S. Rust Belt city; dictions and possibilities. Also, the fore-
through their strong commitment to a partic- closing of some political spaces is often
ular, somewhat marginalized, place, these accompanied by the emergence of new ones
entrepreneurs are resisting globalization that enable NGOs to address issues of social
while simultaneously participating in and structural violence in innovative and
global networks. Another example from highly contextualized ways.
the industrialized world is McDowell's Our Inclusion 3 highlights the complexi-
(2000a, 2002) study of the impact of ties and contradictions that are inherent in
economic and social change, especially the actors' relationships to globalization. In the
decline of the manufacturing sector, in two next section, we present a thematic overview
localities in England, where she is investi- of feminist research in critical develop-
gating the opportunities that poorly educated ment studies that highlights the ways in
young white men face as they finish compul- which global processes can be liberating as
smy schooling. As Katz (1998) and Bourgois well as exploitative, empowering as well as
( 1995) have documented in New York disempowering, and transforming as well as
City, working-class youths face declining reinforcing of patriarchal structures and
labor market opportunities in inner-city gender relations. Recognizing such complex-
neighborhoods but are culturally ill- ities and contradictions is central to a femi-
equipped for employment in the service nist epistemology, a point we explore more
sector. Their attitudes of bravado and
fully in the final section.
machismo often disqualify them from the
only jobs there are-"feminized" service jobs
that demand docile and deferential attitudes Feminist Research on Global
and performances. Young women in these Processes
localities, on the other harid, see their
labor market opportunities expanding, albeit In many ways, feminist interventions in
in low-status and poorly paid occupations. critical development studies and transna-
Thus, the combination of global economic tional organizing over the past two decades
restructuring and local "structures of feeling" can be seen as a long-term intellectual and
and social networks are recasting gender political struggle over the same exclusions
relations among working-class young people and inclusions that we detailed in the
to the disadvantage of men, leading some preceding section. Although much of this
commentators to identify a contemporary literature has been produced by nongeog-
"crisis of masculinity" (Clare 2000, raphers and hence does not explicitly reflect
McDowell 20006). a geographic sensibility, its engagements
A third example is that of Nagar and Raju with the politics of development, globaliza-
(forthcoming), who view women's tion, and empowerment have necessarily
nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in begun from the vantage point of those
peoples and places that have been the tified "lapses into foundationalism and essen-
most marginalized by global capitalist tialism in (Western) feminist texts on 'Third
processes. Slowly but surely, these feminist World' women" (Marchand 1995, 58). These
studies have reshaped the terrain of devel- discussions have sensitized feminist
opment-at both the discursive and policy researchers to the problems of universal,
levels-by deeply politicizing notions of ahistorical, and decontexualized generaliza-
work; placing households, shop floors, hospi- tions about women's oppressions and have
tals, schools, weekly markets, and diasporic inspired more grounded analyses of the
networks in direct relationship with corpo- historically and geographically specific ways
rations, markets, banks, and development in which patriarchal discursive practices
institutions; engaging with people's lived intersect with subsistence agrarian produc-
experiences of globalization in all their tion and industrial capitalism in a globalizing
contradictions; and revealing that these world (Gordon 1996; Stitcher and Parpart
erased and neglected voices and spaces are 1990).
by no means passive or simply victimized, We consider feminist analyses that have
but actively engaged in struggles over access emerged over more than a decade from a
to resources and the very definitions of devel- variety of sociopolitical locations and strug-
opment, progress, empowerment, andjustice. gles on such subjects as international divi-
Because of the considerable overlap sions oflabor; informal economies and femi-
between globalization and development, one nization of poverty; gender bias in structural
may expect these contributions to be equally adjustment/neoliberal economies; gender
visible in research on globalization. Sadly, and social reproduction as women provide
however, there is an odd disconnect between services to households and communities
the literatures on economic globalization and when the state withdraws from social repro-
development, with the result that these crit- duction; gender and mobility, including
ical feminist understandings are often absent internal and transnational migrations,
from or, at best, muted in academic discus- refugees, and international sex workers; and
sions of globalization. Here, we seek to popular protests and transnational femi-
connect the economic globalization commu- nisms. Our review divides these topics into
nity with the large body of feminist research three themes that are the most pertinent
on global processes. 3 Rather than provide a to research on globalization: the gendering
comprehensive review of what is a large liter- of work, gender and structural adjustment
ature, we highlight the nature of these programs (SAPs), and mobility and dias-
contributions. Since the late 1980s, feminist poras.
scholars have developed powerful critiques
of the neocolonial discourses on women and
The Gendering of Work
development (Mohanty 1991a, 1991b; Ong
1987; Parpart and Marchand 1995) and iden- The gendering of work is one of the many
areas in which feminists have used a
grounded approach to examine how subjec-
3 Some scholars have begun to consider the tivity is drawn upon and contested in shaping
intersections and disjunctures between critical context-specific relationships between "glob-
development studies and research on globaliza- alized" capital and "localized" labor. Diane
tion (see, e.g., Slater (1992), Watts (1993), Gupta Wolf (1992) highlighted the contradictions
(1998), Escobar (1995), and Ong (1991)). Even and complexities of industrial capitalist prole-
in these studies, however, work on gender and
tarianization through the lives and voices
development remains largely neglected. In addi-
tion, the proliferation of discourses on global- of Javanese "factory daughters," and
ization and transnationalism-in both the main- Chandra Mohanty (1997) illustrated how
stream and feminist literatures-has tended to global processes of capitalism use local
crowd out analyses of the theory, praxis, and poli- ideologies and gendered identities for their
tics of development. own ends. Naturalized assumptions about
work and the worker are constructed around Research on home-based work, for example,
"notions of appropriate femininity, domes- shows how competition in international
ticity, (hetero) sexuality, and racial and markets is increasingly pushing national
cultural stereotypes" (Mohanty 1997, 6). companies to resort to flexible home-based
Mohanty discussed (inter alia) Maria Mies's subcontracting arrangements (Beneria and
( 1982) study of home-working lace makers Roldan 1987; Mitter 1986; White 1994;
in Narsapur to show how capitalists mobi- Lawson 1995). The specific ways in which
lized the ideology of women as housewives women, men, and children are drawn into
to define lace makers as nonworkers and to these arrangements, however, are centrally
label their lace making for corporations as shaped by communal discourses of religion,
a leisure activity. Carla Freeman (2000, 3) honor, respectability, and machismo; by the
explored the interconnected "dialectics of workings of state and legal structures at
globalization/localization, production/ the local level; by the specific ways in which
consumption, and gender/class" through the the public-private dichotomy is reproduced
everyday lives of pink-collar informatics and reified; and by the forms of cooperation
operators in Barbados. She showed how the that emerge between unions and commu-
work process in informatics is imbued with nity groups (Prugl and Boris 1996;
notions of appropriate femininity and how Mirchandani 1998). Similarly, Cravey (1998)
dress and feminine image-making make analyzed how gender and class intersect in
workers' experiences simultaneously burden- the transformation of Mexican industrial
some and pleasurable; she also tied their strategy, from one focused on import substi-
engagement in the formal informatics sector tution to a neoliberal export orientation
directly to a range of practices in the based on transnational investment. Cravey
informal economy. This literature vividly showed how microscale negotiations over
illustrates that both the subjects of global- the gender division of labor within house-
ization (Exclusion 3) and the scale of the holds and neighborhoods influenced global
body (Exclusion 2) are central to the and regional dynamics and was also shaped
gendered processes of globalized work. by national policies and global competi-
Research on flexible labor regimes has tion.
focused on the feminization of the transna-
tional industrial force and its implications Gender and Structural Adjustment
for workers' struggles in the "periphery." Programs
In contrast to Fordism, flexible accumula-
tion draws on female and minority workers Perhaps no other issue has triggered a
and involves, as Aihwa Ong (1991, 280) wider dialogue among feminist scholars and
stated, "local milieus constituted by the unex- activists around the globe than SAPs (Dalla
pected conjunctures of labor relations and Costa and Dalla Costa 1993; Elson 1994;
cultural systems, high-tech operations and Emeagwali 199,5; Sparr 1994). Indeed,
indigenous values." Ong further argued that critical interrogation of SAPs is one of the
the means of labor control extend beyond key areas in which feminist analysts have
the workplace into community life and that extended globalization research by demon-
workers' resistance is "more often linked to strating how new gendered understandings
kinship and gender than to class" (p. 281). of globalization processes are intertwined
Recent feminist scholarship has expanded with neoliberal discourses and policies.
these ideas by highlighting the intersections These studies also allow us to apprehend
across geographic scales, ranging from the how globalization discourses legitimate
bodily to the global, and across what are neoliberal policies that redefine the posi-
often problematically labeled "independent" tions of individuals and nations within the
spheres (formal/informal) and sectors global context and how this legitimacy, in
(economy, culture, politics)-interdepen- turn, serves the material processes of glob-
dencies that we discussed in Inclusion 1. alization (Kelly 1999). At the same time, they
demonstrate that such relationships among power inequalities by restructuring market
discourses, policies, and processes are histor- relationships, political and bureaucratic rela-
ically-not naturally or necessarily- tions, and relationships within households.
produced and that alternative spaces can be This discussion, along with rich ethnographic
created for progressive forms of globaliza- studies of the kind undertaken by Gracia
tion. Clark (1994), illustrates the point we made
Among the salient themes in the discus- in Inclusion l, namely, that globalization
sion of SAPs are the relationships between needs to be understood in terms of gendered
social reproduction and international debt and racialized, culturally specific systems of
policies and among SAPs, governmental oppression and struggles to negotiate and
strategies, and market-led growth. In Paying redefine those systems. Feminist work has
the Price (Dalla Costa and Dalla Costa 1993, helped to highlight how oppressions consti-
1), several contributors likened the SAPs tute globalization and how revealing these
to "capital's first phase of 'primitive accu- oppressions can lead to new openings and
mulation."' Caffentzis (1993, 31) noted: understandings about agency.
Although analyses of SAPs have often
[The World Bank] and other financial agen- highlighted the increasing burdens on poor
cies have managed the debt crisis in such a women, feminist scholarship has also chal-
way as to create a strikingly Malthusian situa-
lenged the idea of women as mere victims.
tion, characterized by the presence of "posi-
tive" and "negative" checks: famines, war, and Afshar and Barrientos (1999) criticized glob-
disease, generated by falling incomes, reduced alization research for either ignoring the
health services and changes in land tenure and unequal impact that globalization has had
cropping. Indeed, the African body, especially on women or simplistically viewing women
the female body, has been attacked ... in ways as victims of globalization. They advocated
similar to those in which the European research on how globalization can both
proletariat in the "transition to capitalism" was empower and disempower women; how
terrorized by witch hunts, plagues of syphilis, patriarchal power structures have been trans-
the "price revolution," famines and war. The formed, rather than erased, by globalization;
outcome of this campaign cannot be presented
and how new forms of resistance emerge
in traditional economic indices: GNP, interest
rates or foreign exchange values. At best we
as women are increasingly integrated into
can look at demographic statistics and note the global production process. The contrib-
that, starting in 1982, there has been a reversal utors demonstrated how local and global
in the post-colonial decline in African processes that help reshape formal and
mortality. informal sectors of the economy are also
linked with the remaking of fractured states
Social reproduction has thus become the and religious ideologies and varied articu-
"primary and therefore fundamental terrain lations of women's agency. In so doing, they
for the restructuring needed in a new phase advanced previous work on the intersections
of accumulation" (Dalla Costa and Dalla among politicized religion, nationalisms, and
Costa 1993, 1-2). women's activism in postcolonial contexts
Diane Elson (1994) argued that in explic- (see Moghadam 1994; Afshar 1996; Jeffery
itly relying on price changes and market and Basu 1998). Rai (1999) addressed these
forces as the instruments for reallocating interrelationships by exploring how women
resources, architects of SAPs overlook street vendors oppose, subvert, negotiate,
their implicit reliance on a supply of and cooperate with various forms of the
unpaid female labor to enable the realloca- Indian state. Phalke (1999) looked at the
tion of paid labor. She pointed to the need intersections between patriarchy and moder-
for alternative policies that focus not simply nity to understand the right-wing mobiliza-
on retargeting public expenditures and tion of Hindu women in India, and Afshar
extending marketing opportunities more (1999) examined how Islamification and
effectively to women, but on redressing women's reconstruction of Islamic discourses
in Iran have been shaped by the interactions emphasized that sexual labor has been histor-
between global policies and local specifici- ically, culturally, and socially organized
ties. Similarly, El-Mikawy (1999) demon- and how these specificities allow for a multi-
strated how conservative and populist coun- plicity of sexualized and gendered categories,
terreaction to globalization in Egypt has identities, and dependencies. This research
reified women's role as mothers but under- moves us beyond the essentialist notions of
mined their public role as civic partners. the prostitute and the client and "starkly
[illustrates] the global repositioning that is
Mobility and Diasporas occurring between postindustrial and post-
colonial societies, where Black and Brown
The new feminist literature on mobility bodies become (or continue to be) the
and diasporas captures similar cultural, sites for the construction of (white) North
political, and economic complexities.
American and Western European power,
Researchers in various parts of the world
wealth, and well-being" (Kempadoo 2001,
have analyzed how morality, religion, state
58).
ideologies, and colonial and postcolonial
histories both enmesh with economic poli- Questions of mobility and subjectivity
cies to shape gendered mobilities and have also resonated in feminist discussions
subjectivities, production relations, and on global democracy and social movements.
consumer aspirations in migrants' lives Eschle (2001, 210-11) considered the
and sustain existing social hierarchies (Nagar work of"black and Third World feminists,"
1998; Radcliffe 1990; Silvey 2000). This such as Grewal, Anzaldua, Alexander, and
research has addressed another gap in the Mohanty, who theorized the effects of
literature on globalization, which has largely "enforced mobility on a global scale" and
ignored migrants and their networks; to the "[drew] attention to the pain and trauma of
extent that migrants have been considered, processes of displacement and marginality
they are conceptualized primarily as that have been evacuated from more
workers, rather than as complex, political abstracted postmodern accounts." At the
subjects. same time, these theorists have evoked
Some of the most creative feminist strategies for reformulating subjectivity by
engagements with questions of mobility, drawing attention to the gendered and raced
ideology, subjectivity, and struggle are repre- migrant subject whose location "disrupts the
sented in emerging research on global sex home/abroad and the margin/center
work. Kempadoo's (2001) collaborative constructs for more complex positionings"
research with feminist scholars and practi- (Grewal 1994, 235) and whose rootedness
tioners in Colombia and Cuba identified the in the "borderlands" is shaped by resistance
participation of women as sex tourists as an to racist dualisms and to ethnocentric
important part of the late twentieth-century
attempts to impose linguistic fixity (Anzaldua
Caribbean landscape and proposed an inter-
1987, 1990).
rogation of the recolonizations shaped
By placing questions of mobility and
through the global tourism industry. By high-
lighting how Caribbean women and men are subjectivity at the center, such feminist inter-
both subject to eroticizing, sexualizing ventions emphasize how economic dimen-
fantasies and exploitation, and how sex sions of contemporary globalization
tourists-both male and female-use the processes are thoroughly entangled with the
Caribbean as a place to consolidate or rede- ways in which the same processes reconsti-
fine their own cultural identities, these tute and reinvigorate preexisting social hier-
researchers have shown the limitations of archies (Alexander and Mohanty 1997).
feminist analyses that rely solely on mascu- Furthermore, feminist theorists (e.g.,
line hegemony as an explanation for prosti- Eisenstein 1997; Eschle 2001) have
tution and sex work. Instead, they have reminded us that
globalizing reconfigurations of space, time and ties in ways that underscore the complex
territoriality have coercive effects and occur workings of political economic and socio-
unevenly, with much of the world continuing cultural processes at scales ranging from the
to live according to slow rhythms, embedded
within territories, and with others forcibly
body and the household to the local, national,
displaced. Further, feminist accounts attempt and transnational. These approaches allow
to re-embed ostensibly supra-territorial and us to look at the intricacies of labor, iden-
"hypermobile" interactions within material tity, and agency and to explore the messy
social relations, revealing interconnections with ways in which empowerment and disem-
recognizable, territorially located, and socially powerment, production and reproduction,
stratified places and processes, as well as
opportunities and dangers for people
exploitation and pleasure remain thoroughly
depending on their location and embodi- entangled with each other. In so doing, they
ment .... [Finally, globalization) allows for have rejected simplistic generalizations that
the subversive possibility of women seeing cast globalization as either totally victimizing
beyond the local to the global. This move puts or completely liberatory and have illumi-
male privilege clearly in view [as) never before. nated the subtle ways in which power rela-
It also enables the construction of trans border
identifications and organizations in response. tions, interdependencies, negotiated
(Eschle 2001, 187) constructions of femininity and masculinity,
and multilayered politics of difference consti-
Eschle blended these insights with those tute the everyday politics and realities of
of Newland (1988); Pietila and Vickers globalization.
(1994); and coalitions, such as Women We are curious why so little conversa-
Living Under Muslim Laws, on anticapitalist tion has taken place between the feminist
organizing below and across the state and research reviewed in this section and the
on transformatmy change through coalition mainstream literature on economic global-
politics. She proposed a "skeptical and ization. And why is gender and development
strategic approach to the state and state
marginalized even within feminist work on
system" as an "appropriate way of under-
globalization and transnationalism? We
standing the dilemmas of transnational femi-
nist organizing" (p. 215). In so doing, she argue that these disconnects reflect concep-
advanced the pioneering analyses in femi- tual, epistemological, and methodological
nist international politics that have concep- differences between the two approaches,
tualized feminist activism in relation to which make conversation difficult. Starting
gendered divisions of violence, labor, and with the lives of marginalized people, rather
resources and have specifically considered than with the nation or the global economy,
the combined impact of gender hierarchies not only animates new questions, analyses,
and globalization on democracy (Enloe 1988; and insights on globalization, but has far-
Pettman 1996; Peterson and Runyan 1999; reaching methodological and epistemolog-
Peterson 1995). ical implications. Although the literature
Taken as a whole, then, feminist research reviewed here deals implicitly with ques-
in development studies has provided tions of methodology and epistemology,
grounded and contextual understandings of we believe that an explicit engagement with
globalization by highlighting the ways in
these concerns lies at the heart of a feminist
which gender-as a social category that is
retheorizing of economic globalization. As
thoroughly interwoven with race, class, reli-
gion, and other axes of social difference- the next section reveals, it is only through
has been central to reworked forms of such an engagement that the politics of
capitalism and to resistance. A major knowledge production on globalization can
strength of this work is its ability to mediate be recast and recentered on the voices,
analytically between larger structural scales, and spaces of hitherto marginalized
processes and finer-scaled contextual reali- subjects.
Feminist Epistemologies and and affect specific social and spatial forma-
Methodologies tions in places that are distinguished by
particular histories and geographies. These
In this section, we consider the implica- specificities result in differentiated forms of
tions of feminist epistemologies and method- gender relations that are transformed by but
ologies for understandings of economic glob- also affect global shifts. This recognition of
alization, recognizing that in the preceding the connections between what is often called
sections we have already touched on many the global and the local is a striking feature
of the points that we explicitly address here. of recent feminist work, particularly of schol-
We take for granted a certain awareness of arship from the peripheries, not the center,
key debates among feminists, both femi- and by women of color and scholars in the
nist geographers and other social scientists, south. Because global processes affect struc-
in recent years-about situated knowledges, tures of domination in ways that often result
critical social science, ethnocentrism, and in deepening patterns of inequality, the
the impact of postmodernism. In thinking particular effects of globalization and the
about feminist epistemologies in the context prospects of struggling against them are
of research on economic globalization, we matters of huge theoretical and political
aim to build on earlier critiques of the speci- concern.
ficity of Western social science, especially in
its Anglo and Anglo-American forms; we lay
out a series of connections between recent Propositions
work in feminist and geographic scholarship Next, we set out a series of propositions
to show how current interests in both bodies or arguments outlining the implications of
of work in differentiation and variation feminist epistemologies for research on glob-
among people and places has led to a coin- alization.
cidence of approaches. These feminist-
inspired approaches-which take seriously Proposition 1: Capitalism must be analyzed as
issues of gender, scale, and politics-involve a set of social relations that are mediated
modes of knowledge creation that differ through the simultaneous operation of
substantially from the ways in which analysts gendered, sexualized, and racialized hierar-
have sought understandings of economic chies.
globalization to date. As in the previous
sections on conceptual issues and empir- That globalization clearly strengthens and
ical work, our hope here is to generate deepens capitalist social relations means that
productive conversation between the femi- capitalism must be increasingly placed at the
nist and the economic globalization litera- center of analyses of globalization. As
tures. Alexander and Mohanty (1997, xvii) argued,
Both feminist work and work in the main- "global realignments and fluidity of capital
stream of geography reflect a growing have simply led to further consolidation and
acknowledgement of the uneven nature of exacerbation of capitalist relations of domi-
globalization and an interest in exploring nation and exploitation"; what they termed
its specificities in particular locations, "processes of recolonization" challenge
whether households, firms and organizations, and recast global relations of domination
or localities. Some geographers have also formed under previous regimes. Research,
shown an expanding interest in the inter- therefore, needs to examine the specific
connections between economic processes cultural, political, economic, and social
and social and cultural formations. Thus, consequences of the transformation of
through a common focus on globalization, particular historical circumstances as
analysts have begun to ask questions about different places are drawn into the social
the ways in which global flows----of capital, relations of globalization in different ways.
labor, information, and ideas-connect It must also examine changing circumstances
in the various arenas of everyday life from he noted, "The erasure of place is a reflec-
the perspective of participants who are tion of the asymmetry that exist[s] between
differentiated by gender, sexuality, and the global and the local in much contem-
racialization and so are drawn into or porary literature on globalization, in which
excluded from new social processes in partic- the global is associated with space, capital,
ular ways. For example, studies of how history, and agency while the local,
new labor forces are assembled must clarify conversely, is linked to place, labor, and
how gender and ethnicity are linked as tradition-as well as with women, minori-
well as how potential workers are positioned ties, the poor, and one might add, local
in the social relations of reproduction. cultures" (2001, 155-56). This challenge to
Because production is not generic in its reconceptualize the places of globalization
recruitment and organization of labor, "we and to work against the erasure of other
must incorporate into our reading of the readings from women, minorities, and the
labor process the simultaneous processes of south is central to a feminist epistemology.
the culture of production and the produc- A focus on places-on grounded analysis-
tion of culture" (Freeman 2000, 51). has often been constructed, however, as
Thus, in this emphasis on the impact of marginal in theoretical and epistemological
capital flows and the dominance of capitalist debates in geography, partly through its very
social relations, studies must incorporate the localization. It is crucial to challenge the
specificity of place and the differential claims of the center, of capital-centrism and
impact of capitalist social relations. This Eurocentrism that are the privileged, author-
point leads to Proposition 2. itative terrain of global-speak, as well as to
insert into analyses of globalization a focus
Proposition 2: Analyses of globalization from on the connections between production and
the perspectives ofboth the south and the north the institutions of employment and repro-
are crucial,focusing on place and on the local, duction, bodies, households, and commu-
as well as on space and general globalizing nities. As we argued in the previous sections,
processes and their coconstitution.
there is still a great need for wider accep-
tance oflong-term feminist arguments that
Our insistence on bringing attention to the
production and reproduction must he
often-neglected subjects, scales, and places
of globalization in the periphery, rather than analyzed in tandem. This point leads to
in the center, resonates with Arturo Proposition 3, regarding work on the local
Escobar's (2001) call for a reconceptualiza- and the particular:
tion of globalization in which close attention Proposition 3: \Ve recover place, but not to
is paid to the role of place and local knowl- celebrate experience or the local per se, but
edges. Escobar followed J. K. Gibson- rather tu "reveal a local that is constitutively
Graham (1996) in arguing against capital global" (Katz 2001, 1214).
centrism, as it is often defined and theorized,
as Eurocentric, thus excluding the possibil- We draw on Cindi Katz's (2001) concept of
ities of other ways of theorizing globaliza- topography, which builds on Massey's (1994)
tion. Capital-centric approaches currently now-classic work on the constitution of place,
privilege not only class relations but also to argue for research that moves beyond
Western knowledge about globalization place as unique, self-contained, or victim-
processes; they also privilege spatialities of ized to place as an entry point for developing
globalization that place the nation-state-a a relational approach to globalization that
product of Western imperialism-at the "situates places in their broader context and
center. Escobar argued that other stories can in relation to other geographic scales,
be told, stories from marginalized places that offering a means of understanding structure
emphasize differences rather than similari- and process. Indeed, my project is driven
ties, diversity rather than homogeneity. As here by the notion that producing a critical
278 EcmmMrc GEOGRAPHY
topography makes it possible to excavate the edge production within research universi-
layers of process that produce particular ties.
places and to their intersections with mate- These norms of citation, value freedom,
rial social practices at other scales of analysis" and replicability raise difficult questions
(Katz 2001, 1228). Resolutely material, these for public intellectuals in the periphery, and
countertopographies also reveal the contour Appadurai asked if we can imagine ways to
lines that relate distinct locales to one internationalize social science research in
another through their experience of partic- this context. In other words, he proposed "a
ular social practices. As we noted in the first deeper consideration of the relationship
section, this reading of places as embedded between knowledge of globalization and the
and intimately related through globalization globalization of knowledge" (Appadurai
processes can lay the groundwork for 2000, 13). Appadurai argued for engaging
building a gendered oppositional politics that with scholars from other cultures to debate
moves across space and scale. As Alexander what counts as new knowledge, what
and Mohanty (1997, xix) have argued, commitments of judgment and account-
feminist scholars stress issues of "power, ability should be central to critical studies
history, memory, relational analysis, justice on globalization. Using case studies from the
(not just representation), and ethics as writings of Third World scholars and
central to our analysis of globalization." developing collaborative research on glob-
Therefore, we advocate the following propo- alization may produce new kinds of knowl-
sition: edge and pedagogy. Taking seriously the
institutions, vocabularies, and horizons of
Proposition 4: Collaborative research must globalization from below will require
be undertaken with subjects of globalization Western academics to step back "from the
in peripheralized places. obsessions and abstractions that constitute
our own professional practice to seriously
This proposition is linked to Hartsock's consider the problems of the global
(2001) argument, reviewed in the first everyday" (Appadurai 2000, 17-18). The
section, about the strategic potential of inclusions we called for in the first section
starting from the lives of those who are make explicit connections between political
marginalized to understand the operation of economy and localized struggles around
global capitalism. Grounded, place-based, identity politics. We argue for the impor-
collaborative research is part of reimagining tance of body, place, and transnational as
and retheorizing globalization and devel- scales of an alternative, feminist analytic of
opment. Appadurai (2000) argued for the globalization.
significance of what he termed "grassroots On the basis of these propositions, we
globalization" on the basis that people in advocate building richly grounded work that
peripheralized places articulate diverse read- develops intricate understandings across a
ings and social mobilizations regarding glob- multiplicity of scales. This work will involve
alization. These visions articulate strategies collaborative case studies that tell different
and visions on behalf of the poor who stories about globalization from the south
strive for a democratic and autonomous and West and that do not privilege a singular
standing with respect to various forms of theorization of dominant Western capitalism.
global power. Appadurai suggested that In this way, the research will work against
Western academic research needs to engage the erasures of marginalized peoples and
seriously with alternative readings and strate- places. In terms of methodological strate-
gies for engaging globalization, rather than gies, we are in sympathy with recent work
continue to produce the hegemony of in anthropology and sociology that has devel-
Western social science research practices oped an approach that has been variously
that center Western academic norms of termed multisited or global ethnography,
"scientific," often discipline-bounded, know!- which is interested in analyzing the connec-
LocATING GLOBALIZATION 279
tions between and among places; in travel economic" in economic globalization by
as well as dwelling; and in the flows of ideas, drawing attention to the inseparability of
people, or money (Burawoy et al. 2000; activities in the formal and informal, paid
Clifford 1997; Kaplan 1996; Marcus 1998). and unpaid, productive and reproductive
Although all methodological strategies spheres. While it appreciates the material
depend, to some extent, on the aim of the dimensions of globalization, a feminist
research in question, we advocate close analysis also insists on the importance of
attention to interconnections-whether cultural and political meanings (e.g., of femi-
between the arenas of waged work and the ninity and masculinity, work, justice, and
household, between economic and cultural activism). Feminism's central concern with
processes, between the spatially distinctive gender necessarily entails an engagement
parts of a multinational organization, or with power and the complex ways in which
between nation-states and international insti- power works at multiple geographic scales,
tutions. To give just one example of an including those of the body and the house-
area in which future research needs to high- hold. A feminist analysis further emphasizes
light such interconnected processes, we human agency and therefore calls atten-
advocate building ethnographies of institu- tion to the resilience and creativity with
tions of globalization and development (such which people and communities survive,
as corporations, the World Bank, and the accommodate to, and resist global processes.
IMF) as well as place-based studies to reveal In short, we contend that research on glob-
the emergence of new forms of governance, alization should attend to the cultural
to understand the contingencies and vulner- construction of difference; to productive and
abilities that drive different forms of global caring activities conducted outside the
capital, to uncover the wide variety of power- formal economy and its institutions; and to
knowledge regimes at work within the a diverse range of spaces, scales, and
multiple institutions of globalization, and to subjects. In doing so, it must theorize and
understand the power of these actors in engage with questions of intersectionality in
the contemporary period so as to envision the production, reproduction, and constitu-
a politics of opposition. tion of globalized spaces, places, and spheres
of human activity.
We advocate research that both pays close
Conclusion attention to geographic and historical context
Building a feminist analysis of globaliza- and yields insights that are portable and
tion is not simply a matter of recognizing the hence applicable in other contexts; we do
importance of gender in processes of not see these two desiderata as incompat-
economic globalization. A feminist under- ible. Rather, clarifying precisely how certain
standing of globalization requires substan- processes are related to specific contexts
tial conceptual, analytical, and epistemo- (when context includes linkages among
logical shifts; it opens up new questions diverse geographic scales) and carefully
regarding what is appropriately included spelling out the nature of connections in a
under the rubric of economic globalization particular context illuminates which of the
and in any litany of probable causes or salient insights gained from one context (e.g., a case
consequences. As Marchand and Runyan study of a Pakistani village) may be usefully
(20006, 18) put it, global restructuring employed in analyzing a similar problem in
"entails reworkings of the boundaries another context. Only by undertaking a large
between and meanings of femininity and number of richly contextual studies that
masculinity, which are intimately related cut across many geographic scales will
to the shifting boundaries and meanings of analysts be able to appreciate which aspects
private and public, domestic and interna- of any particular process or place usefully
tional, local and global." A feminist analysis illuminate circumstances in a different time
dramatically expands the scope of "the and place. In the second section, we
described the burgeoning feminist literature Afshar, H., and Barrientos, S., eds. 1999. Women,
on globalization that has begun this process globalization and fragmentation in the devel-
of building a body of theory from carefully oping world. London: Macmillan.
contextualized accounts. In contrast to Agnew, J. 1999. The new geopolitics of power.
In Human geography today, ed. D. Massey, J.
conventional studies of economic globaliza-
Allen, and P. Sarre, 173-93. Cambridge, U.K.:
tion, these feminist studies begin with the Polity Press.
lives of people, often those who have been Alexander, M. J., and Mohanty, C.T. 1997.
marginalized by globalization. They insist on Introduction: Genealogies, legacies, move-
a relational analysis that highlights ments. In Feminist genealogies, colonial lega-
complexity and interdependencies without cies, democratic futures, ed. M. J. Alexander
compromising a commitment to social and C. T. Mohanty, xiii-xiii. New York:
equity, justice, ethics, and democracy. While Routledge.
such studies begin at the local scale, they do Anzaldua, G. 1987. Borderlands/La Frontera: The
new mestiza. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books.
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A feminist analysis therefore fundamen- face, making soul/Hacienda caras: Creative
tally changes the nature of understandings and critical perspectives by feminists of
of economic globalization. Above all, it cowr, ed. G. Anzaldua, 377--89. San Francisco:
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master narrative toward diverse and possibly Appadurai, A. 2000. Grassroots globalization and
conflicting accounts. These feminist accounts the research imagination. Public Culture
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Bello, W.; Cunningham, S.; and Rau, B. 1994.
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economic globalization; they will also high- Bourgois, P. 1995. In search of respect: Selling
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Abstract: The literatures on economic globalization and feminist understandings of

factory workers shifted to subcontracting employ; it is not surprising, in view of

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