Fortunes of Feminism (40 page)

Such was the feminist critique of Embedded Liberalism. Politically and intellectually powerful, this critique was nonetheless ambivalent, capable of leading in either of two directions. Taken one way, the feminist critique of the family wage would aim to secure women's full access to employment and to employment-linked entitlements on a par with men. In that case, it would tend to valorize wage labor and the androcentric ideal of individual independence, effectively devaluing unwaged carework, interdependence, and solidarity.
¹³
Targeting the traditional gender ethos that was still serving to embed markets, a feminism of this sort could end up furthering their disembedding. Intentional or not, the effect could be to align the struggle against gender hierarchy with marketization.

In principle, however, the feminist critique of oppressive protection could develop in another way. Differently articulated, the feminist struggle for emancipation could align with the other pole of the triple movement, the pole of social protection. In this second scenario, the thrust of feminist critique would be to reject androcentric valuations, especially the overvaluation of waged labor and the undervaluation of unwaged carework. Casting carework as a matter of public importance, the movement's thrust would be to re-envision social arrangements in a way that enabled everyone—male or female—to perform both sets of activities, without the strains that beset all such efforts today. Rejecting, too, the gender-coded opposition between dependence and independence, a pro-protectionist feminism would serve to break the spurious link between social hierarchy and the dependency that is a universal feature of the human condition.
¹⁴
Valorizing solidarity and interdependence, the critique would work not to dissolve, but to transform social protections.

As a matter of fact, second-wave feminism encompassed both orientations. For the most part, so-called liberal and radical feminists gravitated in the direction of marketization, while socialist-feminists and feminists of color were more likely to align with forces for social protection. In the first case, the alignment was not always intended. Not all liberal and radical feminists consciously aimed to replace the family wage with the two-earner family. But by failing to situate their struggle for emancipation in the context of the triple movement, they could end up unwittingly abetting the forces seeking to disembed and deregulate markets. In the other case, by contrast, the alignment was relatively conscious. Feminists whose concerns dovetailed with protectionist forces tended to have an intuitive grasp of the logic of the triple movement. They were often aware that their struggle for emancipation intersected with another struggle, between protection and deregulation. Positioning themselves in a three-sided game, they sought to avoid abetting the forces of marketization, even while vigorously opposing oppressive protections.

Arguably, feminist ambivalence has been resolved in recent years in favor of marketization. Insufficiently attuned to the rise of free-market fundamentalism, mainstream feminists have ended up supplying the rationale for a new mode of capital accumulation, heavily dependent on women's wage labor. As women have streamed into labor markets across the globe, the ideal of the family wage is losing ground to the newer, more modern norm of the two-earner family. Certainly, the reality that underlies the new ideal is catastrophic for many: depressed wage levels, decreased job security, declining living standards, a steep rise in the number of hours worked for wages per household, and exacerbation of the double shift—now often a triple or quadruple shift. But neoliberalism cloaks its depredations beneath an enchanting, charismatic veil: invoking the feminist critique of the family wage, it promises liberation through waged labor in the service of capital. Clearly, feminist ideas suffuse the experience of the female cadres of the professional middle classes, determined to crack the glass ceiling. Equally, however, they lend a higher meaning and moral point to the daily struggles of millions of female temps, part-timers, low-wage service workers, domestics, sex workers, migrants, EPZ workers, and micro-credit borrowers, who seek not only income and security, but also dignity, self-betterment, and liberation from traditional authority. In both cases, the dream of women's emancipation is harnessed to the engine of capital accumulation. Thus, feminism's critique of the family wage has assumed a marketizing valence. Once capable of aligning with social protection, it serves increasingly today to intensify neoliberalism's valorization of waged labor.
¹⁵

7. FOR A NEW ALLIANCE OF EMANCIPATION

WITH SOCIAL PROTECTION

What should we conclude from this account? Certainly not that second-wave feminism has failed
simpliciter
. Nor that it is to blame for the triumph of neoliberalism. Surely not that struggles for emancipation are inherently problematic, always already doomed to be recuperated for marketizing projects. I conclude, rather, that we who aim to emancipate women from gender hierarchy need to become more aware that we operate on a terrain that is also populated by marketizing forces. Above all, we need to reckon with emancipation's inherent ambivalence, its capacity to go in either of two directions—to ally either with the forces of marketization or with those promoting social protection. Only by appreciating this ambivalence, and by anticipating its potential unintended effects, can we undertake collective political reflection on how we might best resolve it.

Let me return to the larger questions that have inspired this chapter. Reflecting on the great transformation we are living through now, I have effectively rewritten Polanyi's project. By theorizing the double movement, he portrayed the conflicts of his time as an epochal battle for the soul of the market: Will nature, labor, and money be stripped of all ethical meaning, sliced, diced, and traded like widgets, and to hell with the consequences? Or will markets in those fundamental bases of human society be subject to ethically and morally informed political regulation? That battle remains as pressing as ever in the twenty-first century. But the triple movement casts it in a sharper light, as crosscut by two other major battles of epochal significance. One is a battle for the soul of social protection. Will the arrangements that re-embed markets in the post-neoliberal era be oppressive or emancipatory, hierarchical or egalitarian—and we might add, misframed or well-framed, difference-hostile or difference-friendly, bureaucratic or participatory? That battle, too, is as pressing as ever. But it is crosscut by yet another epochal battle—in this case for the soul of emancipation. Will the emancipatory struggles of the twenty-first century serve to advance the disembedding and deregulation of markets? Or will they serve to extend and democratize social protections and to make them more just?

These questions suggest a project for those of us who remain committed to emancipation. We might resolve to break off our dangerous liaison with marketization and forge a principled new alliance with social protection.
¹⁶
In realigning the poles of the triple movement, we could integrate our longstanding interest in non-domination with legitimate interests in solidarity and social security, without neglecting the importance of negative liberty. Embracing a broader understanding of social justice, such a project would serve at once to honor Polanyi's insights and remedy his blindspots.

1
Karl Polanyi,
The Great Transformation
, 2
^nd
ed., Boston: Beacon Press, 1944 [2001].

2
Recent feminist accounts of social reproduction, “social depletion,” and the “crisis of care” include
Power, Production, and Social Reproduction: Human In/Security in the Global Political Economy
, eds. Isabella Bakker and Steven Gill, New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2003; Arlie Hochschild,
The Commercialization of Intimate Life: Notes from Home and Work
, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2003; Shirin Rai, Catherine Hoskyns, and Dania Thomas, “Depletion and Social Reproduction,” CSGR Working Paper 274/11, Warwick University: Centre for the Study of Globalisation and Regionalisation, available at www2.warwick.ac.uk; and Silvia Federici,
Revolution at Point Zero: Housework, Reproduction, and Feminist Struggle
, New York: PM Press, 2012.

3
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, “The Communist Manifesto” (1848), in
The Marx-Engels Reader
, 2
^nd
edition, ed. Robert C. Tucker, New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1978, 475.

4
For an account of the official economic realm as both institutionally demarcated from and suffused with lifeworld norms, see Chapter 1 of this volume, “What's Critical About Critical Theory?”

5
For a fuller account of “emancipation” as a third pole of social aspiration, not reducible to protection or marketization, see Nancy Fraser, “Marketization, Social Protection, Emancipation: Toward a Neo-Polanyian Conception of Capitalist Crisis,” in
Business as Usual: The Roots of the Global Financial Meltdown
, eds. Craig Calhoun and Georgi Derlugian, New York: New York University Press, 2011, 137–58.

6
Hierarchy is not the only way in which social protections can be oppressive. The arrangements that embed markets can also be oppressive in a second way: in virtue of being “misframed.”
Misframing
is a neologism I have coined for mismatches of scale—in this case between the scale at which markets are embedded, which is usually national, and that at which they expose people to danger, which is often transnational. The oppression of misframing arises when protective arrangements externalize the negative effects of markets onto “outsiders,” wrongly excluding some of those exposed, while saddling them with the costs of protecting others. For the general concept of misframing, see “Reframing Justice,” Chapter 8 of this volume. For an account of colonialism and its neo-imperial successor regimes as paradigmatic cases of misframed protections, and indeed as protection rackets, see Nancy Fraser, “Marketization, Social Protection, Emancipation.”

7
For an account of participatory parity as a principle of justice, see “Feminist Politics in the Age of Recognition,” Chapter 6 of this volume. For a fuller defense of this principle, see Nancy Fraser, “Social Justice in the Age of Identity Politics: Redistribution, Recognition, and Participation,” in Nancy Fraser and Axel Honneth,
Redistribution or Recognition? A Political-Philosophical Exchange
, trans. Joel Golb, James Ingram, and Christiane Wilke, London: Verso Books, 2003.

8
For the second-wave feminist critique of “public patriarchy” and the family wage, see Chapters 2, 3, and 4 of this volume.

9
For a fuller discussion of the triple movement, see Fraser, “Marketization, Social Protection, Emancipation.”

10
I borrow the phrase “Embedded Liberalism,” as well as the concept, from John G. Ruggie, “International Regimes, Transactions, and Change: Embedded Liberalism in the Postwar Economic Order,”
International Organization
36:2, 1982, 379–415.

11
See “Feminism, Capitalism, and the Cunning of History,” Chapter 9 of this volume.

12
See “A Genealogy of ‘Dependency': Tracing a Keyword of the US Welfare State,” Chapter 3 of this volume.

13
This approach resembles the Universal Breadwinner model I criticized in “After the Family Wage,” Chapter 4 of this volume.

14
This approach resembles the Universal Caregiver model I advocated in “After the Family Wage,” Chapter 4 of this volume.

15
For the argument that feminism has ended up supplying a portion of the “new spirit of capitalism,” see “Feminism, Capitalism, and the Cunning of History,” Chapter 9 of this volume.

16
I borrow the phrase “dangerous liaison” from Hester Eisenstein, “A Dangerous Liaison? Feminism and Corporate Globalization,”
Science and Society
69:3, 2005, 487–518.

INDEX

abortion 58

action contexts 24–30

African-Americans: AFDC claimants 75, 78–79, 104; dependency 103–4

Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) 75, 78–79, 86, 97, 104, 106, 171n

American Psychiatric Association 102–3

American Revolution, the 95

androcentrism 2, 14, 120–21, 128, 132, 133, 134, 162, 172, 213; capitalist 211, 213, 215–16, 217, 219–21; Marxist 23n; neoliberal 219–21, 225–26

apolitical countercultural activity 49

Arendt, Hannah 64, 66, 197

Bakhtin, Mikhail 58n

Beck, Ulrich 13

bodies, social construction of 48

Boltanski, Luc 14, 210, 219–20

Bourdieu, Pierre 59n

Braybrooke, David 56n

Bretton Woods system 189, 214, 218, 237

Brown, Carol 44

Butler, Judith 153–54; achievements 175; analysis of heterosexism 178–83; destabilization argument 185; economic/cultural distinction 184–85; material harms cited by 179–80; “Merely Cultural” 11–12, 175; rebuttal of 11–12, 175–86

Cameron, Deborah 147

capitalism 1, 3; androcentrism 211, 213, 215–16, 217, 219–21; classical 40; crisis of 5, 16, 227–28, 231, 235–36, 236–38; economism 212–13, 214–15, 217, 219; étatism 213, 216, 217, 221–22; and the family 29; feminist critique 211, 212–17; industrial 89–95, 109; inter-institutional relations in classical 32–39; moral-cultural dimension 26; neoliberal 211, 223–26; postindustrial 112–13; regulation of sexuality 180–83; rise of 12; rise of neoliberalism 217–23; second-wave feminism and 14–15, 209–26; state-organized 212–17, 220, 224; welfare-state 33, 51; Westphalianism 213–14, 216–17, 222–23

capitalist economy 26–27

capitalist paid work 22–23

Caregiver Parity model 9, 114, 128–32, 133

carework 121, 124–25, 128–32, 133–35, 215–16, 238, 239

Chiapello, Eve 14, 210, 219–20

child abuse 74

childrearing 21–22, 23–24, 31, 32, 36, 39, 50, 128

citizenship 36–39, 50, 90

civil society 64n, 120, 133

class compromise 3

Clinton, Bill 124n, 221

Cloward, Richard A. 78–79

codependency 102

colonial native dependency 92–93

communication 30, 48, 49, 72–73

communicative action 24n

communicative ethics 80n

communicatively achieved action 29–30

Communism, fall of 4

comparable worth 125, 126, 172–73

consumer role, the 35–36, 40, 43–44

consumption 35–36

crisis-management 43

Critical Theory 1–2, 6–7, 19–51; action contexts 24–30; definition 19–20; Habermas's society model 27–32; legal 81–82; public-private separation 32–39; socialist-feminist 51n, 53–82; social-theoretical categorical framework 21–32; and welfare-state capitalism 40–50

cultural feminism 9, 160

cultural hegemony 140, 142, 144, 149

cultural politics 1, 160

cultural turn, the 159–60

cultural value 169

deconstruction 185

democratic justice 14, 207–8

democratic re-embedding 237–38

democratic revolutions, age of 90

dependency: and addiction 101–2; and African-Americans 103–4; appearance of gendered 90; bad 96, 99, 101, 105, 109; and citizenship 90; colonial native 92–93; definition 86, 87, 88; discursive shifts 85–86; DPD 102–3; economic 93, 96–97, 101, 108; enforced 107; and exploitation 117–18, 126, 131; feminist reinterpretation 110; feminized 99, 103; genealogy of 7–8, 83–110; good 96, 99, 100–101, 108; and the housewife 93–94; as ideological term 86; and individualization 101, 103, 109; and infantilization 107; New Left critique 107–8; pauperism 91–92, 96–97, 105, 106; political consequences 88; politics of 104–8; postindustrial 99–101, 101–4, 104–8, 109; and poverty 96; preindustrial 87–89, 109; psychologized 101–4, 109–10; racializing practices and 8; registers of meaning 86–87, 108–10; slave 92–93; and status 88, 90, 93; stigma 86, 96–97, 97–99, 100–101, 102, 109; and subordination 87, 93–94; welfare 8, 44, 83–84, 95–99, 101–4, 104–8, 110; women's 88–89, 93–94, 102, 109–10, 238

dependency theory 108

“Dependent Personality Disorder” (DPD) 102–3

Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-III-R) 103

dialogic heteroglossia 58n

difference 115

difference feminists 9

discourse publics 61

discourse theory 139, 140–43; Kristeva and 151–55; pragmatics model 143, 150–57, 157–58

discursive power, distribution of 59

disembedded markets 230–32, 235–36

distributive justice 49

divorce 172

domestic institutions 62

domestic kin networks 75

domestic labor 35

domestic violence 72–75

Dowling, Colette, The Cinderella Complex 102

dual systems theory 23n, 32, 39n, 215

economic/cultural distinction 184

economism 212–13, 214–15, 217, 219, 225

Ehrenreich, Barbara, The Hearts of Men 35

Eisenstein, Hester 219

emancipation 16, 47–50, 230, 232–34, 239–40; ambivalence of 236–38, 241; and hierarchical protections 234–35; and marketization 233–34, 235–36, 237–38, 241; social movements 237–38; and social protection 233, 234–35, 235–36, 236–38, 240–41, 241; triple movement 235–36

emancipatory promise 14

emancipatory transformation 39

Embedded Liberalism 236–37, 238–39

embedded markets 230–32, 235

enforced dependency 107

entitlements 121–22, 125n

equality 115, 118–20

essentialism 10–11

étatism 213, 216, 217, 221–22, 226

European Union 15, 223

exploitation, prevention of 117–18, 126, 131

family, the 8–9, 15, 26, 32; Butler on 178; and capitalism 29; decision-making 29; Habermas and 28–29, 33, 34, 36; nuclear 111; and patriarchal power 30; postindustrial 113

family wage, the 15, 111–35, 213, 220–21, 235, 238, 240; Caregiver Parity model 114, 128–32, 133; gender justice 114, 115–23; normative assumption 111–12; Universal Breadwinner model 114, 123–28, 133; Universal Caregiver model 133–35

female genital mutilation 172

femininity 48, 49, 148; Habermas and 35–36, 37; Kristeva and 156

feminist imaginary, the 2, 16

feminist radicalism, revival of 2

Fordism 213, 216

Forst, Rainer 207n

Foucault, Michel 7, 66n, 85; Discipline and Punish 70n; “On the Genealogy of Ethics: An Overview of Work in Progress” 57n

foulard headscarf controversy 11, 169–70

framing 197–99, 200–6, 207

France, foulard headscarf affair 11, 169–70

Frankfurt School 6

freedom 40–41

free-riders 122n, 127, 135

Freud, Sigmund 145

functionalism 183

functionality 25

Gallop, Jane, The Daughter's Seduction 149n

gay and lesbian oppression 176, 177–78, 179–80, 182

gay and lesbian rights 182–83

gender: deconstructing 134–35; distributive perspective 162, 163; Habermas and 20, 34–39, 43–44, 50–51; recognition perspective 162–63; two-dimensional conception 161–63

gender economic concepts 38

gender equality 5

gender hierarchies 234–35, 237, 239

gender identity 38, 141, 145, 148, 159–60

gender justice 1, 2, 8, 12, 114, 115, 115–23, 133–35, 211, 224; and carework 121; comparable worth 172–73; definition 115–16; and difference 122–23; distributive 164; and entitlement to provision 121–22; as participatory parity 164–67; principles 116–21; promoting 121; and recognition 165, 166; two-dimensional conception 171–73

gender norms 48, 113

gender order: disappearing 111; and Lacanianism 145–46; postindustrial 114

gender-political concepts 39

gender relations 159

gender roles 49–50, 134–35

gender theory 159–61

gift rituals 26

Gilder, George 105

globalization 5, 222–23; and framing 198–99; and justice 13–14, 189–208; and the Keynesian-Westphalian frame 189–92; and the politics of framing 200–206; and recognition 191–92; and redistribution 191

Golden Age of capitalism 3

Gordon, Linda 74

Gould, Carol 203n

Gowens, Pat 110

Gramsci, Antonio 142

group formation 140, 141–42, 148–49

gynocentric feminism 156–57

Habermas, Jürgen 6–7, 19–51; absolute differences interpretation 25–27; account of welfare-state capitalism 40–50; action contexts 24–30; and citizenship 36–38, 38–39; colonization thesis 41, 45–46, 50; communicative ethics 80n; critique of model 28–30; decolonization 42, 48–50, 50; and the family 28–29, 33, 34, 36; and gender 20, 34–39, 43–44, 50–51; inter-institutional relations in classical 32–39; Legitimation Crisis 24n, 28n; on modern societies 27–28; political implications of model 30–32; public-private separation 32–39; role theory 34–39, 46–47; socially integrated action subcategories 29–30; social-theoretical categorial framework 21–32; society model 27–32; terminology 24n; The Theory of Communicative Action 20, 24n, 28n

headscarf affair, France 11, 169–70

Hegel, Georg 145, 154

hegemony, cultural 140, 142, 144, 149

Held, David 203n

heterosexist oppression 11–12, 176, 178–83

hierarchical protection 234–35, 237

Hill, Christopher 88n

historicization 185

homelessness 55–56

housing, decommodification of 55n

Hunter, Alan 91n

identity: collective 155; construction 147–48; gender 38, 141, 145, 148, 159–60; masculine 34–35, 37; Muslim 169–70; and needs 75–78; social 22–23, 49, 140–41, 147–48, 157–58

identity politics 5, 9, 12, 16, 176, 219; and recognition 167–70

income equality 119, 126, 131

independence 8, 87–88, 89, 105, 108; America and 95; economic 90–91; industrial 89–95

individualization 101, 103, 109

infants, subjectivity in 150n

injustices 13–14, 214–15

Institute for Research on Poverty, University of Wisconsin 105

insurrectionary spirit 1

intentionality 25

interaction work 30

interdependence 110

interpretation, control of 48, 49, 72–73

Irigaray, Luce 148

Jencks, Christopher 105

Jenson, Jane 63n

juridification 6

justice 4, 11, 12, 233; all-affected principle 202–3, 203n, 204; all-subjected principle 202n; challenge facing 192–93; definition 193–94; democratic 14, 207–8; distributive 164, 164–65; framing 197–99, 200–206, 207; and globalization 13–14, 189–208; Keynesian-Westphalian frame 189–92, 194, 197–99, 206; and misframing 197–99; and misrepresentation 196–97; political dimension 194–200; post-Westphalian democratic 193, 206–8; post-Westphalian frame 199n, 202, 204–6; and representation 195–97, 199–200; state-territorial principle 201–2, 203–5; three-dimensional theory 192–93, 193–200; transformative politics 204–6; two-dimensional conception 164–67

Justice Interruptus (Fraser) 175–76, 178n, 180

Keynesianism 189, 190n

keywords 85

knowledge production 70n

Kristeva, Julia 10, 139, 150–57; “The System and the Speaking Subject” 151–52; “Women's Time” 156

labor-force segmentation 45, 50

labor movements 3

Lacanianism: account of identity construction 147–48; critique of 139–58; definition 144–45; and gender identity 145, 148; and the gender order 145–46; and group formation 141–42; Kristeva and 139, 151, 153–54; and language 143–50; phallocentrism 145–46, 153

Lacan, Jacques 10, 139, 144, 146n, 147

language 25, 72–74, 84n, 139–58, 147; discourse theory 139; Kristeva and 139, 150–57; and Lacanianism 143–50; linguistic turn 7; phallocentrism 145–46, 153; pragmatics model 143, 150–57, 157–58; structuralist model 143–46