J. Ann Tickner is ranked among the most influential scholars of international relations. As one of the founders of the field of feminist international relations, she is also among the most pioneering. A Feminist Voyage through International Relations provides a compendium of Tickner's work as a feminist IR scholar, from the late 1980s through today, tracing the methodological and epistemological story of feminist interventions in IR.

Publisher Description

Two decades ago, V. Spike Peterson's Gendered States asked what difference gender makes in international relations and the construction of the sovereign state system. This book connects the earlier debates of Peterson's book with the gendered state today, one that exists within a globalized and increasingly securitized world. Bringing together an international group of contributors from the Global South, United States, Europe, and Australia, this volume answers three overarching questions. First, it answers whether the concept of a "gendered state" is generic or if some states are particularly gendered in their identities and interests, and with what implications for the type of citizenship, society, and international security. Second, it looks at the continued theoretical significance of the gendered state for current IR scholarship. And, finally, it explains to what extent postcolonial states are distinctive from metropolitan states with regard to gender. Including scholars from International Relations, Postcolonial Studies, and Development Studies, this volume collectively theorizes the modern state and its intricate relationship to security, identity politics, and gender. With a preface by V. Spike Peterson, this book aims to connect the earlier debates of Peterson's book with the gendered state today, one that exists within a globalized and increasingly securitized world. Bringing together an international group of contributors from the Global South, United States, Europe, and Australia, this volume will answer three overarching questions. First, it will answer whether the concept of a "gendered state" is generic or if some states are particularly gendered in their identities and interests, and with what implications for the type of citizenship, society, and international security. Second, it will look at the continued theoretical significance of the gendered state for current IR scholarship. And, finally, it will explain to what extent postcolonial states are distinctive from metropolitan states with regard to gender. Including scholars from International Relations, Postcolonial Studies, and Development Studies, this volume collectively theorizes the modern state and its intricate relationship to security, identity politics, and gender.

This important introduction to feminist International Relations discusses the history, present and future of the field. With a unique format, it examines issues including global governance, the United Nations, war, peace, security, science, beauty and human rights.

Repeatedly declared dead by the media, the women’s movement has never been as vibrant as it is today. Indeed as Stanford professor and award-winning author Estelle B. Freedman argues in her compelling new book, feminism has reached a critical momentum from which there is no turning back. A truly global movement, as vital and dynamic in the developing world as it is in the West, feminism has helped women achieve authority in politics, sports, and business, and has mobilized public concern for once-taboo issues like rape, domestic violence, and breast cancer. And yet much work remains before women attain real equality. In this fascinating book, Freedman examines the historical forces that have fueled the feminist movement over the past two hundred years–and explores how women today are looking to feminism for new approaches to issues of work, family, sexuality, and creativity. Freedman begins with an incisive analysis of what feminism means and why it took root in western Europe and the United States at the end of the eighteenth century. The rationalist, humanistic philosophy of the Enlightenment, which ignited the American Revolution, also sparked feminist politics, inspiring such pioneers as Mary Wollstonecraft and Susan B. Anthony. Race has always been as important as gender in defining feminism, and Freedman traces the intricate ties between women’s rights and abolitionism in the United States in the years before the Civil War and the long tradition of radical women of color, stretching back to the impassioned rhetoric of Sojourner Truth. As industrialism and democratic politics spread after World War II, feminist politics gained momentum and sophistication throughout the world. Their impact began to be felt in every aspect of society–from the workplace to the chambers of government to relations between the sexes. Because of feminism, Freedman points out, the line between the personal and the political has blurred, or disappeared, and issues once considered “merely” private–abortion, sexual violence, homosexuality, reproductive health, beauty and body image–have entered the public arena as subjects of fierce, ongoing debate. Freedman combines a scholar’s meticulous research with a social critic’s keen eye. Sweeping in scope, searching in its analysis, global in its perspective, No Turning Back will stand as a defining text in one of the most important social movements of all time.

Until relatively recently, little had been written about gender issues in international relations despite the increased importance of the study of gender in other areas of the social sciences. Gender and International Relations fills that gap, providing a clear and accessible guide to the study of gender issues, feminist theories, and international relations. Steans illustrates how gender is central to nationalisms and political identity, the state, citizenship and conceptions of political community, security, and global political economy and development. Drawing on feminist scholarship from across the social sciences, she demonstrates the uses of feminism as critique. She also introduces readers to contemporary theoretical debates in international relations using concrete concerns and easily understandable issues to ground the discussion. The book does not construct a single feminist theory of international relations nor does it advance a particular perspective of how gender can best be understood in an international or global context. Rather, the book argues that feminist theories have collectively produced insights crucial to the study of international relations and that these insights can be used to challenge conventional approaches to the discipline.

The violent Basque separatist group ETA took shape in Franco's Spain, yet claimed the majority of its victims under democracy. For most Spaniards it became an aberration, a criminal and terrorist band whose persistence defied explanation. Others, mainly Basques (but only some Basques) understood ETA as the violent expression of a political conflict that remained the unfinished business of Spain's transition to democracy. Such differences hindered efforts to 'defeat' ETA's terrorism on the one hand and 'resolve the Basque conflict' on the other for more than three decades. Endgame for ETA offers a compelling account of the long path to ETA's declaration of a definitive end to its armed activity in October 2011. Its political surrogates remain as part of a resurgence of regional nationalism - in the Basque Country as in Catalonia - that is but one element of multiple crises confronting Spain. The Basque case has been cited as an ex- ample of the perils of 'talking to terrorists'. Drawing on extensive field research, Teresa Whitfield argues that while negotiations did not prosper, a form of 'virtual peacemaking' was an essential complement to robust police action and social condemnation. Together they helped to bring ETA's violence to an end and return its grievances to the channels of normal politics.

-- Political Science Quarterly

Class is a particularly troublesome issue in the United States and other rich capitalist societies. In this feminist analysis of class, noted sociologist Joan Acker examines and assesses feminist attempts to include white women and people of color in discussions of class. She argues that class processes are shaped through gender, race, and other forms of domination and inequality. Class Questions: Feminist Answers outlines a theory of class as a set of gendered and racialized processes in which people have unequal control over and access to the necessities of life-processes including production, distribution, and paid and unpaid labor. Historically, gender and race-based inequalities were integral to capitalism and they are still fundamental aspects of the class system. Acker argues that capitalist organizations create gendered and racialized class inequalities and outlines a conceptual scheme for analyzing "inequality regimes" in organizations. Finally, the book examines contemporary changes in work and employment and in economic/political processes, including current events like deregulation, downsizing, and off-shoring, that increase inequalities and alter racialized and gendered class relations. This book will appeal to readers interested in a feminist discussion of class as a racialized and gendered process intimately tied to the capitalist economic system.