Book launch: ‘The Political Economy of Patriarchy in the Global South’

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Recent decades have witnessed both a renewed energy in feminist activism and widespread attacks taking back hard-won rights. Despite powerful feminist movements, the Covid-19 pandemic has significantly undermined the progress women have struggled for decades to achieve; how can this be? What explains this paradox of a strong feminist movement coexisting with stubborn patriarchal arrangements? How can we stop the next global catastrophe initiating a similar backlash? This book suggests that the limitations of social theory prevent feminist strategies from initiating transformative changes and achieving permanent gains. It investigates the impact of theoretical shortcomings upon feminist strategies by engaging with two clusters of work: ungendered accounts of capitalist development and theories on gendered oppression and inequality. Decentring feminist theorising grounded in histories and developments of the global North, the book provides an original theory of the patriarchal system by analysing changes within its forms and degrees as well as investigating the relationship between the gender, class and race-ethnicity based inequalities. Turkey offers a case that challenges assumptions and calls for rethinking major feminist categories and theories, thereby shedding light on the dynamics of social change in the global South. The timely intervention of this book is, therefore, crucial for feminist strategies going forward. 

Purchase your copy on the Routledge website

Author

Ece Kocabıçak is currently working as a lecturer in the Department of Sociology at the Open University, UK. She completed her Ph.D. in Sociology at Lancaster University. Prior to joining the Open University, Ece was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Gender Studies at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Her research engages with contemporary debates in comparative sociology, feminist political economy, and international development. Her expertise is on the ways in which varieties of gender regimes diversify the trajectories of capitalist development, state formation and civil society in the global South; and the interactions between the patriarchal, capitalist and racist collective subjects. For more than two decades, Ece has been involved in feminist politics in Turkey, Egypt, Cyprus and England, and written for a variety of publications including academic books and journals, newspapers and magazines.

Discussants

Manali Desai is Professor of Comparative and Historical Sociology and Fellow of Newnham College at the University of Cambridge, UK. Her work encompasses the areas of parties and political articulation, social movements, ethnic and gendered violence, and post-colonial studies. While her recent comparative qualitative research focuses on gendered violence and urban transformation in India and South Africa, Manali’s previous work addresses the emergence of two different welfare regimes in India (1860- 1990).

Haroon Akram-Lodhi is Professor of Economics and International Development in the Department of International Development at Trent University, Canada. He is also the Editor-in-Chief of the Canadian Journal of Development Studies and an Associate Editor of Feminist Economics. The focus of Haroon’s research interest is in the engendered political economy of agrarian change, on the economic dimensions of gender relations, and on the political ecology of sustainable rural livelihoods and communities in developing countries.

Sanchari Roy is a Senior Lecturer in Development Economics at the Department of International Development at King’s College London, UK. Sanchari's work focuses on the various types of constraints faced by developing countries in the process of poverty alleviation and economic development. The core themes of her research include the role of gender constraints in perpetuating poverty, with special focus on female inheritance rights; the challenges faced in providing effective public service delivery; and the role of psychological constraints in perpetuating poverty.

Chair

Lorena Lombardozzi is a Senior Lecturer in Economics at the Open University, UK. Her research interests relate to the theoretical debates on political economy, inequality, growth and distribution as well as to applied areas of international development (Central Asia in particular), gender and feminist economics, labour and work, the welfare state and social policy, agro-industrial policy and innovation, food systems, global value chains and research methods in Economics.

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