Marta B Calás. International Encyclopedia of Organizational Studies. Editor: Stewart R Clegg & James R Bailey, Volume 4, Sage Publications, 2008.
Transnational feminism is a contemporary term referring to processes and practices engaged by feminist scholars and activists in the context of globalization. As a conceptualization, it takes its name from First/Third World and postcolonial feminist theorizing regarding material and symbolic encounters among diverse populations of women worldwide and their relationships formed at the intersections of gender, race/ethnicity, class, sexuality, and nation. This conceptualization intends to recognize differences among populations of women while articulating common interests against oppressions and subordination. The term also refers to positions taken by feminists worldwide against processes of economic globalization that create increasing disadvantages for women and underprivileged populations, as well as to the concrete experiences of transnational organizing by women around the world.
Conceptual Overview
Transnational/postcolonial feminist theorizing, while not monolithic, includes several critics who challenge Western feminist theories of gender and gender relations as furthering the images and social experiences of mostly privileged women (and men) in the First World. These arguments, which have acquired theoretical strength since the 1990s, go beyond those raised by race theorists who questioned the white, middle class, heterosexist representations of gender in feminist theorizing, and interrogate the function of the nation in gendering and racializing “others” through specific, patriarchal, heterosexist, political, and economic projects between and within different countries. They also promote notions such as transversal politics instead of identity politics to address both the heterogeneity of citizenship in its current global dimensions, within and between nations, and the possibility of feminist projects cutting across differences without assimilation.
Transnational feminist theorizing stresses a materialist interest in globalization processes but also reiterates an interest in the formation of subjectivities and in concerns with language and representation that are more typical in postcolonial theorizations. Chandra Talpade Mohanty’s contributions to transnational feminist theorizing offer a classic example: Calling for a rewriting of history based on the specific locations and histories of struggle of (post)colonial peoples, Mohanty reaffirms the need to voice “other knowledges” to illuminate the simultaneity of oppressions as grounding for a feminist politics based on the histories of racism and imperialism; the significance of memory and writing in the creation of oppositional agency; and the differences, conflicts, and contradictions internal to Third World women’s organizations and communities. At the same time, her work emphasizes the interconnectedness of different people’s exploitation at present—no matter where they are located—as produced within the political economy of globalization, reiterating that the boundaries between the haves and the have nots exist as much within nations as between nations, which situates communities of people as social majorities/minorities in disparate forms.
Works such as Mohanty’s articulate the existence of complex subjectivities and heterogeneous subject positions and relations, produced by intersections of gender, race, class, ethnicity, sexualities, and so on in the context of specific First World/Third World historical and contemporary relationships. These more complex conceptualizations defy Western humanist, homogenizing, and apparently benign subjectivities represented in notions such as “global sisterhood.” The latter, as well as many other First World feminist notions, have contributed to constructing “Third World peoples” (not just women) as backward, ignorant, and passive recipients of Western “knowledge,” obliterating other possible representations that would articulate their agency, capabilities, involvement in struggles, and strategies for survival.
There is now sufficient scholarship demonstrating that transnational feminist theorization is not a matter of either representation or materialism but rather how to deploy the best analyses afforded by several disciplinary conceptualizations. For instance, Inderwal Grewal and Caren Kaplan consider that to engage at present in critical practices capable of linking postmodernity; global economic structures; problematics of nationalism; and issues of gender, race, and imperialism, one can no longer choose among economic, cultural, and political concerns. Rather, it is necessary to work in the interlocking fields of postcolonial discourse, international feminist theorizing, literary and cultural production, as well as political economy. Transnational feminist theorizations thus resolve some dilemmas posited by feminist postcolonial theorizations such as how to portray postcolonial subjectivities without depicting them as a romanticized “native other,” or how to address contemporary global issues in places that were not part of the colonial world but that are now subject to the continuities of imperial power through military, economic, political, and cultural imperialism.
More fundamentally, however, transnational feminist theorizing aims to address the following questions: In the face of disintegrating community and identity under forces of globalization, what possibilities exist for collective action and the articulation of common interests? Are there possibilities for social movements and solidarity among and between those concerned with inequalities and oppression the world over? Several responses to these concerns have been offered. A well-known example is Gayatri Spivak’s notion of “strategic essentialism” to demonstrate the possibility for engaging in seemingly contradictory political struggles while mobilizing support for and from groups that might otherwise appear to stand for different agendas. Others include Cherríe Moraga’s “theory in the flesh” and Sandra Cisneros’s feminismo popular. The former suggests a realist account of identity beyond essentialism by showing connections between social location, experience, cultural identity, and what is represented as knowledge of self-and-other at any particular time and place. The latter is offered as a transnational practice of border crossing, intellectually as well as materially, to examine emergent types of movements and resistance across geopolitical boundaries. Further, Ann Ferguson’s “bridge identity politics” calls for a reconstitution of identities into affinity networks and practices as an ethico-political goal for egalitarian and reciprocal relations between different populations who share common political demands in the context of globalization. Finally, “hybrid identities” and “hybridization” are also important concepts in these arguments, for they can be read both as ways of resisting the forces of assimilation into a dominant culture and addressing linkages between differently situated subjects by recognizing multiple interconnecting axes of affiliation and differentiation.
Theoretical conceptualizations such as those proposed above are clear on the implications of “theory” for possibilities to articulate transnational collective action and resistance to oppression and exploitation within the circuits of capital, in particular for women. These implications are also present in several research methodological considerations. For instance, Latin American testimonios suggest opportunities for inquiry of strong political force, portraying very different gender configurations through women “from below” who speak up, initiate action, fight in all kinds of struggles, while resisting any easy classification within First World images of “woman” or “feminism.” Others, such as Kamala Visweswaran, propose ethnographic approaches that foreground, reflexively and proactively, the relationship of the researcher and the research subject as they both are multiply traversed by institutional, political, and economic interests and power relations. Also, the need for more concrete interventions by researchers is brought to the fore in reconsiderations of action research which, despite poststructuralist critiques, revalorize researchers’ participation on a transnational scale to empower those who are most vulnerable. In general, transnational/postcolonial feminist research portrays and emphasizes the agency of “the other” and articulates the multiple relationships between the “local” and the “global.” More importantly, these research approaches also make visible how transnational practices of research can further empower or exploit those whom they claim to represent. As a whole, scholarship on transnational feminism is mindful of the tenuous and possibly ambiguous nature of this notion but also hopeful for the analytical and practical possibilities that it unlocks.
Critical Commentary and Future Directions
It would be misleading to narrow transnational/postcolonial feminist theorizing to the few conceptualizations and arguments discussed above, for scholarship on these topics continues to grow while cutting across disciplines and territories, including theory, method, and practice, and most of these newer works are as significant for cultural concerns as they are for concerns in political economy. Moreover, in principle, and while not always clearly designated as such, a good amount of this scholarship is intended to cross over the boundaries of the academy and to contribute to actual political action in the world by women and for women. Thus, often the literature addressing these ideas is prompt to recognize the contradictions that come to the fore when trying to navigate between theory and practice in the context of many differently situated populations. This is evidently the case when the populations in question are located between the extreme of “theory,” represented by First World feminist academic privilege, and the extreme of “practice,” represented by Third World populations of women working against subordination and oppression.
Some topical examples illustrate these extremes. Processes of globalization are a central focus of attention and are analyzed through various frames and themes. Some theorists would critique representations of globalization in neoliberal economics literatures and address the limits imposed by these representations when imagining feminist subjectivities within and in resistance to global capital. In contrast, others would regard gatherings such as the World Social Forum as a space in which new tendencies and new ways of existence for feminisms might emerge in the collective constructions of alternatives to dominant notions of globalization. These extremes often find themselves in opposition in transnational conferences where activists and academics, as well as other women representing diverse interests, from formal political participation within the state to indigenous movements against the state, attempt to come to common understandings. Narratives abound about the limits of these gatherings aiming to represent diverse women’s interests and create coalitions between them, which often end up representing the interests of very few, for the intended theoretical tactics are unable to attain the expected practical outcomes in the context of profound differences of class, race, ethnicity, sexuality, and even language.
The critical approaches offered by transnational feminist analyses are nonetheless of considerable importance for organization studies given the increasing focus on transnationalism and globalization in contemporary organization literatures and, concurrently, the steady production of gender and organization scholarship. At present, there are few works representing intersections of organization studies and transnational feminist theorizing, but Joan Acker has offered a promising analytical agenda for the future, which requires gendering globalization. She articulates three interrelated themes where gender, capitalism, and globalization appear to be uniquely intertwined in contemporary organizational processes: masculinities in globalizing capital, the gendered construction of a division between capitalist production and human reproduction, and gender as a resource for globalizing capital.
Regarding masculinities in globalizing capital, Acker offers an important analytical question for organization studies: Who makes the decisions that define “globalization” in theory and in practice? There is no doubt that certain groups of men occupy most top decision-making positions in business and other organizations, including transnational institutions fostering globalization policies, and academic domains creating theories about them. At the same time, images of top decision makers in organizations involved in global processes promote particular notions of how such individuals should act, look, and so on. Thus, global decision making is coded “masculine” in specific ways, and the men, but also the few women, who make decisions under this code are immediate beneficiaries of most of the wealth and power thus produced. At the same time, these decisions produce cultural and economic dislocations affecting gender/race/class relations, both in particular local arenas and at global levels.
The second area suggested by Acker, to analyze the gendered construction of a division between capitalist production and human reproduction, focuses on the fact that corporate practices, at local and global levels, claim nonresponsibility for the reproduction of human life, creating a distinction between production as monetary economy and reproduction as nonmonetary. These practices may first create a gendered system supported by the unpaid reproductive work of women (caring work, household work) as well as by the lower-paid women’s work and other low-paid, feminized work in the for-profit economy. Nonresponsibility at the local level in the name of capitalist accumulation becomes naturalized as a globalization process when production is continuously moved from location to location in search of the cheapest labor, which is often women’s labor.
Acker’s third suggested area, to analyze gender as a resource for globalizing capital, shows further interconnections between different forms of transnational economies, not just through the mobility of capital but also through the mobility of bodies. In these analyses, it is observed that the relations of capitalist production and globalization today prosper in more complex ways than simply moving production to a “low-wage country,” be it physically or through virtual offshoring of services. Patterns of immigration and transmigration from Third World and other less affluent regions to rich Euro-American countries and other affluent regions create newer transnational relations between labor and capital. These relations, still mediated by gender, race, class, and so on, frequently occur as more affluent local men and women, often subject to work intensification, require services from less privileged migrants so that they can go on about their business. These services (e.g., housework, child care) contribute to increasing a transnational low-wage labor market; to the naturalization of work intensification for all; and also to further privatization of economies, as public services for families and workers continue to recede, as a matter of course, under neoliberal state policies that are now global policies.
Gendering globalization through these themes would expose the discontinuities between the realities of most women’s and men’s lives in local arenas, as well as expose the discontinuities of those realities with mainstream scholarly work about global processes. Analyses such as these produce a better understanding of current global organization practices, and their consequences, at the specific sites where they appear. They help to expose much that lies invisible behind the assumed “value-creation processes” of globalization as represented in traditional organizational texts, and provide alternative conceptualizations for a more critical transnational organization studies.