Feminist Theory Redux: Neoliberalism’s Public-Private Divide
Feminist Theory Redux: Neoliberalism’s Public-Private Divide
Conventional wisdom about neoliberalism is that it has led to the privatization of what were once public resources and that many state functions, particularly those related to social welfare, have been outsourced or privatized. While we do not dispute that many recent changes have led to what analysts call “privatization,” we argue that this story of neoliberalism is insufficient to understand its contemporary manifestations in India and China and, perhaps, more generally. Feminist theorists have long argued that “public” and “private” are ideologically defined and vary historically; that the division is empirically unfounded; and that it obscures the work these ideological distinctions do to maintain gender hierarchies. The chapter borrows from such insights to analyze recent mutations in the relationships between state and capital, or state-capital. It argues that much of what has been described as neoliberal privatization are actually blurred, hybrid mixtures of public-private endeavors that comprise “actually existing” neoliberalism.
Keywords: capitalism, China, feminism, feminist theory, India, political economy, privatization, public-private, state
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