Chapters by Alan Cafruny, the Henry Platt Bristol Professor of International Relations, and Associate Professor of Women’s Studies Anne Lacsamana were recently published in The Palgrave Handbook of Critical International Political Economy (London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2016).
Co-edited by Cafruny, along with Leila Talani of Kings College London and Gonzalo Pozo Martin of Sodortorn University in Stockholm, The Palgrave Handbook includes chapters by 22 leading international scholars. Challenging the assumptions of mainstream international political economy, the book’s contributors demonstrate the value of critical theory.
Lacsamana’s chapter, “Feminism and Critical International Political Economy,” examines the contested relationship between feminism and Marxism. Feminism has largely abandoned questions of class and capitalism, resulting in “trickle-down,” one percent, or neoliberal feminism.
Attributing this situation to the ascendancy of postmodernism and the deployment of “intersectionality” as the dominant lenses through which to understand gender and other markers of identity, Lacsamana asserts that a re-engagement between feminism and Marxism (and vice versa) is necessary if we are to obtain a comprehensive understanding of the contemporary neoliberal global landscape.
Cafruny’s chapter, “The Transatlantic Imperium after the Global Financial Crisis: Atlanticism Fractured or Consolidated,” focuses on two significant contemporary issues for the Euro-Atlantic area: the war in Ukraine and subsequent crisis of Russia-West relations, and the impasse over the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. He relates each of these key developments to underlying neoliberal transformation of global capitalism alongside sharpening international rivalries.
