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CSUDH Habermas UWP

California State University, Dominguez Hills
University of Wisconsin, Parkside
Created: April 28, 2001
Latest update: May 2, 2001
jeannecurran@habermas.org

CALL FOR PAPERS for Science and Society

SPECIAL ISSUE: MARXIST-FEMINIST THOUGHT TODAY

As capitalism strengthens its worldwide domination, the resulting burdens fall increasingly on those in the poorest sectors of the rural and urban populations and of the masses displaced by armed conflicts and natural disasters. Growing numbers of men find themselves downsized, unemployed, in prison, or forced to migrate. Regardless of marital status, income level, or prior occupational experience, women are increasingly in charge of supporting themselves, their families, and future generations. The proportion of households that are female-headed has been moving up since the 1970s, particularly in areas of the world affected by neoliberal economic policies. While spared from the devastation inflicted in the third world, the developed countries have seen similar increases in female-headed households. In the U.S., for example, households composed of married couples with children are only 24 percent of all households. In short, women workers, peasants, and migrants not only increasingly bear all responsibility for economic provision, care of household members, and the never-ending tasks of daily life, they also make up the majority of the world's working classes.

How can we understand the contradictions and possibilities of these shifts? It has become commonplace for progressives to argue that in our presumably post-capitalist times Marx's work no longer pertains. For feminists, the rejection of Marxism builds on the outcomes of a 1970s discussion of the relation of Marxism and feminism. Although most feminists concluded Marxism to be irrelevant, a large minority retained a certain interest in Marxist analysis by adopting "dual systems" theories, which represent women as shackled to both patriarchy and capitalism. And a handful of scholars, male as well as female, have persisted in a commitment to finding ways to make Marxism feminist and feminism Marxist.

Readers of SCIENCE & SOCIETY are not likely, of course, to have given up on Marxism. But they may not be aware of the past three decades' extensive Marxist-feminist discussions, much less of current trends in Marxist-feminist thought and analysis. It is time for all of us to reappraise Marx's work, the Marxist heritage, and Marxist-feminist theory in an effort to understand, in all their complexity, the manifold ways in which capitalism affects the lives of women and men everywhere.

To this end, we call for contributions to a special issue of SCIENCE & SOCIETY on "Marxist-Feminist Thought Today." We encourage prospective authors to explore both concrete issues, amenable to the use of empirical research findings, and theoretical questions having to do with poststructuralist, postmodern and postfeminist challenges to Marxism and to Marxist-feminism. Possible topics could include: unionization among women workers; the relationship between changes in men's opportunity structures and women's rising levels of labor force participation and economic responsibility; the effects of recent welfare reforms; the decline of the male-breadwinner family unit; rethinking race, gender, and identity politics; Marxist-feminism, materialist-feminism, and other puzzles; Black feminism and Marxist-feminist thought; etc. In all cases, we ask authors to explain how they view their framework to be Marxist as well as feminist. We especially welcome manuscripts and proposals from younger scholars.

The coordinating editors for the issue are Editorial Board member Lise Vogel (Rider University, 2083 Lawrenceville Road, Lawrenceville, NJ 08648; lvogel@mindspring.com; 718-499-4952) and Guest Editor Martha E. Gimenez (Department of Sociology, Campus Box 327, University of Colorado at Boulder, Boulder, CO 80309; gimenez@csf.colorado.edu). Copies of proposals, abstracts, manuscripts, and other correspondence should go to both Vogel and Gimenez. The deadline for manuscripts is September 2002 and the issue is projected for publication in 2003.