Gender in the Inter- Paradigm Debate

Millennium : Journal of Internationat Studies (Vol. 17, No.3, Winter 1988 ).

Mark Hoffman , 'Critical Theory and the Inter-Paradigm Debate ', Millennium (Vol. 16, No. 2, Summer 1987), pp. 231-49; see also N.R. Rengger , 'Going Critical? A Response to Hoffman', Millennium (Vol. 17, No. 1,1 1988), pp, 81-90; M. Hoffman , Conversations on Critical International Relations Theory', in ibid ; Y. Lapid , 'Quo Vadis International relations? Further Reflections on the "Next Stage" of International Theory', Millennium (Vol. 18, No. 1, Spring 1989 ); Y. Lapid , 'The Third Debate: On the Prospects of International Theory in a Post-Positivist Era', International Studies Quarterly (forthcoming).

The extent to which any discussion has taken place between feminist and critical IR theorists has been largely feminist IR scholars noting that examinations of gender inequality is a 'requirement for a critical theory of international relations'. See Sarah Brown , 'Feminism, International Theory and International Relations of Gender Inequality', Millennium (Vol. 17, No. 3, Winter 1989 ), p. 472.

See Richard K. Ashley , 'The Poverty of Neorealism', in R.O. Keohane (ed.), Neorealism and its Critics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986); and Fred Halliday , 'State and Society in International Relations: A Second Agenda', Millennium (Vol. 16, No. 2, Summer 1987).

Hoffman , op. cit, p. 238.

For a parallel discussion, see Nancy Fraser, 'What's Critical about Critical Theory? The Case of Habermas and Gender', in S. Benhabib and D. Cornell , (eds.), Feminism and Critique (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1987), pp. 31-55.

Ibid, p. 32.

Hoffman , op. cit.

Michael Banks suggests that there are currently three paradigms within IR: realism, pluralism and structuralism. Michael Banks , 'The Inter-Paradigm Debate', in M. Light and A.J.R. Groom (eds.), International Relations: A Handbook of Current Theory (London: Frances Pinter, 1985), pp. 7-26. The last of these, structuralism, is a rather confused collection of theories in which, for example, he includes both Richard Ashley and Robert Cox, two writers who explicitly reject purely structural accounts of IR and which has not engaged in 'debates' with realism in the same way as the pluralist paradigm during the 1970s and 1980s. Because of this, I have replaced structuralism with critical IR theory and include a variety of approaches which, in Robert Cox's words, 'do not take institutions and social power relations for granted but calls them into question by concerning itself with their origins and whether they might be in the process of changing'. Writers such as Wallerstein, and more recently Ashley, Hoffman, Rengger and Cox would be included in this approach.

C.f., R.O. Keohane , 'Theory of World Politics: Structural Realism and Beyond', in R.O. Keohane , op. cit., p. 160

Catherine A. MacKinnon , Feminism Unmodified: Discourses on Life and Law (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987), p. 234; cf., Brown , op. cit., p. 469.

Brown , op. cit., p. 464.

Paraphrased from Alison M. Jaggar , Feminist Politics and Human Nature (Brighton: Harvester, 1983), p. 21.

Paraphrased from Joan Wallach Scott , 'The Modem Period', Past and Present, (No. 101, November, 1983).

C.f., R.W. Cox , 'Production and Hegemony: An Approach Towards a Problematic', paper prepared for the IPSA Congress , Moscow, 12-18 August 1979, p.

Brown , op. cit, p. 464.

Much of the conceptual work for this section has been inspired by numerous recent writings by Jane Jenson. See, for example, 'Gender and Reproduction: Or, Babies and the State', Studies in Political Economy (No. 20, 1986), pp. 9-46; 'Changing Discourse, Changing Agendas: Political Rights and Reproductive Policies in France', in M. Katzenstein and C. Mueller (eds.), The Women's Movement of Western Europe and the USA: Consciousness, Political Opportunity and Public Policy (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1987); and 'The Talents of Women, The Skills of Men: Flexible Specialization and Women', in S. Wood (ed.), The Transformation of Work (London: Unwin Hyman, 1989).

K.J. Holsti , The Dividing Discipline: Hegemony and Diversity in International Theory (Boston, MA: Allen and Unwin, 1985), p. 8.

H.J. Morgenthau , Politics Among Nations, Fifth Edition (New York: Alfred A. Knopf , 1978), pp. 9,30.

Ibid, pp. 12, 29-30.

Ibid, pp. 29-30.

Holsti , op. cit, pp. 139-40.

Ashley , op. cit., p. 270.

Ibid, pp. 270-71; see also Keohane , op. cit., p. 168.

Ashley , op. cit., pp. 270-71.

R.W. Cox , 'Social Forces, States and World Orders: Beyond International Relations Theory, Millennium (Vol. 10, No. 2, Summer 1981 ), p. 137.

Stephen Krasner , 'Structural Causes and Regime Consequences: Regimes as Intervening Variables', in Stephen Krasner (ed.), International Regimes (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1983).

Friedrich Kratchowil and J.G. Ruggie , 'International Organisation: A State of the Art on an Art of the State ', International Organisation (Vol. 40, No. 4, 1986), p. 764.

Ernie Keenes , Gregg Legare and Jean-Francois Rioux , 'The Reconstruction of New-Realism from Counter-Hegemonic Discourse'. Carleton Universitv Occasional Papers (No. 14, Spring 1987), p. 15.

John W. Burton , 'World Society and Human Needs', in M. Light and A.J.R. Groom , op. cit., p. 47; C.R. Mitchell , 'World Society as Cobweb: States, Actors and Systemic Processes', in Michael Banks , Conflict in World Society, pp. 59-61.

See Jaggar , op. cit., p. 199 and chapter 7 for a review of liberal feminism and its critics.

Brian Fay, Social Theory and Political Practice (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1975), pp. 90-91.

Hoffman , op. cit., pp. 237-8 and passim.

And, of course, this interpretation of realism is a contentious one, even among critical IR theorists. See especially the exchange between Richard Ashley. Ramashray Roy and R.B.J. Walker in Alternatives (No.13, 1988), pp. 77-102.

See, for example, R.B.J. Walker and Saul H. Mendlovitz , 'Peace, Politics and Contemporary Social Movements', and Richard A. Falk, 'The State System and Contemporary Social Movements', in S.H. Mendiovitz and R.B.J. Walker (eds.). Towards a Just World Peace (Toronto: Butterworths, 1987).

Fraser , op. cit., p. 31.

Jane Jenson , 'Different but not Exceptional: the Fenimism of Permeable Fordism', Studies in Political Economy (forthcoming).

Sandra Whitworth , 'What Next? Gender and IR?', mimeo.