Rhacel Salazar Parreñas
Office: HSH 314
Office Hours: W 12-130 pm
SWMS 554
W 2-450 pm
VKC 161
WOMEN IN A GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE
This course examines the production and reproduction of gender and inequalities in the
contexts of globalization and transnationalism. The course examines the constitution of
gender in labor, migration, the family, and religion. It looks at the construction of gender
in key phenomena that embody cross-national ties in globalization including adoption,
global labor flows, neoliberalism, international marriages and the global political
economy. Class discussions will engage questions of feminist epistemology, the
construction of a gendered global subject and national differences among women in
globalization.
REQUIRED BOOKS
*Laura Briggs, Somebody’s Children: The Politics of Transracial and Transnational
Adoption. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012.
*Christine Chin, Cosmopolitan Sex Workers: Women and Migration in a Global City,
New York: Oxford University Press, 2013.
*Silvia Federici, Caliban and the Witch, Brooklyn, NY: Autonomedia, 2004.
*Karen Ho, Liquidated: An Ethnography of Wall Street, Durham, NC: Duke University
Press, 2009.
*Mirca Madianou and Daniel Miller, Migration and the New Media: Transnational
Families and Polymedia, New York: Routledge, 2012
*Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject,
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011.
*Pun Ngai, Made in China: Women Factory Workers in a Global Perspective, Durham,
NC: Duke University Press, 2005.
*Rhacel Parreñas, Illicit Flirtations: Labor, Migration and Sex Trafficking in Tokyo,
Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011.
*Raka Ray and Seemin Qayum, Cultures of Servitude: Modernity, Domesticity and Class
in India, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009.
*Felicity Amaya Schaeffer, Love and Empire: Cybermarriage and Citizenship across the
Americas, New York: New York University Press, 2012.
*Melissa Wright, Disposable Women and Other Myths of Capitalism, New York:
Routledge, 2006.
COURSE REQUIREMENTS
Attendance and Participation (10%) You are expected to not only attend class regularly
but to also participate in class discussions. This means that you should attend class
having already completed the readings. To help facilitate class discussions, you are
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required to design three questions based on the readings prior to class and submit these
questions to the instructor by midnight prior to the class meeting.
Presentation of Readings (10%) You are expected to select one week to present the
readings during the first half of class. There is no set structure that you are expected to
follow but you should prepare an interactive presentation that provides students a
thorough understanding of the assigned materials.
Papers (80%) You are expected to complete one 2-page book summary of Caliban and
the Witch (5%) and three 5-7 page critical papers (25% each). Each critical paper
coincides with one of three themes covered in the course: Feminist Epistemologies in
Globalization; Morals, Sexuality and Globalization; and The Body and the Political
Economy of Globalization. For each critical paper, you will respond to the set of
questions that I had posed to bring together the readings that had been grouped into one
particular theme. The questions are listed below in the beginning of each thematic group.
For the critical paper, you need not respond to each question but instead need to only
view the questions as a guideline. While you are expected to draw from the readings, you
are not required to make references to all of them. You also have the option to draw from
other materials when writing your critical paper.
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
WEEK I (August 28)
Introduction
WEEK II (September 4)
Feminism and Globalization
Chandra Mohanty. 1988. “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial
Discourse,” Feminist Review 30 (Autumn), 61-88.
Chandra Mohanty. 2002. “‘Under Western Eyes’ Revisited: Feminist Solidarity through
Anticapitalist Struggles,” Signs 28(2), 499-535.
Caren Kaplan and Inderpal Grewal. 1994. "Transnational Feminist Cultural Studies:
Beyond the Marxism/Poststructuralism/Feminism Divides,” positions: east asia
cultures critique 2(2), 430-445.
Inderpal Grewal and Caren Kaplan. 1994. "Transnational Feminist Practices and
Questions of Postmodernity." Pp. 1-33 in Scattered Hegemonies: Postmodernity
and Transnational Feminist Practices, eds. Inderpal Grewal and Caren Kaplan,
Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Freeman, Carla. 2001. “Is local: global as feminine: masculine? Rethinking the gender of
globalization,” Signs 26 (4): 1007-1037.
Recommended:
Parreñas, Rhacel. 2008. The Force of Domesticity: Filipina Migrants and Globalization,
New York: NYU Press.
Moghadam, Val. 2005. Globalizing Women: Transnational Feminist Networks,
Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
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WEEK III (September 11) Women and the Global Economy
Acker, Joan. 2004. “Gender, Capitalism and Globalization,” Critical Sociology 30 (1),
17-42.
Bergeron, Suzanne. 2001. “Political Economy Discourses of Globalization and Feminist
Politics,” Signs 26 (4): 983-1005.
Mills, Mary Beth. 2003. “Gender and Inequality in the Global Labor Force,” Annual
Review of Anthropology 32, 41-62.
Werbner, Pnina. 1999. “Global Pathways. Working Class Cosmopolitans and the
Creation of Transnational Ethnic Worlds,” Social Anthropology 7 (1), 17-35.
Sassen, Saskia. 2000. “Women’s Burdens: Counter-Geographies of Globalization and the
Feminization of Survival,” Journal of International Affairs 53 (2), 504-524.
Recommended:
Rai, Shirin. 2002. Gender and the Political Economy of Development: From Nationalism
to Globalization, London: Polity Press.
WEEK IV (September 18) Social Reproduction and the Body
Silvia Federici, Caliban and the Witch, Brooklyn, NY: Autonomedia, 2004.
No class on September 18.
PAPER DUE A short paper summarizing Federici, Caliban and the Witch is due on
Friday September 20.
FEMINIST EPISTEMOLOGIES IN GLOBALIZATION
Avoiding ethnocentrism is a priority in current feminist scholarship in Europe, which
raises the question of how could this be done. How do we account for differences in
gender systems when doing feminist research in globalization? Are there essential or
organic differences in gendered formations across cultures? Are the priorities of women
likewise different in the West and the Rest? Should we always assume differences in
gendered formations and priorities across cultures? Is it ethnocentric to assume or not to
assume differences in gender systems across cultures?
WEEK V (September 25) Gender and Culture
Mahmood, Saba. 2011. Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject,
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Recommended:
Boellstorff, Tom. 2003. “Indonesian Gay and Lesbi Subjectivities and Ethnography in an
already globalised world,” American Ethnologist 30(2): 225-42.
Boellstorff, Tom. 2005. The Gay Archipelago: Sexuality and Nation in Indonesia,
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
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WEEK VI (October 2)
Gender and the Transnational Family
Mirca Madianou and Daniel Miller. 2012. Migration and the New Media: Transnational
Families and Polymedia, New York: Routledge.
Recommended:
Gamburd, Michelle. A Kitchen Spoon’s Handle: Transnationalism and Sri Lanka’s
Migrant Housemaids, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Schmalzbauer, Leah. 2004. “Searching for Wages and Mothering from Afar: The Case of
Honduran Transnational Families.” Journal of Marriage and Family 66: 13171331.
Parreñas, Rhacel. 2005. Children of Global Migration: Transnational Families and
Gendered Woes, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Dreby, Joanna. 2006. “Honor and Virtue: Mexican Parenting in the Transnational
Context,” Gender & Society 20: 32-59.
Abrego, Leisy. 2009. “Economic Well-Being in Salvadoran Transnational Families: How
Gender Affects Remittance Practices,” Journal of Marriage and Family 71: 10701085.
WEEK VII (October 9)
Gender and Class
Raka Ray and Seemin Qayum. 2009. Cultures of Servitude: Modernity, Domesticity and
Class in India, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Recommended:
Appadurai, Arjun. 1996. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization,
Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Levitt, Peggy. 1998. “Social Remittances: Migration Driven Local-Level Forms of
Cultural Diffusion,” International Migration Review 32(4), 926-948.
PAPER DUE Critical paper on “Feminist Epistemologies in Globalization” is due on
Monday, October 14 at 5 pm.
MORALS, SEXUAL INTIMACY, AND GLOBALIZATION
Earlier discussions of commercial intimacy in a global context followed a Marxist
framework and considered commercial intimacy a reflection of socio-economic
inequalities. Since then, feminists have tried to provide a subject-centered discussion of
commercial intimacy, arguing that international commercial-sex shows the constitution of
‘autology,’ ‘cosmpolitanism,’ ‘neoliberal’ or ‘postmodern’ subjectivities, and the moral
diversity of Third World women. How does the literature describe the moral constitution
of the Third World female subject? According to the literature, what do sexual practices
tell us about the constitution of the “self” for the Third World female subject? Does
current feminist literature on international commercial sex downplay the economic
inequalities of globalization?
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WEEK XIII (October 16) Human Trafficking
Rhacel Parrenas. 2011. Illicit Flirtations: Labor, Migration and Sex Trafficking in Tokyo,
Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
WEEK IX (October 23)
International Marriage
Felicity Amaya Schaeffer. 2012. Love and Empire: Cybermarriage and Citizenship
across the Americas, New York: New York University Press.
Recommended:
Constable, Nicole. 2003. Romance on a Global Stage: Pen Pals, Virtual Ethnography
and ‘Mail Order’ Marriages, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Povinelli, Elizabeth. 2006. The Empire of Love: Toward a Theory of Intimacy,
Genealogy, and Carnality, Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
WEEK X (October 30)
Commercial Sex
Christine Chin. 2013. Cosmopolitan Sex Workers: Women and Migration in a Global
City, New York: Oxford University Press.
Recommended:
Bernstein, Elizabeth. 2007. Temporarily Yours: Intimacy, Authenticity and the Commerce
of Sex, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Padilla, Mark. 2007. Caribbean Pleasure Industry: Tourism, Sexuality, and AIDS in the
Dominican Republic, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
PAPER DUE Critical paper on “Morals, Sexuality and Globalization” is due on Monday,
November 4 at 5 pm.
THE BODY AND THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF GLOBALIZATION
There is a rich tradition in feminist global studies to describe the displacement of women
through the lens of female corporeal suffering. Does this continue to be the case? How is
the body represented in discussions of the political economy of globalization and its
processes? Are depictions of the suffering body in the literature balanced with
discussions of corporeal resistance?
WEEK XI (November 6)
Neoliberalism
Karen Ho, Liquidated: An Ethnography of Wall Street, Durham, NC: Duke University
Press, 2009.
WEEK XII (November 13) Adoption
Laura Briggs, Somebody’s Children: The Politics of Transracial and Transnational
Adoption. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012.
WEEK XIII (November 20) Manufacturing Labor
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Pun Ngai, Made in China: Women Factory Workers in a Global Perspective, Durham,
NC: Duke University Press, 2005.
Recommended:
Otis, Eileen. 2011. Markets and Bodies: Women, Service Work, and the Making of
Inequality in China, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
WEEK XIV (November 27)
THANKSGIVING BREAK
WEEK XV (December 4)
Manufacturing Labor/Conclusion
Melissa Wright, Disposable Women and Other Myths of Capitalism, New York:
Routledge, 2006.
Recommended:
Salzinger, Leslie. 2003. Genders in Production: Making Workers in Mexico’s Global
Factories, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
PAPER DUE Critical paper on “The Body and the Political Economy of Globalization”
is due on Monday, December 9 at 5 pm.
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