Radical Political Economy and the State: Lessons from Gender Theory
Author(s)
Mutari, Ellen
Abstract
Feminist analyses of the state and public policy imply that the state should be treated as a site for the generation of social practices that can either reproduce or transform existing gender, racial-ethnic, and class relations. For this reason, discussing the state as an abstract, timeless construct holds little meaning. It is argued that the state is better viewed not simply as a lifeboat for women and other groups who are relatively disempowered in markets, not merely as a bandage for “market failures,” but rather as one of three sites, along with markets and families, where economic provisioning occurs.
