Page 25 - Culture and Cultural Studies

24 CULTURE AND CULTURAL STUDIES

Feminism

Feminism (Chapter 9) is a field of theory and politics that contains competing perspec-
tives and prescriptions for action. However, in general terms, we may locate feminism as
asserting that sex is a fundamental and irreducible axis of social organization which, to
date, has subordinated women to men. Thus, feminism is centrally concerned with sex as
an organizing principle of social life where gender relations are thoroughly saturated with
power. The subordination of women is argued to be evident across a range of social insti-
tutions and practices; that is, male power and female subordination are structural. This
has led some feminists to adopt the concept of patriarchy, with its derivative meanings of
the male-headed family, ‘mastery’ and superiority.
Liberal feminism stresses equality of opportunity for women. This is held to be achiev-
able within the broad structures of the existing legal and economic frameworks. In con-
trast, socialist feminists point to the interconnections between class and gender, including
the fundamental place of gender inequalities in the reproduction of capitalism. Instead of
liberal and socialist feminism’s stress on equality and sameness, difference or radical
feminism asserts essential differences between men and women. These are celebrated as
representing the creative difference of women and the superiority of ‘feminine’ values.

Problems with patriarchy A criticism of the concept of patriarchy is its treatment of the
category of ‘woman’ as undifferentiated. That is, all women are taken to share something
fundamental in common; in contrast to all men. This is an assumption continually chal-
lenged by black feminists, amongst others, who have argued that the movement has
defined women as white and overlooked the differences between black and white wom-
en’s experiences. This stress on difference is shared by poststructuralist and postmodern
feminists who argue that sex and gender are social and cultural constructions, which can-
not be adequately explained in terms of biology or reduced to functions of capitalism.
This is an anti-essentialist stance which argues that femininity and masculinity are not
essential universal categories but discursive constructions. That is, gender is constituted
by the way we talk about and perform it. As such, poststructuralist feminism is concerned
with the cultural construction of subjectivity per se and with a range of possible mascu-
linities and femininities.

Race, ethnicity and hybridity
Another ‘politics of difference’ which has received increasing attention within cultural
studies is that of race and ethnicity in postcolonial times (see Chapters 8 and 14). Ethnicity
is a cultural concept centred on norms, values, beliefs, cultural symbols and practices that
mark a process of cultural boundary formation. The idea of ‘racialization’ has been
deployed to illustrate the argument that race is a social construction and not a universal or
essential category of either biology or culture. Races do not exist outside of representation
but are formed in and by it in a process of social and political power struggle.

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