About the Editor; Title; Copyright; Contents; Acknowledgements; 1 Introduction: Marxism and feminism; Part One: Class and race in Marxism and feminism; 2 Gender relations; 3 The Marx within feminism; 4 Building from Marx: reflections on 'race', gender and class; Part Two: Marxist-feminist keywords; 5 Democracy; 6 Financialization; 7 Ideology; 8 Imperialism and primitive accumulation; 9 Intersectionality; 10 Labour-power; 11 Nation and nationalism; 12 Patriarchy/patriarchies; 13 Reproduction; 14 Revolution; 15 Standpoint theory; 16 Epilogue: gender after class; Recommended reading.
The articles in this collection, covering the diverse regions of Afghanistan, Egypt, and Palestine, engage in questions concerning gender and human rights discourses, anticolonial and anti-imperialist resistance, and religious and political fundamentalisms. They also discuss "colonial feminism" and "imperialist feminism" in the context of current wars and occupation in the Middle East, examine the mutually reinforcing yet conflicting relationships between regressive forces in the West and the Middle East, and consider the place of gender analysis in the debate on "empire" and "imperialism." The articles in this special section, as well as the literature cited in this introduction, warn us that, in spite of the proliferation of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), the conditions of women's lives are deteriorating and levels and forms of exploitation are on the rise. Women, whether under war and occupation in Iraq, Palestine, or Afghanistan or in the marketplace of NGOs, continue to suffer from the rule of capital in its imperialist expansion. The amount of critical literature on the role of women's NGOs is limited and needs to be expanded, to delve deeper into questions of how women's NGOs fit into the continuation of the production of capital and labor and the furthering of imperialism.
This is a Marxist-feminist theoretical study of 'democracy training' projects delivered among Iraqi women as part of 'post-war reconstruction' efforts of the US. This frame of analysis can assist us in dialectically understanding the ideological practice of these training projects and conceptualizing consciousness/praxis in order to explain adult education, gender, and imperialism.
This article examines developments in 'Islamic feminism', and offers a critique of feminist theories, which construct it as an authentic and indigenous emancipatory alternative to secular feminisms. Focusing on Iranian theocracy, I argue that the Islamization of gender relations has created an oppressive patriarchy that cannot be replaced through legal reforms. While many women in Iran resist this religious and patriarchal regime, and an increasing number of Iranian intellectuals and activists, including Islamists, call for the separation of state and religion, feminists of a cultural relativist and postmodernist persuasion do not acknowledge the failure of the Islamic project. I argue that western feminist theory, in spite of its advances, is in a state of crisis since (a) it is challenged by the continuation of patriarchal domination in the West in the wake of legal equality between genders, (b) suspicious of the universality of patriarchy, it overlooks oppressive gender relations in non-western societies and (c) rejecting Eurocentrism and racism, it endorses the fragmentation of women of the world into religious, national, ethnic, racial and cultural entities with particularist agendas.
