Lecture 8 & 9 Sociology 621 September 30 & October 5, 2009 CLASS AND GENDER I. Introduction: Standard Feminist Critiques Both Marxism and Feminism are emancipatory theoretical traditions. Both identify and seek to understand specific forms of oppression in the existing world -- gender oppression, particularly of women, in the case of feminism; class oppression, particularly of workers, in the case of Marxism. Both theoretical traditions explore the consequences of the oppression on which they focus for other social phenomena, and both seek to understand the conditions which contribute to the reproduction of the oppression in question. Both believe that these forms of oppression should be and can be eliminated. Both see the active struggle of the oppressed groups at the core of their respective theories as an essential part of the process through which such oppression is transformed: the struggles of women are central to the transformation of gender oppression, the struggles of workers are central to the transformation of class oppression. And intellectuals working within both traditions believe that the central reason for bothering to do social theory and research is to contribute in some way to the realization of their respective emancipatory projects. Given these parallel moral and intellectual commitments, one might have thought that Marxists and feminists would work closely in tandem, mutually seeking to understand the complex ways in which class and gender interact. With some notable exceptions, this has not happened. Indeed, far from trying to forge a close articulation of Marxist analyses of class and feminist analyses of gender, in many ways the most sustained challenge to class analysis as a central axis of critical social theory in recent years has come from feminists. The characteristic form of this challenge involves the accusation that Marxist class analysis is guilty of one or more of the following sins: 1. The concept of class in Marxism is gender-blind, whereas class relations are inherently gendered. 2. Marxist class analysis tends to “reduce” gender to class. That is, gender oppression is treated as if it can be fully explained by class oppression. 3. Marxist class analysis treats gender inequality and gender oppression as “epiphenomenal” -- that is, as effects which are not themselves causally important for anything else. They are treated as a “surface phenomena”, symptoms of something else, but not important in their own right. Because of time constraints we cannot, in this course, systematically explore all of the theoretical and empirical problems of the relation of class to gender. Nevertheless, it is important to respond to these objections and define a general perspective on how to think about the structural interconnection between class and other forms of oppression. But first, I want to draw a contrast between Marxism and Feminism as broad traditions of social theory, focusing on the relationship between their emancipatory visions and the explanatory challenges each theory faces.Sociology 621. Lectures 8 & 9. Class & Gender 2II. Visions of Emancipation, challenges of explanation 1. Marxism & Feminism as emancipatory critical theories Recall how I defined an emancipatory critical theory in the first lecture of the semester: This is a social theory that analyzes existing institutions and practices in terms of an emancipatory alternative. Both Marxism & Feminism are emancipatory traditions of social theory in this sense. They are both grounded in a normative ideal of a world free of oppression; where they differ in these terms is the kind of oppression around which the theory revolves – class oppression in Marxism, and gender oppression in Feminism. 2. The emancipatory visions What, precisely, are the emancipatory visions of these two traditions? 2.1 Marxism & classlessness. Marx himself was fairly explicit in his characterization of the emancipatory ideal – a classless society. The institutional implementation of this ideal was much less clear, but the principle of the ideal was clear: a society without class exploitation and alienation, a society governed by the distributional maxim “to each according to need from each according to ability.” Capitalism, then, is to be analyzed from the vantage point of these ideals: how does capitalism block the realization of these ideals? What dynamics in capitalism point in the direction of the realization of this ideal of emancipation? 2.2 Feminism & Emancipation. The positive normative vision in feminism is perhaps less clear and contested among feminists. Is the emancipatory ideal gender equality or genderlessness? Does a radical egalitarianism within gender relations imply an obliteration of gender difference or just a valorization of gender difference? But whatever else feminists might believe about this, the emancipatory vision involves an end to inequalities of power, opportunity, and status built around gender relations. A note on the normative foundations of gender emancipation: I think the most coherent position is in fact genderlessness in the following precise sense: gender is a social construction. It is a social transformation of sexual differences which are biologically-rooted into social differences between men and women that are culturally salient and enforced through various kind of gender-specifying norms. Genderlessness means the destruction of all gender-differentiated normative rules that govern and enforce expectations about the proper and appropriate roles or identities or behaviors of biological men and women. This does not mean the eradication of all difference between the modal man and woman; and it does not mean normative androgyny in the sense of normatively enforced rules which obliterate expressions of traits that are stereotypically called “masculinity” and “femininity”. What it means is that there would be no socially enforced association between masculine and feminine behaviors and dispositions and biological categories. Genderlessness is the withering away of socially sanctioned and normatively enforced expectations about how a man and a woman should behave by virtue of biological sex.Sociology 621. Lectures 8 & 9. Class & Gender 33. The explanatory challenges 3.1 The general problem: A fully elaborated Emancipatory theory faces three interconnected tasks, as elaborated early in the