Chapter 7: The Global Economy, Neoliberalism and Labor - Finish

What are the underlying values of neoliberal thinking?

-Freeing markets from interference. -Deregulating anything that can interfere with profits like environmental or health laws. -Privatizing a society's projects, goods, services; whether electricity, toll highways, or even fresh water supply by selling them to private investors. -Replacing the idea of a community or public good with one that values individual responsibility. -Ideological assumptions that freedom of choice and individuality are natural inborn rights. -Motivation for economic gains are fundamental elements of human nature. -If people have a chance, they instinctively welcome opportunities for choices offered by free marketing and make rational choices to maximize their individual advantages. -Say unregulated markets can deliver human happiness and any economic inequalities are temporary and not due to the system but to individual characteristics like laziness or having too many children.

How are the poor and and especially poor women burdened by structural adjustment policies such as those instated by the World Bank?

-Women cope with increased prices and shrinking incomes, because in most cases they are responsible for household maintenance. -Women must work more to deal with higher prices and withdrawal of government services for basic needs and health care; thus this increases their labor time and reproductive burdens, compensating caregiving for cutbacks in social services. -More work and fewer services means increased vulnerability for both women and their children. Especially in areas favouring men and other income earning adults in terms of consumption, health care and education. -Policies are a major factor behind the feminization of poverty. -Female headed households are impeached by the poverty inducing aspect of structural adjustments. -Downsizing and privatization adversely affects women because they are the first to be fired due to gender bias, and also because women tend to be concentrated in the low rungs of the corporate ladders as unskilled labor or overstaffed clerical positions. -Polices that require the reduction in government expenditures through cutting of social services hit women's jobs which tend to be caregiving, nurses, social services and educators.

Flexible Accumulation

A form of capitalism arising out of the economic crises of the 1970s in which corporations developed more readily changeable, "flexible" forms of production, allowing manufacturers to respond rapidly to changing markets and sell their products to increasingly specialized consumer niches.

Neoliberalism (New Economic Liberalism)

A strategy for economic development that calls for free markets, balanced budgets, privatization, free trade, and minimal government intervention in the economy. Distribution of wealth around the world has been greatly affected by it. It's a set of social values, ideas, and economic policies that have had significant consequences for nations, groups, and individuals since the late 1970s. Classical Liberalism was rooted in Humanism by theorists such as Adam Smith and David Ricardo who focused on the social and adverse consequences of pre-capitalist system. Neoliberalism was a philosophy based on the idea of laissez faire capitalism. (French translation for "let do"). Laissez-faire capitalism opposes governmental interference in economic affairs, promotes developing the economy through "free market" entities that are self-regulating. Helped fuel the Industrial Revolution in Europe during mid-19th century, enabled by Euro colonialism where colonized countries provided European nations with raw materials and cheap labor to produce and sell goods and gain wealth. Proponents argue that governments shouldn't impose limitations on manufacturing, restrictions on commerce, or taxes/duties on manufactured goods. They prefer deregulation and strongly support privatization. Say that it "eventually" benefits everyone because free markets achieve a stable, unbiased, and fair/balanced distribution of wealth. Underlying ideology is that markets are efficient engines of technological innovation and progress that should be allowed to operate without regulations or controls. Into the 20th century is when liberalism emerged into neoliberalism and largely based on ideas of Friedman and Hayek, with it becoming the dominant ideology of the 70s/80s.

What are the racial disparities in the criminal justice system?

African American and Latinos are highly affected with disparities in employment and the justice system, with disproportionally high levels of unemployment and mass incarceration for these populations. Mass unemployment feeds imprisonment. Most are unemployed at times of their arrests, and when black juveniles are arrested they are treated radically different than while offenders. White youth offenders are more likely to be referred to juvenile courts while black are usually tried as adults. Mass imprisonment also leads to mass political disfranchisement. Most African American males are unable to vote due to criminal records.

Tautological Argument

An argument based on circular reasoning. Often used to substantiate women's participation in work environments which supposedly utilize their "natural" caregiving or physical abilities. Such as garment industry, health care, etc.

What is the global economy?

An immense network of exchanges of capital, goods, resources, people, and services across national boarders.

Global Apartheid

An international system of minority rule that promotes inequalities, disparities, and differential access to to basic human rights, wealth and poor largely determined by race, class, gender and geographic location. The radicalized division and stratification of resources, wealth and power that separates Europe, North America and Japan from the billions of mostly black, brown, indigenous, undocumented immigrant and poor people across the planet.

What is the difference between liberalism and neoliberalism?

Classical Liberalism: Political ideology based on the importance of liberty and freedom. Promotes equality and upholds the democratic process and the welfare state. Neoliberalism: Economic principle that places high importance on free markets, defends the concentration of wealth and unequal distribution of property, and natural resources, and rejects the welfare state. Basically it's the opposite of liberalism. Derived from classical liberalism.

Host/Hostess Clubs

Commodifications of intimate relations, highly compartmentalized. Further manifestation of commodifiying logic of capitalism, combined with with hyper-alienation.

What is the most common job for women in the transnational labor force?

Domestic service, followed by health services and garment manufacturing. Educated and non-educated women have issues finding employment in their poor home countries so they often become caregivers for children in richer countries.

Dominican Republic: Sousa

Dominicans and Haitian migrants go to Sosua for work in the sex and tourist trades. Sosua has become a transnational sexual meeting ground. The town has been transformed into what is called a sexscape. One more dimension in global cultural "flows" identified by Arjun Appadurai. Describes landscapes that are the building blocks of imagined worlds in globalization. Nodes through which commodities, people, ideas, flow. Sex for sale is one more dimension of global cultural flows, and Sosua is one site within a global economy of commercial sexual transactions.

Grand Tour

During the 17th century, it was seen as a rite of passage into manhood and proper upper-class society for white European males. Young, mostly wealthy British men would travel to educate themselves with the rest of the world in addition to gain access to women considered "exotic". Nowadays the same type of tourism exists, with the expectations and stereotypes of male travellers often reinforcing colonial ideas with women being seen and represented as sexually promiscuous and rationalizes behaviours such as rape.

Maquilas

Export processing factories, MNCs, found along the border between USA and Mexico. Originally opened as a work alternative for male migrant workers, but hiring trends fluctuated in the 1980s with women becoming the favoured workers due to supposedly "natural' tendencies. The image of women as docile and productive. Women are exploited for their sexuality, subject to male gaze, and critiqued not only for their appearance but quality of work.

De-Americanization

Implicitly associates being white with being American and creates and exacerbates fears of undesirable citizens. Tends to focus on people who are Muslim, Arab or Latinos, but in the past it concentrated on French, German, Italian, Jewish and Eastern Europeans.

How has neoliberal policies adversely affected wealthier nations?

In places like the USA, there are higher rates of women's unemployment and great dismantling of public services like child care and food kitchens and has dramatically expanded poverty. It's led to the idea that everyone can one day be wealthy if they work hard to climb the social and economic ladder, even though there are harsh disparities in economic structure which favour some racial, ethnic and gender groups over others.

Sex Worker Strategies - Dominican Republic

In the midst of this, sex workers seek to transform field of inequality into some kind of opportunity. Permanent relationship/remittances with a European (i.e, someone who stays with them, or sends money) Marriage, and migration off of DR. For women and men in the DR, marriage to foreigners often the only viable option for legal migration. Marriage as transaction in this and other contexts, can be improvement for women for whom constant insecure labour and financial crises the norm. In such a calculus, love is not missed.

Why do multinational corporations like poor nations?

Low costs and higher profits. The feminization of labor is found worldwide but MNC's are attracted to poorer countries because there are minimal labor conditions, low environmental standards, which reduce costs and increase profits. It increases poverty by decreasing household incomes while raising the number of women seeking employment thus increasing the labor supply. These factors keep women's wages low.

Fordist Accumulation

Named after Henry Ford, it is assembly line production invented for building automobiles. Workers are trained to work along a production line and expected to carry out monotonous and repetitive tasks.

Sexscapes

One more dimension in global cultural "flows" identified by Arjun Appadurai -scapes: ethnoscape, mediascape, technoscape, financescape, ideoscape. Describes landscapes that are the building blocks of imagined worlds in globalization. Nodes through which commodities, people, ideas, flow. The practices of sex work to the forces of a globalized economy. Characteristics are: 1) international travel from the developed to the developing world. 2) Consumption of paid sex. 3) Inequality. In a sexscape, differences in power exist between the buyers and the sellers based on race, gender, class, and nationality. These differences become eroticized and commodified inequalities.

Why is the concept of liberalism confusing in North America?

People in USA and Canada are used to the word liberal meaning the opposite of conservative, and used to hearing phrases like "free market economy."

Feminization of Labor

Relative growth in the use of female labor as a result of deregulation of labor markets. Labor intensive, low wage, feminized positions which men tend to avoid and known as "women's work". Multinational corporations like this type of labor because it reduces labor costs, and because traditionally women are less likely to form unions or protest poor conditions.

Who are the biggest proponents of neoliberalism in the USA?

Republican political conservatives who have strong alliances with big business with ideals associated with neoconservatism and the Christian Right. The Republican Party aligned itself with Christian Right to expand its base, and nowadays is an important voting block with supporters of the Religious Right and Moral Majority mobilizing and then blaming mostly Democrats, while opposing feminism, affirmative action, and homosexuality. Say "liberals" use the power of the state to create policies that they see as favouring black people and white women in hiring decisions.

Feminization of Unemployment

Tendency for women to disproportionately lose their jobs due to retrenchment in manufacturing and services activities in countries hit by the crisis. Global restructuring often displaces large sectors of the labor force, producing high rites of unemployment which means women tend to lose their jobs due to cuts in manufacturing and service industries in countries especially hit by financial crises. The gender biases of the free market, make this a characteristic of the global economy.

Feminization of International Migration

Tendency for women to disproportionately move across national boundaries to find employment. Women comprise the largest growing segment of migrations in all regions of the world. Such movement places heavy burdens on poor countries and poor women.

Embodying Gender

The body is a social construct. It is a physical thing, to which cultural meanings are given. The body is also a site of power, through which political economic and social inequalities are inscribed. The body is also a site of protest.

What is a crucial factor in the development of the global economy under neoliberalism?

The establishment of important supranational institutions lie the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. They are heavily dominated by the USA, and have policies that counties must follow in order to quality for loans which are essential to helping them repay debt and develop their economies. They widen divisions between the global north and south, they influential in structuring the global economy, and impose structural adjustment programs which oblige countries to balance their national budgets by cutting government spending. Resulting in deep cuts to social programs that provide education, health and social care. They also remove subsidies designed to control prices on basic necessities like food, causing very high prices that are sometimes way more than they were prior to the policies. They've expanded poverty, radically reduced people's standards of living, devastated environments and decreased employment opportunities, mainly for women and the poor. In providing financial support to poor counties, they try to reduce risks to financial investors by transferring the suffering to the ordinary citizens of poor nations and disproportionality to women.

Sex Tourism and Inequality

The increase in sex tourist destinations around the developing world reflect global capitals' destabilizing effects on these economies, left out of mainstream account of globalization. Redirection of development and local employment into the tourist and sex tourist industry. The growth of sex tourist trade and poor women's participation in it are consequences not only of the restructuring of the global economy but also of women's central role in the service sector of tourism, a 'hospitality' industry. But for all who participate as workers in sex tourism, poverty is key. As sites in the developing world become known as sexscapes, sex for sale comes to define the places but also the women who live there. In Europe and particularly Germany, Dominican women have become associated with sexual availability and proficiency. This becomes a dimension in their racialization. Thailand has the image of a sex hot spot which is more widespread. Associations between nationality, race/gender and sexual prowess, sex for sale, draw sex tourists to sexscapes in the developing world where they buy sex more cheaply than in their home countries but can live out their racialized sexual fantasies. Researchers have commented on the very negative, misogynistic ways that male sex tourists speak of women "back home," including girlfriends and wives. Western male sex tourists seeking more compliant, feminine women, more traditional relationships, escape from demands of liberated Western/European women. Sex tourists also experience being 'richer' in places like the DR, escaping economic barriers at home along with other social constraints. All in all fulfilling multiple levels of fantasy and sense of empowerment.

Transnational Labor Force

The movement of people across national boundaries for the purpose of economic production. Depends on the movement of people with women typically crossing boarders for work, usually from the Global South to Global North. Women end up in low paying jobs that citizens of the host country abandoned because they were considered jobs that were low status, boring or short term.

Global Division Of Labor

The organization of production across national borders such that corporations in advanced capitalist nations increasingly outsource manufacturing functions to countries with lower wages, resulting in manufacturing goods begin produced in developing nations while the vast majority of those good are bought by people in nations with advanced capitalist economies. Part of the gender biases of the free market, a result of industrialized nations seeking cheap labor that's available in the Global South.

Transnational Motherhood

The practice in which women from the Global South come to be the primary caretakers of children of women of the Global North, who often seek higher paying employment outside of the home. These women earn money which is sent home to care for their own children.

Deregulation

The removal of governmental controls over commercial activities or markets. Preferred by neoliberalists.

Feminization of Poverty

The tendency of women to bear the burden of poverty. Women and children around the world make up the largest percentage of the world's poor living under harsh and highly unequal conditions. They earn much less than males, rarely able to get credit in their own names, have lower literacy rates, eat less, start working at younger ages, and carry the double burden; running the house while working for wages or tending to crops. The last half of the 20th century increased the divide and countries looking for tax credits see women as "ideal" workers because of not only their lack of social, economic and political resources in comparison to men, but they are more likely to accept lower wages and harsher conditions because of assumed natural tendencies.

Privatization

The transfer of governmentally owned enterprises to the private sector, including those social services that provide basic necessities such as education, health, and child care, etc.

How is the gendered global labor force created?

Through the tying of certain kinds of imagined and constructed identities to certain forms of labor.

What area of the world economy has been most affected by the loosening of border controls and migration?

Tourism. It is the world's largest industry and become a preferred way for many developing countries to improve their economies. The scarcity of economic resources, growing economic insecurity and a sector of the world's population with a large supply of disposable income has created the large expansion of the sex tourism industry.

Sex Tourism

Travel, usually organized through the tourism sector, to facilitate commercial sexual relations between tourists and local residents. Found in destinations usually affected by their developing economies. Many women working in the sex industry do so to support their children and husbands at home while they reside in urban centres in richer countries. Tourist sex trade is a transnational industry, and many women turn to sex work as an economic strategy while seeing themselves as professionals.

When women leave their home country to pursue work abroad, what typically happens to their own children?

Women from poor countries leave their families to pursue domestic work and low wage labor in other countries, with most leaving their children behind. The responsibility for their own children's care typically falls onto other women, mainly relatives, since husbands who remain in their home country may be culturally restricted from engaging in care because it's considered women's work.