1st Edition

Toward a Feminist Philosophy of Economics

By Drucilla Barker, Edith Kuiper Copyright 2003
    368 Pages
    by Routledge

    368 Pages
    by Routledge

    Feminist economists have demonstrated that interrogating hierarchies based on gender, ethnicity, class and nation results in an economics that is biased and more faithful to empirical evidence than are mainstream accounts.

    This rigorous and comprehensive book examines many of the central philosophical questions and themes in feminist economics including
    · History of economics
    · Feminist science studies
    · Identity and agency
    · Caring labor
    · Postcolonialism and postmodernism

    With contributions from such leading figures as Nancy Folbre, Julie Nelson and Sandra Harding, Toward a Feminist Theory of Economics looks set to become the book on feminist economics for some time to come and will be greatly appreciated by all those interested in gender studies, economic methodology and social theory.

    1. Introduction: Sketching the Contours of a Feminist Philosophy of Economics Part I. Re-reading History 2. 'Intro the Margin' 3. Hazel Kyrk and the Ethics of Consumption 4. Feminist Fiction and Feminist Economics: Charlotte Perkins Gilman on Efficiency 5. Beyond Markets: Wage Setting and the Methodology of Feminist Political Economy Part II. Science Stories and Feminist Economics 6. Some Implications of the Feminist Project in Economics for Empirical Methodology 7. Foregrounding Practices: Feminist Philosophy of Economics beyond Rhetoric and Realism 8. After Objectivism versus Relativism 9. How Did the 'moral' get split from the 'Economic'? Part III. Constructing Masculine/Western Identity in Economics 10. The Construction of Masculine Identity in Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments 11. Social Classifications, Social Statistics and the 'Facts' of 'Difference' in Economics 12. A Reading of Neoclassical Economics: Toward an Erotic Economy of Sharing 13. The Anxious Identities we Inhabit Post'isms and Economic Understandings Part IV. Beyond Social Contract: Theorizing Agency and Relatedness 14. Holding Hands at Midnight: The Paradox of Caring Labor 15. Integrating Vulnerability: On the Impact of Caring on Economic Theory 16. An Evolutionary Approach to Feminist Economics: Two Different Models of Caring 17. Domestic Labor and Gender Identity: Are all Women Carers? Part V. Rethinking Categories 18. Empowering Work? Bargaining Models Reconsidered 19. Economic Marginalia: Postcolonial Readings of Unpaid Domestic Labor and Development 20. The Difficulty of a Feminist Economics

    Biography

    Drucilla K. Barker is Professor of Economics and Women's Studies at Hollins University, Virginia, USA

    Edith Kuiper is researcher at the faculty of Economics and Econometrics, the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands