CMNS 240 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Queer Eye, Social Reproduction, Neoliberalism
7 Nov 2017
School
Department
Course
Professor
Identity and Political Economy
Feminist political economy and feminist cultural studies, definitions and points of agreement and
disagreement
• Social relationships that make up our world, women in film, coding interpreted by audience
• Gender of labour in the production, ethical question, how things ought to be, right/wrong?
• Cultural studies: consume texts, consumption, micro level power relations (gender relation)
• Political economy: distribution, macro level relationships
• Having fewer restrictions, oligopoly, international trade (NAFTA)
Feminist political economy and the critique of neoliberalism
• Neoliberalism: society would be best served as entrepreneur, restricting government intervene
o Entrepreneurship of the self, marketing ourselves to survive
• Harvey: unions, mature Fordism, take away the gains
• Media systems: FCC regulation
o Removing regulation that government put on television what could and could not show
o Kids TV become more like commercials
o The globalised neoliberal society, media corporation are male dominated
▪ Fraser’s critique of the public sphere, male power
• Global wealth by the 1% of the population
o Not necessarily benefit women either, usually white women succeed
• Political economic history: women has been systematically excluded
Feminist political economy and the critique of the origins of capitalism (Federici)
• The social power that women has gain through feudalism has to be destroyed
o The ability of women to control their social reproduction (children)
o 16th and 17th century, common women were tasked the jobs of nurturing
▪ As domestic caregiver, largest population as possible, more kids the better
▪ The witch hunt to persecute women who control their power of having children
• Smythe: media producers, advertisers, audiences, audience commodity
o Transformers shows are desired for children asking parents to buy toys
Case study (i): Mommy Blogs
• Most popular users can make a living, professional bloggers
• Advertisers look for material, advertisements at margins of the page
o sponsored products to solve parenting problems
• From a place of discussion for parents to share common experiences to a place of
commercialisation and commodification of audiences
• Change in content and comment section, suggest more posts on the blog to attract audiences
o Appeared to be more sanitised, content becomes easily digestible
o From motherhood to the usefulness of commodities, audiences learned to differentiate
products, to consume properly
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