This new issue of The Scholar & Feminist Online, edited by Elizabeth Bernstein and Janet R. Jakobsen, forges new ground by weaving together issues of gender and sexuality, usually sidelined in conversations about neoliberalism, with questions of the economy and political processes. Emerging out of a 2012 international workshop on the mutual imbrication of economic, cultural, and political structures of neoliberalism with the vast changes in gendered and sexual life, “Gender, Justice, and Neoliberal Transformations” seeks new lines of inquiry to explore the extreme disparities of wealth across the globe, as well as new and old forms of social inequality.
Bringing together a diverse group of scholars who work on a wide array of regions, sites, and issues, “Gender, Justice, and Neoliberal Transformations” makes rich connections between Detroit and Buenos Aires, privatization and gambling, and migration, caring labor, and sex work. Using short papers, videos, poetry, art, and photography, the contributors consider the meanings of neoliberalism through questions of how it is lived, how it connects people, places, and issues, and importantly, what its contradictions can reveal about the possibilities for social change and justice. Piercing through the heart of this issue are the urgent questions the editors ask in the introduction: “If neoliberalism is the current context for action, what might gender justice become?” And equally important, “If another world is possible, what kind of world would we desire it to be?”