Justice, Gender and the Family

This book, a classic feminist polemic from philosopher Susan Moller Okin, was, I'll admit, not read by free choice but is the core text for an essay I've been bashing out over the last several days. As such, as is generally the case when I'm writing posts about books I've already written loads about, I'll be brief. It's a good book though.*
   Okin's aim throughout the book is effectively applying feminist critiques to theories of political justice, to show their insufficiency in properly accounting for an equitable society once we realise that women are in the picture. She opens with a compelling argument that the family, the smallest unit within which sociological power relations form and function, is not beyond the scope of political theories of justice. Then turning to prominent theories of justice to see how well they can adapt to this, she all but guts the tradition-based and shared-value-based systems of communitarianism on the grounds that they allow for existing patriarchal dominance to retain its power; libertarianism fares even worse, with its core concepts of self-ownership and property rights implying a ridiculous dystopia of matriarchal slavery were reproduction as an activity to be brought within the considerations of its radical individualism. Communitarianism and libertarianism then, to be plausible as theories of social justice, must undergo enormous adaptation to explain where women fit in.
   More plausible though is liberalism, specifically John Rawls's model. Rawlsian justice entails placing people behind a 'veil of ignorance', such that they do not know what societal characteristics they will have - any class, race, ability, opinion, or similar endowment that would affect how well they'll cope with whatever benefits or responsibilities an average role in society, is unknown to them, and as such, their deliberations about how best to structure the society they're about to enter will be unanimously in favour of ensuring fair equality of opportunity for everyone, especially those with the least advantage. (I know it's complex, it's philosophy, sorry - check out the link above for a better academic explanation.) Unfortunately for women, Rawls neglected to mention sex as one of these characteristics that would be left unknown! Okin argues that with the small step of adding that to the pile of morally-contingent factors behind the 'veil of ignorance', the deciders of justice would radically widen the scope of their notions of how best to allocate certain gender-associative responsibilities and benefits, such as the division of labour between income-earnings of [men's] work, and unpaid homekeeping and childcare roles [women's] work. Family structures would be reshaped completely, making space in both public work and domestic work for men and women to take up equal parts in each, breaking down the dichotomy between the spheres, and fundamentally challenging the oppressive dominative norms of the patriarchy whereby assumptions made about people based on their biological sex determine their liberties. Effectively, to achieve social justice we would abolish gender.
   She follows this argument with a statistical and sociological overview of some of the real sources and outcomes of female vulnerability within existing marital structures - if you're not convinced that gender norms as they currently stand are bad for women, check out this chapter and maybe also this other book - and a final chapter proposing some steps that could be taken policy-wise to establishing a future society free of the constraints of gender.
   Okin's call for the complete removal of a normative institution older than human history is then very much in touch with the feminist-tumblr zeitgeist. That said though, contemporary feminists (largely bloggers rather than philosophers)** tend to take up arms to this cause on the grounds of individual identity formation, whereas she took a much sturdier, more objective route. She has laid out a dazzlingly-argued case about how we can best achieve socioeconomic justice, considering the allocations of independence, responsibility, prestige, and security in how we balance family and work. In terms of how well it makes its point, it's probably one of the best, most coherent, most potent books I've ever read. Susan Moller Okin has completely convinced me that gender shouldn't be a thing - and that's not to say I didn't wrestle with it, because I tried. If you have any interest in issues of sex and gender, or more widely of sociopolitical justice, this book should definitely be on your list.


* I feel also like its smell deserves a mention. If you're the kind of person who appreciates a good-smelling book then you'd have loved the pervasive woody waft of this particular copy. Perhaps because it's been sat unopened for up to twenty-six years (nah, someone must have taken it out at some point, even though there are seventeen other copies of it) - if you're really keen, and also happen to be fortunate enough to be a student at Sheffield Uni, you can go find and sniff it in the IC. Though I realise following a blogger's advice of seeking out a book for the sole purpose of smelling it may be weird, so while you're there take it out and read it.

** In case this comes across the wrong way, let me clarify - yes, of course I intend to be disparaging towards tumblr-culture. Like most internet subcultures, it annoys me. That doesn't in the slightest detract from how much I approvingly support the resurgence of interest in and importance of feminism to public discussion though.

23 Things they don't tell you about Capitalism

This book, by Cambridge professor of economics Ha-Joon Chang, is just excellent. I acquired it during a spate of book-buying during the early days of my economics A-level, when the subject was still academically (rather than just generally) exciting to me. Then - what, four years ago now, yikes - I breezed through it quite carelessly, but having read his more recent book (which was brilliant) and heard him speak at a Manchester conference for student societies campaigning for reform of economics education last month (which was also brilliant), I decided to give it a proper attempt. Also, my own branch of the student campaign for reform of economics education is hosting a talk by him (this Wednesday, actually), so I finished it considerably quicker than I usually do non-fiction books.

   It's a fantastic book. High depth of research, socially and pragmatically grounded, well-argued and critically thought, taking a pluralistic interdisciplinary approach to economic issues; he handles the subject as it should be handled.* He also writes extremely readably and accessibly, amusingly even (he does pepper his paragraphs with brief anecdotes or pop culture references, not to an annoying or distracting extent, but they are sometimes clumsy, but on the whole he writes with clarity, wit, and a vivacious charm), digesting fairly hefty socioeconomic issues into laypersons' terms without dumbing them down or misrepresenting their complexity. Like his other book (see *), it's great for those who are interested in economics but feel alienated by its impenetrable elitism and jargon - though while his other book is an introduction/manual, this (as its title may suggest) is out-and-out mythbusting. Ha-Joon, in a deft ten-pages or so each, outlines the surprisingly straightforward cases for 23 things about our current system of freemarket capitalism which if were widely known would radically alter political and corporate activity. They are:

1. There is no such thing as a free market
2. Companies should not be run in the interests of their owners
3. Most people in rich countries are paid more than they should be
4. The washing machine has changed the world more than the internet has
5. Assume the worst about people and you get the worst
6. Greater macroeconomic stability has not made the world economy more stable
7. Freemarket policies rarely make poor countries rich
8. Capital has a nationality
9. We do not live in a post-industrial age
10. The US does not have the highest living standard in the world
11. Africa is not destined for underdevelopment
12. Governments can pick winners
13. Making rich people richer doesn't make the rest of us richer
14. US managers are over-priced
15. People in poor countries are more entrepreneurial than people in rich countries
16. We are not smart enough to leave things to the market
17. More education in itself is not going to make a country richer
18. What is good for General Motors is not necessarily good for the United States
19. Despite the fall of communism, we are still living in planned economies
20. Equality of opportunity may not be fair
21. Big government makes people more open to change
22. Financial markets need to become less, not more, efficient
23. Good economic policy does not require good economists

   Sound interesting? Oh of course.

   Sound like the exact opposite of what most mainstream pro-establishment-remora-fish economists tend to say on these matters? Why, yes.

   Sound plausible, having weighed up evidence, theory, and arguments from economics, politics, sociology, psychology, history, ethics, and the various other fields one must draw from and think in to make proper judgements about these issues? Yes. All of them do.

   The 23rd thing is an excellent critique of current vested interests in economic policy-making and education. The reason he can make such cogent points in direct contrast to the myths he busts is because 'economics' as a discipline has lost its way, has become enslaved as an apologist for the status quo, enforcing its dogma by mathematics and abstract diagrams, ignoring any inconvenient misalignment of theory and reality. He does economics properly by recognising its limitations and uses, and complementing it with other tools of thought to tell better truths about economic issues. Though politically controversial topics, these are not opinions he's voicing; these are calmly-assessed analyses and presentations of facts, more often than not weighted with ethical implications. It'd be a great book to give to someone with right-wing socioeconomic views (assuming they were open-minded enough to properly engage true stuff) as a challenge. These assertions that sound like leftist spoutings are actually just statements about economic reality. It reminds me of the simple brilliance of evidence-based policymaking, which I discussed in my post about The Spirit Level.

   Anyone with but a newswatcher's understanding of the economy has, most probably, been deceived about how quite a lot of it works. There's a two-fold effect to this misinformation; established elites propagate myths about the world economy that aid their positions of wealth and power, and mainstream academic economics (doubtless aided by funding from the aforementioned top-class citizens) has become narrowed and corrupt in the way it approaches any issue, leading to often radically ineffectual and often arguably unethical conclusions about them. Because of this, not even economists are much help.** Ha-Joon makes an excellent case for our need to take a critical stand toward the conventional wisdom of pseudo-economists, as in the dismal science if we are better informed and better able to understand the issues we have a much clearer means of making ethically right sociopolitical choices.
   If you think you understand economic issues because you've seen a Robert Peston documentary or two, read this book. If you don't even have a layperson's understanding of economics, I still recommend you read it, but would advise first checking out his other book (see *) as a helpful clear-headed overview of the subject and how to think in it.

   

* For more on proper approaches to economics, especially public understanding of it, check out my post about his other book, Economics: the User's Guide. There are also relevant resources from the international network of campaigners, Rethinking Economics.

** Our lecturer for a module called The International Economy asked the class (third-year economics students, mind you) earlier this year who could explain, even superficially, how the financial crisis happened. Less than a fifth raised their hand. Have we learned nothing?

   Imagine if psychology were dominated by a single school of thought (fortunately, it isn't). Then, imagine tens of millions of people around the world go insane in ways that no mainstream psychologist can properly rationalise given their existing theories of the human mind. Would those theories and models continue to have as much worth? Demonstrably not, as they failed to predict and even fail to satisfactorily explain an enormous series of catastrophic psychological events. Handfuls of heterodox psychologists, though disreputed in academic circles for espousing 'implausible' or 'outdated' theories about mental activity, had (weirdly enough) predicted the 'Insanity Crisis' decades earlier, and using their alternative schools of thought and models are able to form a variety of coherent, overlapping explanations for what caused it and how it might be prevented from reoccurring. However, seven years after the Insanity Crisis, psychology students are taught the exact same mainstream models, policymakers are informed using those exact same mainstream theories, and psychologists all over the world despair that their noble and important science has become the object of so much public distrust and disillusionment.
   Economics's reaction to the 2008 crash was, cheesy thought experiment aside, pretty much this absurd.

The Equality Illusion

This book, by Kat Banyard, is a broad but detailed overview of the key issues facing women in the 21st century; an introductory catalyst for making feminists. I bought in efforts to try to brush up on my understanding of the topic before embarking on a module in the social philosophy of feminism, and while I consider myself a fairly well-informed man when it comes to this* there's always room for improvement, especially when the lecturer is one of the world's best-known feminist thinkers, plus the fact that I'm male, means some extra initiatives are probably worthwhile. I read it too slowly though and so have now only just finished it while halfway through the course, but I'm still glad I read it. Note, that's different to enjoying it. I didn't enjoy reading this book, nor (but for brief parts of the last chapter) do I think anyone reasonably could - it's the kind of book that shocks, upsets, infuriates and spurs the reader into deciding to try to be more active and aware.
   Topics are organised loosely around six main areas where women's rights are still much too far from proper liberation:

• Socially-internalised norms and expectations of gender identity, especially female body image, which are propagated and enforced by the media, resulting in widespread insecurity, mental illness, bullying, eating disorders, and so on.
• How these norms, now with main regard to gender identity and roles, are propagated in social education systems; children grow up constrained into their roles in the patriarchy, which from a very early age comes off worse for women.
• Difficulties in entering and progressing in normal working life for women, because of systemic inequalities in childcare expectations, and employer discrimination.
• Realities of domestic rape and violence, which far outnumbers cases of serious abuse from strangers; the problems of responsibility and victimisation in both are examined.
• Truly abysmal facts about the sex industry, from porn to prostitution to lap-dancing clubs, and how the 'empowerment' that these enterprises often claim to give women is utterly bogus.
• Problems of reproductive rights, and the importance of access to contraception but moreso the importance of making men approach the issue sensibly and receptively.

Each of these topics is covered by a mixture of interviews with over a hundred real women from diverse backgrounds, backed up by statistics and figures demonstrating the scale of each problem. It's an excellent way to introduce someone to the issues: the stories make them human and understandable, the numbers give you a sense of the (too often jaw-dropping) scope and magnitude on which similar stories occur. The perfect way to discuss the need for feminism, in the dichotomy of personal and political; it makes for a very upsetting read. I was basically a proxy misandrist by the end.

   Consistent throughout her discussion ran the rejection of the liberal stance taken by many contemporary feminists. You know, for example, how some may support a woman's right to be a stripper because they're making those choices autonomously, and therefore allowing her to do so is 'empowering'. Banyard disagrees:** these choices, though made individually and arguably even rationally, are not made in a vaccuum; they are made in a context where women's autonomous capabilities, especially for disadvantaged women who do generally tend to be the ones staying in abusive relationships or becoming sex workers, are hindered and quashed by patriarchal systems of oppression. For example, when a prostitute has sex with a man who hired them, should feminism approve? Many liberals would say yes; she is autonomously choosing to offer bodily services to him, and so as a woman she has power in doing do. However, her choice to do so is probably not the thing she would primarily choose if other normal options were available to her. I'll leave this discussion here lest it veer from feminism to an all-out plummet into the depths of moral-political philosophy. What even is freedom, dude?

   One aspect I was disappointed didn't get more discussion was feminist issues in global economic context; there are so many more broad and depressingly deep problems facing women in developing countries, but the author is drawing mainly on experience in working to help disadvantaged women in the UK and her factual research is in support of this too. No worries then; there are plenty of other interesting-looking books about global feminism on my list. The focus on our own country drives the issues too I think; it brings both story and statistic closer to home.

   Another thing I was slightly disappointed she didn't much discuss was the changing conception of gender under third-wave feminism; though I can't really complain as the blurb does say it's more about achieving sociocultural equality for men and women rather than contributing to the altogether more philosophical discussion on sexual identity. Again, there are loads of other books for that on my list, but I'd expected a brief introduction to the topic in this one as it seemed a good thing to include in a 'welcome to feminism' manual.

   That's actually a really good way to describe the book; a 'welcome to feminism manual'. It doesn't tell you exactly how it works (i.e. sociology, philosophy, psychology) but it does tell you what it's for (tackling the issues outlined) and how to use it: the final chapter is an overview of various grassroots movements and institutions working for betterment of women's rights, and how readers can get involved in the struggle against the patriarchy. Glimmers of hope are seen in this closing section; real change properly empowering real women's capabilities is taking place as oppression is increasingly challenged. Like No Logo in the anti-capitalist surge last decade, this is a book providing an incisive look into the heart of a social ill, inspiring the left to take heed and take action. If you at all care about the wellbeing of women, I recommend you read it and be shocked into becoming a feminist.

* Feminism is the big bandwagon for lefty activists at the moment, especially at the University of Sheffield - where our SU has a bit of a reputation - so naturally I'm a passionate advocate of it. Several women from our alternative economics society (okay, and some of the ones from the actual EconSoc too) helped organise seminars about feminist economics, and upcoming there's a full week of similar events. And being part of the students' union's newspaper, particularly the comment and opinion section, has inevitably yielded far more than its fare share of gender-shattering polemics. Forge Press do so so so so so many articles about this kind of thing.

** As do I. However, as a man, I have to take a backseat on having-feminist-opinions, at the risk of 'mansplaining' (i.e. assuming that my own opinions on gender issues, despite my white straight male privilege, are as legitimate of those of people who do experience oppression, and thus propagating those opinions without first making extensive empathetic efforts to take on board the realities of the issues from the perspectives of people they actually effect). This topic was something I was often concerned about as it was a point of unspoken disagreement between me and some (not all) strong female feminists I know, so I'm glad that Kat Banyard argues the same way I would've.

Reasons of the Heart

This book, a critical look at apologetics and how the practice of Christian persuasion should be recovered from William Edgar, was rather interesting. I read it very thoroughly and write a summary document as I went along (to help Tim Chester, one of my church leaders and author of one or two good books, with something, I don't know what, he just wanted it summarised), so have already written far more words than I'd've usually liked about this book, so I'll keep this post very brief indeed. If you actually do want a 4368-word breakdown of the whole thing, here's my full summary as a freely-viewable Google Doc.
   The book's about recovering christian approaches to persuasion, so the area of mission and evangelism largely taken up by apologetics. Edgar lays out the biblical mandate for our engaging in this activity, considers some broad realities about how we should do so, and then outlines helpful stances we can take to some of the most common difficulties in it. His overall point is twofold: firstly that we need to tackle not just intellectual issues but the 'reasons of the heart', i.e. we must try to understand someone's worldview, character and relationship to God, and understand these multidimensional aspects properly, to accurately be able to speak the gospel to their position; and secondly that our own 'reasons of the heart' need to be rightly attuned, i.e. we need to be fully mindful and worshipful of God's goodness and glory, so that we proclaim him with the right motivations. The combination of these two aspects makes for an approach to apologetics that is humble, loving, realistic in its treatment of persons and God. Though parts of the book were fairly dry or seemed unnecessary and other parts which I thought deserved a great deal more discussion were neglected, this main focus on refreshing the way we not only do but think about apologetics struck me as important and largely correct.
   Would I recommend this book? I have no idea who to. I'm not even sure I enjoyed it or was just concentrating on it harder than most things I read outside my degree. If you want helpful books about apologetics, there are probably far better out there, and if you want helpful books about approaches to mission, there are also probably far better out there. It was pretty interesting though, so if you're the kind who enjoys shortish densely-written reconsiderations of aspects of christian life mingled with very vague methodological pointers, check it out.
   It prompted much responsive thought in me about the nature of reason, persuasion and truth, but I've spent two workdays writing about this book so now I'm going to cut the post off shortish and watch the last episode of Better Call Saul.