Scandalous Economics should be required reading for anyone thinking about how to chart a progressive path in the aftermath of Brexit or the 2016 U.S. elections; for those wrestling with the relationship between democracy, intersectionality, and our economic system; and for those who want to understand the far-reaching impact and roots of the seemingly omnipresent and continuing scandals that have beset political systems from the IMF to the Democratic Party to Rupert Murdoch’s media empire to the current meltdown in South Korea.
This anthology considers the ways that gender, race, and class combined to shape the financial crisis of 2008 and shape the contours of financial crises more generally. It not only considers the ways gender and race cause crises, or form the fabric of their social construction, but also explores the ways that gender, race, and class filter and mediate crises’ implications. The intersection of these social categories is manifest in the interpretation of crises in the mainstream media. The volume combines an analysis of scandal, sexuality, and morality with a critical analysis of the idea of a financial crisis. An original feature of the anthology is the way it combines discussions of phenomena such as a financialization with cultural studies of advertisements, magazine covers, and other popular representations of the financial crisis.
The first parts of the volume examine the role of gender ideologies in shaping the crisis and its aftermath, covering a wide regional scope from Europe and North America to Asia and Latin America. At the outset, Elisabeth Prügl’s excellent essay establishes that gendering the financial crisis does not mean blaming the global financial crisis on the men that run 96 percent of the Fortune 500 companies or hoping that women in positions of leadership (Christine Lagarde, Janet Yellen) would bring a new, feminine sensibility to financial leadership. Indeed, all the authors in this book are thoroughgoing in their critique of the gender stereotypes deployed in the aftermath of the crisis—pervasive images of domestically-minded, risk-averse women cleaning up after the out of control men, boys powered by testosterone and competition, by lust and greed. The authors point out the ways that such gendered narratives distract from the structural relationships between classes of people within and between countries, relationships of power that are obscured rather than challenged by a singular focus on the sex of bodies at the top of the hierarchy. The essays in this section link the systemic causes and effects of the Global Financial Crises to violence against women in everyday life and to the rise of authoritarianism, both very pertinent to the rise of hyper-masculinist populist authoritarianism that characterizes contemporary political figures from Putin to Trump.
Theorizing the connection between scandal and crisis is a core contribution of this volume, and it runs through the introductory essays and all the chapters to the conclusion. Scandals reveal putatively private exchanges and thrust them into the public, destabilizing the public-private split that is at the foundation of the global economy. But treating injustice and corruption as a “scandal” also treats it as something out-of-the-ordinary, as deviant, rather than as business as usual. Seeing scandal as evidence of individual failing rather than as a symptom of a systemic problem leaves the fundamental relationships at the heart of the global economy undisturbed. Celeste Montoya’s essay on the DSK affair shows how scandals both reveal and obscure the power dynamics at work in the global economy; Aida Hozic’s essay on the phone-hacking affair in the United Kingdom similarly highlights the ways scandal reveals the seedy underbelly, the unseemly nepotism and close relationships, at the heart of the global economy. This “scandalized” approach also, Hozic argues, ensures that those censured ultimately “land on their feet,” their privilege protecting them from the violence and poverty that is endemic to the system atop which they sit. Hozic’s innovative analysis draws parallels to Foucault’s analysis of sex and sexuality in Victorian times, suggesting new insights into normalization and the construction of deviance in contemporary times.
The chapter on the DSK affair took me back to the way the affair unfolded. It was, for a moment, exhilarating to contemplate the head of the IMF being brought down by the rule of law, in a democratic system protecting a woman, a domestic worker, from one of the poorest parts of the world in the United States. As a result of her complaints, this man resigned, and was replaced by a woman, Christine Lagarde (not a champion of women or social justice, as the volume makes clear). In the end, the lawsuit fell apart, for reasons Montoya shows can be traced to the race, class, and sex of the victim. And Lagarde fell victim to a scandal in turn, being found guilty of negligence in 2016, but given no penalty.
Many of the seemingly constant stream of scandals seem to undermine democratic politics and hobble anyone with the least bit of a progressive agenda (Clinton, DSK), while empowering (or at least not blocking) those on the right (Trump, Berlusconi). Even Rupert Murdoch’s crew seem to have come out of their scandal all right, as Hozic’s chapter points out. Recent evidence suggests Russian actors and others have been involved in strategic disinformation campaigns and “leaks” aimed at affecting elections in the United States and Europe, making it all the more pressing that we achieve a deeper understanding of how scandal undermines democratic politics while seeming to reflect processes of accountability and greater transparency. This volume provides an excellent basis for this work. We already have some evidence that at least in some contexts, women are punished more for corruption than men. We need to know more about whether and how scandal systematically affects the left and right, women and men, people of color and those of the dominant race in different or similar ways.
Another particularly thought-provoking part of the first section is the critique of the emerging consensus around the “necessity of investing in women” (p 15), as reflected in the UN Women’s Gender Dividend report, the World Economic Forum’s(WEF) new focus on women, and Goldman Sach’s 10,000 Women initiative. This volume argues that these efforts to promote investment in women allow states, corporations, and the financial industry to avoid major reforms and to realize profits while seemingly promoting social justice. This critical perspective is an important one. However, it leaves some questions unanswered. Is it possible that “investing in women” might itself be a major reform in some senses and in some contexts? Could such an approach yield progressive outcomes anywhere, on balance? Developing this critique further will require us to wrestle with the practical issues facing progressives who might want to take advantage of these programs for their own ends. It would be interesting to consider whether efforts to highlight the economic contribution of women have unintended consequences.
These arguments suggest that a full assessment of what is at stake in a gender analysis of the global economy requires consideration of the strategic motivations that might guide activists in various contexts to pursue more pragmatic arguments (for example, emphasizing the business case for investing in women), even if their goal is empowerment, and what the consequences of such a strategic orientation might be. Investment in women is so often seen as a waste of time and money (in competition with excellence, competitiveness, or other values). This is to the disadvantage of women trying to achieve economic self-sufficiency when women are devalued as workers and entrepreneurs and erased as economic agents on the world scene. What benefits might there be to an approach that emphasizes the economic contributions and value of women, and might they outweigh the costs of allowing Goldman Sachs to influence the gender equality agenda in some contexts?
The critical approach adopted here seems to put the UN, Goldman Sachs, the WEF, the World Bank, and the IMF (among others) in the same category, which may not make sense analytically or politically. The UN clearly has, as part of its mission, the goals of advancing human rights and democracy and empowering women. It is worth asking whether the UN should be in the business of promoting “Investment in Women.” Do we gain the same leverage, though, in criticizing the WEF for their focus on women? The authors clearly do not expect the WEF to become a social-justice agency, and they are not looking to the WEF for ideas about how to reform capitalism. What do we get, politically or analytically, by criticizing the WEF for focusing on women? We certainly get a reminder that the WEF is not a feminist organization, and a warning about what happens when these types of programs dominate the gender-equality agenda. This is a useful corrective, but I wanted to hear more about the WEF’s decision to focus on women, what motivated it, who was behind it, and whether they were able, ultimately, to achieve their goals, and what unintended consequences—both positive and negative—there might have been.
These small points and suggestions merely tinker at the edges of what is a fascinating critical analysis. And that is not all the book contributes. Moving from critique to directions forward, the volume points to the importance, in the current moment, of developing new normative visions of our future: what could we have instead of the WEF? How can we improve the UN? What could we have that would be better than the impoverished idea of “investing in women”? Can’t we do better?
The book takes on this important project of political imagination to some degree, with a conversation about alternative economic models in the last section, “Scandalizing Reimaginings.” In this section, authors emphasize the connection between democracy and alternative economic systems, an important connection. The model of Occupy, which surfaces on more than one occasion in this volume, is an important one. Taking Occupy as a basis for a way forward, however, also raises questions: Is the model democratic community represented by the vision developed by Occupy actually a realistic model for a modern economy, which cannot be based on face-to-face interaction, and must involve some aspects of systemic, complex coordination? The volume does not propose a global economy organized as an encampment, of course, but the discussion does point to the pressing need for good alternatives to the current system, alternatives that fully address the complex, intersectional nature of contemporary challenges of social justice.
These contributions are particularly valuable in the present moment, as progressives in the United States, the UK, and elsewhere struggle to define a path forward in the aftermath of Brexit and the 2016 election in the United States. In the aftermath of these seemingly “populist” successes, some observers have called on progressives to separate “identity politics” from “material issues” or class politics, and to deemphasize “merely cultural” issues in favor of the supposedly more important class-based or redistributive issues. Others claim that race trumped class, motivating working-class whites to vote against their economic interests. Joining scholars who have emphasized the critical importance of merging these approaches such as Iris Marion Young and Nancy Fraser, this book shows the limits of any approach that fails to understand the fundamental connection between violence on the one hand and class, gender, and race on the other, illuminating the inseparability of questions of materiality and questions of “identity.” The effort to “move away” from so-called identity politics is problematic for so many reasons, but one that this book highlights is that it proceeds as if the whole discussion on intersectionality never happened, as if being worried about rape or racial violence was a question of “cultural politics” that should be secondary to questions of class. The discussions in this book show that that gender, race, and class are intimately linked and that we will understand none of it, and will adopt political strategies that may make these worst excesses of the system worse, if we try to treat them entirely separately in both our analysis and our politics. This fundamental insight should not be lost as we seek to chart a path away from the abyss of populist authoritarianism into which we now gaze.
