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Fortunes of Feminism. From State-Managed Capitalism to Neoliberal Crisis
Charts the history of women’s liberation and calls for a revitalized feminism.
Nancy Fraser’s major new book traces the feminist movement’s evolution since the 1970s and anticipates a new—radical and egalitarian—phase of feminist thought and action.
During the ferment of the New Left, “Second Wave” feminism emerged as a struggle for women’s liberation and took its place alongside other radical movements that were questioning core features of capitalist society. But feminism’s subsequent immersion in identity politics coincided with a decline in its utopian energies and the rise of neoliberalism. Now, foreseeing a revival in the movement, Fraser argues for a reinvigorated feminist radicalism able to address the global economic crisis. Feminism can be a force working in concert with other egalitarian movements in the struggle to bring the economy under democratic control, while building on the visionary potential of the earlier waves of women’s liberation. This powerful new account is set to become a landmark of feminist thought.
Nancy Fraser’s major new book traces the feminist movement’s evolution since the 1970s and anticipates a new—radical and egalitarian—phase of feminist thought and action.
During the ferment of the New Left, “Second Wave” feminism emerged as a struggle for women’s liberation and took its place alongside other radical movements that were questioning core features of capitalist society. But feminism’s subsequent immersion in identity politics coincided with a decline in its utopian energies and the rise of neoliberalism. Now, foreseeing a revival in the movement, Fraser argues for a reinvigorated feminist radicalism able to address the global economic crisis. Feminism can be a force working in concert with other egalitarian movements in the struggle to bring the economy under democratic control, while building on the visionary potential of the earlier waves of women’s liberation. This powerful new account is set to become a landmark of feminist thought.
260 pages, Unknown Binding
First published January 1, 2013
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3431 people want to read
About the author
Nancy Fraser
148 books448 followersNancy Fraser is an American critical theorist, currently the Henry A. and Louise Loeb Professor of Political and Social Science and professor of philosophy at The New School in New York City. Fraser earned her PhD in philosophy from the CUNY Graduate Center and taught in the philosophy department at Northwestern University for many years before moving to the New School.
Librarian Note: There is more than one author with this name in the Goodreads database.
Librarian Note: There is more than one author with this name in the Goodreads database.
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June 21, 2014don't feel like i can really offer a rating on this because a lot of it went straight over my head. i was expecting it to be a little more aimed at laypersons, and it really, really isn't - incredibly dense text that i struggled to parse, no doubt because i have basically no education in sociology. so i struggled with the technical terms, i guess. on the few moments that i could grasp the gist, it seemed comprehensive, literate, powerful. but for the most part i had trouble keeping up.
December 30, 2016
Nancy Fraser is without a doubt one of the most original and exciting critical theorists of our time.
Premise: the current crisis of neoliberal capitalism is altering the landscape of feminist theory, i.e., feminist theorists cannot avoid the question of capitalist society (I wish!).
In her ten essays in three parts (all great reads) which span 25 years of her writing, she traces the radical origins of second wave feminism which sought to enrich rather than supplant Marxism/materialist paradigms before feminism was drawn in the orbit of 'identity politics' ending up with today's degenerated neoliberal 'feminism' and 'gender studies' as a ridiculous branch of cultural theory which has lost its historic links with Marxism/ political economy (e.g. from redistribution to recognition).
Fraser then goes on to outline a two-dimensional conceptions of gender and justice: class-like within the political economy (distribution) and as status subordination (misrecognition), the latter not being merely superatructural to the former (breaks my Marxist heart). As such, redressing gender injustice requires changing both the economic structure and the status order of contemporary society (dialectics, surprise, surprise). Something along the lines of Gramscianizing Foucault and Foucauldianizing Gramsci :)
Finally, Fraser brings in Polanyi's account of capitalist crisis as a starting point for feminist theorizing on the 21st century capitalist society.
Premise: the current crisis of neoliberal capitalism is altering the landscape of feminist theory, i.e., feminist theorists cannot avoid the question of capitalist society (I wish!).
In her ten essays in three parts (all great reads) which span 25 years of her writing, she traces the radical origins of second wave feminism which sought to enrich rather than supplant Marxism/materialist paradigms before feminism was drawn in the orbit of 'identity politics' ending up with today's degenerated neoliberal 'feminism' and 'gender studies' as a ridiculous branch of cultural theory which has lost its historic links with Marxism/ political economy (e.g. from redistribution to recognition).
Fraser then goes on to outline a two-dimensional conceptions of gender and justice: class-like within the political economy (distribution) and as status subordination (misrecognition), the latter not being merely superatructural to the former (breaks my Marxist heart). As such, redressing gender injustice requires changing both the economic structure and the status order of contemporary society (dialectics, surprise, surprise). Something along the lines of Gramscianizing Foucault and Foucauldianizing Gramsci :)
Finally, Fraser brings in Polanyi's account of capitalist crisis as a starting point for feminist theorizing on the 21st century capitalist society.
November 16, 2016
This is a good collection if you don't understand what feminism and neoliberalism have to do with each other. However, it is very strange that Fraser co-wrote an entire essay on the rhetoric surrounding welfare "dependency" and did not examine or even refer to the similar rhetoric about disability payments and/or SSDI. Feminist theory seems to CONSISTENTLY leave out disability and disabled people, which is a shame--but the absence is even clearer in this collection. Given that there are many feminist economic and disability-related economic issues that intersect, I wish Fraser had at the very least acknowledged those connections.
February 17, 2021
Amazing, though not for those with low comfort with or little patience for "academic writing", as I can see from previous reviews.
I was disappointed at first to realize that this was a collection of essays written over the last 25 years, rather than a cohesive piece analyzing the development of feminism. You're often thrown into the middle of a debate about a specific topic, for example Lacanian symbolicism, with little context. However, what emerges from this collection of detailed analyses is a consistent eye for the core questions that enable an evolving yet comprehensive vision for what justice should be and how we might get there. Fraser is tenacious in rejecting simple paradigms to ask the difficult questions, and forces the reader to accept that justice and feminism require the simultaneous pursuit of sometimes conflicting goals. To simplify would be to lose a critical facet. She writes with precision and clarity, laying out her planned arguments and then fully delivering. Somehow she manages to gently eviscerate counterarguments.
I particularly liked her articulation of justice as "parity of participation," which requires social arrangements that permit all (adult) members of society to interact with one another as peers. Having three mutually irreducible dimensions enables a revival of focus on political economy through (mal)distribution, while fully recognizing the real harms through culture with (mis)recognition without regressing to identity politics. Finally, she recognizes that in our globalized world, Westphalian borders have little relation to justice claims, and includes (mis)representation. These three dimension might be understood as economy (class), culture (status), and meta-politics. As the chapters are written over time, the reader is able to follow along in her development of this argument, and see how it can be applied.
I also love her focus on discourse as a critical site for feminist struggle, recognizing that language and rhetoric play a critical role in shaping our reality. The last chapter was a little limp, but otherwise a very solid book. It is clear why Nancy Fraser is such an influential social philosopher.
PS - The "prologue" is highly informative, contextualizing the articles and tracing the arc of second wave feminism - which also enables you to easily pick which chapters would be of interest, if you don't want to read it all.
I was disappointed at first to realize that this was a collection of essays written over the last 25 years, rather than a cohesive piece analyzing the development of feminism. You're often thrown into the middle of a debate about a specific topic, for example Lacanian symbolicism, with little context. However, what emerges from this collection of detailed analyses is a consistent eye for the core questions that enable an evolving yet comprehensive vision for what justice should be and how we might get there. Fraser is tenacious in rejecting simple paradigms to ask the difficult questions, and forces the reader to accept that justice and feminism require the simultaneous pursuit of sometimes conflicting goals. To simplify would be to lose a critical facet. She writes with precision and clarity, laying out her planned arguments and then fully delivering. Somehow she manages to gently eviscerate counterarguments.
I particularly liked her articulation of justice as "parity of participation," which requires social arrangements that permit all (adult) members of society to interact with one another as peers. Having three mutually irreducible dimensions enables a revival of focus on political economy through (mal)distribution, while fully recognizing the real harms through culture with (mis)recognition without regressing to identity politics. Finally, she recognizes that in our globalized world, Westphalian borders have little relation to justice claims, and includes (mis)representation. These three dimension might be understood as economy (class), culture (status), and meta-politics. As the chapters are written over time, the reader is able to follow along in her development of this argument, and see how it can be applied.
I also love her focus on discourse as a critical site for feminist struggle, recognizing that language and rhetoric play a critical role in shaping our reality. The last chapter was a little limp, but otherwise a very solid book. It is clear why Nancy Fraser is such an influential social philosopher.
PS - The "prologue" is highly informative, contextualizing the articles and tracing the arc of second wave feminism - which also enables you to easily pick which chapters would be of interest, if you don't want to read it all.
July 25, 2018
Some writers circle gently around an argument, inviting the reader to figure it out well before it's spelled out explicitly. Nancy Fraser does not do that. This is an impressive collection of essays which leaps for the throat, tearing through philosophers and generally coming out on top. She does a superb job of challenging the work of both Judith Butler and the Lacanians. I agree with most of Fraser's conclusions: the chapter on dependency (co-authored with a historian, which shows) is excellent, and her arguments for a 'universal caregiver' model are well-made. Her central argument - that feminism has been resignified in a dangerous liaison with neoliberalism, simultaneously a movement for emancipation and increasingly an 'empty signifier of the good' - is, I think, correct and worth making. Perhaps above all, Fraser emphasises the importance of 'process' in a way which chimes with my own thoughts - and, unsurprisingly, I appreciated her several references to Raymond Williams...
At the same time, there was also quite a bit that I took exception to. I was initially uncomfortable about her recourse to a Weberian distinction between 'class', 'status' and 'party' (and especially the narrow economistic view of class which this can leave unchallenged), although I was somewhat persuaded by her argument that this is a historically specific phenomenon. Still, I'm not sure she does enough to show that this holds - it certainly feels like the opposite, that claims about 'class' and 'status' in the contemporary situation are usually rolled together, inseparable. It isn't quite like the distinction between 'the economic' and 'the political' or the other distinctions which Fraser discusses - it isn't a distinction which feels like the common sense of capitalism.
Another problem emerges in Fraser's description of three kinds of injustice: maldistribution, misrecognition, and misframing. I think this is useful analytically, although per Fraser's quasi-Weberianism these are ideal-typical distinctions rather than in any sense distinctions which emerge out of the logic of capitalism - it wouldn't make sense to talk about maldistribution and misrecognition diverging, etc. Still, the notion of 'misframing' is particularly useful and Fraser is right to try and understand the significance of globalisation for notions of justice. Fraser spends a lot of time making clear that none of these forms of injustice is primary, but I fear that was time wasted - although it's fraught with danger, it's useful to try and establish what's determining 'in the last instance' as opposed to surrendering to a messy totality. More significantly, perhaps, I think there's a severe limitation in the way that Fraser discusses 'maldistribution' - something which she pushes up against when discussing the 'universal caregiver'. Fraser, for all her discussion of need, still tends to conceive of justice in terms of work rewarded - taken a few steps further, her argument could have been more forcefully made into an attack on capitalism and production-for-profit. I don't see how there can be any just distribution based on rewarding work (whether that's productive in the Marxist sense or otherwise) in a world dominated by markets: how could you possibly avoid inequality between families headed by two-workers and those headed by one? I suspect that's Fraser's point, but I'm not sure this comes through with much clarity - the answer isn't just a 'universal caregiver' model in which everyone is potentially a care-worker and where care-work is rewarded as productive work, but a society in which production is for need and not profit and where distribution is according to need and not ability. Ultimately that means shifting from Fraser's notion of 'maldistribution' towards a sense of production-injustice; away from the sphere of distribution, towards the sphere of production.
Relatedly, I found the final chapter engaging with Karl Polanyi to be - at least by comparison - very poor. Although I agree with the criticisms that she makes, there's still too much which Fraser accepts needlessly - we can agree that Polanyi poses a useful challenge to mainstream economic thinking without having to start adopting his terms and methods. She describes Polanyi as detailing a capitalist crisis which stretched from the industrial revolution to the Second World War - it's a sense of crisis which can be rhetorically useful (i.e. capitalism is crisis) but analytically a bit weak, losing the specificity of crisis events like 1929 or 2007. More significantly, I do not think there are adequate grounds for Fraser's wholesale acceptance of Polanyi's marketization/protection distinction. Marketization is relatively coherent as a phenomenon arising from the logic of capitalist accumulation, but 'protection' is such a messy idea that it really defies attempts to make use of it. It is futile to try and discuss the protectionism of some parts of the capitalist class, and the 'protections' sought by e.g. peasants resisting enclosure, as if they are part of the same movement. They are not. Fraser's articulation of 'emancipation' poses a useful challenge to Polanyi, but the idea that marketization/protection/emancipation are three different forces pulling in three different directions (and sometimes the same ones) is next to worthless. By focusing on these forces - described largely in policy terms - Fraser (and Polanyi) avoid talking in terms of class (or race or gender). Rather than a transnational capitalist class competing (through marketization *and* particular protectionisms) with a nationally-restricted capitalist class (which again relies on particular combinations of marketization and protection), and both against a proletariat which can form alliances of convenience with either of them, there are advocates of 'protection' and advocates of 'marketization'. Rather than an internally differentiated proletariat struggling continuously against itself over gender, race, etc - there are advocates of 'emancipation' and its opponents. Even a two-dimensional approach (in which marketization/protection form one axis, domination/emancipation another) would be more coherent than what Fraser offers - but I still don't think there is a need to resort to focusing on 'forces' in this manner. Fraser's use of Karl Polanyi comes across as the work of someone afraid to refer to Karl Marx except in a footnote.
For all Fraser's astute description of the turn in second-wave feminism, in combination with neoliberalism, away from 'social justice', it's a turn which she remains locked within. She is right to suggest that much of Western feminism has been bureaucratised, made to serve the interests of capital, divorced from the masses, etc. But her appeal remains sadly limited to the academics and GNO workers whose influence she has lamented - it winds up as less an appeal to the masses, more an appeal for better policy. Brenna Bhandar and Denise Ferreira da Silva were right to rebuke Fraser for failing to cite feminist thinking emerging from the Third World (https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/1438...). Fraser is right to place emphasis upon 'process' in her conception of justice, but she doesn't do enough to integrate and interpret the feminism emerging from real processes of struggle. If she did so, this book would be even more useful - a real work of feminist philosophy, and not merely a (very good, worthwhile, well-argued) dispute with feminist philosophers.
At the same time, there was also quite a bit that I took exception to. I was initially uncomfortable about her recourse to a Weberian distinction between 'class', 'status' and 'party' (and especially the narrow economistic view of class which this can leave unchallenged), although I was somewhat persuaded by her argument that this is a historically specific phenomenon. Still, I'm not sure she does enough to show that this holds - it certainly feels like the opposite, that claims about 'class' and 'status' in the contemporary situation are usually rolled together, inseparable. It isn't quite like the distinction between 'the economic' and 'the political' or the other distinctions which Fraser discusses - it isn't a distinction which feels like the common sense of capitalism.
Another problem emerges in Fraser's description of three kinds of injustice: maldistribution, misrecognition, and misframing. I think this is useful analytically, although per Fraser's quasi-Weberianism these are ideal-typical distinctions rather than in any sense distinctions which emerge out of the logic of capitalism - it wouldn't make sense to talk about maldistribution and misrecognition diverging, etc. Still, the notion of 'misframing' is particularly useful and Fraser is right to try and understand the significance of globalisation for notions of justice. Fraser spends a lot of time making clear that none of these forms of injustice is primary, but I fear that was time wasted - although it's fraught with danger, it's useful to try and establish what's determining 'in the last instance' as opposed to surrendering to a messy totality. More significantly, perhaps, I think there's a severe limitation in the way that Fraser discusses 'maldistribution' - something which she pushes up against when discussing the 'universal caregiver'. Fraser, for all her discussion of need, still tends to conceive of justice in terms of work rewarded - taken a few steps further, her argument could have been more forcefully made into an attack on capitalism and production-for-profit. I don't see how there can be any just distribution based on rewarding work (whether that's productive in the Marxist sense or otherwise) in a world dominated by markets: how could you possibly avoid inequality between families headed by two-workers and those headed by one? I suspect that's Fraser's point, but I'm not sure this comes through with much clarity - the answer isn't just a 'universal caregiver' model in which everyone is potentially a care-worker and where care-work is rewarded as productive work, but a society in which production is for need and not profit and where distribution is according to need and not ability. Ultimately that means shifting from Fraser's notion of 'maldistribution' towards a sense of production-injustice; away from the sphere of distribution, towards the sphere of production.
Relatedly, I found the final chapter engaging with Karl Polanyi to be - at least by comparison - very poor. Although I agree with the criticisms that she makes, there's still too much which Fraser accepts needlessly - we can agree that Polanyi poses a useful challenge to mainstream economic thinking without having to start adopting his terms and methods. She describes Polanyi as detailing a capitalist crisis which stretched from the industrial revolution to the Second World War - it's a sense of crisis which can be rhetorically useful (i.e. capitalism is crisis) but analytically a bit weak, losing the specificity of crisis events like 1929 or 2007. More significantly, I do not think there are adequate grounds for Fraser's wholesale acceptance of Polanyi's marketization/protection distinction. Marketization is relatively coherent as a phenomenon arising from the logic of capitalist accumulation, but 'protection' is such a messy idea that it really defies attempts to make use of it. It is futile to try and discuss the protectionism of some parts of the capitalist class, and the 'protections' sought by e.g. peasants resisting enclosure, as if they are part of the same movement. They are not. Fraser's articulation of 'emancipation' poses a useful challenge to Polanyi, but the idea that marketization/protection/emancipation are three different forces pulling in three different directions (and sometimes the same ones) is next to worthless. By focusing on these forces - described largely in policy terms - Fraser (and Polanyi) avoid talking in terms of class (or race or gender). Rather than a transnational capitalist class competing (through marketization *and* particular protectionisms) with a nationally-restricted capitalist class (which again relies on particular combinations of marketization and protection), and both against a proletariat which can form alliances of convenience with either of them, there are advocates of 'protection' and advocates of 'marketization'. Rather than an internally differentiated proletariat struggling continuously against itself over gender, race, etc - there are advocates of 'emancipation' and its opponents. Even a two-dimensional approach (in which marketization/protection form one axis, domination/emancipation another) would be more coherent than what Fraser offers - but I still don't think there is a need to resort to focusing on 'forces' in this manner. Fraser's use of Karl Polanyi comes across as the work of someone afraid to refer to Karl Marx except in a footnote.
For all Fraser's astute description of the turn in second-wave feminism, in combination with neoliberalism, away from 'social justice', it's a turn which she remains locked within. She is right to suggest that much of Western feminism has been bureaucratised, made to serve the interests of capital, divorced from the masses, etc. But her appeal remains sadly limited to the academics and GNO workers whose influence she has lamented - it winds up as less an appeal to the masses, more an appeal for better policy. Brenna Bhandar and Denise Ferreira da Silva were right to rebuke Fraser for failing to cite feminist thinking emerging from the Third World (https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/1438...). Fraser is right to place emphasis upon 'process' in her conception of justice, but she doesn't do enough to integrate and interpret the feminism emerging from real processes of struggle. If she did so, this book would be even more useful - a real work of feminist philosophy, and not merely a (very good, worthwhile, well-argued) dispute with feminist philosophers.
April 30, 2021
3,5 Dobra, ale gęsta i teoretyczna książka. Dla mnie najlepszym i najciekawszym rozdziałem był ten o historii zależności, o tym jak kulturalnie postrzegamy zależność, o tym jak ewoluował obraz osób zależnych od państwa/pomocy socjalnej i jak wpisywało i wciąż wpisuje się w stereotypy związane z kobietami/kobiecością. Teksty traktujące o gospodarce/naukach społecznych czytało mi się dobrze, za to polemika z konstruktami psychologicznymi, przykładowo Kristevy, to było dla mnie wyzwanie, któremu nie do końca podołałam. Nie jest to łatwa lektura, na dodatek to zbiór esejów napisanych w przeciągu 25 lat, więc raczej skupiający się na klasie średniej i w przeważającej mierze za kontekst biorący Stany Zjednoczone, ale jak ktoś lubi sobie poczytać takie książki, to polecam. :)
January 19, 2021
An interesting academic read, but -- cards on the table - this is a very heteronormative/eurocentric collection of essays on feminism, claims-making, solidarity and building political arguments around typically western middle-class feminist issues, like unpaid care work and the gender pay gap. Dr Fraser tackles contemporary political demands that arise from conflicts between gender norms and neoliberalism (again, gotta stress - this is traditional academics waxing about eurocentric/ethnocentric/ middle-class US focused) POV. While I didn't find any of the arguments particularly 'new' or refreshing. However, her style of building arguments and some of her takes on issues of inequality had potential and could be used to build future arguments using more recent work by feminists and activists. Is this for the lay person? Nah. Could she have simplified her writing? Totally. While I found the book *seriously lacking* in class-based, racial or queer arguments, she does sprinkle examples here and there on differences between white/black feminist groups in the 80s and dedicated a chapter to responding to a critique by Judith Butler. I found a few chapters very interesting and worth trekking through the deep political philosophical texts; particularly where she dives into her framework - without spoiling, I would say this chapter stood out as the one to read by lay persons and activists. But I think Nancy Fraser is very much a product of her time, and there's still a lot to work with and build from using more recent issues/events/intersectional feminist black/queer/religious theorists.
September 24, 2018
Some of the ideas and essays in this book have so thoroughly restructured the way I think about gender and labor, especially reproductive labor, that I can't remember what it was like not to have read it. Amazing, incredible, work, especially the following essays:
- "A Genealogy of Dependency: Tracing a Keyword of the US Welfare State" - a how-to manual for how Democrats and Republicans successfully dismantled a social safety network by twisting words and meaning
- "After the Family Wage: A Postindustrial Thought Experiment" - if you're ever frustrated with the leftist tendency to end stirring, teardown critiques with feeble handmotionining towards a "sketch" for the future, look no further than Nancy's thorough outline for a future society that is clear, cogent, and just may save us all
- "Feminist Politics in the Age of Recognition" - swoon. for everyone sick of the schism between identity and class politics (it's yes AND, friends, yes AND)
- "Feminism, Capitalism, and the Cunning of History"
- "A Genealogy of Dependency: Tracing a Keyword of the US Welfare State" - a how-to manual for how Democrats and Republicans successfully dismantled a social safety network by twisting words and meaning
- "After the Family Wage: A Postindustrial Thought Experiment" - if you're ever frustrated with the leftist tendency to end stirring, teardown critiques with feeble handmotionining towards a "sketch" for the future, look no further than Nancy's thorough outline for a future society that is clear, cogent, and just may save us all
- "Feminist Politics in the Age of Recognition" - swoon. for everyone sick of the schism between identity and class politics (it's yes AND, friends, yes AND)
- "Feminism, Capitalism, and the Cunning of History"
August 18, 2020
I'm always a little disappointed when a single-authored book turns out to be a collection of essays. But the articles collected here build beautifully on each other, constituting a sweeping analysis of the historically ambiguous relationship between feminism and capitalism over the past half-century – with a respectful but spectacularly devastating takedown of Judith Butler an added bonus.
May 30, 2017
Some essays in this collection are better than others (I personally skipped over most of the first chapter on Habermasian philosophy, while I found the chapters on "dependency", the family wage, and feminist politics "in the age of recognition" particularly useful). Overall an important read that shows how feminism, which once drew upon Marxist thinking, can and must be reconciled with political economy. Also great for anyone interested in the problem of "identity politics": Fraser asserts that we need identity politics (or rather, a re-worked politics of "recognition", as she would call it) but we need to go beyond neoliberal interpretations of identity to re-assert a "politics of redistribution" (as she would call it, maybe a bit reductively) if we want true social justice.
non-fiction-to-read
August 27, 2015NTS: requested via library
Read
March 11, 2025read chapter 3, "feminism, capitalism and the cunning of history"
imo the chapter fails to explain in detail the intersection of second-wave feminism and capitalism and the later raise of neoliberalism. the author argues in favor of their intersection in four different areas (economism, étatism, etc.) nonetheless, its depiction of feminism is quite poor, as it does not go beyond mentioning that feminism (with the exception of lib fem) became more intersectional as a consequence of the reframing of the concept of justice, while at the same time, she offers extensive descriptions of the at-the-time state-organized capitalism
imo the chapter fails to explain in detail the intersection of second-wave feminism and capitalism and the later raise of neoliberalism. the author argues in favor of their intersection in four different areas (economism, étatism, etc.) nonetheless, its depiction of feminism is quite poor, as it does not go beyond mentioning that feminism (with the exception of lib fem) became more intersectional as a consequence of the reframing of the concept of justice, while at the same time, she offers extensive descriptions of the at-the-time state-organized capitalism
February 28, 2018
This book is actually a collection of essays, and so its quality is slightly variable; although there is an overarching theme with several of the essays building on those which came before, in places it can be repetitive and in others it feels disconnected. At times, also, it could be excessively philosophical: critiques of Habermas and Kristeva were mostly over my head, having read no Habermas and almost no Kristeva; and the language used in places is oddly linguistic (the author talks, for example, about the ‘grammar’ of social movements, as if social movements are nothing but discussion). However, the chapters that dealt with more concrete matters were interesting; she begins to flesh out a model which could be used to address both economic and social/cultural issues, avoiding the tendency to focus on either one to the exclusion of the other; later, she expands on this model to address the tendency of globalized neoliberalism to negate responsibility for both economic and social issues.
June 14, 2019
Interessante, forse a tratti poco scorrevole. La prima parte è molto teorica, adatta a chi ha una buona base filosofica (soprattutto Habermas). L'ultima è un po' ripetitiva, mentre quella centrale è un excursus storico fatto molto bene.
La Fraser sa di cosa parla e come spiegarlo.
La Fraser sa di cosa parla e come spiegarlo.
December 27, 2021
The first few essays on welfare didn't really hit home for me, even though I recognise how great those ideas are, I feel that you can tell they're a part of a dated discourse. The rest are absolutely fantastic!
July 11, 2024
This book is not a unified analysis (nor is it entirely about what the synopsis would lead you to believe) but rather a series of essays that are somewhat related. Some are only tangentially related to the whole, while others clearly build off concepts introduced in those prior. It’s an academic work that is not accessible for those unaccustomed to reading such things.
It is, however, valuable. Nancy Fraser has earned her spot amongst other critical theorists and leftists for a reason. Every essay was articulated using a consistent, clear formula, and presented an idea that felt important and in conversation with the broader feminist academia. I particularly enjoyed the analysis in the essay “Struggle Over Needs” as well as Fraser’s idea of “participatory parity” that she explains and implements in a few of the later essays.
The one essay that seems majorly flawed is “A Genealogy of Dependency” which, as another reviewer pointed out, completely misses a huge part of its own argument. It’s wild that someone (or in this case, two someones) could write an entire paper about the culture and politics behind “dependency” and fail to mention disability literally at all. It’s one of the biggest reasons for someone to be a dependent. Otherwise it’s a brilliant essay, but it would hold up much better in modern discourses if it weren’t missing a chunk of its own topic.
Three essays are particularly difficult to parse if you have not read the source material that Fraser is responding to. The first, “What’s Critical About Critical Theory?” is an examination of Jurgen Habermas’ work, which I found mostly readable without the context. However, I skipped “Against Symbolicism” after the first few pages because it’s completely in dialogue with the neoliberal interpretation of Lacanianism, something I am not familiar with and Fraser does not really explain. The final of these, “Heterosexism, Misrecognition, and Capitalism” is a response to Judith Butler, part of an extended back-and-forth between the two. This one I found readable without the context, but only because I already have a basic familiarity with Butler’s views.
Essentially, this is a very good collection of feminist essays, but it is not accessible to casual readers and has parts that will appear to be missing context. Those in academic circles will enjoy this.
It is, however, valuable. Nancy Fraser has earned her spot amongst other critical theorists and leftists for a reason. Every essay was articulated using a consistent, clear formula, and presented an idea that felt important and in conversation with the broader feminist academia. I particularly enjoyed the analysis in the essay “Struggle Over Needs” as well as Fraser’s idea of “participatory parity” that she explains and implements in a few of the later essays.
The one essay that seems majorly flawed is “A Genealogy of Dependency” which, as another reviewer pointed out, completely misses a huge part of its own argument. It’s wild that someone (or in this case, two someones) could write an entire paper about the culture and politics behind “dependency” and fail to mention disability literally at all. It’s one of the biggest reasons for someone to be a dependent. Otherwise it’s a brilliant essay, but it would hold up much better in modern discourses if it weren’t missing a chunk of its own topic.
Three essays are particularly difficult to parse if you have not read the source material that Fraser is responding to. The first, “What’s Critical About Critical Theory?” is an examination of Jurgen Habermas’ work, which I found mostly readable without the context. However, I skipped “Against Symbolicism” after the first few pages because it’s completely in dialogue with the neoliberal interpretation of Lacanianism, something I am not familiar with and Fraser does not really explain. The final of these, “Heterosexism, Misrecognition, and Capitalism” is a response to Judith Butler, part of an extended back-and-forth between the two. This one I found readable without the context, but only because I already have a basic familiarity with Butler’s views.
Essentially, this is a very good collection of feminist essays, but it is not accessible to casual readers and has parts that will appear to be missing context. Those in academic circles will enjoy this.
June 6, 2021
This is a collection of Frasier's essays centered on the relationship between feminism, gender and capitalism. I only give it three stars because they are written in a very academic style and consequently contain a lot of fluff and redundancy. The book length could probably have been cut in half and still preserved all of the content. Still, there is much of value. By far, Her genealogy of dependency is the best essay in the book. The historical shift it describes from viewing wage labor as a form of dependency to viewing it as independence for the worker, in contrast to dependence on the state or other social institutions, is fascinating and extremely important at a theoretical level. Frasier's critique of certain strands of feminism for abetting neoliberalism or failing to integrate both redistribution and recognition politics into a unified movement, which is present throughout most of the book, is also prescient, even though I am ambivalent about her normative conclusions. Her revision of Polanyi in the final essay is similarly useful.
January 5, 2025
A lot of it went over my head because this is a collection of essays published at different times and edited to form a somewhat coherent text. Still, it's clear that Nancy Fraser is brilliant, and I appreciated her very nuanced thinking about the importance of redistribution, recognition, and representation as goals of feminism that would prevent it from being co-opted by neoliberal structures. My difficulty with the book is with how abstract it is (and maybe this is more telling of my issues as a thinker), and I would've appreciated some reference to examples from feminist movement history to illustrate some of the ideas.
Ideas from the book I'd like to remember:
- The Universal Caregiver model for gender justice (discussed in chapter 4: After the Family Wage:
A Postindustrial Thought Experiment)
- The analysis of the political discourse on needs which I need to revisit when I can think better. It reminds me of questions I tried to explore in my senior essay (discussed in chapter 2: Struggle over Needs: Outline of a Socialist-Feminist Critical Theory of Late-Capitalist Political Culture)
Ideas from the book I'd like to remember:
- The Universal Caregiver model for gender justice (discussed in chapter 4: After the Family Wage:
A Postindustrial Thought Experiment)
- The analysis of the political discourse on needs which I need to revisit when I can think better. It reminds me of questions I tried to explore in my senior essay (discussed in chapter 2: Struggle over Needs: Outline of a Socialist-Feminist Critical Theory of Late-Capitalist Political Culture)
December 10, 2020
Very engaging introduction to feminist theory, the weaving-in of socialist theory throughout provided for a very rich understanding of why any just liberating movement must run along economic, political and cultural lines in tandem.
Stand-out essays for me were 'A Genealogy of "Dependency"' and 'Feminist Politics in the Age of Recognition'. In both there were truly exciting moments as things clicked that are now intuitive in the language used by the left of society.
Through all the essays it's interesting to see how the language of feminist theory develops as used by Fraser and maps to the wider usage by society as a whole.
Stand-out essays for me were 'A Genealogy of "Dependency"' and 'Feminist Politics in the Age of Recognition'. In both there were truly exciting moments as things clicked that are now intuitive in the language used by the left of society.
Through all the essays it's interesting to see how the language of feminist theory develops as used by Fraser and maps to the wider usage by society as a whole.
April 12, 2021
Le doy 5 estrellas porque el reclamo que le hace Habermas es maravilloso: Fraser demuestra la lectura ante la ausencia del género como un concepto determinante para la creación de las sociedades. Teoría de la acción comunicativa al separar lo reproductivo/productivo demuestra que no sólo los filósofos eran ciego ante los reclamos de las feministas, la academia también.
(Igual siento que debió agregar ensayos que dejaran clara la división entre la categoría del reconocimiento y representación, porque agrega un ensayo que habla de una dimensión binaria entre la Justicia redistributiva y de reconocimiento. )
(Igual siento que debió agregar ensayos que dejaran clara la división entre la categoría del reconocimiento y representación, porque agrega un ensayo que habla de una dimensión binaria entre la Justicia redistributiva y de reconocimiento. )
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April 12, 2020As someone else has said, I don't feel I could give an honest review of this book other than to say it felt like wading through treacle. I do have some (not a lot of) sociological and philosophical knowledge, as well as a little understanding of the history of feminism, and I still struggled. Critical Theory is known for being impenetrable, and this is no exception, sadly.
Perhaps for the more knowledgeable on crit theory! I'm sure enjoyable for others, with some incisive analysis, it's clearly an important contribution.
Perhaps for the more knowledgeable on crit theory! I'm sure enjoyable for others, with some incisive analysis, it's clearly an important contribution.
November 12, 2020
Wanted an introductory book on feminist theory and its development. This book had all the theory, but none of the introduction that I needed. I struggled in many parts, especially those that seemed geared toward supporting/refuting philosophers I had never read, or in some cases heard of.
There were essays covering three distinct eras of feminist thought in the 20th Century. I think I understand the way the essays were organized, but the essays themselves and their arguments were harder for me to parse.
There were essays covering three distinct eras of feminist thought in the 20th Century. I think I understand the way the essays were organized, but the essays themselves and their arguments were harder for me to parse.
September 26, 2025
“En general, por lo tanto, los temas que dan forma a la organización de este libro son sistemáticos e históricos. Registro de los constantes esfuerzos de una teoría por rastrear la trayectoria del movimiento, el libro evalúa las perspectivas actuales y las posibilidades futuras del feminismo.”
Esta es, en parte, la intención del libro. Nancy Fraser junta algunos de sus propios escritos de manera cronológica tratando de, a través de ellos, reflejar los cambios de perspectiva en la teoría feminista entre los años 70’ y 2000.
Mi crítica principal es la poca accesibilidad del texto debido a su lenguaje sumamente académico. Para comprenderlo es necesario tener un trabajo de lectura previo con textos de este estilo, dificultando el acceso a todas las personas. Pese a ello, lo considero un texto enriquecedor para mi propio panorama, sobretodo por las propuestas en torno a políticas de género y la identificación de sistemas de dominación dentro de ellas. Si bien no comparto totalmente su mirada, sus críticas al Estado de Bienestar en torno a la necesidad y la dependencia me parecen importantes para poder superar las debilidades que presenta este sistema hoy en día. Además, la relación que presenta entre la economía, la cultura, el ámbito público y el privado es fundamental para pensar en futuras políticas de género y luchas sociales.
Sigo manteniendo que es un texto con un lenguaje súper técnico, que utiliza conceptos ligados a otras teorías y con una mirada occidental centrada en Estados Unidos que no refleja las realidades sociales de otros países, ni sigue la línea del feminismo en estos. Igualmente, me gustaría resaltar que tiene muchos puntos relevantes no solo para el pensamiento feminista, sino que también para el pensamiento político de todo el mundo.
Esta es, en parte, la intención del libro. Nancy Fraser junta algunos de sus propios escritos de manera cronológica tratando de, a través de ellos, reflejar los cambios de perspectiva en la teoría feminista entre los años 70’ y 2000.
Mi crítica principal es la poca accesibilidad del texto debido a su lenguaje sumamente académico. Para comprenderlo es necesario tener un trabajo de lectura previo con textos de este estilo, dificultando el acceso a todas las personas. Pese a ello, lo considero un texto enriquecedor para mi propio panorama, sobretodo por las propuestas en torno a políticas de género y la identificación de sistemas de dominación dentro de ellas. Si bien no comparto totalmente su mirada, sus críticas al Estado de Bienestar en torno a la necesidad y la dependencia me parecen importantes para poder superar las debilidades que presenta este sistema hoy en día. Además, la relación que presenta entre la economía, la cultura, el ámbito público y el privado es fundamental para pensar en futuras políticas de género y luchas sociales.
Sigo manteniendo que es un texto con un lenguaje súper técnico, que utiliza conceptos ligados a otras teorías y con una mirada occidental centrada en Estados Unidos que no refleja las realidades sociales de otros países, ni sigue la línea del feminismo en estos. Igualmente, me gustaría resaltar que tiene muchos puntos relevantes no solo para el pensamiento feminista, sino que también para el pensamiento político de todo el mundo.
February 23, 2018
Fortune of Feminism is a thoroughly great read. More than ever, we need a feminism that is critical to neoliberalism yet able to explore alternative beyond tamed capitalism under social democratic model. The last chapter is especially important and highly recommended to be a central question we need to ask as a movement.
December 23, 2019
Necessario. Una riflessione sul ruolo della donna e il progressivo abbandono dello stato.
June 12, 2020
One of the best books I've read. A very good summary and a brilliant analysis of the feminism, it's history and it's possible future.
July 26, 2022
I love her and I wish I could think like her.
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July 23, 2025Reference book for SIMP27. I think this book is better than others, something about capitalism and patriarchy reconstruct each other to make women's life worse.
December 17, 2022
Nancy Fraser is one of the most perceptive philosophers and social critics of our time. This book is a collection of her essays dealing with feminism’s relationship to capitalism and work over the period of 30 years.
While each essay is individually excellent, the book is introduced as if they will make up a coherent work, rather than being separate essays. In spite of this, the essays often open the topic of the book as if it needs to be introduced and explained in detail again and again. After the first couple of essays this becomes really tiresome, which isn’t helped by the academic style of the texts.
This isn’t to criticise the content of Fraser’s work - I think she’s truly brilliant and I particularly found her rebuttal of criticisms she has received from postmodern feminists to be convincing. Instead my issue with the book is that given a bit of re-writing and structuring, it could be a much more readable and coherent work. Instead it sort of feels like you’re going around in circles.
I look forward to reading more of Fraser’s works which are actual books rather than an essay collection dressed up as a book.
While each essay is individually excellent, the book is introduced as if they will make up a coherent work, rather than being separate essays. In spite of this, the essays often open the topic of the book as if it needs to be introduced and explained in detail again and again. After the first couple of essays this becomes really tiresome, which isn’t helped by the academic style of the texts.
This isn’t to criticise the content of Fraser’s work - I think she’s truly brilliant and I particularly found her rebuttal of criticisms she has received from postmodern feminists to be convincing. Instead my issue with the book is that given a bit of re-writing and structuring, it could be a much more readable and coherent work. Instead it sort of feels like you’re going around in circles.
I look forward to reading more of Fraser’s works which are actual books rather than an essay collection dressed up as a book.
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