The Political Economy of Patriarchy in the Global South (2023, Routledge) emerges at the intersections of gender, political economy, and sociology. The main concern of the book is to investigate the respective roles that gender plays in shaping the macro-level political economy in the Global South. Decentring feminist and political economic theorising grounded in the histories and developments of the Global North, it examines how uneven gender relations diversify the trajectories of socio-economic transformation, including capital accumulation strategies, state-formation and civil society. The book also provides an original theory of the patriarchal system by distinguishing its new forms sustained by the gendered patterns of agriculture.
A brief overview
In this book, I critically engage with the underlying assumption of classical and Marxist political economists that the dynamics of capitalism are the sole determinant of social change. I further argue that this capitalism-based reductionism supports an essentialist perception of culture and religion. When the key features of capitalism fail to explain the diverse development trajectories in the Global South, attention shifts to cultural and religious characteristics, which are then portrayed as the main barriers to development. Alternatively, I reveal that gender relations significantly shape capitalist transformation. The evidence suggests that patriarchal labour relations in agriculture influence the initial accumulation necessary for early industrialisation, prevent the movement of female labour from agriculture to non-agricultural sectors, thereby constraining labour supply and putting upward pressure on capitalist wages. I also show that gendered property and labour relations in agriculture maintain the category of ‘patriarchal farmer’, preventing the hegemony of bourgeois farmers. Patriarchal farmers, in turn, maintain a strong bargaining capacity, playing a significant role in shaping state formation and civil society.
Furthermore, in this book, I critically engage with the social reproduction approach and varieties of gender regimes scholarship. While the first approach describes a one-sided deterministic relationship in which capitalist labour relations (in production) dictate patriarchal labour relations (in reproduction), the second neglects different varieties of gender regimes in the Global South. Alternatively, the findings in this book suggest a mutually shaping relationship between capitalism and patriarchy, whereby uneven gender relations effectively shape the trajectories of capitalist development. I further reveal how the distinguishing dynamics of social change in the Global South give rise to a ‘premodern form of domestic patriarchy’ sustained by gendered property and labour relations in agriculture. By examining the uneven and combined development of patriarchy, I show that urban women experience modern domestic and neoliberal public patriarchies, while rural women live under the conditions of modern and premodern domestic patriarchies. While these spatial dimensions impact women’s experiences, I also unpack how religion and ethnicity-based oppression and discrimination play a significant role in dividing as well as uniting women on the grounds of patriarchal domination.
To identify (i) the prerequisites of the new varieties of patriarchy and (ii) their implications for socio-economic transformation, I used the mixed methods of qualitative and quantitative analysis. My qualitative analysis draws on a historical-sociology-based case study. The selected case of Turkey enables an assessment of the ways in which the gendered patterns of agriculture effectively shape the trajectories of capitalist development, state-formation, and civil society. The period considered is from the sixteenth-century Ottoman Empire to the Republican period (1923–2015). The evidence includes work drawn from archival materials such as the Imperial code, sharia court records, land inheritance laws and regulations, and petitions and complaints. Drawing on secondary quantitative data, my cross-country comparison includes Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Malaysia, and South Africa (i.e., countries sharing a similar level of economic development to Turkey but characterised by large-scale capitalist farms and paid labour in agriculture) and Bangladesh, Egypt, India, Morocco, and Pakistan (less developed countries characterised by the dominance of small landownership and women’s unpaid family labour in agriculture).
Significance
My book challenges assumptions and calls for rethinking major political economic categories and theories, thereby shedding light on the dynamics of social change in the Global South. It potentially transforms multiple fields, including international development, economics, sociology, gender studies, and social policy by investigating how uneven gender relations effectively shape the macro-level political economy. In so doing, the book aims to initiate a paradigm shift by questioning the widely accepted approach that reduces the relationship between gender and development to either ‘the gendered outcomes’ of or ‘the gendered prerequisites’ for capitalist development. Along with providing major theoretical and conceptual breakthroughs, in this book, I propose novel concepts by offering a theoretical and empirical account of premodern domestic patriarchy, including the category of the patriarchal farmer. Drawing on my theoretical and empirical investigations, I further conclude by offering an alternative conceptual framework. While emphasising the significance of the Historical Materialist methodology, I critically engage with the Althusserian base/superstructure approach and explore the potential contribution of Hegelian Marxism to feminist political economic thought.
To date, the book has been named 'essential reading' by Choice Reviewed Titles, a division of the American Library Association, and has been nominated for the British Sociological Association's Philip Abrams Memorial Prize. In his review, the external assessor of the American Library Association, Professor Birol Yeşilada at Portland State University, described my book as 'a breathtaking study that will stand the test of time'.