ABSTRACT

In this chapter I have been asked to address the following question: what difference has an international political sociology perspective made to the study of gender? In order to do so, I have reconsidered what I understand an international political sociology perspective to mean, and to revisit what I might mean by ‘the study of gender’. Neither of these tasks has been self-evident. Each has required recognizing that any picture that I might paint, mapping I might draft and course I might chart could not be (and should not attempt to be) comprehensive or cohesive. 1 Both an international political sociology and feminist theory embrace “forms of knowledge that are sensitive to non-coherence and points of rupture rather than reproductive governmental techniques” (Huysmans and Nogueira 2012: 3), albeit in different ways and through different trajectories. Indeed, the difficulty – and indeed fundamental impossibility – of the task I have been invited to perform, I propose, promises much for future developments of an international political sociology and feminist research. Each has set out to critically interrogate the lines of distinction that have generated it as a distinctive-enough field in the first place. Remaining open, reflexive, committed to pluralism (Ackerly Stern and True 2006; Huysmans and Nogueira 2012: 2) and to critically querying “the conditions under which disciplinary distinctions have been made” (Bigo and Walker 2007: 4), the tools for analysis that these fields offer us, as well as the subjects of our scrutiny is paramount for their continuing intellectual and ethico-political purchase as fields of study. Hence, it is this non-coherence that makes both an international political sociology and feminist theory vibrant and worthwhile endeavours – endeavours that would surely benefit from further cross- or inter-conversations.