Feminist Economics: Interrogating the Masculinity of Rational Economic Man - Hardcover

Hewitson, Gillian J.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1858989469 ISBN 13: 9781858989464

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing, 1999

Synopsis

Feminist economists have produced a wide range of critical analyses of the various forms of masculinity within neoclassical economics. This book employs a feminist poststructuralist approach to reveal the masculinity of the allegedly unsexed figure, 'rational economic man'.

Gillian Hewitson constructs an alternative approach to the question of masculinity in neoclassical economics, using a range of poststructuralist and feminist poststructuralist writing, the centrepiece of which may be seen as the notion of the body, rather than gender, as a cultural product. The author argues that neoclassical economics actively constructs sexual differences as meaningful by using case studies of the neoclassical teaching device, Robinson Crusoe, and the surrogate motherhood exchange. The book concludes that the notion of the exchanging agent, as a supposedly universal and hence disembodied individual, cannot accommodate sexual differences and thus the female body.

This ground-breaking new book will be essential reading for scholars of feminist economics and women's studies.

About this title

About the Author

Gillian J. Hewitson, Visiting Professor, Franklin and Marshall College, Pennsylvania, US

Edition details

• Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1858989469
• ISBN 13: 9781858989464
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 288