DRS/SRI: Heteronormativity, Harmony Ideology, and Development

Abstract

In this talk I try to connect some of my past research on gender and development in the Latin American and Caribbean region of the World Bank to an interest in globalized narratives of harmony. Using Laura Nader’s work on harmony ideology in law, along with feminist and post-colonial work on heteronormativity, I ask what appeals to gender harmony and balance enable for feminist development specialists, and what they shut down, disallow, or make more difficult to say. I briefly explain the World Bank’s approach to consensus and harmony, to explain why these themes interest me as a development scholar, before summarizing some findings from the research I did on two Bank projects (in Ecuador and Argentina) to promote gender sharing. I conclude with some broader lessons about what the embrace of gender harmony might reveal about the multi-level governance and registers of value used to regulate poverty.

 About the speaker

Kate Bedford is a Senior Lecturer in Law at Kent Law School (University of Kent) in the United Kingdom. She has worked in development, and she holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from Rutgers (USA).

Her research focuses on gender and international political economy. She has written on World Bank gender lending in Ecuador and Argentina, investigating projects on export promotion, ethno-development, and social capital promotion. More recently she was part of an UNRISD project looking at the social and political economy of care, focusing in particular on the gender sharing approach endorsed by the UN's Commission on the Status of Women.

She is currently working on a large research project exploring the feminist political economy of gambling regulation. As a result she hopes that you will share your bingo stories with her.

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Please contact Dr Wendy Harcourt: harcourt@remove-this.iss.nl and Dr Silke Heumann: heumann@remove-this.iss.nl

Full DRS/SRI: 'Why Sex Counts' Programme

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