Follow the bodies: Global capitalism, global war, global crisis and feminist IPE
| Published date | 01 March 2021 |
| Author | Aida A Hozić |
| Date | 01 March 2021 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0047117821992418 |
| Subject Matter | A Necessarily Historical Materialist Moment? Forum on Global Capitalism, Global War, Global Crisis |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0047117821992418
International Relations
2021, Vol. 35(1) 173 –177
© The Author(s) 2021
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DOI: 10.1177/0047117821992418
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Follow the bodies: Global
capitalism, global war, global
crisis and feminist IPE
Aida A Hozić
University of Florida
Global Capitalism, Global War, Global Crisis by Andreas Bieler and Adam Morton
makes a persuasive case for the enduring relevance of historical materialism as the her-
meneutical tool for analysis and understanding of contemporary political economy.1 The
most interesting aspect of the book – and the one which sets it apart from other recent
critical works in International Political Economy (IPE) in the same tradition – is the
concept of ‘internal relations’, which allows Bieler and Morton to endogenise wars and
crises within the capitalism itself.2 Arguing against the habitual dualisms in the discipline
of International Relations – between states and markets, agents and structures, material
conditions and ideologies – Bieler and Morton suggest instead that global capitalism,
war and crisis should be analysed ‘in terms of their internality’.3 Their ‘relational method’
thus ‘captures capital’s internalisation through the states system of uneven and combined
development, geopolitics and the global crisis conditions facing humanity that are them-
selves embedded within world ecology’.4
In this intervention, I would like to elaborate upon this ‘radical ontology’ of ‘internal
relations’ from the perspective of feminist IPE. There are significant overlaps between
feminist IPE and Bieler and Morton’s analysis in this book, none the least their effort to
integrate what Nancy Fraser aptly calls ‘Marx’s hidden abode’ – the background condi-
tions of expropriation and social reproduction – with Marx’s ‘front story’ of exploitation
and capitalist production.5 However, while Bieler and Morton noticeably expand Marx’s
framework to incorporate and relate aspects of the Gramscian ‘social factory’ within the
world of class struggle and geopolitical contestations, feminists begin their analyses by
looking at the world through the lens of gendered hierarchies and embodied (rather than
Corresponding author:
Aida A Hozić, Department of Political Science, University of Florida, 234 Anderson Hall, Gainesville, FL
32611, USA.
Email: hozic@ufl.edu
992418IRE0010.1177/0047117821992418International RelationsHozić
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