New Perspectives on "Public" and "Private"

Since its beginnings, feminist political science and second-wave feminisms have challenged the boundaries of the ‘private’ and the ‘public’ and, thus, of political science itself. They have re-conceptualized this division, disclosing it as a constitutive component of both capitalism and patriarchy. The overall aim of the proposed section is to re-open the scholarly debate on the ‘private vs. public’ division against the background of current shifts affecting the spheres. Western feminists in both academia and movement contexts have long pointed to the political relevance of the relations, discourses, and practices taking place in the ‘private’ sphere. They underlined that the ‘private’ is not outside but part of societal relations, domination, and subordination, as well as subject to interventions and regulations through public policy. In political theory, Carol Pateman’s work was seminal: she demonstrated that women’s exclusion from the ‘public’ sphere is legitimized by framing reproductive work as female. In her analysis, this is a prerequisite for a "gender contract" that naturalizes this gendered division of labor. Thus, locating women in the domestic sphere precedes the conception of a public sphere dominated by men. Moreover, a variety of studies revealed that the question of the separation of private and public spheres itself is subject of political negotiation and decision-making. Configurations of ‘private’ and ‘public’ spheres differ through time and space, suggesting more than a mere dichotomy, and also depending on political regimes, whether it is about liberal democracy, state socialism, authoritarianism or in the context of post-colonial power relations. Especially for the last decades significant structural shifts in the liberal ‘private’/‘public’ dichotomy and the configurations of these spheres can be stated. • Women’s and LGBTQI* movements have achieved important changes as evidenced by national, international, and supranational efforts to address ‘private’ concerns such as the long tabooed topic of sexualized violence, childcare as a task for society as a whole, and the recognition of (marginalized) sexual orientations. Additionally, digitalisation created new forms of public spaces for political discourse, participation and activism, but also brought new concerns for privacy, intimacy, and gender relations in general. • Despite becoming blurrier due to these historical achievements and developments, the gendered and hierarchical ‘private vs. public’ binary could not be overcome, but has risen in complexity: • We currently face new or altered mechanisms of reproducing gendered inequality. For example, the integration of (white, middle-class) women into the labour market could be achieved to a considerably extent, thanks to public childcare, but is also built on precarious employment of female care workers from the Global South. • Similarly, the recognition of non-heterosexual families by European nation-states has gone hand in hand with the integration of these families into the heteronormative institution of family and capitalist consumerism. • In addition, current developments are putting gender-political achievements at risk: Post-socialist states reprivatized reproductive work, conservative governments in semi-peripheral states like Turkey introduced financial schemes to redefine family and household as women’s primary locus. In several states, that what has just been reached in terms of fighting sexualized violence or LGBTQI* rights is questioned. At the same time, the scope of action for civil society actors, among them women’s and LGBTQI* movements, is shrinking. • The merger between neoliberalism and rising authoritarianism in many regions does its part in this development, with its focus on gender and the attempt to re-traditionalize gendered power relations actively re-negotiating the public and the private realm. Against this background, the proposed section wants to bring the complexities of ‘public’ and ‘private’ back to center stage of feminist scholarship. It addresses the following crucial questions: How are the ‘private’ and ‘public’ spheres currently being re-negotiated and re-conceptualized? How are these processes gendered, classed, and racialized? Which social groups’ particular interests are being universalized therein and at whose expense? Which feminist and intersectional alliances are possible to counteract these processes? We welcome empirical and/or conceptual panel or paper proposals that seek to contribute to the theory debate, dealing with the following topics - The reproduction of the society along the ‘public vs. private’ divide - Shifting configurations of public and private and their implications for gender regimes; the role of gendered civil societies at the interstices between the political and the private; shrinking and expanding gendered public spaces and the consequences for democratization or rise of authoritarianism - Success or failure to translate feminist knowledge production on the private/public-distinction and on ‘privatized’ issues into public policy - (Re-)Introduction of privatized issues such as care and affects into the public policy debate - Historical and regional case studies