Engendering transformations: Reconstructing state and civil society in the post-socialist Czech Republic

Despite the unprecedented nature of the transitions in Eastern Europe since 1989, scholars of international political economy have done little to analyze them as processes of globalization and socio-cultural transformation: In this dissertation I consider how gender has shaped post-socialist transformations and how gender itself has been shaped by these transformations and by dynamics in the global political economy. In so doing, I refine feminist approaches to the study of International Relations and International Political Economy. Throughout the study, the post-socialist Czech Republic is examined as a case. I explore the changes and continuities in Czech gender relations before and after 1989. I further show how the creation of new gender identities and differences have propelled the expansion of labour and consumer markets, the development of civil society, and the global integration of the Czech Republic.; The method of this study is interpretative. It draws upon extensive fieldwork conducted between 1995 and 1998 in the Czech Republic. I analyse the Czech economic and democratic transitions from a gender perspective using a range of sources. These include original Czech historical documents, contemporary documents in Czech and English, the secondary scholarly literature in Czech and English, over thirty-five formal interviews, and many other personal interviews incorporating elements of the participant-observer, ethnographic method.; Taken together, my investigations of the transitions in the Czech Republic provide new insights into the formation of gender relations in a emerging capitalist society. In the aftermath of socialism, new norms of gender relations, ostensibly exports from the West, have served both to extend global markets and democracy, and empower women as individuals and citizens.; This dissertation has implications for our deeper understanding of the social and cultural dynamics of contemporary globalization. Global and local interactions in specific contexts not only affect gender relations, they construct new gender identities and differences. Above all, this analysis of the inextricable linkages among the transitions in gender, politics, and economics in Eastern Europe represents a strategic effort to engender studies of global political economy.