SOCI370/Sassen

Paragraphs 1-3: Xizi Li

The passage built by Saskia Sassen, who has the inimitable respective on the necessity of feminine equality under world's globalization. She gives a very incisive description of a overview of association between world economy and feminism. As she mentions, current global economy is deeply driven by territorial organization, political authority and even supranational organizations. The concept of state is being vaguer and vaguer because of many transnational companies and global finance markets. Those organizations and their cross-border activities also play vital roles in economy. She points that males and females are equally significant as objects if developing feminist analytics.Women inequality is still need reform as like as the integration of economy.It is now the time to use feminist analytics method to standardize various profession and make women visible, which helps women gain their right to participate more in their occupation.

Valorization and Devalorization Processes: A First Step Toward Locating Gendering: Haoshen An

In this passage, Sassen focuses on the group of people who have lower wages in the work force. Although they may have contributions that should not be overlooked to the global economic system, they usually do not get recognized as part of the global information economy. To be more exact, such phenomenon promotes the valorization and devalorization process as how people value their work. They became the invisible and powerless class of workers in the service of the strategic sectors constituting the global economy. In the case of immigrant women, a large portion of people within the low wage group, attempt to gain greater personal autonomy and independence by taking higher positions and gain more control over budgeting and other domestic decisions. Furthermore, with their accesses to public services and other resources, they are able to blend into the mainstream society and get recognized.

[Comment - Diana]: I believe it could also be the same case as the glass ceiling effect where it is impossible for minorities and women to rise in the ranks due to the barriers that keep them from getting promotions, pay raises, and further opportunities.

The Unbundling of Sovereignty: Implications for a Feminist Analysis: Yansong Li

The transformation in the organization of political power, which is the strategic instantiations is Sassen's main concern of this section. The two kinds of developments about sovereignty that she mentioned: the emergence of "new sites of normativity"; the formation of new transnational legal regimes and regulatory institution that stopped taking over functions after being located in governmental institutions recently. She argues that the global capital market and the international human right regime are the two institutional arenas that are new sites for normativity exist together with traditional normative order represented by the nation-state and are powerful enough to make influences. Additionally, feminist critique of decentralization of sovereignty is important because globalization creates "new operational and formal openings for the participation of nonstate actors and subject"( including women).

International Human Rights and State Sovereignty: Yun Mao

International human rights codes are used by individuals and non-state actors as laws to claim for their rights, which is more often in Western countries. Under the rule of human rights, these claimants are seen as persons rather than citizens of nations, which means human rights function beyond nation-state. Sassen thinks that this is big improvement of international civil society. Capital market pursues profitability, while the expansion of international human rights regime may improve this situation. The living condition and human rights of women and immigrants will be attached more importance under cross-border membership notions.

Comment [Alexis Wolfe] The shift from a legal framework of citizenship rights to one of 'universal human rights' that Sassen alludes to has currency in debates about migration and refugee status carried out today at national and international level political discourse. following the devastation of imperialist enterprises on behalf of the NATO regime and the American military industrial complex, millions of refugees of war (and also of ecological devastation) pour into Western welfare states in pursuit of safety and survival. The reaction to this massive migration on the basis of last resort has been especially polarized in countries like Austria, Germany and France who have seen demographic shifts alter what is perceived as their 'national culture'. Groups on the far-right argue that citizenship rights must be granted after a significant vetting process that would take months if not years and endanger the lives of refugees. At the same time, the notion that human beings be received as subjects deserving of universal rights, untethered from citizenship, sits in opposition to the citizen-rights framework insisted upon by nationalist groups. The shift from rights granted on the basis of national citizenship to one founded in intrinsic human rights, not confined to borders or cultural boundaries, directs a new message that resonates with Sassen's proposition that claimants must be understood as persons rather than citizens of nations and derive their rights from an internationalized recognition of human dignity. This, in a way, is a radical transformation of our legal framework with regards to human rights. But it is a necessary one in order to humanely respond to the tragedy and dispossession inevitable in a period of permanent and indiscriminate terror and war.