1st Edition

Feminist International Relations Through a Technospatial Lens An Interdisciplinary Approach

By Gillian Youngs Copyright 2025
172 Pages 6 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

172 Pages 6 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

172 Pages 6 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

Feminist International Relations Through a Technospatial Lens is a rich, thought-provoking and wide-ranging assessment of power and empowerment in the digital age. Artificial intelligence (AI) innovations have launched a new era of policy and public engagement with the workings of digital economy and the scale of its possibilities and risks. How beneficial will its data-driven technological... Read more

Part I. Introducing an Interdisciplinary Journey and Rationale

 

1. Feminist International Relations Through a Technospatial Lens: an interdisciplinary approach

Setting the scene: a long view of political economy

The technological momentum of contemporary history

Digital economy and a technosocial world

Feminism and mediated digital times

Agency and horizontal versus vertical communication

Geospatial and sociospatial hybridity

Digital empowerment: technospatial considerations

Power, empowerment and the digital self

Related Reading

 

Part II. Public/Private and the Geospatial/Sociospatial Nexus

 

2. Introduction to Part II

Feminism, spatiality and empowerment

Unseen or obfuscated areas of lived experience

Embodied experience: online and offline life

Disrupting the containment of women’s lives and identities

 

3. Breaking Patriarchal Bonds: Demythologizing the Public/Private

The nature of the patriarchal ‘prism’

Space and power: gender and public/private divides

From the private to the public: agency and spatiality

Conclusions: an atypical case points the way

 

4. Globalization, Feminism and Information Society

Introduction

Globalization and the virtual world: sightings

Digital divide and access: sites

Feminism and access to the information society: sociospatial resistances

     Technology and identity restructuring

     Technology and history

Horizontal versus vertical communication

Conclusion

 

5. Making the Pain Count: Embodied Politics in the New Age of Terror

Introduction: pain and embodied politics

Disembodied politics and the new age of terror

Disembodiment and the absence of pain as politically meaningful

Radical transformation: making pain count

Conclusion

 

Part III. Feminism, Technology and Agency

 

6. Introduction to Part III

Radical spheres of relating and knowledge-building

Feminist challenges to masculinist technological determinism

Embodied security and the information-age state

Multimedia surveillance

 

7. Theoretical reflections on networking in practice: The Case of Women on the Net

Introduction

WoN and networking as practice

WoN and ‘relating internationally’

Conclusion

 

8. Feminizing cyberspace: rethinking technoagency

Introduction

Cyberspace, boundaries and agency

Women and cyberpolitics

Cyber possibilities and development

Conclusion

 

9. Feminist International Relations in a High-Tech Age

The world of intelligence through a feminist lens

Intelligence and the technological world

Ontological dimensions of feminist perspectives on technology

Conclusion

 

Part IV. Interdisciplinary Threads and Digital Futures

 

10. Concluding Thoughts

Future-scoping: sociotechnical and industrial imperatives

AI as a sociotechnical wake-up call?

Multimedia and embodied reality in an AI world

AI and creeping automation

Feminism and STEM hierarchies

 

Index

Biography

Gillian Youngs has held a number of professorial positions, including, most recently, as a visiting professor at the University of Greenwich, UK. She has built an international scholarly reputation at the cutting edge of international relations (IR) and international political economy (IPE), focused on globalization, digital economy and feminist theory. Her research, publications and academic leadership work reflect the strong interdisciplinary traditions of IR and their relevance to diverse areas of policy, business and culture.