Political Economy of Same-Sex Marriage

<p>Same-sex marriage is now legal in twenty-nine countries and the subject of continued debate around the world. <i>The Political Economy of Same-Sex Marriage: A Feminist Critique </i>considers this debate from a political economy perspective. Rather than engaging directly in the now well-rehearsed social-movement and academic for-and-against debates this book focuses on processes of institutionalization of same-sex marriage and so-called rainbow families within (neo)liberal capitalist democracies. It examines how states and markets appropriate same-sex marriage and family to enhance their own political and symbolic capital consolidating power and profit within existing systems of gendered and raced socioeconomic stratification. </p><p>Taking a radical feminist heterodox qualitative and intersectional approach this book investigates the political economy of same-sex marriage across three axes: same-sex marriage as institution; same-sex marriage and the market; and the political economy of the rainbow family. The examination of case studies from different countries and regions enables a comparative analysis that foregrounds cultural political and economic path dependencies while at the same time highlighting a number of striking commonalities. In all the countries discussed in this book and in most respects same-sex marriage has been integrated almost seamlessly into a mainstream/malestream political economy of marriage and family and its translation into added market and productive value. </p><p>The Political Economy of Same-Sex Marriage: A Feminist Critique will be of use to researchers and students alike and indeed to all those who are curious about the mainstreaming of homosexuality within twenty-first-century capitalist democracies.</p>