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This article serves as an introduction to the International Affairs special section, 'Feminist interrogations of global nuclear politics'. In this article, we argue that feminist International Relations scholarship on the global nuclear order and its discontents should be revitalized, in ways that reckon more fully with the colonial matrix of power and its contemporary realignments. As the initial step in such a task, the first part of the article explores some of the distinctive insights that are generated about global nuclear politics by a feminist approach that takes coloniality seriously. We show that such an approach reconceptualizes nuclear destruction as a lived reality for many, within a broader history of domination; exposes the racialized, gendered and colonial dimensions of nuclear discourses; and casts fresh light on the material colonial relationships at the heart of the global nuclear order. In the second part, we reverse our focus to critically think through how the content of feminism, and its relation to coloniality and struggles for self-determination, might be understood differently if we start from a concern with global nuclear politics. The third and final part surveys the articles in the special section, highlighting where they pick up on the themes we have explored and some future lines of enquiry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of efforts to revive and reconfigure the left, fraught solidarity relations between feminism and other left forces are again under the political spotlight. This article revisits the widespread use of the 'unhappy marriage' metaphor to characterise these relations, given that metaphors play a significant role in structuring political discourse and action. We argue that the metaphor has been used in uncritical and limiting ways, and turn to feminist reconfigurations of the institutions of marriage to develop a more expansive, reflexive conceptual lens. We then apply this lens to three case studies of left organising in Scotland around the time of the 2012–2014 Scottish independence referendum, showing that the expanded marriage metaphor captures a more complex story of solidarity relations. Nonetheless, aspects of the marriage metaphor remain irredeemable, and we end with a call for the continued development of alternative frameworks that imagine political solidarity differently. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers a feminist take on the question of why Occupy camps closed down, in the form of a narrative analysis of interviews from participants in Occupy Glasgow. In response to the emergence of an activist discourse emphasising the role of external forces in camp closure and the existence of a longer-term legacy in terms of individual and community politicisation, I build here on feminist interventions that point instead to serious internal problems within the camps and thus to a more limited legacy. Interrogating the plotting, characterisation and denouement of interviewee narratives, I show that feminist participants in Occupy Glasgow characterise the trajectory of the camp as a tragedy, attribute responsibility for the camp’s demise to co-campers and sometimes to themselves, and present the outcome of Occupy Glasgow as limited, and in some cases even traumatic. This raises serious questions about the culmination and outcomes of Occupy in Glasgow and more generally, and indicates the extent of the hard work remaining if future mobilisation against neoliberal austerity is to be more inclusive and sustainable. The article closes by considering the theoretical implications for the wider question of why movements come to an end. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article engages with the influential narrative about the co-optation of feminism in conditions of neo-liberalism put forward by prominent feminist thinkers Nancy Fraser, Hester Eisenstein and Angela Mc Robbie. After drawing out the twin visions of 'progressive' feminist politics that undergird this narrative - couched in terms of either the retrieval of past socialist feminist glories or personal reinvention - we subject to critical scrutiny both their substantive claims and the conceptual scaffolding they invoke. We argue that the proleptic imaginings of all three authors, in different ways, are highly circumscribed in terms of the recommended agent, agenda and practices of progressive politics, and clouded by conceptual muddle over the meanings of 'left', 'radical' and 'progressive'. Taken together, these problems render the conclusions of Fraser, Eisenstein and Mc Robbie at best unconvincing and at worst dismissive of contemporary feminist efforts to challenge neo-liberalism. We end the article by disentangling and redefining left, radical and progressive and by sketching a contrasting vision of progressive feminist politics enabled by this re-conceptualisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that a feminist approach to the ‘politics of resistance’ offers a number of important empirical insights which, in turn, open up lines of theoretical inquiry which critical theorists in IR would do well to explore. Concretely, we draw on our ongoing research into feminist ‘anti-globalisation’ activism to rethink the nature of the subject of the politics of resistance, the conditions under which resistance emerges and how resistance is enacted and expressed. We begin by discussing the relationship of feminism to critical IR theory as a way of situating and explaining the focus and approach of our research project. We then summarise our key empirical arguments regarding the emergence, structure, beliefs, identities and practices of feminist ‘anti-globalisation’ activism before exploring the implications of these for a renewed critical theoretical agenda in IR. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the division between academia and activism and the struggle by feminists to bridge the gap. Some academics theorize that while academics flex their cognitive skills, while activists are energized by passion. Feminists agree that while some efforts have been made to connect academia and activism, for example the emergence of women's studies, the division remains highly racialized and gendered.

This article offers a distinctive mapping of the feminist literature on globalisation. Part I sets the "new wave" of debate in the context of long-standing feminist theorising and organisation around global power and politics, drawing attention to a growing focus on economic processes. Part II explores the marginalisation of feminist arguments within globalisation studies, pointing to the dominance of an economistic model of globalisation as a key factor. It also identifies a parallel feminist tendency to neglect non-feminist efforts to develop non-economistic analyses of globalisation. Part III seeks to pinpoint the originality of the contribution of feminism. Although the most obvious starting point for such an evaluation is an emphasis upon gender, the feminist contribution is not reducible to this. Feminists have integrated gender analyses into accounts of multiple, intersecting relations of global power. They also offer distinctive analyses of the relation between the local and the global and the character of agency and resistance. The article indicates that the feminist response to economism still remains incomplete. Nonetheless, it demonstrates that feminist insights pose a significant challenge to non-feminist accounts of globalisation and to those organising within and against global power relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]