Transforming Masculine Rule : Agriculture and Rural Development in the European Union

Taking West and East Germany as case studies, Elisabeth Prugl shows how European agricultural policy has cemented long-standing gender-based inequalities and how feminists have used liberalization as an opportunity to challenge such inequalities. Through a comparison of the EU's rural development program known as LEADER as it played out in the Altmark region in the German East and in the Danube/Bavarian Forest region in the West, Prugl provides a close-up view of the power politics involved in government policies and programs. In identifying mechanisms of power (refusal, co-optation, compromise, normalization, and silencing of difference), Prugl illustrates how these mechanisms operate in arguments over gender relations within the state. Her feminist-constructivist approach to global restructuring as a gendered process brings into view multiple levels of governance and the variety of gender constructions operating in different societies. Ultimately, Prugl offers a new understanding of patriarchy as diverse, contested, and in flux.