Feminist periodicals and the production of cultural value: The canadian context

• Published in: Women's studies international forum 2002-03, Vol.25 (2), p.209-223
• Main Author: Godard, Barbara
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Canada; Community; Cultural values; Culture; Economic Change; Feminism; Literature; Periodicals; Poverty; Sex; Social Stratification; Texts; Welfare; Women; Writing
• ISSN: 0277-5395; 1879-243X
• DOI: 10.1016/S0277-5395(02)00231-5

Addressing questions about the distribution of power and influence—that is, about the constitution of cultural value, this article examines the dynamics of feminist periodicals in the field of cultural production in Canada. I outline three phases in the changing distribution of value since the 1980s in the course of a restructuring of the Canadian welfare state which has been accompanied by a feminization of poverty: (1) promotion of the exchange values of the market; (2) withdrawal of state funds from feminist activism; (3) resignification of culture. I draw on Bourdieu's materialist approach, but I introduce gender as a category into his complex model of social stratification and so trouble his equation of prestige (cultural capital) with disinterest in economic profits. Feminist periodicals show that anti-economic behaviour does not necessarily translate into symbolic recognition in the public sphere. Producing “a labour of love,” feminist editorial collectives participate in an economy of the gift rather than one of accumulation. In the present triumph of exchange value, feminist labour risks foundering in a more strongly entrenched private sphere rather than participating in the collective as citizens.