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BISA International Political Economy Group (IPEG) Book Prize, 2010

This year the IPEG prize panellists are delighted to announce the award of the annual book prize to Penny Griffin's Gendering the World Bank: Neoliberalism and the Gendered Foundations of Global Governance (Palgrave, 2009), which tackles the performativity of the World Bank and its discursive (heteronormative) articulation of neoliberalism. Breaking truly new ground in traversing debates on gender, queer theory, development studies, and political economy, Gendering the World Bank delivers a fresh and innovative analysis of the manner in which neoliberal development strategy is gendered through heterosexual configurations of World Bank discourse. The book departs from what can be called a "diffusionist" account of capitalism, meaning the straightforward unfolding of neoliberalism from a capitalist "centre" in the North to a dependent and reactive "periphery" in the South, to thereby also connect with wider postcolonial thought. By offering a compelling statement on the boundaries of heterosexualised discursive practices in IPE, Gendering the World Bank makes a distinctive contribution to revealing the gendered foundations of neoliberal global governance. This year witnesses another first in the history of IPEG, with the prize awarded to a book that focuses on the discourses of sex and gender in global governance. It is hoped that Penny Griffin’s book will offer the opportunity for greater intellectual reflection on World Bank discourse and lead to the sparking (rather than parking) of debate on the normative articulations of gender and heterosexuality so central to the formation of social identities and economic behaviour in IPE.

Previous awardees

2006 Graham Harrison, The World Bank and Africa: The Construction of Governance States (Routledge, 2004)
2007 Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera: How Financial Models Shape Markets (MIT Press, 2006)
2008 Matthew Patterson, Automobile Politics: Ecology and Cultural Political Economy (Cambridge University Press, 2007)
2009 William Robinson, Latin America and Global Capitalism: A Critical Globalization Perspective (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008)
2010 Penny Griffin, Gendering the World Bank: Neoliberalism and the Gendered Foundations of Global Governance (Palgrave, 2009).