"Discussion about slavery and racial capitalism are generating renewed interest in pre-capitalist merchant economies and/or merchant capitalism, and rekindling debates about their influence in transitions to capitalism. Thus far, however, these discussions about merchant economy/merchant capitalism have not been extensively addressed in feminist political economy, even though they obviously bear important implications for understanding of gendered division of labor, primitive accumulation, and social reproduction. I examine these questions by focusing on the role of trade in the Ottoman/Balkan economy – usually excluded from analysis of European capitalism - and on the complex role of women within it, in hope that shedding more light on this liminal case can also illuminate some of the contradictory currents in the contemporary merchant capitalism and its interplay with gendered identities." - Aida A. Hozić
Aida A. Hozić is Associate Professor of international relations at the University of Florida, Gainesville, United States. Her research is situated at the intersections of feminist political economy, cultural studies, and international security. She is the author of Hollyworld: Space, Power and Fantasy in the American Economy (Cornell University Press, 2002), co-editor (with Jacqui True) of Scandalous Economics: Gender and Politics of Financial Crises (Oxford University Press, 2016). She is currently completing a monograph entitled Follow the Bodies: Feminist Political Economy of War and Peace. Her work has been supported by the John D. and Katherine T. MacArthur Foundation, IREX, Institute for Turkish Studies, Open Society Institute, multiple Fulbright awards and many other fellowships. She is a Co-Lead Editor of Review of International Political Economy and a Rotating Editor-in-Chief of International Political Sociology. Her public writing has appeared on the pages of Slate, Foreign Policy, Politico, Al Jazeera, Le Monde, Guernica and other media. In the Spring of 2023, she is a Fulbright Distinguished Scholar at Pembroke College, Oxford.