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As triumphantly announced in journals and magazines, a la Fukuyama, late capitalism and its contingent logic of neoliberalism (ostensibly) reigns supreme, exploiting each site it encounters with precision. According to this fantasy of capitalism's seamless and ultimate triumph, domination is produced as inevitable, social struggle and revolution, a utopian dream. Yet, what many have seen since the 1990s is that this narrative requires military mobilizations of different kinds (i.e., “the war on terror” has become of late the reason thousands are being killed daily in Afghanistan and Iraq).

On the occasion of the publication of the 20th volume of the Advances in Gender Research series, this chapter reviews the series goals and previous volumes and introduces the themes and chapters of the current one.

The chapter shows both continuity and change in approaches to theories, research methods, pedagogy, and praxis in gender studies.

Newer approaches, gender-centered, intersectional and global, offer a critique of older ways of gathering and understanding data, ways that respond to and are impacted by social change.

The chapter and the volume are intended to encourage further advances in gender research.

Brooke Ackerly is an assistant professor in political science at Vanderbilt University. Her research interests include democratic theory, feminist methodologies, human rights, social and environmental justice. She integrates empirical research on activism into her theoretical work. Her publications include Political Theory and Feminist Social Criticism (Cambridge University Press, 2000), “Women's Human Rights Activists as Cross-Cultural Theorists” in International Journal of Feminist Politics (2001), “Is Liberal Democracy the Only Way? Confucianism and Democracy” in Political Theory (2005), and Universal Human Rights in a World of Difference (Cambridge, forthcoming). She is currently working on the intersection of global economic, environmental, and gender justice. With Jacqui True (University of Auckland), a text on feminist research methodologies, Doing Feminist Research in Social and Political Sciences (Palgrave), is forthcoming.