This collection of eighteen articles shows how conceptions of the political are expanded and revised when viewed through the lens of gender. Carefully organized to serve scholars and students across the social sciences, this book reexamines such basic notions as citizenship, collectivity, political resistance, and the state, drawing on examples with important historical and national variations.
Section One, "Gender, Citizenship, and Collectivity," includes Nancy Frazer and Linda Gordon's critique of dependency and citizenship; Iris Young on women as a social collective; Ruth Bloch on the feminization of public virtue in revolutionary America; Trisha Franzen on feminism and lesbian community, and Sonia Kruks on de Beauvoir and contemporary feminism.
"Collective Action and Women's Resistance," Section Two, features Louis Tilly's "Paths of Proletarianization"; Temma Kaplan's "Female Consciousness and Collective Action"; and five assessments of women's collective action worldwide: Samira Haj on Palestine, Arlene McLeod on Egypt, Gay Seidman on South Africa, Nancy Sternbach "et al." on Latin America, and Anne Walthall on Japan.
Concluding with a section on gender and the state, "Rethinking the Political" also features Bronwyn Winter on the law and cultural relativism; Sherene Razack on sexual violence; Wendy Luttrell on educational institutions; Patricia Stamp on ethnic conflict in postcolonial Kenya; Elizabeth Schmidt on patriarchy and capitalism in Zimbabwe; and Muriel Nazzari on the "woman question" in post-revolutionary Cuba.

In Telling Stories, Mary Jo Maynes, Jennifer L. Pierce, and Barbara Laslett argue that personal narratives autobiographies, oral histories, life history interviews, and memoirs are an important research tool for understanding the relationship between people and their societies. Gathering examples from throughout the world and from premodern as well as contemporary cultures, they draw from labor history and class analysis, feminist sociology, race relations, and anthropology to demonstrate the value of personal narratives for scholars and students alike.

Telling Stories explores why and how personal narratives should be used as evidence, and the methods and pitfalls of their use. The authors stress the importance of recognizing that stories that people tell about their lives are never simply individual. Rather, they are told in historically specific times and settings and call on rules, models, and social experiences that govern how story elements link together in the process of self-narration. Stories show how individuals' motivations, emotions, and imaginations have been shaped by their cumulative life experiences. In turn, Telling Stories demonstrates how the knowledge produced by personal narrative analysis is not simply contained in the stories told; the understanding that takes place between narrator and analyst and between analyst and audience enriches the results immeasurably."

In Telling Stories, Mary Jo Maynes, Jennifer L. Pierce, and Barbara Laslett argue that personal narratives autobiographies, oral histories, life history interviews, and memoirs are an important research tool for understanding the relationship between people and their societies. Gathering examples from throughout the world and from premodern as well as contemporary cultures, they draw from labor history and class analysis, feminist sociology, race relations, and anthropology to demonstrate the value of personal narratives for scholars and students alike.

Telling Stories explores why and how personal narratives should be used as evidence, and the methods and pitfalls of their use. The authors stress the importance of recognizing that stories that people tell about their lives are never simply individual. Rather, they are told in historically specific times and settings and call on rules, models, and social experiences that govern how story elements link together in the process of self-narration. Stories show how individuals' motivations, emotions, and imaginations have been shaped by their cumulative life experiences. In turn, Telling Stories demonstrates how the knowledge produced by personal narrative analysis is not simply contained in the stories told; the understanding that takes place between narrator and analyst and between analyst and audience enriches the results immeasurably."

This volume of recent "Signs "articles offers a number of significant contributions to feminist debates on history and theory. It illustrates the uses of theories in recent feminist historical research and the often contentious arguments that surround them. The readings are organized into three sections. The first draws on the tradition of political economy, and discusses the importance of class relations for understanding historical events and social relationships and the expansion of concepts of political economy to include race. The second section, on "The Body," demonstrates how feminist scholars have increasingly worked to re-place the body, to move it from its traditionally less valued position in the hierarchal Enlightenment mind/body split to an approach that emphasizes the body as both material and discursive, both "real" and "representational." The final section, "Discourse," focuses on an examination of the productive power of language in both reflecting and shaping experience and in the contestation of social relations of power.

This collection of eighteen articles shows how conceptions of the political are expanded and revised when viewed through the lens of gender. Carefully organized to serve scholars and students across the social sciences, this book reexamines such basic notions as citizenship, collectivity, political resistance, and the state, drawing on examples with important historical and national variations.
Section One, "Gender, Citizenship, and Collectivity," includes Nancy Frazer and Linda Gordon's critique of dependency and citizenship; Iris Young on women as a social collective; Ruth Bloch on the feminization of public virtue in revolutionary America; Trisha Franzen on feminism and lesbian community, and Sonia Kruks on de Beauvoir and contemporary feminism.
"Collective Action and Women's Resistance," Section Two, features Louis Tilly's "Paths of Proletarianization"; Temma Kaplan's "Female Consciousness and Collective Action"; and five assessments of women's collective action worldwide: Samira Haj on Palestine, Arlene McLeod on Egypt, Gay Seidman on South Africa, Nancy Sternbach "et al." on Latin America, and Anne Walthall on Japan.
Concluding with a section on gender and the state, "Rethinking the Political" also features Bronwyn Winter on the law and cultural relativism; Sherene Razack on sexual violence; Wendy Luttrell on educational institutions; Patricia Stamp on ethnic conflict in postcolonial Kenya; Elizabeth Schmidt on patriarchy and capitalism in Zimbabwe; and Muriel Nazzari on the "woman question" in post-revolutionary Cuba.

Introduction Barbara Laslett, Ruth-Ellen Boetcher Joeres. African-American Women's History and the Metalanguage of Race Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham From Servitude to Service Work: Historical Continuities in the Racial Division of Paid Reproductive Labor Evelyn Nakano Glenn The Occult of True Black Womanhood: Critical Demeanor and Black Feminist Studies Ann duCille Beyond White and Other: Relationality and Narratives of Race in Feminist Discourse Susan Stanford Friedman Gender as Seriality: Thinking about Women as a Social Collective Iris Marion Young Feminist Fiction and the Uses of Memory Gayle Greene Gender as a Personal and Cultural Construction Nancy J. Chodorow The Construction of Subjectivity and the Paradox of Resistance: Reintegrating Feminist Anthropology and Psychology Maureen A. Mahoney, Barbara Yngvesson. Purity, Impurity, and Separation Maria Lugones Differences and Identities: Feminism and the Albuquerque Lesbian Community Trisha Franzen Getting It Right Marilyn Frye When a Looker Becomes a Bitch: Lisa Olson, Sport, and the Heterosexual Matrix Lisa Disch, Mary Jo Kane. "The Teachers, They All Had Their Pets": Concepts of Gender, Knowledge, and Power Wendy Luttrell About the Contributors Index

Introduction Barbara Laslett, Ruth-Ellen Boetcher Joeres. African-American Women's History and the Metalanguage of Race Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham From Servitude to Service Work: Historical Continuities in the Racial Division of Paid Reproductive Labor Evelyn Nakano Glenn The Occult of True Black Womanhood: Critical Demeanor and Black Feminist Studies Ann duCille Beyond White and Other: Relationality and Narratives of Race in Feminist Discourse Susan Stanford Friedman Gender as Seriality: Thinking about Women as a Social Collective Iris Marion Young Feminist Fiction and the Uses of Memory Gayle Greene Gender as a Personal and Cultural Construction Nancy J. Chodorow The Construction of Subjectivity and the Paradox of Resistance: Reintegrating Feminist Anthropology and Psychology Maureen A. Mahoney, Barbara Yngvesson. Purity, Impurity, and Separation Maria Lugones Differences and Identities: Feminism and the Albuquerque Lesbian Community Trisha Franzen Getting It Right Marilyn Frye When a Looker Becomes a Bitch: Lisa Olson, Sport, and the Heterosexual Matrix Lisa Disch, Mary Jo Kane. "The Teachers, They All Had Their Pets": Concepts of Gender, Knowledge, and Power Wendy Luttrell About the Contributors Index

This volume of recent "Signs" articles offers some of the most significant contributions to the debates on history and theory. Illustrating the uses of theories in recent feminist historical research and the often contentious arguments that surround them, the articles speak to a number of discussions, including the theoretical tradition of political economy, the importance of class relations for understanding historical events and social relationships, and the expansion of concepts from political economy to include race. Included as well are the workings of gender signification in terms of the body, moving it from its traditionally lesser position in the hierarchical Enlightenment mind/body split. A further group of articles concerns the discursive character of power relations and the dialogic quality of language. The volume will be extremely useful for feminist historians in a variety of disciplines as well as women's studies students interested in issues of interdisciplinarity. Sixteen articles include contributions by Karen Anderson, Josephine Donovan, Nancy Folbre, Evelyn Nakano Glenn, April Gordon, Luise White, C. Fred Blake, Antoinette Burton, Jane Desmond, Nancy M. Theriot, Kathleen Canning, Sueann Caulfield, Lisa Duggan, Nancy Fraser and Linda Gordon, Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, and Sandra R. Joshel.