The essays in Feminist Politics contest some of the prevailing conceptualizations of identity and difference, as well as the functions of these concepts in feminist political discourse and praxis. Doing so, they amply demonstrate that issues of identity and difference have a central place in contemporary feminist scholarship. The authors of these essays have worked to develop new ways of understanding and living out differences which will both preserve and celebrate them while also fostering the necessary conditions for opening dialogue and forming new coalitions. The intent of these efforts has been to thereby engender imaginative new strategies for the personal, spiritual, and sociopolitical changes that will enable human growth, wellbeing, and flourishing. While the focus of the work represented here is understandably on women, the issues that are raised are given additional urgency, explicitly in some of the papers and implicitly in others, by the situation of their concerns in the context of the world created by the Bush administration. Because that administration has foregrounded issues of identity and difference in ways that are not only inhumane and often inaccurate but dangerous for all of us, the new ways of thinking and acting that are proposed here have a much broader application. Thus these papers truly invite not only feminists but all people to move in new directions. Taken as a whole, this volume represents cutting-edge thinking from an international perspective in these important and pressing areas for feminist research and praxis.

The essays in Feminist Politics contest some of the prevailing conceptualizations of identity and difference, as well as the functions of these concepts in feminist political discourse and praxis. Doing so, they amply demonstrate that issues of identity and difference have a central place in contemporary feminist scholarship. The authors of these essays have worked to develop new ways of understanding and living out differences which will both preserve and celebrate them while also fostering the necessary conditions for opening dialogue and forming new coalitions. The intent of these efforts has been to thereby engender imaginative new strategies for the personal, spiritual, and sociopolitical changes that will enable human growth, wellbeing, and flourishing. While the focus of the work represented here is understandably on women, the issues that are raised are given additional urgency, explicitly in some of the papers and implicitly in others, by the situation of their concerns in the context of the world created by the Bush administration. Because that administration has foregrounded issues of identity and difference in ways that are not only inhumane and often inaccurate but dangerous for all of us, the new ways of thinking and acting that are proposed here have a much broader application. Thus these papers truly invite not only feminists but all people to move in new directions. Taken as a whole, this volume represents cutting-edge thinking from an international perspective in these important and pressing areas for feminist research and praxis.

InBelief, Bodies, and Being, twelve distinguished contributors present diverse and illuminating viewpoints on feminist issues of embodiement, materialism, and agency from feminist and postmodernist philosophical perspectives. Beginnning by positing non-traditional ways of approaching ontological concerns (through the acknowledgement of agential realties and the usage of an ontology of tropes), the volume concludes by addressing highly specific, culturally constituted types of postmodern bodies (monstrous, anorexic, and pharmaceutical bodies).

InBelief, Bodies, and Being, twelve distinguished contributors present diverse and illuminating viewpoints on feminist issues of embodiement, materialism, and agency from feminist and postmodernist philosophical perspectives. Beginnning by positing non-traditional ways of approaching ontological concerns (through the acknowledgement of agential realties and the usage of an ontology of tropes), the volume concludes by addressing highly specific, culturally constituted types of postmodern bodies (monstrous, anorexic, and pharmaceutical bodies).

Relationship Based Leadership has been written primarily for child-care leaders looking for a better way to manage their agencies-one that emphasizes cooperation rather that control; motivation from within rather that from without; and accountability to a team, more than to a boss. Such changes not only require fundamental shifts in how managers and workers think, but even greater changes in their relationships to one another. It carefully explains the basic changes needed to bring about relationship-based leadership, including principles of motivation, managing social situations, principles of team leadership, strategic planning, keys to being more effective in relationships, staff development strategies, and working through personality conflicts at all levels of an organization. The text illustrates these concepts with case studies (derived from on-site interviews with early childhood program directors) and anecdotal experiences in actual childcare settings. The book's applied focus utilizes learning exercises that allow the reader to apply the principles and skills presented in each chapter.