"Fresh, original, and brings together in one place a set of authors who are very important to the field." -- Mary Margaret Fonow, coeditor of Beyond Methodology: Feminist Scholarship as Lived Research "Finally, a collection dedicated to demonstrating precisely what it means to do feminist research " -- Madonna Harrington Meyer, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign How likely is feminist research to promote change in society? Are some research methods more successful at bringing about change than others? Contributors to this volume discuss principles of feminist inquiry, providing examples from their own experience and evaluating research practices for their potential to promote social change. The twelve chapters cover methodologies including ethnographic study, in-depth interviewing, naming, and going public. Also explored are consultative relationships between academic researchers and activist organizations, participatory and advocacy research processes, and coalition building.

Feminists in the Southern Cone countries?Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay?between 1910 and 1930 obliged political leaders to consider gender in labor regulation, civil codes, public health programs, and politics. Feminism thus became a factor in the modernization of theseøgeographically linked but diverse societies in Latin America. Although feminists did not present a unified front in the discussion of divorce, reproductive rights, and public-health schemes to regulate sex and marriage, this work identifies feminism as a trigger for such discussion, which generated public and political debate on gender roles and social change. Asunci¢n Lavrin recounts changes inøgender relations and the role of women in each of the three countries, thereby contributing an enormous amount of new information and incisive analysis to the histories of Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay.

In this trenchant inquiry into the state of feminism, Angela McRobbie breaks open the politics of sexual equality and ′affirmative feminism′ and sets down a new theory of gender power. Challenging the most basic assumptions of the ′end′ of feminism, this book argues that invidious forms of gender re-stabilisation are being re-established. Consumer and popular culture encroach on the terrain of so-called female freedom, appearing supportive of female success, yet tying women into new post-feminist neurotic dependencies. With a scathing critique of ′women′s empowerment′, McRobbie has developed a distinctive feminist analysis that she uses to examine socio-cultural phenomena embedded in contemporary women′s lives: from fashion photography and the television ′make-over′ genre to eating disorders, body anxiety and ′illegible rage′. A turning point in feminist theory, The Aftermath of Feminism will set a new agenda for gender studies and cultural studies.

Can scholars generate knowledge and pedagogies that bolster local and global forms of resistance to U.S. imperialism, racial/gender oppression, and the economic violence of capitalist globalization? This book explores what happens when scholars create active engagements between the academy and communities of resistance. In so doing, it suggests a new direction for antiracist and feminist scholarship, rejecting models of academic radicalism that remain unaccountable to grassroots social movements. The authors explore the community and the academy as interlinked sites of struggle. This book provides models and the opportunity for critical reflection for students and faculty as they struggle to align their commitments to social justice with their roles in the academy. At the same time, they explore the tensions and challenges of engaging in such contested work.

Extrait de la préface : "The subject of this study is social change in the Middle East, North Africa, and Afghanistan ; its impact on women's legal status and social positions ; and women's varied responses to, and involvment in, change processes. It also deals with constructions of gender during periods of social and political change. Social change is usually described in terms of modernization, revolution, cultural challenges, and social movements. Much of the standard literature on these topics does not examine women or gender, and thus [the author] hopes this study will contribute to an appreciation of the significance of gender in the midst of change. Neither are there many sociological studies on MENA and Afghansitan or studies on women in MENA and Afghanistan from a sociological perspective. Myths and stereotypes abund regarding women, Islam, and the region, and the sevents of September 11 and since have only compounded them. This book is intended in part to "normalize" the Middle East by underscoring the salience of structural determinants other than religion. It focuses on the major social-change processes in the region to show how women's lives are shaped not only by "Islam" and "culture", but also by economic development, the state, class location, and the world system. Why the focus on women? It is [the autor's] contention that middle-class women are consciously and unconsciously major agents of social change in the region, at the vanguard of movements for modernity, democratization and citizenship."

Emerald Studies in Criminology, Feminism and Social Change offers a platform for innovative, engaged, and forward-looking feminist-informed work to explore the interconnections between social change and the capacity of criminology to grapple with the implications of such change.

In this timely volume, contributors from various disciplines analyze reaction and resistance to feminism in several areas of law and policy - child custody, child poverty, sexual harassment, and sexual assault - and in a number of institutional sites, such as courts, legislatures, families, the mainstream media, and the academy. Collectively, their studies paint a complicated, often contradictory, picture of feminism, law, and social change, offering feminists and activists empirically grounded knowledge to develop legal and political strategies for change.