How have ideas about white women figured in the history of racism? Vron Ware argues that they have been central, and that feminism has, in many ways, developed as a political movement within racist societies. Dissecting the different meanings of femininity and womanhood, Beyond the Pale examines the political connections between black and white women, both within contemporary racism and feminism, as well as in historical examples like the anti-slavery movement and the British campaign against lynching in the United States. (...) Beyond the Pale is a major contribution to anti-racist work, confronting the historical meanings of whiteness as a way of overcoming the moralism that so often infuses anti-racist movements. (shrink)

Bringing together eighteen thought-provoking articles--most of them written especially for this volume--Women and Social Protest addresses a long-neglected area in social history and politics, showing how in recent years feminist social scientists have begun to reexamine women's involvement in social protest, the innovative forms this protest takes, and the impact of activism on women's lives. This timely and comprehensive anthology provides a much-needed forum for discussion of these topics, and shows how the sociological and political literature has long ignored, masked, (...) or distorted the political activities of women, thus creating the stereotype of the "apolitical woman."Drawing on the work of sociologists, political scientists, historians, and experts in women's studies, Women and Social Protest explores four types of social protest--economic; racial, ethnic, and nationalistic; social nurturing and humanistic; and women's rights--considering a wealth of data from different eras and case studies from around the world. An introductory chapter provides a theoretical framework for the essays and helpful introductions to each section identify and elaborate general themes. In addition, a comprehensive bibliography offers the most extensive, up-to-date list of readings available. One of the first books to examine this important topic in detail, Women and Social Protest is a valuable contribution to the expanding field of social political theory. (shrink)

Surely since the Enlightenment, if not before, the study of mind has centered principally on how man achieves a “true” knowledge of the world. Emphasis in this pursuit has varied, of course: empiricists have concentrated on the mind’s interplay with an external world of nature, hoping to find the key in the association of sensations and ideas, while rationalists have looked inward to the powers of mind itself for the principles of right reason. The objective, in either case, has been (...) to discover how we achieve “reality,” that is to say, how we get a reliable fix on the world, a world that is, as it were, assumed to be immutable and, as it were, “there to be observed.”This quest has, of course, had a profound effect on the development of psychology, and the empiricist and rationalist traditions have dominated our conceptions of how the mind grows and how it gets its grasp on the “real world.” Indeed, at midcentury Gestalt theory represented the rationalist wing of this enterprise and American learning theory the empiricist. Both gave accounts of mental development as proceeding in some more or less linear and uniform fashion from an initial incompetence in grasping reality to a final competence, in one case attributing it to the work out of internal processes or mental organization, and in the other to some unspecified principle of reflection by which—whether through reinforcement, association, or conditioning—we came to respond to the world “as it is.” There have always been dissidents who challenged these views, but conjectures about human mental development have been influenced far more by majoritarian rationalism and empiricism than by these dissident voices. Jerome Bruner is research professor of psychology at New York University, where he is also serving as Meyer Visiting Professor of Law. His most recent book, Acts of Meaning, appeared in 1990. In 1987 he received the Balzan Prize for “a lifetime contribution to the study of human psychology.”. (shrink)

This article develops a cross-cultural and historical theory of antifeminist movements. Such movements are composed of two elements, which often involve very different types of people: vested-interest groups and voluntary associations. Five predictions concerning the social composition of antifeminist vested-interest groups and voluntary organizations and antifeminist movement ideology are derived from the theory. Evidence taken from existing literature pertaining to both first-wave and second-wave antifeminist movements in a variety of nations is reviewed. Substantial support is found for all five predictions. (...) We conclude that antifeminist movement adherents are responding to realistic threats. For men and vested-interest groups, the threat is primarily class based, but also extends to their status as family head; for women, it is primarily status based as wives and mothers, but also class-based inasmuch as their husbands' economic interests are threatened. (shrink)