Annette Kuhn

AnnMarie Wolpe

These original essays are planned to provide a coherent basis for an understanding of women’s social and historical situation. This achieved by outlining the foundation of a systematic approach to an analysis of women’s relationship to modes of production and reproduction within a materialist framework. The essays, each with a brief editorial introduction, deal with issues and perspectives brought increasingly to the fore in recent years, not only in the women’s movement but in the social sciences generally. The articles are wide-ranging, covering such issues as patriarchy, paid and unpaid labour and the state. The centrality of two of the major themes – the family and the labour process – suggests that an understanding of women’s situation is necessarily based on an analysis of the structures of production and reproduction. The authors’ aim in producing Feminism and Materialism is to confront systematically theoretical issues current in the developing area of women’s studies, while recognising that this must constitute a critique of existing theoretical frameworks. The book will be of interest to teachers and students in the social sciences and in women’s studies, as well as to all those who wish to develop an understanding of what a materialist approach to feminism might be.

Women and Modes of Production

Feminism and Materialism (RLE Feminist Theory)

Drawing from her in-depth ethnographic study of a London comprehensive school the author shows how gender formation for both girls and boys is mediated by disciplinary control, sexuality and the curriculum. Her findings for girls and boys – with their important emphases – are revealed. So are the responses and perspectives of the teachers. Prior to publication of this volume much feminist writing depicted the subordination of girls as a function of patriarchal control, both in terms of the teaching the girls receive and the behaviour of the boys around them. The author's narrative implicitly and explicitly challenges some of these views.

AnnMarie Wolpe

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