Andrea L. Stanton

Carolyn M. Elliott

Edward Ramsamy

Peter J. Seybolt

In our age of globalization and multiculturalism, it has never been more important for Americans to understand and appreciate foreign cultures and how people live, love, and learn in areas of the world unfamiliar to most U.S. students and the general public. The four volumes in our cultural sociology reference encyclopedia take a step forward in this endeavor by presenting concise information on those regions likely to be most "foreign" to U.S. students: the Middle East, Asia, and Africa. The intent is to convey what daily life is like for people in these selected regions. It is hoped entries within these volumes will aid readers in efforts to understand the importance of cultural sociology, to appreciate the effects of cultural forces around the world, and to learn the history of countries and cultures within these important regions.

An Encyclopedia

Cultural Sociology of the Middle East, Asia, and Africa

Gail P. Kelly

Gail Kelly and Carolyn Elliott have assembled the latest and best available scholarship from a range of disciplines to illuminate the determinants, nature, and outcomes of womens education in third World nations. This study focuses on the undereducation of women in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East, delving into its causes, changes in female education patterns and the significance of these changes to societies and to womens lives. Articles in this volume lay the foundation for further research by examining womens schooling from the novel perspective that the social and economic outcomes of womens education are shaped by gender-sex systems that subordinate women to men.

Comparative Perspectives

Women's Education in the Third World

The empowerment of women is a broadly endorsed strategy for solving a host of difficult problems, from child poverty to gender violence to international development. The seventeen international scholars in this multi-disciplinary volume offer thoughtful critiques of the notion of empowerment based on their studies in twenty countries in all regions of the world. The comparative introduction places concepts of empowerment in the context of models of the market and of community, showing how contradictions in these models as they are enacted on the ground provide both spaces and constraints for women. The chapters consider opportunities for women in the context of globalization, resurgent nationalism and politicized religion, cultures of masculinity, and the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Africa. They show how initiatives at national or global levels are transformed by local cultures and power structures, and demonstrate the fruitfulness of tensions between universal values of human rights and contextualized understandings. This landmark, multi-disciplinary collection of original studies by distinguished international feminist scholars will be an essential addition to the fields of Political Science, Women’s Studies, Economics, Sociology, International Development, and Environmental Studies.

Carolyn M. Elliott

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