This landmark work from a renowned feminist historian is a foundational demonstration of the uses of gender as a conceptual tool for cultural and historical analysis. Joan Wallach Scott offers a trenchant critique of the compartmentalization of women's history, arguing that political and social categories are always fundamentally shaped by gender and that questions of gender are essential to considerations of difference in history. Exploring topics ranging from language and class to the politics of work and family, Gender and the Politics of History is a vital contribution to feminist history and historical methodology that also speaks more broadly to the ongoing redefinition of gender in our political and cultural vocabularies.
This anniversary edition of a classic text in feminist theory and history shows the evergreen relevance of Scott's work to the humanities and social sciences. In a new preface, Scott reflects on the book's legacy and implications for contemporary politics as well as what she has reconsidered as a result of her engagement with psychoanalytic theory. The book also includes a previously unpublished essay, ""The Conundrum of Equality,"" which takes up the question of affirmative action.
By:
Joan Wallach Scott
Imprint: Columbia University Press
Country of Publication: United States
Edition: thirtieth anniversary edition
Dimensions:
Height: 229mm,
Width: 152mm,
ISBN: 9780231188012
ISBN 10: 0231188013
Series: Gender and Culture Series
Pages: 288
Publication Date: 23 January 2018
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Preface to the Thirtieth Anniversary Edition Acknowledgments Introduction Part I: Toward a Feminist History 1. Women’s History 2. Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis Part II: Gender and Class 3. On Language, Gender, and Working-Class History 4. Women in The Making of the English Working Class Part III: Gender in History 5. Work Identities for Men and Women: The Politics of Work and Family in the Parisian Garment Trades in 1848 6. A Statistical Representation of Work: La Statistique de l’industrie à Paris, 1847–1848 7. “L’ouvriere! Mot impie, sordide . . .”: Women Workers in the Discourse of French Political Economy, 1840–1860 Part IV: Equality and Difference 8. The Sears Case 9. American Women Historians, 1884–1984 10. The Conundrum of Equality Notes Index
Joan Wallach Scott is professor emerita in the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. Her books include Only Paradoxes to Offer: French Feminists and the Rights of Man (1996); The Fantasy of Feminist History (2011); and Sex and Secularism (2017).
Reviews for Gender and the Politics of History
A radical book, provocative, exciting, and very satisfying. * Journal of Social History * Scott's book makes a powerful case not only for a historical scholarship that recognizes the depth of gender difference in human experience but also for a renewed self-consciousness about the role of the historian in constructing the meanings of our past. * American Historical Review * At once a 'how-to' manual . . . and a broad assessment of the state of women's history in the 1980s. It will clearly become a classic volume for both feminist theory and women's history. * Gender and Society * Scott has given us an intelligent, sensitive reflection on the nature of events, of thought, of judgment, of history. * New Republic * Thoughtful and pioneering. * Nation * A real tour de force . . . evidence of the value of Scott's project to rethink gender and history simultaneously. * New York Times *
