Gender and the Politics of History
by Joan Wallach Scott
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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 show more 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 The book also includes a previously unpublished essay, “The Conundrum of Equality,” which takes up the question of affirmative action. show lessTags
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An important contribution to theoretical gender historical writing, this book was perhaps the first to introduce into gender history the notion of gender as the social construction of sexual difference. A stimulating theoretical discussion of the implications of history (as a discipline) and gender, and of the necessity for the explicit use of gender as a category of historical analysis. Ranges across a set of essays by the author, and might seem polemical at times. Nonetheless, a classic in its field.
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1,068 works; 18 members
Author Information
28+ Works 1,251 Members
Joan Wallach Scott is professor emerita in the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. 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).
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- Gender and the Politics of History
- Original publication date
- 1989
Classifications
- Genres
- Nonfiction, History, Sexuality and Gender Studies, General Nonfiction
- DDC/MDS
- 305.409 — Society, government, & culture Social sciences, sociology & anthropology Social group - Age, Gender, Ethnicity Women Standard subdivisions History, geographic treatment, biography
- LCC
- HQ1154 .S335 — Social sciences The family. Marriage, Women and Sexuality The Family. Marriage. Women Women. Feminism
- BISAC
Statistics
- Members
- 387
- Popularity
- 81,108
- Reviews
- 1
- Rating
- (3.82)
- Languages
- English, Italian, Japanese
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 10
- ASINs
- 2
