Description
Book Synopsis* New edition of a popular and highly lauded introduction to gender - the first edition won Choice s outstanding academic title award. * Provides an excellent survey of the key theoretical approaches that have been developed in gender studies, and how they relate to social and political life.
Trade Review‘This new edition of Gender provides a highly accessible overview of the changing understanding of this powerful social construct. Using a narrative story-telling approach, Harriet Bradley shifts seamlessly between analyses of how gender shapes everyday life and discussions of how it is deployed in various institutions. By weaving together her own experience of gendered processes with the structural practices of consumption, production, and reproduction in local and international contexts, Bradley gives new meaning to “the personal is political”.’
Nancy Naples, University of Connecticut
‘Harriet Bradley has succeeded in producing a unique and extremely engaging introduction to the complex concept of “gender” which will invigorate scholars at all levels. Dispelling any notion that either feminist theory or gender analysis are passé, she deftly interweaves theoretical exegesis, analysis of contemporary social and political issues, and vignettes which illustrate gender as a lived experience.’
Barbara L. Marshall, Trent University, Canada
‘The first edition of Gender has become an indispensable guide to sociological debates in the field. This revised edition is even better. Harriet Bradley turns her clear analytical gaze on the changing nature of gender relations in an era of austerity, seeing both optimistic and pessimistic trends in the emergence of a new politics of gender.’
Linda McDowell, University of Oxford
Table of ContentsPreface to Second Edition vii
Introduction: The Concept of Gender 1
IN AND OUT OF THE FRAME: A PERSONAL HISTORY OF GENDER 9
1. What's in a Name? Meanings and Usages of Gender 15
GENDERING AND CLASS: GROWING UP GIRL, GROWING UP BOY 29
2. Gender and Modernity 37
'WHAT'S IT ALL ABOUT?' BEING A MAN IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY 54
3. Gender and Postmodernity 64
'SISTERS UNDER THEIR SKINS'? IDENTITIES IN A GLOBAL AGE 87
4. Gendered Worlds: Production 98
HAVING IT ALL: FAMILY AND EMPLOYMENT IN WOMEN'S LIVES 118
5. Gendered Worlds: Reproduction 129
MEN, MARRIAGE AND EMOTIONS: ARRANGEMENTS BETWEEN THE SEXES 150
6. Gendered Worlds: Consumption 159
IT DOESN'T HAVE TO BE THIS WAY: GENDERED UTOPIAS 183
Conclusion: What the Future Holds – Gender, Theory and Politics 195
Questions for Discussion 221
Glossary 223
References 227
Index 242
