Suchergebnisse

This concise introduction to feminist theorizing traces three separate waves of feminist theory, from the equality movement of the 1970s and 1980s, to the postmodernist examination of different women and women's groups of today. The book highlights the close connection between action and theory, in addition to the historical development of feminist theories. These changes in feminist thought and praxis are examined through some celebrated cases of recent decades

Two developments in social theory, one somewhat older than the other, are raising a similar set of concerns. One, the older, is the critique of positivism as a model for social understanding, and in its most exemplary form provides the underpinnings for the trenchant criticism that has come out of the Frankfurt School. The second, the mole recent, comes out of Women's Studies and, like the critical theory of Jurgen Habermas and his predecessors, speaks to the need to understand human beings based on methods other than empiricism.I should like to propose the joining in dialogue of the two, for while I see them as having much in common, I recognize a carefully considered set of arguments coming out of the Frankfurt School, arguments which could enhance the very understanding of the world of women that feminist scholarship has as its objective.After explicating some key arguments out of Alfred Schutz, the paper indicates where the Frankfurt School parts ways with the phenomenological tradition. Of particular import is Habermas' "emancipatory interest." Certain recent writings in feminist theory are looked at for the kind of attack they make on scientism and for the rationale behind their call for a turn to the phenomenological or hermeneutic method. The paper then raises concerns about (1) the importance of understanding the historical debates on positivism; (2) the danger of conflating intuition and hermeneutics; and (3) the suggestions that women may occupy a privileged standpoint from which to interpret the social world.

Three recent studies on socialization processes & the family are reviewed. Edward Shorter's The Making of the Modern Family (New York: Basic Books, 1977) is presented as a study on family privatization & the replacement of lineal/property bonding by sexual & internal ties; the apparent endorsement of a "new" liberal capitalism in fostering such change is critiqued for lack of specificity. Letha & John Scanzoni's Men, Women, and Change: A Sociology of Marriage and the Family, 2nd edition, (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1981) is seen as positing "rationalization of marriage & the family" based on a questionable model of economic imperatives & change. Mark Poster's Critical Theory of the Family (New York: Seabury Press, 1978) is discussed primarily as a critique of Sigmund Freud, which highlights a dependence of the Oedipal model on the nuclear family & capitalist accumulation. All three works are evaluated as positivist in outlook, forecasting a developing liberalized or utopian family model; the alternative uses of critical theory in identifying historical processes in the family, incorporating the Marxist & Freudian frameworks, are emphasized. (See IRPS listings in this issue for these three works.) L. Whittemore.