Patriarchy And Class

A coherent and focussed exploration into how Patriarchy constructed pre-capitalist and capitalist society, and its role in the transition from feudalism to capitalism.

At a time when we are witnessing a worldwide expansion of capitalist relations, a feminist rethinking of Marx’s work is vitally important. In Patriarchy of the Wage, Silvia Federici, bestselling author and the most important Marxist feminist of our era, asks why Marx's crucial analysis of the exploitation of human labor was blind to women’s work and struggle on the terrain of social reproduction. Why was Marx unable to anticipate the profound transformations in the proletarian family that took place at the turn of the nineteenth century creating a new patriarchal regime? Patriarchy of the Wage does more than just redefine classical Marxism. It is an urgent call for a new kind of radical politics.

Sylvia Walby provides an overview of recent theoretical debates - Marxism, radical and liberal feminism, post-structuralism and dual systems theory. She shows how each can be applied to a range of substantive topics from paid work, housework and the state, to culture, sexuality and violence, relying on the most up-to-date empirical findings. Arguing that patriarchy has been vigorously adaptable to the changes in women's position, and that some of women's hard-won social gains have been transformed into new traps, Walby proposes a combination of class analysis with radical feminist theory to explain gender relations in terms of both patriarchal and capitalist structure.

This book argues for the applicability of a materialist mode of production analysis to the situation of women in Africa. It briefly reviews some of the intellectual background and current theoretical dilemmas of marxism-feminism.

The essays collected in this volume reflect the upsurge of interest in the research and writing of feminist history in the 1970s/80s and illustrate the developments which have taken place – in the types of questions asked, the methodologies employed, and the scope and sophistication of the analytical approaches which have been adopted. Focusing on women in nineteenth-century Britain and America, this book includes work by scholars in both countries and takes its place in a long history of Anglo-American debate. The collection adopts 'the doubled vision of feminist theory', the view that it is the simultaneous operation of relations of class and of sex/gender that perpetuate both patriarchy and capitalism. This view informs a wide variety of contributions from 'Class and Gender in Victorian England', to 'Servants, Sexual Relations and the Risks of Illegitimacy', 'Free Black Women', 'The Power of Women’s Networks', and 'Socialism, Feminism and Sexual Antagonism in the London Tailoring Trade'. Both the vigour and the urgency of scholarship infused with social aims can be clearly felt in the essays collected here.

This sociopolitical study shows why patriarchy has been the dominant pattern in Algeria, in spite of colonialism, revolutionary war, and the implementation of state socialism after independence. Knauss carefully analyzes Algerian class formation, ideology, and gender relations, and then demonstrates how these factors decisively influenced the persistence of patriarchy as well as the status of women. To further enhance this model historical drama, there are interviews with former President Ahmed Ben Bella, Berber activist Hocine Ait Ahmed, and exiled socialist Mohammed Boudiaf.

Thomas Hardy's fiction has had a remarkably strong appeal for general readers for decades, and his poetry has been acclaimed as among the most influential of the twentieth century. His work still creates passionate advocacy and opposition. The Cambridge Companion to Thomas Hardy is an essential introduction to this most enigmatic of writers. These commissioned essays from an international team of contributors comprises a general overview of all Hardy' s work and specific demonstrations of Hardy's ideas and literary skills. Individual essays explore Hardy's biography, aesthetics, his famous attachment to Wessex, and the impact on his work of developments in science, religion and philosophy in the late nineteenth century. Hardy's writing is also analysed against developments in contemporary critical theory and issues such as sexuality and gender. The volume also contains a detailed chronology of Hardy's life and publications, and a guide to further reading.