In this pathbreaking book, a well-known feminist and sociologist--who is also the Founding Editor of Gender & Society--challenges our most basic assumptions about gender. Judith Lorber views gender as wholly a product of socialization subject to human agency, organization, and interpretation. In her new paradigm, gender is an institution comparable to the economy, the family, and religion in its significance and consequences.

Drawing on many schools of feminist scholarship and on research from anthropology, history, sociology, social psychology, sociolinguistics, and cultural...

Judith Lorber and Lisa Jean Moore consider the interface between the social institutions of gender and Western medicine in this brief, lively textbook. They offer a distinct feminist viewpoint to analyze issues of power and politics concerning physical illness. SIGNS labeled the first edition 'a rich and imaginative work.' In the extensively revised second edition of this successful text, the authors add chapters on disability and genital surgeries. They also update and expand their discussions of social epidemiology, AIDS, the health professions, PMS, menopause, and feminist health care. For...

Judith Lorber and Lisa Jean Moore consider the interface between the social institutions of gender and Western medicine in this brief, lively textbook. They offer a distinct feminist viewpoint to analyze issues of power and politics concerning physical illness. SIGNS labeled the first edition 'a rich and imaginative work.' In the extensively revised second edition of this successful text, the authors add chapters on disability and genital surgeries. They also update and expand their discussions of social epidemiology, AIDS, the health professions, PMS, menopause, and feminist health care. For...

This is an excellent and timely addition to the literature on Gender and Women's Studies. Each chapter explores contemporary questions and dilemmas in feminist theory and research, assessing the impacts of past research and feminist actions. Leading scholars discuss such topics as the state of women's and gender studies, feminist epistemology, cultural representations, globalization and the state, families, and work. This book is sure to be an essential resource for gender scholars and students' - Joan Acker, University of Oregon

This breathtakingly broad,...

"Medical Professionals and Their Work" conveys how medical people shape and organize the knowledge, perception, and experience of illness, as well as the substance of illness behavior, its management, and treatment. It is now well established that the unique symbolic equipment of the human animal is intimately connected with the functioning of the body. Freidson and Lorber believe that the proper understanding of specifically human rather than generally "animal" illness requires careful and systematic study of the social meanings surrounding illness.The content of social meanings varies from...

New Blood offers a fresh interdisciplinary look at feminism-in-flux. For over three decades, menstrual activists have questioned the safety and necessity of feminine care products while contesting menstruation as a deeply entrenched taboo. Chris Bobel shows how a little-known yet enduring force in the feminist health, environmental, and consumer rights movements lays bare tensions between second- and third-wave feminisms and reveals a complicated story of continuity and change within the women's movement.

Through her critical ethnographic lens, Bobel focuses on debates central to...

Designed for undergraduate students, Gendered Bodies: Feminist Perspectives, Second Edition, is a concise textbook/reader that provides a critical and multifaceted approach to the study of gendered bodies. Acclaimed scholars Judith Lorber and Lisa Jean Moore analyze the construction of gendered bodies in different contexts. Exploring a broad range of both long-established and more cutting-edge topics in feminist studies, Lorber and Moore present scholarly research, offer information on relevant laws and political events, and point to directions for social change.

Gendered...

In Gender Inequality: Feminist Theories and Politics, Fifth Edition, internationally renowned feminist Judith Lorber examines thirteen evolving theories of gender inequality. Tightly structured around Lorber's own paradigm of "reform, resistance, rebellion," this combination text/reader acknowledges feminism's significant contributions to redressing gender inequality and celebrates its enormous accomplishments over the last forty years. It also documents feminism's ongoing political activism, and with an exploration of postmodern and third-wave trends, points toward its future....