This major new book is the most up-to-date account of current feminist debates, written by some of the world's leading feminist thinkers. The 1980s saw a devastating critique of the simple unities of woman or woman's experience as a theoretical basis for feminist politics. The 1990s brought a powerful reappraisal of the universalizing tendencies in mainstream political, social and cultural theory, as feminists explored the deeper biases that go beyond mere sexism' to structure the very terms of theoretical debate. Destabilizing Theory pushes this debate further with major new essays by...

A new emphasis on diversity and difference is displacing older myths of nation or community. A new attention to gender, race, language or religion is disrupting earlier preoccupations with class. But the welcome extended to heterogeneity can bring with it a disturbing fragmentation and closure. Can we develop a vision of democracy through difference: a politics that neither denies group identities nor capitulates to them?

In this volume, Anne Phillips develops the feminist challenge to exclusionary versions of democracy, citizenship and equality. Relating this to the crisis in...

Exploring the spirituality and faith of girls on the verge of adolescence, this book presents fresh insights into children's spirituality and their transition to adulthood. Phillips has listened to girls' voices speaking in depth on the themes of self, God, church, and world, and reflected on their experiences and understandings in the light of current psychological, philosophical and sociological thinking, all placed into dialogue with a feminist approach to contemporary theology and bible. Phillips offers 'wombing' as a metaphor for their transition to young adulthood, and suggests...

In the past "women" have been radically undermined, and newer concerns with "difference", "identity", and "power" have emerged. This text explores these developments in a set of specially commissioned essays by feminist theorists.