On Our Own Terms: Race, Class, and Gender in the Lives of African-American Women

by Mullings,Leith

• ISBN13: 9780415912853
• ISBN10: 0415912857
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1996-11-26
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

This volume utilizes the cross-cultural, historical and ethnographic perspective of anthropology to illuminate the intrinsic connections of race, class and gender. The author begins by discussing the manner in which her experience as a participant observer led her to research and write about various aspects of African-American women's experiences. She goes on to provide a critical analysis of the new scholarship on African-American women, and explores issues of race, class and gender in the arenas of work, kinship and resistance. The first section explores the fundamental issue of how work outside the home conditions the experience of gender, while essays in the second section challenge traditional definitions of the family and explore the role of culture, history and society in conditioning household structure and function. The essays in the final section explore transformative strategies in politics and in the academy.On Our Own Termsconcludes by examining the implicationsof issues raised in the volume for the feminist agenda and for our understanding of social processes.

Table of Contents

Contents

Acknowledgements

Preface

Introduction

Women, Work, and Community

Introduction

Notes on Women, Work, and Society

Uneven Development: Class, Race, and Gender in the United States Before 1900

Minority Women, Work, and Health

Kin and Family

Introduction: Perspectives on the American Family

Anthropological Perspectives on the African American Family

Households Headed by Women: The Politics of Race, Class, and Gender

Representation, Resistance, and Transformation: Theory and Practice in Politics and in the Academy

Introduction

Images, Ideology, and Women of Color

Mapping Gender in African American Political Strategies

Gender and the Application of Anthropological Knowledge to Public Policy in the United States

Race, Inequality, and Transformation: Building on the Work of Eleanor Leacock

Reclaiming Culture: The Dialectics of Identity

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