April 2005
Peg Snyder
New Titles in the Women, Ink. Collection
- Women's Rights and Islamic Family Law: Perspectives on Reform
- Denial and Distress: Gender, Poverty and Human Rights in Asia
- Lost Voices: Central Asian Women Confronting Transition
- Feminist Futures: Re-Imagining Women, Culture and Development
- Feminist Post-Development Thought: Rethinking Modernity, Post-Colonialism and Representation
Women's Rights and Islamic Family Law: Perspectives on Reform
edited by Lynn Welchman
Three country case studies are presented to illustrate how legal rules seen as part of the Islamic shari'a are widely applied in family law. Egypt, with a majority Muslim population, is the most populous Arab state with a tradition of regional leadership in matters legal, and has a constitutional clause on the place of 'principles of the shari'a' as the principal source of legislation; The West Bank and Gaza, also with a majority Muslim population, but with no sovereign power and no national legislation on the issue, because family law has become a contested site between different visions of national identity in the process of trying to build a Palestinian state; and The United States of America, where some in the minority Muslim communities seek to regulate their family relations in accordance with 'principles of the shari'a' within the context of the domestic legal framework of a non-Muslim state applying civil law requirements to all family matters. Part IV of the book is a comparative study of Muslim societies in the Middle East, Africa and Asia from the perspective of domestic violence and shari'a.
The book also contains tables, indexes, bibliography, contributor biographies, and appendices.
2004. ISBN 1-84277-095-0. 300 pages. WE 709. US$29.95
Denial and Distress: Gender, Poverty and Human Rights in Asia
by Ranjani K. Murthy and Lakshmi SankaranThe authors of Denial and Distress analyze the gender-differentiated impact of globalization on women and men in various parts of Asia and the Commonwealth of Independent States - 33 countries in all. They provide empirical evidence that not only is the incidence of poverty increasingly more severe among women than men, but that the dimensions of women's poverty and the causes or process of their poverty are different from those of poor men. They then analyze the dilemma facing development agencies: should their focus be on gender and poverty? Or does that linkage serve to push issues of gender discrimination and human rights off the agenda? The authors challenge development agencies to address the deep-rooted gender-specific causes of poverty, calling for strengthening women's land rights, challenging inegalitarian kinship systems, and enhancing women's democratic participation. The book will be useful for government and NGO policy makers, planners, researchers and students working on development issues in Asia.
The book contains tables, index, glossary, and annexes. It was commissioned by ActionAid.
2004. ISBN 1-84277-265-1. 184 pages. WE 713. US $25.00
Lost Voices: Central Asian Women Confronting Transition
by Yvonne Corcoran-Nantes
In 1991 the collapse of the Communist Party and the dissolution of the Soviet Union launched the republics of Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan into an unexpected, self-declared independence after almost 75 years of Soviet tutelage. Central Asian women's lives were profoundly affected during the huge upheavals of sovietization in the 1920s and democratization in the 1990s, but because their experiences have gone unresearched and undocumented, they are called the "lost voices" of Central Asia. The author offers a timely analysis of the lives of Muslim women during the Soviet era, and considers the impact of the shift from communism to Western capitalist ideal. Their gains in the socialist/Islamic era have been rapidly eroded in the process of "democratization." Opportunities for employment, education and socio-political status have declined. Corcoran-Nantes shows how women have negotiated feminism in the two time-periods, and offers a strong argument that the main threat to the status of women in the region is not Islamic fundamentalism, but the imposition of free-market principles and Western "liberal democratic" ideals.
2005. ISBN 1 84277 537 5. 208 pages. WE 711. US$ 22.50
Feminist Futures: Re-Imagining Women, Culture and Development
edited by Kum-Kum Bhavnani, John Foran and Priya Kurian
Asserting that the field of development studies has reached a widely acknowledged impasse, both in its theoretical paradigms and its practical prescriptions, the editors propose an imaginative new framework that they call Women, Culture and Development. The 27 authors - many well known and many from a new generation of scholars - intersect cultural studies, feminist studies and critical development studies. The new framework is applied to a range of issues including sexuality and the gendered body; environment, technology and science; and the cultural politics of representation. A set of short essays introduces visions of the future through the prism of new work. This interdisciplinary book, spanning diversely situated regions of the world, connects scholarship and social change and juxtaposes the past, present and future to suggest a new lens through which to look at the situation of women in the Third World, which includes an understanding of the complex ways women resist the conditions in which they find themselves. It should be of interest to scholars as well as activists, development planners and policy makers.
The book contains a bibliography, index, contributor biographies, and list of acronyms.
2003. 1 84277 029 2. 336 pages. WE 714. US$ 25.00
Feminist Post-Development Thought: Rethinking Modernity, Post-Colonialism and Representation
edited by Kriemild Saunders
The crucial question of what development means for women is addressed in this book. Is it still their best hope of social progress and equality, or does it simply raise false expectations for the future? In this groundbreaking collection with its diverse perspectives, feminist thinkers explore whether Third World women ought to continue along the path of development or abandon full-scale modernization and seek post-development alternatives instead. It is proposed to represent the first attempt to ascertain the possibilities and limitations of the post-development path for women. Its 21 authors give particular attention to mainstream development and alternative development; gender, globalization, political identity, resistance and the struggle to survive; feminist theory and practice and the significance of difference; western science, local knowledge and environmental sustainability, fieldwork, ethnography and participatory approaches; and reproduction, population and the gendered self. This range of themes allows for a broad interrogation of development and contributes to the process of feminist perspectives shaping intellectual thinking on the subject.
The book contains abbreviations, contributor biographies, bibliography, and index.
2002. 1 85649 947 2. 384 pages. WE 716. US$ 25.00
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