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Gender and Scientific Authority

This volume of recent Signs articles offers some of the most significant contributions to the debates on history and theory. Illustrating the uses of theories in recent feminist historical research and the often contentious arguments that surround them, the articles speak to a number of discussions, including the theoretical tradition of political economy, the importance of class relations for understanding historical events and social relationships, and the expansion of concepts from political economy to include race. Included as well are the workings of gender signification in terms of the body, moving it from its traditionally lesser position in the hierarchical Enlightenment mind/body split. A further group of articles concerns the discursive character of power relations and the dialogic quality of language. The volume will be extremely useful for feminist historians in a variety of disciplines as well as women’s studies students interested in issues of interdisciplinarity.

Table of Contents

Introduction by the Editors
Rethinking Knowledge

The Social Construction of Black Feminist Thought
Patricia Hill Collins

The Postmodernist Turn in Anthropology: Cautions from a Feminist Perspective
Frances E. Mascia-Lees, Patricia Sharpe, Colleen Ballerino Cohen

Knowers, Knowing, Known: Feminist Theory and Claims of Truth
Mary E. Hawkesworth
Gendering Scientific and Technical Knowledge

Political Arithmetic: The Nineteenth-Century Australian Census and the Construction of the Dependent Woman
Desley Deacon

Women’s Voices in Nineteenth-Century Medical Discourse: A Step toward Deconstructing Science
Nancy M. Theriot

Women and Computers: An Introduction
Ruth Perry, Lisa Greber

Sex and Death in the Rational World of Defense Intellectuals
Carol Cohn

Science and the Construction of Gendered Subjectivities

The Trials of Alice Mitchell: Sensationalism, Sexology, and the Lesbian Subject in Turn-of-the-Century America
Lisa Duggan

Looking and Listening: The Construction of Clinical Knowledge in Charcot and Freud
Daphne de Marneffe

Field Dependence Research: A Historical Analysis of a Psychological Construct
Janice Haaken

Meta-Analysis and the Psychology of Gender Differences
Janet Shibley Hyde
Science and the Construction of Gendered Bodies

The Egg and the Sperm: How Science Has Constructed a Romance Based on Stereotypical Male-Female Roles
Emily Martin

The Medical Construction of Gender: Case Management of Intersexed Infants
Suzanne J. Kessler

Baboons with Briefcases: Feminism, Functionalism, and Sociobiology in the Evolution of Primate Gender
Susan Sperling

Engendering Reproductive Policy and Practice in Peasant China: For a Feminist Demography of Reproduction
Susan Greenhalgh, Jiali Li

About the Contributors

Index

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