Provoking Agents: Gender and Agency in Theory and Practice

by Judith Gardiner (Editor), Ellen Messer-Davidow (Contributor)

     "A major contribution in women's studies and in other disciplines
        dealing with issues of agency. The authors raise issues that are very
        important . . . and they raise them as they must be raised--by bridging
        theory and action." -- Kathryn Pine Addelson, author of Moral
        Passages: Toward a Collectivist Moral Theory
      Both the women's liberation movement and those who have studied it characterize
        agency as the capacity to make change in individual consciousness, personal
        lives, and society. The seventeen contributors to Provoking Agents
        explore whether--and how--feminist theory, writing, and other social practices
        can help readers move beyond seeing women as a powerless group to effecting
        changes in their own lives and, ultimately, becoming social activists.
        Topics in this multi-disciplinary collection range from maternal surrogacy
        to writing, from consciousness-raising to AIDS activism, from pornography
        to local organizing
 

352 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1995