Feminist futures : reimagining women, culture and development /

This is the second edition of the influential text (CH, May'04, 41-5603) that established the women, culture, and development (WCD) approach to issues of women and development. The WCD approach links insights from feminist studies, cultural studies, and development studies to critique previous frameworks that privilege economics, narrowly define culture, or reproduce hierarchical gender relations. Yet this book is more than a critique; chapters also provide alternative accounts placing the lives and perspectives of women in the Third World at the center of analysis. Contributions are global in scope, interdisciplinary in perspective, and cover a wide range of issues. The volume contains a lively mix of traditional scholarly essays with shorter works. While the second edition retains a handful of essays from the 2003 edition in their original form, most of the works in the volume are new or reworked. The changes highlight both the continuation of top-down political and economic globalization and changes in geopolitical crises and global resistance movements. Most contributions are readable and well written, making this book especially valuable in the classroom. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All levels/libraries. --Doreen Jeanette Mattingly, San Diego State University