Do writings about ethnicity, class and gender form a 'holy trinity' or challenge previous unidimensional analyses?
Intersexions accepts the triple perspective but goes further. One aim is to understand the processes by which relations of power are maintained, reproduced and resisted. Intersexions also examines modes of representation: within social theory, feminism, development theory and discussions of capitalism and postcolonialism, as well as dominant ideological notions of caste, domesticity and 'success'.
The writers' approaches are all critical but concerned also with providing alternatives. Comparative and specific analyses are combined, attention is paid to the written and spoken material of the people 'represented' and their own positions as commentators examined. Topics range from discussions of family ideology and paid and domestic work, to analyses of writings by Aboriginals, Vanuatuans and second generation Greek Australians and critiques of the cultural construction of gender and ethnicity in Bangladesh, India and Indonesia.
Themes recur and overlap. Unitary categories are questioned and the processes by which relations described as 'class', 'ethnic', 'cultural' and 'gender' intersect and interact are demonstrated.
Preface
1 Moving in from the margins: Gender as the centre of cultural contestation of power relations in south India - Kalpana Ram
2 Ethno-religious communities and gender divisions in Bangladesh: Women as boundary markers - Santi Rozario
3 Housemaids: The effects of gender and culture on the internal and international migration of Indonesian women - Kathy Robinson
4 The politics of difference: Feminism, colonialism and decolonisation in Vanuatu - Margaret Jolly
5 Through their own eyes: An interpretation of Aboriginal women's writing - Jan Larbalestier
6 Representing the 'second generation': subjects, objects and ways of knowing - Gill Bottomley
7 Multiculturalism and feminism - Jeannie Martin
8 The family: in the national interest? - Marie de Lepervanche
9 Gender, class and ethnic relations: The domestic and work experiences of Italian migrant women in Australia - Ellie Vasta
10 Domesticity and Latin American women in Australia - Vanda Moraes-Gorecki
11 Racism, sexism and sociology - Jan Pettman
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Biography
GILL BOTTOMLEY, Associate Professor of Anthropology at Macquarie University, is the author of After the Odyssey and co-editor of Family in the Modern World. MARIE DE LEPERVANCHE is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Sydney and is the author of Indians in a White Australia and co-editor of Crossing Boundaries: Feminism and the critique of knowledges. JEANNIE MARTIN is Senior Lecturer in Humanities at the University of Technology Sydney. Gill Bottomley and Marie de Lepervanche co-edited The Cultural Construction of Race and Ethnicity, Class and Gender in Australia.
