More precisely, as she shows in this uniquely comprehensive and accessible survey of behavioral and evolutionary ecology, they come down to the basic principle that all organisms evolved to maximize their reproductive success and seek resources to do so.Low begins by reviewing the fundamental arguments and assumptions of behavioral ecology: selfish genes, conflicts of interest, and the tendency for sexes to reproduce through different behaviors. She explains why in primate species--from chimpanzees and apes to humans--males seek to spread their genes by devoting extraordinary efforts to finding mates, while females find it profitable to expend more effort on parenting. Low illustrates these sexual differences among humans by showing that in places as diverse as the parishes of nineteenth-century Sweden, the villages of seventeenth-century China, and the forests of twentieth-century Brazil, men have tended to seek power and resources, from cattle to money, to attract mates, while women have sought a secure environment for raising children. She makes it clear, however, they have not done so simply through individual efforts or in a vacuum, but that men and women act in complex ways that involve cooperation and coalition building and that are shaped by culture, technology, tradition, and the availability of resources. Low also considers how the evolutionary drive to acquire resources leads to environmental degradation and warfare and asks whether our behavior could be channeled in more constructive ways.

    The approach, which focuses on intersecting inequalities, illustrates how racism, social class, ageism and heterosexism can compound the consequences of gender inequality. Although it focuses primarily on women and men in the United States, international issues and data are incorporated throughout.

    This book is the story of the life of Nisa, a member of the !Kung tribe of hunter-gatherers from southern Africa's Kalahari desert. Told in her own words--earthy, emotional, vivid--to Marjorie Shostak, a Harvard anthropologist who succeeded, with Nisa's collaboration, in breaking through the immense barriers of language and culture, the story is a fascinating view of a remarkable woman.

    Among those who have disparaged romance reading are feminists, literary critics, and theorists of mass culture. They claim that romances enforce the woman reader's dependence on men and acceptance of the repressive ideology purveyed by popular culture. Radway questions such claims, arguing that critical attention "must shift from the text itself, taken in isolation, to the complex social event of reading." She examines that event, from the complicated business of publishing and distribution to the individual reader's engagement with the text.Radway's provocative approach combines reader-response criticism with anthropology and feminist psychology. Asking readers themselves to explore their reading motives, habits, and rewards, she conducted interviews in a midwestern town with forty-two romance readers whom she met through Dorothy Evans, a chain bookstore employee who has earned a reputation as an expert on romantic fiction. Evans defends her customers' choice of entertainment; reading romances, she tells Radway, is no more harmful than watching sports on television."We read books so we won't cry" is the poignant explanation one woman offers for her reading habit. Indeed, Radway found that while the women she studied devote themselves to nurturing their families, these wives and mothers receive insufficient devotion or nurturance in return. In romances the women find not only escape from the demanding and often tiresome routines of their lives but also a hero who supplies the tenderness and admiring attention that they have learned not to expect.The heroines admired by Radway's group defy the expected stereotypes; they are strong, independent, and intelligent. That such characters often find themselves to be victims of male aggression and almost always resign themselves to accepting conventional roles in life has less to do, Radway argues, with the women readers' fantasies and choices than with their need to deal with a fear of masculine dominance.These romance readers resent not only the limited choices in their own lives but the patronizing atitude that men especially express toward their reading tastes. In fact, women read romances both to protest and to escape temporarily the narrowly defined role prescribed for them by a patriarchal culture. Paradoxically, the books that they read make conventional roles for women seem desirable. It is this complex relationship between culture, text, and woman reader that Radway urges feminists to address. Romance readers, she argues, should be encouraged to deliver their protests in the arena of actual social relations rather than to act them out in the solitude of the imagination.In a new introduction, Janice Radway places the book within the context of current scholarship and offers both an explanation and critique of the study's limitations.

    D'Emilio & Freedman give a deeper understanding of how sexuality has dramatically influenced politics & culture throughout history. "The book John D'Emilio co-wrote with Estelle B. Freedman, Intimate Matters, was cited by Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy when, writing for a majority of court on July 26, he and his colleagues struck down a Texas law criminalizing sodomy. The decision was widely hailed as a victory for gay rights—& it derived in part, according to Kennedy's written comments, from the information he gleaned from D'Emilio's book, which traces the history of American perspectives on sexual relationships from the nation's founding thru the present day. The justice mentioned Intimate Matters specifically in the court's decision."—Julia Keller, Chicago Tribune "Fascinating...[they] marshall their material to chart a gradual but decisive shift in the way Americans have understood sex & its meaning in their lives."—Barbara Ehrenreich, NY Times Book Review "With comprehensiveness & care...D'Emilio & Freedman have surveyed the sexual patterns for an entire nation across four centuries."—Martin Bauml Duberman, Nation "Intimate Matters is comprehensive, meticulous & intelligent."—Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post Book World "This book is remarkable...bound to become the definitive survey of American sexual history for years to come."—Roy Porter, Journal of the History of the Behavioral SciencesAcknowledgmentsIntroductionThe reproductive matrix, 1600-1800Divided passions, 1780-1900 Toward a new sexual order, 1880-1930 The rise & fall of sexual liberalism, 1920 to the presentNotesSelected BibliographyIndex

    Now, in Scheherazade Goes West, Mernissi reveals her unique experiences as a liberated, independent Moroccan woman faced with the peculiarities and unexpected encroachments of Western culture. Her often surprising discoveries about the conditions of and attitudes toward women around the world -- and the exquisitely embroidered amalgam of clear-eyed autobiography and dazzling meta-fiction by which she relates those assorted discoveries -- add up to a deliciously wry, engagingly cosmopolitan, and deeply penetrating narrative.

    White's deliberate, dominating voice evokes a Plath-like dynamism turned on to queer pleasure and displeasure, indulgence and raison d'être, the bedevilments of a gay bitch on the pole.

    Documenting the categories of subculture and style that high school students use to explain class and racial/ethnic differences among themselves, Bettie depicts the complex identity performances of contemporary girls. The title, Women Without Class, refers at once to young working-class women who have little cultural capital to enable class mobility, to the fact that class analysis and social theory has remained insufficiently transformed by feminist and ethnic studies, and to the fact that some feminist analysis has itself been complicit in the failure to theorize women as class subjects. Bettie's research and analysis make a case for analytical and political attention to class, but not at the expense of attention to other axes of identity and social formations.

    She explores the importance of women's religious practices along with related themes of family and of social change. Weaving several of her own voices--analytic, descriptive, and personal--with the voices of her subjects in alternate chapters of traditional ethnography and ethnographic fiction, Brown presents herself as a character in Mama Lola's world and allows the reader to evaluate her interactions there. Startlingly original, Brown's work endures as an important experiment in ethnography as a social art form rooted in human relationships. A new preface, epilogue, bibliography, and a collection of family photographs tell the story of the effect of the book's publication on Mama Lola's life.

    BUCKLE YOUR SEAT BELT AND GET READY TO RIDE!

    Since fieldwork is situated, Raybeck's treatment also includes rich descriptions of Kelantanese society and culture, addressing such topics as kinship, linguistics, gender relations, economics, and political structures. Through the lively pages of this narrative, readers gain insight into the human dimension of the fieldwork undertaking, a sense of how the anthropologist builds rapport in a research setting, and how reliable information is obtained.

    Thus, asexual individuals do not find (and perhaps never have) others sexually appealing. Some consider asexuality as a fourth category of sexual orientation, distinct from heterosexuality, homosexuality, or bisexuality. However, there is also recent evidence that the label asexual may be used in a broader way than merely as a lack of sexual attraction. People who say they have sexual attraction to others, but indicate little or no desire for sexual activity are also self-identifying as asexual. Distinct from celibacy, which refers to sexual abstinence by choice where sexual attraction and desire may still be present, asexuality is experienced by those having a lack of sexual attraction or a lack of sexual desire. More and more, those who identify as asexual are coming out, joining up, and forging a common identity. The time is right for a better understanding of this sexual orientation, written by an expert in the field who has conducted studies on asexuality and who has provided important contributions to understanding asexuality. This timely resource will be one of the first books written on the topic for general readers, and the first to look at the historical, biological, and social aspects of asexuality. It includes first-hand accounts throughout from people who identify as asexual. The study of asexuality, as it contrasts so clearly with sexuality, also holds up a lens and reveals clues to the mystery of sexuality.

    But until then, her marriage, now doomed, was a sleepwalker s tragedy. This novel will shock and offend some readers. Unapologetically explicit in its language, extreme in some of the acts it catalogues, it makes no pretense of submission to middle-class decency, let alone to expectations of happy endings. All three people in this love triangle are flawed, damaged, human. Things fall apart, and the resolution is unclear. Why does she do it? Why should we read it? The answer is one word: Ecstasy. Micheline Aharonian Marcom has a genius for language that is not only beautiful in and of itself, but also engages the heart. Lusher than Marguerite Duras, more tender and erotic than Cormac McCarthy, but nearly as dark, this is a narrative masterpiece."

    broke and miserable to an educated, confident woman after answering one newspaper ad: Get Paid for Being a Bitch. This award winning tell all comically chronicles Konney's simulataneous navigation through at Washington DC dungeon and academia.

    Ironically, the first thing we read is Kingston's mother's warning Kingston, "You must not tell anyone . . . what I am about to tell you."