First published in 1999, the primary focus of this book is what goes on inside the ‘black box’ of households, beginning with decision-making but branching out to develop a comprehensive view of the domestic domain. It brings together theoretical frameworks relevant to the study of family households from several root disciplines, each framework highlighting a different approach. Each approach is applied to important problems concerning the functioning of family households. The book focuses on households and their members as active agents who manage both material and immaterial resources. The private sector, to which family households belong, is not viewed as just responding to impulses from the formal economy and to public policies, but as a dynamic system in its own right. In the view of Paul Pennartz and Anke Niehof, households not only accommodate to social change but also mediate and generate social change. In the book key studies are presented which exemplify approaches and issues. The key studies cover a wide range of societies in Europe, North and Latin America, Asia and Africa, thus also exemplifying the comparative perspective, which is another important feature of the book. Pennartz and Niehof examine issues including the organisational approach and resource allocation, the power approach and the division of household production tasks and the opportunity structure approach and the housing market.

An ambitious general study of the development of marriage, family and conjugal roles in the change from hoe to plough agriculture, relating African society to Asian and European.

This authoritative introductory text takes into account the changes in the conceptualisation of kinship brought about by new reproductive technologies and the growing interest in culturally specific notions of personhood and gender. Holy considers the extent to which Western assumptions have guided anthropological study of kinship in the past. In the process, he reveals a growing sensitivity on the part of anthropologists to individual ideas of personhood and gender, and encourages further critical reflection on cultural bias in approaches to the subject.

Through analysis of an impressive array of 'low' and 'high' Hindu literatures, particularly pamphlets, tracts, newspapers, and archival data, Gupta explores the emerging discourse of gender and sexuality, which was essential to the development of notions of Hindu communitality and nationalism in the colonial period. The book offers an exceptionally nuanced account of Hindi gender politics.

Valenty, Feldman, and their contributors challenge the current state of political leadership studies by offering a variety of analytical methods from scholars around the world. While focused on American political leadership, the different approaches and vantage points offer fresh insights of the roles of cultural and political context, including the historical circumstance, environmental factors, and socialization agents that affect and shape American political leadership and performance. The highly unusual and valuable approach includes multidisciplinary perspectives with contributors from the fields of political science, political psychology, philosophy, sociology, and economics. Scholars, students, and researchers from a variety of disciplines will find the evaluations of the interaction between personality, leadership, decision making, and context invaluable.

The book examines the representation of women, their agency and subjectivity and gender relations in 18th- and 19th-century India. The chapters in the volume interrogate notions and discourses of ‘women’ and ‘gender’ during the period, historically shaped by multiple and even competing actors, practices and institutions. They highlight the ‘making of the woman’ across a wide spectrum of subject areas, regions and roles and attempt to understand the contradictions and differences in social experiences and identity formations of women. The volume also deals with prevalent notions of masculinity and femininity, normative and non-conformist expressions of gender and sexual identity and epistemological concerns of gender, especially in its intersectional interplay with other axes of caste, class, race, region and empire. Presenting unique understandings of our gendered pasts, this volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of history, gender studies and South Asian studies.

Examining how the shared interests of state elites and the middle classes rationalize mistreatment of domestic workers, the author argues that the "premodern" exploitation of migrant domestic workers is at odds with the global expansion of open markets and free trade.

Towards A New Christian Political Realism presents a new theoretical approach to understanding the role of religion in international relations, considering the strengths of Christian realism, classical realism, and neorealism, as well as the literature about the relevance of religion for IR. The book discusses the resurgence of religion and how it has become ‘public’ in the world since around the 1960s. It extensively describes the role religion plays in Hans Morgenthau’s classical realism and Kenneth Waltz’s neorealism and how both thinkers are indebted to an Augustinian way of thinking that has influenced political realism through Reinhold Niebuhr’s Christian realism. The book presents an alternative approach inspired by the Amsterdam School of Philosophy: a new Christian political realism. It incorporates the theological inspiration of political realism and the necessity of theorizing while doing justice to the relevance and manifold manifestations of religion in international relations. This book will be of interest to scholars and higher-level students of International Relations, the Amsterdam School of Philosophy, Classical Realism, Neorealism, Christian Realism, and Religious Studies, as well as practitioners working in the field of International Relations.

A Stanford University Press classic.

This book examines the factors influencing women's choices of obstetrical care in a Bariba community in the People's Republic of Benin, West Africa. When selecting a research topic, I decided to investigate health care among the Bariba for several reasons. First, I had served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in northern Benin (then Dahomey) and had established a network of contacts in the region. In addition, I had worked for a year as assistant manager of a pharmacy in a northern town and had become interested in the pattern of utilization of health care services by urban residents. This three-year residence proved an invaluable asset in preparing and conducting research in the northern region. In particular, I was able to establish relationships with several indigenous midwives whose families I already knew both from prior research experience and mutual friend ships. These relationships enabled me to obtain detailed information regarding obstetrical practice and thus form the foundation of this book. The fieldwork upon which the book is directly based was conducted between June 1976 and December 1977 and sponsored by the F ord-Rockefeller Popula tion Policy Program, the Social Science Research Council, the National Science Foundation, and the FUlbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Program. The Ford-Rockefeller Population Policy Program funded the project as a collab oration between myself and Professor Eusebe Alihonou, Professor Agrege (Gynecologie-Obstetrique) at the National University of Benin.