Extrait de l'introduction : "The search for women's overall ar fundamental position long ago ar far wawy is an outcome of the confrontation between social darwinist anthropology and the feminist and socialist movements over sexism here and now. ... Women have been fighting for equl rights for well over one hundred years. The center of the struggle lies in changing institutionalized pattterns of behaviors and allocations of social roles. All behavior is informed and shaped by ideas, by way of seeing the world, as well as by standards for what is right and wrong, moral and immoral. A marxist and feminist anthropology can affrim the reality of equality in other times and places and increase our understanding of how to obtain such a social order for ourselves. This book is an attempt to develop such a way of seeing and of informing our actions."

Since TLC first launched its popular reality program "Sister Wives, Kody Brown, his four wives--Meri, Janelle, Christine, and Robyn--and their seventeen children have become one of the most famous families in the country.

"These stories sink deep and rise high. And along the way, they gleam with love." -Lavina Fielding Anderson The female protagonists of these fourteen short stories are daughters of devout Mormon women. Some choose to leave the family faith; some choose to stay. All hum the hymns of their forebears. They are women of the American West, but some have also journeyed a bit beyond those borders. One swims in a tributary of the Colorado; another dips her elbow into the Ganges. Each finds her own way to ask (not answer) the big questions. They represent four distinct families. They are separated by mountain ranges and deserts. But they share a common birthright. They are sisters. "Rosenbaum probes the feminine soul with deep empathy." -Levi S. Peterson Karen Rosenbaum's published work comprises short stories, personal essays, and newspaper articles, some of which have won awards from Sunstone, Exponent II, and Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought.

In the isolated rural community of Unity, the people of The Movement live a simple life guided by a set of religious principles and laws that are unique to them. Polygamy is the norm, strict obedience is expected and it is customary for young girls to be assigned to much older husbands. Celeste was born and raised in Unity, yet she struggles to fit in. Perhaps it's because of Taviana, the girl who has come to live with them and entertains Celeste with forbidden stories, or Jon, the young man she has clandestine meetings with, or maybe it's the influence of Craig, the outsider she meets on the beach. Whatever it is, she struggles to accept her ordained life. At fifteen she is repulsed at the thought of being assigned to an older man and becoming a sister wife, and she knows for certain she is not cut out to raise children. She wants something more for herself, yet feels powerless to change her destiny because rebelling would bring shame upon her family. Celeste watches as Taviana leaves Unity, followed by Jon, and finally Craig, the boy who has taught her to think "outside the box." Although she is assigned to a caring man, his sixth wife, she is desperately unhappy. How will Celeste find her way out of Unity? Torn from the headlines and inspired by current events, Sister Wife is a compelling portrait of a community where the laws of the outside world are ignored and where individuality is punished.

This book is an anthropological study of the unusual coincidence of prostitution and patriarchy among an extremely marginalized group in north India, the Bedias, who are also a de-notified community. It is the first detailed account of the implications of a systematic practice of familial prostitution on the kinship structures and marriage practices of a community. This starkly manifests among the Bedias in the clear separation between sisters and daughters who engage in prostitution and wives and daughters-in-law who do not. The Bedias exemplify a situation in which prostitution of young unmarried women is the mainstay of the familial economy of an entire social group. Tracing the recent origins of the practice in the community, the author goes on to explore the manner in which this familial economy manifests itself in the lives of individual women and the kind of family groupings it produces. She then examines the repercussion this economy has on the lives of Bedia men, how the problem of their marriage is resolved, and how the Bedia wives become repositories of female purity which otherwise stands jeopardized by Bedia sisters engaged in prostitution.

Four women seeking the promise of salvation and prosperity in a new land.

ONE OF PEOPLE MAGAZINE’S BEST NEW BOOKS “A searing and intimate memoir about love turned deadly.” —The BBC “An intimate illumination of sisterhood and loss.” —People When Sheila Kohler was thirty-seven, she received the heart-stopping news that her sister Maxine, only two years older, was killed when her husband drove them off a deserted road in Johannesburg. Stunned by the news, she immediately flew back to the country where she was born, determined to find answers and forced to reckon with his history of violence and the lingering effects of their most unusual childhood—one marked by death and the misguided love of their mother. In her signature spare and incisive prose, Sheila Kohler recounts the lives she and her sister led. Flashing back to their storybook childhood at the family estate, Crossways, Kohler tells of the death of her father when she and Maxine were girls, which led to the family abandoning their house and the girls being raised by their mother, at turns distant and suffocating. We follow them to the cloistered Anglican boarding school where they first learn of separation and later their studies in Rome and Paris where they plan grand lives for themselves—lives that are interrupted when both marry young and discover they have made poor choices. Kohler evokes the bond between sisters and shows how that bond changes but never breaks, even after death. “A beautiful and disturbing memoir of a beloved sister who died at the age of thirty-nine in circumstances that strongly suggest murder. . . . Highly recommended.” —Joyce Carol Oates

This book of essays about Mormon women, all written and edited by scholars who are themselves Mormon women, is a brave and important work. Readers will fully appreciate just how brave and important it really is, however, if they can see how this work of historical theology fits into the history of historical writing about Mormon women, as well as how it fits into Mormon history itself. "The women who contributed to this book are among the best of the Mormon literati . . . they] hold that there is hope within the church for change, for reform, for expansion of the place of women." -- Women's Review of Books "Historians of women in America have a great deal to learn from the history of Mormon women. This fine set of essays provides an excellent introduction to a subject about which we should all know more." -- Anne Firor Scott, author of Making the Invisible Woman Visible.

Cover title: Friends & sisters.

Based on a wealth of family papers, period images, and popular literature, this is the first book devoted to the broad history of sibling relations in America. Illuminating the evolution of the modern family system, Siblings shows how brothers and sisters have helped each other in the face of the dramatic political, economic, and cultural changes of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. As Hemphill demonstrates, siblings function across all races as humanity's shock-absorbers as well as valued kin and keepers of memory.