Gender and Development: Rethinking Modernization and Dependency Theory (Women and Change in the Developing World) - Hardcover

Scott, Catherine V.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 155587410X ISBN 13: 9781555874100

Publisher: Lynne Rienner Pub

Synopsis

Catherine V. Scott demonstrates that many prevailing ideas about development, dependency, capitalism, and socialism are anchored in social constructions of gender differences.
Early modernization theorists, points out Scott, often juxtaposed modernity and tradition in ways reminiscent of Enlightenment dichotomies that pitted the rational, productive city against the particularistic, fragmented, and stagnant countryside. Dependency theory, despite its radically difference focus on the causes of underdevelopment, also rests upon masculinist conceptions of the unfolding of history, human labor, and the gendered divisions between the public and private realms. Recent theories of the African "soft state," realized in policymaking, revive modernization theory's dichotomies; and revolutionary political leaders in African countries, though they have challenged imperialism, have retained the Marxist blind-spot regarding gender.
This provocative critique of both theory and practice goes beyond the "women in development" approach to explore fundamental reconceptualizations of tradition, modernity, masculinity, femininity, revolution, and development.

About this title

About the Author

Catherine V. Scott is associate professor of political science at Agnes Scott College.

Edition details

• Publisher: Lynne Rienner Pub
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 155587410X
• ISBN 13: 9781555874100
• Binding: Hardcover