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This book studies the ways in which the assessment of being or not being ‘respectable'has been applied to women in the UK in the past one hundred and fifty years. Mary Evans shows how the term ‘respectable'has changed and how, most importantly, the basis of the ways in which the respectability of women has been judged has shifted from a location in women's personal, domestic and sexual behaviour to that of how women engage in contemporary forms of citizenship, not the least of which is paid work. This shift has important social and political implications that have seldom been explored: amongst these are the growing marginalisation of the validation of the traditional care work of women, the assumption that paid work is implicitly and inevitably empowering and the complex ways in which respectability and conformity to highly sexualised conventions about female appearance have been normalised. Making Respectable Women makes use of archive material to show how the changing definition of a moral and social concept can have an impact on both the behaviour and the choices of individuals and the operations of institutional power. It will be of interest to students and scholars across the humanities and social sciences.

This book analyses the ways in which twenty-first century detective fiction provides an understanding of the increasingly complex and often baffling contemporary world — and what sociology, as a discipline, can learn from it. Conventional sociological accounts of fiction generally comprehend its value in terms of the ways in which it can illustrate, enlarge or help to articulate a particular social theory. Evans, Moore, and Johnstone suggest a different approach, and demonstrate that by taking a group of detective novels, we can unveil so far unidentified, but crucial, theoretical ideas about what it means to be an individual in the twenty-first century. More specifically, the authors argue that detective fiction of the last forty years illuminates the effects of urban isolation and separation, the invisibility of institutional power, financial insecurity, and the failure of public authorities to protect people. In doing so, this body of fiction traces out the fault-lines in our social arrangements, rehearses our collective fears, and captures a mood of restless disquiet. By engaging with detective stories in this way, the book revisits ideas about the promise and purpose of sociology.​

The French Revolution has put George Washington's friend, the Marquis de Lafayette, in danger. Out of fear of imprisonment or execution, the Lafayettes send their son to America, to stay under Washington's protection. While in America, Georges Washington Lafayette observed democracy,

William Heath Robinson remains one of Britain's best-loved illustrators and has embedded himself into English vernacular, inspiring the phrase ‘it's all a bit Heath Robinson'to describe any precarious or unnecessarily complex contraption. Born in London, he originally had ambitions to be a landscape painter, but would establish his artistic reputation as a book illustrator during the genre's so-called golden age. It was his association with weekly illustrated magazine The Sketch that was to launch and cement his legacy as a humorous artist. Combining a distinctive draughtsmanship with a curious and ingenious mind, the advent of the First World War inspired Heath Robinson to dream up a series of increasingly outlandish and bizarre military inventions with which the opposing armies would try to outwit each other. From the kaiser's campaigning car or a suggestion for an armoured bayonet curler, to post-war ‘unbullying'of beef, his cartoons are a fantastically absurd take on wartime technology and home-front life. Sadly, his inventions were rejected by a (fictitious) ‘Inventions Board', but the charm and eccentricity of his ideas was loved by the public and he remains to this day one of the finest exponents of humorous British art.

The book of Judges presents Israel's frailty, the nation's need for deliverance, and God's use of flawed leaders to guide his chosen people through a dark period of their history. The book of Ruth tells a smaller story within this narrative, showing God quietly at work in the lives of a few individuals. Mary Evans's commentary places each book in its historical and canonical context, examines key theological themes and addresses issues facing twenty-first-century readers.Part of the Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries series designed to help the reader of the Bible understand what the text says and what it means.

William Heath Robinson remains one of Britain's best-loved illustrators and has embedded himself into English vernacular, inspiring the phrase'it's all a bit Heath Robinson'to describe any precarious or unnecessarily complex contraption. Born in London, he originally had ambitions to be a landscape painter, but would establish his artistic reputation as a book illustrator during the genre's so-called golden age. It was his association with weekly illustrated magazine The Sketch that was to launch and cement his legacy as a humorous artist. Combining a distinctive draughtsmanship with a curious and ingenious mind, the advent of the First World War inspired Heath Robinson to dream up a series of increasingly outlandish and bizarre military inventions with which the opposing armies would try to outwit each other. From the kaiser's campaigning car or a suggestion for an armoured bayonet curler, to post-war'unbullying'of beef, his cartoons are a fantastically absurd take on wartime technology and home-front life. Sadly, his inventions were rejected by a (fictitious)'Inventions Board', but the charm and eccentricity of his ideas was loved by the public and he remains to this day one of the finest exponents of humorous British art.

Englisch lernen mit spannenden Kurzgeschichten Sie lieben England und alles was dazu gehört? Dann tauchen Sie ins Land ein und frischen Sie ganz nebenbei ihre Englischkenntnisse auf! Mit 20 abwechslungsreichen Kurzgeschichten rund um die Insel erweitern Sie spielend Ihre Lesekompetenz. Wortangaben auf jeder Seite helfen Ihnen dabei. Für Wiedereinsteiger (A2) und Fortgeschrittene (B1).

Englisch lernen mit spannenden Kurzgeschichten Sie lieben England und alles was dazu gehört? Dann tauchen Sie ins Land ein und frischen Sie ganz nebenbei Ihre Englischkenntnisse auf!Mit 20 abwechslungsreichen Kurzgeschichten rund um die Insel erweitern Sie spielend Ihre Lesekompetenz. Wortangaben auf jeder Seite helfen Ihnen dabei. Für Wiedereinsteiger (A2) und Fortgeschrittene (B1).

Despite centuries of campaigning, women still earn less and have less power than men. Equality remains a goal not yet reached. In this incisive account of why this is the case, Mary Evans argues that optimistic narratives of progress and emancipation have served to obscure long-term structural inequalities between women and men, structural inequalities which are not only about gender but also about general social inequality. In widening the lenses on the persistence of gender inequality, Evans shows how in contemporary debates about social inequality gender is often ignored, implicitly side-lining critical aspects of relations between women and men. This engaging short book attempts to join up some of the dots in the ways that we think about both social and gender inequality, and offers a new perspective on a problem that still demands society's full attention.

Tolstoy's Anna Karenina is considered by many to be one of the greatest novels ever written. This study of its morally ambiguous protagonist, Anna, discusses Tolstoy's troubled relation to the feminine in terms of the fantasies, hopes, and fears that she represents. In Reflecting on Anna Karenina, first published in 1989, Mary Evans presents an original, feminist reading of Anna's life and times for both students and the general audience. She argues that Anna is the embodiment of all those female characteristics that so captivated Tolstoy, and which he felt so compelled to punish in his writing. Evans indicates how author and central character are locked in a contradiction which can only be resolved in the novel by Anna's death, but which in real life must be overcome by women's assertion of their moral and sexual autonomy.

At no point in recorded history has there been an absence of intense, and heated, discussion about the subject of how to conduct relations between women and men. This Handbook provides a comprehensive guide to these omnipresent issues and debates, mapping the present and future of thinking about feminist theory. The chapters gathered here present the state of the art in scholarship in the field, covering: Epistemology and marginality Literary, visual and cultural representations Sexuality Macro and microeconomics of gender Conflict and peace. The most important consensus in this volume is that a central organizing tenet of feminism is its willingness to examine the ways in which gender and relations between women and men have been (and are) organized. The authors bring a shared commitment to the critical appraisal of gender relations, as well as a recognition that to think ‘theoretically'is not to detach concerns from lived experience but to extend the possibilities of understanding. With this focus on theory and theorizing about the world in which we live, this Handbook asks us, across all disciplines and situations, to abandon our taken-for-granted assumptions about the world and interrogate both the origin and the implications of our ideas about gender relations and feminism. It is an essential reference work for advanced students and academics not only of feminist theory, but of gender and sexuality across the humanities and social sciences.

This invaluable volume provides an overview of 37 terms, theories and concepts frequently used in gender studies which those studying the subject can find difficult to grasp. Each entry provides a critical definition of the concept, examining the background to the idea, its usage and the major figures associated with the term. Taking a truly interdisciplinary and global view of gender studies, concepts covered include: Agency Diaspora Heteronormativity Subjectivity Performativity Class Feminist Politics Body Gender identity Reflexivity. With cross referencing and further reading provided throughout the text, Gender: The Key Concepts unweaves the relationships between different aspects of the field defined as gender studies, and is essential for all those studying gender in interdisciplinary contexts as undergraduates, postgraduates and beyond.

Jane Austen is often associated with conservatism and her novels are often seen as light entertainment depicting a vanished world and its manners. Mary Evan's study, first published in 1987, seeks to contradict the conventional wisdom regarding Austen's social and political leanings and argues that far from endorsing established and conservative views Jane Austen advances a radical critique of the morality of bourgeois capitalism and demonstrates a concern for the articulation of women's rights and views whilst simultaneously drawing attention to the vulnerability of women in the economic marketplace.Mary Evans adopts a multidisciplinary approach and her book will appeal to anyone who is interested in Jane Austen's writing as well as those concerned with the moral basis of contemporary politics.

The second wave of feminism which challenged and changed many assumptions about the world in which we live was a product of various western cultures, with no single country possessing a monopoly on the writing of the texts that became the canonical statements of the'new'feminism. Though many of the contributions to feminist scholarship that went on to become internationally significant hailed from Europe and the United States, these works were often formed within the context of local debates and framed within traditions of feminism and other political engagements specific to these nations. Transatlantic Conversations explores the differences yielded by such conditions and their consequences for the meaning of feminism. Examining the meaning and implications of the different ways in which various shared categories have been treated on both sides of the Atlantic, this volume both analyses differences within feminism and provides a framework for the wider discussion of what is sometimes assumed to be the homogeneity of The West. With leading scholars from either side of the Atlantic presenting brand new work, Transatlantic Conversations suggests directions for future research which will be of interest to scholars of feminism, gender studies, sociology, political science and international relations, geography and cultural studies, as well as anyone concerned with the ways in which the different political and intellectual traditions of Europe and the US have shaped current political and intellectual debates.

This reissued work, first published in 1987, examines the problematic and divisive attitudes which bourgeois and socialist feminists take to the question of the links between patriarchy and capitalism and the importance of class conflict as a major cause of women's subordination. Engels still occcupies a central role in this debate and feminists writing in the hundred years since the publication of The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State frequently turn to this book in an attempt to find validation for their central argument.The contributors to this volume reconsider Engels'theories and review evidence from those societies that have attempted to implement his belief that the key to the emancipation of women lies in their entry to social production.

From its growth in Europe in the nineteenth century, detective fiction has developed into one of the most popular genres of literature and popular culture more widely. In this monograph, Mary Evans examines detective fiction and its complex relationship to the modern and to modernity. She focuses on two key themes: the moral relationship of detection (and the detective) to a particular social world and the attempt to restore and even improve the social world that has been threatened and fractured by a crime, usually that of murder. It is a characteristic of much detective fiction that the detective, the pursuer, is a social outsider: this status creates a complex web of relationships between detective, institutional life and dominant and subversive moralities. Evans questions who and what the detective stands for and suggests that the answer challenges many of our assumptions about the relationship between various moralities in the modern world.

This breathtakingly broad, interdisciplinary reader demonstrates how widely feminist thinking has spread, how deeply it has shaken settled assumptions in the disciplines and how much new light it throws on contemporary controversies. - Myra Marx Ferree, University of Wisconsin-Madison'A timely intervention and highly engaged, thoughtful and scholarly analysis of the state of gender and women′s studies in the West by three eminent feminist scholars... Highly cognisant of the central issues that have fractured, blocked and enhanced western feminism.'- Bev Skeggs, Goldsmiths'The comprehensiveness and the interdisciplinary range of themes are impressive, and they make the Handbook into a wonderful tool for teachers and students of women′s and gender studies.'- Nina Lykke, Linkoeping University Gender and women′s studies is one of the most challenging fields within the social sciences - the dynamics of gender relations and the social and cultural implications of gender constructions offer a lively forum of debate. The Handbook of Gender and Women′s Studies presents a comprehensive and engaging review of the most recent developments within the field, including the study of masculinity, the feminist implications of postmodernism, the ′cultural turn′ and globalization. The authors review current research and offer critical analyses of women′s and gender studies in work, the welfare state, family, education, religion, violence and war and feminist global politics. Edited by three leading academics from Europe and the United States, and with 25 chapters written by scholars based throughout the world, the Handbook situates the most important debates in the field within a uniquely international and interdisciplinary context. The Handbook is a useful introduction to gender theory and an exciting starting-point for fresh debates.

'A brilliant inquiry into culture and society over some seven centuries, Mary Evans explores the origins and trajectories of modernity from the Reformation through the Enlightenment to the contemporary period. Her intellectual control of complex ideas and diverse forms of evidence is consistently impressive. Exploring various pessimistic, dystopian strands in European perspectives on modernity by Friedrich Nietzsche, Max Weber and Theodor Adorno, she defends a balanced view of both the negative and positive consequences of modernization. This is historical sociology at its best: judicious, theoretically informed, carefully crafted, grounded in empirical research, and above all intellectually clever. A Short History of Society will prove to be a valuable companion to the student who needs a concise scholarly and sociological overview of modernity.'Bryan Turner, National University of Singapore A Short History of Society is a concise account of the emergence of modern western society. It looks at how successive generations have understood and explained the world in which they lived, and examines significant events since the Enlightenment that have led to the development of society as we know it today. The book spans the period 1500 to the present day and discusses the social world in terms of both its politics and its culture. This book is ideal for undergraduate students in the social sciences who are perplexed by the myriad of events and theories with which their courses are concerned, and who need a historical perspective on the changes that shaped the contemporary world.

'The more it costs, the less it's worth.'(Student slogan, London, 2003)'We are told that this world represents our best hope for intellectual vitality and creativity. We are also told that we should pay more to enter it and experience its rich resources. Yet those rich resources are increasingly marginalized by cultures of assessment and regulation, the heavy costs of which (both financial and intellectual) are to be carried by students. Increasingly students are being asked to pay for the costs of the regulation of higher education rather than education itself. Access to Higher Education has become more widely available: the implications of that change are the concern of this book.'Mary Evans

It is generally accepted that Britain was held together during the second world war by a spirit of national democratic `consensus'. But whose interests did the consensus serve? And how did it unravel in the years immediately after victory? This well observed and powerfully argued book overturns many of our assumptions about the national spirit of 1939-45. It shows that the current return to right-wing politics in Britain was prefigured by ideologies of change during and immediately after the war.

This introductory text sets out to make the links between sociological theories of the body and actual human behaviour and experience. It covers a broad range of topics, from long-standing sociological concerns to more contemporary issues. With a focus on the changeability of the body, it examines the part that bodies play in the social construction of categories such as race, sexuality and disability and explores how we express ourselves through our bodies, whether in eating, dress or pain. It also debates how the body is regulated, both through the life course and in reproduction.

Auto/biography is currently one of the most popular literary genres, widely supposed to illuminate the study of the individual and his or her personal circumstances. Missing Persons suggests that auto/biography is, in fact, based on fictions, both about the person and about what it is possible to know about any one individual.Organised into chapters which consider particular kinds of auto/biographical writing, such as work on the British Royal Family and auto/biographies of twentieth-century men, this book demonstrates the absences and evasions - indeed the `missing persons - of auto/biography. Mary Evans'book will provide invaluable reading for students of womens studies, sociology and cultural studies courses.

This introductory textbook offers a concise and lucid account of the main developments in contemporary feminist thinking, and demonstrates the centrality of feminist thought to all areas of intellectual enquiry. In a wide-ranging discussion, Evans argues that most accounts of the world since the Enlightenment have been constructed in terms of a distinction between the public and the private which excluded women. Using both historical and more recent examples, she examines the breadth and complexity of feminist thinking, focusing on key themes such as the body, representation, engendering knowledge, and the relationship between women and the state. Evans argues that feminist thought seeks less to add to existing theory than to re-theorize the social and symbolic worlds; no contemporary account of these worlds, she suggests, is complete without a discussion of the implications of gender difference. This book offers a clear and coherent guide to contemporary feminism for students of women's studies, gender studies, sociology, social theory and literary theory.