Reviews for European Feminisms, 1700-1950: A Political History

The average rating for European Feminisms, 1700-1950: A Political History based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2017-03-28 00:00:00 David Rd This book is superb. So many treatments of contemporary political movements seem to treat class and ethnicity mutually incompatible but what Pratt does extremely well is 1) show how they may interweave in various contexts, and 2) demonstrate conclusively (not that I need much convincing) that identities such as ethnicity and class are made, not given. His range of case studies is broad - if all southern European and mainly 20th century, but Marxist, anarchist, liberal/middle class, progressive, reactionary and most political persuasions around them. I was quite taken by the case made for class and ethnicity as interwoven that drew on the socialist-inspired lower middle class and small farmer movement in Occitania (southern France) and the xenophobic right wing Lega Nord in Italy as its examples. He is most interested in exploring how the cultural becomes the ethnic (a good anthropological question) and the ways that horizontal links/difference articulate to vertical origin and historical narratives to make identities - what he refers to on p 184 as "opposition and continuity, battles and begetting", but also reminds us in his discussions of the Basque country and Bosnia that violence was not the product of innate ethnic and cultural difference but a political strategy that produced those ethnic and cultural differences. Simply superb and one that I will return to time and again I expect. If I was considering for a text anywhere (which I can't in the sport studies programme) I'd say good for upper level undergraduates and beyond.

Review # 2 was written on 2011-08-02 00:00:00 Ben Buttery For anyone looking at nationalisms, this is a great little book. Pratt questions scholars have treated nationalism as a solidarity premised upon emotional and cultural ties, while class in treated as a non-emotional, economic structure of society. He uses a compelling series of European case studies to demonstrate how the construction of class (in places like Andalusia and Tuscany) has relied on similar processes of group identity building and inclusion/exclusion as nation. He exposes the contingent, cultural elements of both of these categories of collectivity. This book definitely deserves a wider readership.