Wither women and work

Afshar, Haleh, ed. Women, Work, and Ideology in the Third World. New York: Tavistock Publications, 1985. xvii + 265 pp. including indices and chapter notes and references. $15.95 cloth.

Larwood, Laurie, Ann H. Stromberg, and Barbara A. Gutek, eds. Women and Work: An Annual Review, Vol. 1. Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, 1985. 312 pp. including chapter references. $29.95 cloth.

Long, Norman, ed. Family and Work in Rural Societies: Perspectives on Non‐wage Labour. New York: Tavistock Publications, 1984. viii + 222 pp. including references and indices. $33.00 cloth; $13.95 paper.     

七婆娘闯西南

<正>七个不"安分"的半老徐娘,来自不同单位,组成一个小团队,取名"快乐旅行者"。她们相识在老年大学,一起学跳舞、唱歌、模特、乐器,共同性格是活泼、开朗,一致的愿望是走遍祖国的山山水水,周游世界各国。于是,今年"十一"黄金周期间,老姐妹们制订了第一个计划——到祖国的大西南走一遭。线路是:九寨、黄龙——四姑娘山——日隆——雅江——理塘——稻城——亚丁——稻城——中甸、虎跳峡——丽江——泸沽湖——石桦——二郎山——西昌——成都。胜利回师后,七姐妹中会摄影的魏军营,寄给《旅游纵览》一篇图文并茂的文章——     

The care of women's health and beauty: an experience shared by medieval Jewish and Christian women

In this article I intend to elucidate the extent to which medieval western Jewish and Christian women shared customs, knowledge and practices regarding health care, a sphere which has been historically considered as part of women's daily domestic tasks. My study aims to identify female agency in medical care, as well as women's interaction across religious lines, by analysing elusive sources, such as medical literature on women's health care, and by collating the information they provide with data obtained from other textual and visual records. By searching specific evidence of the dialogues that must have occurred between Christian and Jewish women in transmitting their knowledge and experiences, I put forward the idea (developed from earlier work by Montserrat Cabré i Pairet) that medical texts with no clear attribution can be used as sources to reconstruct women's authoritative knowledge.     

The care of women's health and beauty: an experience shared by medieval Jewish and Christian women

In this article I intend to elucidate the extent to which medieval western Jewish and Christian women shared customs, knowledge and practices regarding health care, a sphere which has been historically considered as part of women's daily domestic tasks. My study aims to identify female agency in medical care, as well as women's interaction across religious lines, by analysing elusive sources, such as medical literature on women's health care, and by collating the information they provide with data obtained from other textual and visual records. By searching specific evidence of the dialogues that must have occurred between Christian and Jewish women in transmitting their knowledge and experiences, I put forward the idea (developed from earlier work by Montserrat Cabré i Pairet) that medical texts with no clear attribution can be used as sources to reconstruct women's authoritative knowledge.     

From sacred history to historical memory and back: The Jewish past

This paper deals with the manufacture of collective memory in the Jewish experience. The first section describes the patterns provided by sacred history. Based on the case study of the Jewish communities of Jerba, Tunisia, the second section explores how local events are elaborated and conceptualized to conform to the paradigms of the religious tradition. In the third part, the life stories and autobiographies of North African Jews who have emigrated to France serve as a basis for investigating the relationship between individual memory and sacred history.     

Conversing with the minority: relations among Christian,Jewish, and Muslim women in the high middle ages

This essay introduces a special issue of the Journal of Medieval History on the topic of ‘Conversing with the minority: relations among Christian, Jewish, and Muslim Women in the High Middle Ages’. Despite the fact that both interfaith relations and women's history are now well established subdisciplines within the field of medieval studies, the question of how medieval women themselves established cross-sectarian relations has rarely been explored. Documenting women's history is almost always problematic because of limited source materials, but this essay suggests that much can be learned by looking at areas where Christian, Jewish, and Muslim women shared certain facets of their lives: either by reason of social relations tied to religion and ethnicity (money-lending being a common bond between Jewish and Christian women, slavery between Christian women and Muslims) or by reason of events that connected them due to their shared sex and gender (childbirth, caring for the dead, even cosmetics). By actively looking for ‘spaces’ where women would be found, we can begin to hear the dialogues that passed among women across religious lines.     

All hyped up and no place to go

In this paper we think about the performance of sexual identities in space, and try to explore the notions of transgression and parody implicit in recent queer theory, particularly in the work of Judith Butler. To do this, we take a long hard look at two current dissident sexual identities—the hypermasculine ‘gay skinhead’ and the hyperfeminine ‘lipstick lesbian’. We describe their evolution as sexual‐outlaw styles of the 1990s, and assess the effects of their performance in spaces which are, we argue, actively constructed as heterosexual. Although we are ultimately unsure and unable to agree about what kinds of trouble these identities cause, and for whom, and where, we want to share our unease, our questions, our own troubles.     

Weak Ties and Expertise: Crossing Technological Boundaries

In this article, we question how new technological traits can penetrate cohesive social groups and spread. Based on ethnographic narratives and following studies in sociology, the hypothesis is that not only weak ties are important for linking otherwise unconnected groups and introducing new techniques but also that expertise is required. In order to test this hypothesis, we carried out a set of field experiments in northern India where the kiln has been adopted recently. Our goal was to measure the degree of expertise of the potters distributed between early and late adopters of the kiln. Our results are discussed in the light of oral interviews. Our conclusions suggest that expertise is a necessary, albeit not sufficient, condition for weak ties to act as bridges and thereby for new techniques to spread. As an example, they explain how turntables could have been adopted by potters from the northern Levant during the third millennium BC.     

The Jewish Community's Reactions to the John Demjanjuk Trials

In September 1993, accused Nazi war criminal John Demjanjuk stepped off the small private plane at the tiny Medina, Ohio, airport, about 20 miles from Akron. Demjanjuk's most recent journey had taken him from Israel back to the United States, eventually home to Seven Hills, Ohio, a suburb just south of Cleveland. Formerly an obscure Ukrainian who was brought to the world's attention through his imprisonment and subsequent trials in both the United States and Israel from 1975 to 1998, Demjanjuk became a martyr to some and a monster to others during his two-decade-long legal ordeal. This paper will examine the various reactions to the Demjanjuk case, concentrating particularly on America's Jewish community. In using this case as a focal point I hope to illuminate certain issues regarding national and religious identity and discuss the question of the pursuit of war criminals in the name of justice.¹ The Demjanjuk case proved to be a forum for longstanding conflicts between Ukrainians and Jews, as both sides pushed for an acknowledgment of atrocities committed against their respective communities.     

The development anthropology of food crises: Still a long way to go

Huss‐Ashmore, Rebecca and Solomon H. Katz, eds. African Food Systems in Crisis: Part II. Contending with Change. New York: Gordon and Breach, 1990. xiii + 292 pp. including chapter references and index. $78.00 cloth.

Whiteford, Scott and Ann E. Ferguson, eds. Harvest of Want: Hunger and Food Security in Central America and Mexico. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1991. 264 pp. including chapter references and index. $48.00 cloth.