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322 CONTEMPORARYSOCIOLOGY

thinker,

n

myview, re

nseparable

rom

is

major ontribution

s a sociologist:

o synthe-

size, provoke,

excite,

and inspire.

He

is

reliably

unorthodox nd

brilliant.

TMWS

began

a sustained hallenge

o complacent

common ense.

Wallerstein

evivedhe

Prometheanroject

of

classical sociology:

holistic analysis

n

service

of freedom.

ike Prometheus,

ho

stole fire

from

he gods

and tricked

hem,

capitalism

as created ivilization

y

stealing

and

trickinghe

forces f

nature.

As

punish-

ment rometheus

as chained o

a

mountain,

his mmortal

iver aten

ach

dayby neagle,

and each

daygrowing ack

to

be

eaten

gain.

Perhaps he

metaphorpplies o thecycles f

capitalist

ociety,

nd

perhaps

also to the

fortunes f thosewho

try

o

comprehend

t

whole.

References

Burke,Peter, d. 1972. Economy

&

Society

n

Early

Modern

Europe: Essays From Annales.

New

York:

Harper

Torchbooks.

Wallerstein,

mmanuel.

1983.

Historical

Capitalism.

London:

Verso.

.

1995.

"The end of what modernity?" heory

and Society

24/4:471-88.

Women's

Bodies

and

FeministSubversions

No previous

S review.

In its

influence

n the United

States,

Our

Bodies,

Ourselves may

be

in the same

category

s the

Bible

and Rush Limbaugh.

Since

initial ublication

n

1971,

its trajec-

tory

has been

a

rags-to-riches

dventure,

encapsulating

ome of

the dynamics

f the

women's

movement

n the late twentieth

century.

oth book

and

social

movement

hold ntension herough dgeofa critique

of

male

(and

class

and

race) power

with

pressures

o

sand it down

into a smooth

message f elf-help

nd nformed

onsumer-

ism.Moreover,

ecauseof

ts onnection

o a

social movement,

he book moves

freely

between

the

popular

and the

academic;

t

cuts

across

disciplinary

oundaries,

rawing

upon

and

nfluencing any odies

of

knowl-

edge.

The coincidence

f the

hared wenty-

fifth nniversaryf this journal and of

feminism'sest-selling

ook

affords

n

inter-

esting

pportunity

or

eflection

n theways

in

which

feminism

as influenced

ociology.

In

1969,

at

a

conference

f "Bread and

Roses,"

Boston

socialist-feminist

rganiza-

tion,

group

of women

who came together

at

a

workshop bout

frustrations

ith

physi-

LINDA GORDON

University f

Wisconsin,

Madison

BARRE THORNE

University

f California,

Berkeley

Our

Bodies,

Ourselves:

A

Book

by and

for

Women,by

The

Boston

Women's Health

Book Collective.

NewYork: imon Schuster

[1973]

1992. 647 pp. ISBN:

0-6714-6088-9.

$20.00

paper.

cians

decided to continue meeting.

One-and-

a-half years later

they produced the

first

version

of Our

Bodies,

Ourselves-

194 pages,

printed on newsprintby a small New Left

press,priced

at 75 cents. Advertised

byword

of

mouth

and

notices

in women's

and New

Leftpublications,

t had sold

250,000 copies

by 1973,

when

the

group signed

with

Simon

&

Schuster. The authors,

a collective of

11,

insisted

on provisions rare

in

commercial

publishing:

All

profits go

to the women's

health movement,

and the

publishers

are

required to

make copies available

at 40

percent of the cover price for nonprofit

health

groups. By

1995 the book

has

sold

31/2

million

copies,

not including sales of

three

sibling

books, Changing Bodies,

Changing

Lives (for

teenagers),

Ourselves and

Our

Children,

nd Ourselves

Growing

Older.

The book

is

most

famous for

its

positive

and

explicit

discussion-and

pictures-of

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All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions





CONTEMPORARY

OCIOLOGY

323

sex

and

reproduction.

he first

dition egan

with

n

introduction

n

"Women,

Medicine

and Capitalism,"

nd then turned mmedi-

ately to the most

burning opic

foryoung

feministsf

the time-sexuality.This was

followedby chapters n VD, birth ontrol,

abortion, regnancy

nd childbirth,nd

a

concluding ssay

n medical nstitutions.

he

1992 edition, 50

magazine-size

ages, riced

at $20,

beginswith a subject

possibly ven

more roublingor

women-bodyimage nd

food-

thenmoves on to alcohol

and other

drugs,

ports nd exercise,

lternative eal-

ing, sychotherapy,

nvironmentalnd occu-

pational ealth,

nd violence gainstwomen,

before turning o sex and reproductive

health.

After hildbirth,t continues

witha

long chapteron

women's aging,

nd con-

cludes

with

lengthy

ection

n

thepolitics

of

medical are.

What

makes

Our

Bodies so

influential?o

answerwe

need

to

recallhow

sexuality,

he

body,

nd

gender

werehandled

n

scholarship,

medicine,ndpopular

iscourse

n1971.There

was

virtually

o

open

discussion f

sex

and

reproduction

n

schools

r thepopular

media,

and physiciansondescended owomenand

regularly

ithheldmedical nformation

rom

their

emale

atients.

ocial

science and hu-

manities

cholarshipoutside

thesmall,mar-

ginal,

nd

suspect

field

of "sexology")

in-

cluded

neither

ex

nor

bodies;

t treated

he

maleexperience

ndperspective

suniversal.

Sociologists

ad

nograsp

f

he

oncept gen-

der"

except

for he

Parsonian

onception

f

family-based

sex

roles,"

nd

heir

ork

argely

ignored

omen

s social

ctors.

eminism

p-

pearedonly s a relicofhistory.

The influence

of

Our

Bodies,

Ourselves

is

inseparable

rom he

mpact

f the women's

liberation ovement,

he

argest

ocialmove-

ment

n the

history

f the

United

tates,

nd

one

that

till

evokes ntense esistance.

he

large ender

ap

n

grasping

he

ignificance

f

this

ook

was evident

ecently

hen

CNN

rec-

ognized

hebook's

25th nniversaryy

nter-

viewing

ts wo

eading

uthors.

he CNN

pro-

ducerreportedhatwhenshe firstroposed

the nterview

o

a

large

taff

eeting,

ll the

women

n

the

room

aid,

Great

dea ",

nd all

themen

aid,

What

s it?"

Our

Bodies'

appeal

to

women,

ike

that

f

the women's

movement s

a

whole,

ies in

the

mmediacy

nd, ometimes,

he

urgency

of

the

nformationt contains.

t can function

as a manual

n

which to look

up specific

problems, rombattering o breastfeeding,

candida

to

cunnilingus.t does not defer o

expertise; t will never tell you, as did Dr.

Spock and his colleaguesfor o manyyears:

"If n doubt, all yourdoctor." ts assumption

that readers

want this large quantity f

informations unexceptionable oday,but

onlybecause

of ts

own extraordinary

nflu-

ence.

The

book

fits

today's self-help ashion

because

it

helped

to construct hat mode.

Our Bodies

could be analyzed o show that

books

an

be what eaders

make

f hem

an

example

f

thepoststructuralistmphasis n

the indeterminacyf meaning. r, taking

social-constructionistpproach,

t

can be

understood as

a

cultural artifactwhose

significance hangesover time.More pre-

cisely,

t

tands

s

evidence hat

he

meanings

of

exts

re

powerfullyhapedby ocialethos

and social movement.

t

could

be read as

demonstrating

he

trajectory

f the second-

wave women's

liberationmovement

rom

radicalto cultural eminism,rom n insur-

gentchallenge

o institutionalized

ower

to

... eating healthyand learningto love our

bodies.But thisdeclensionmodelmisses he

dynamics

f

ocial-movementnfluence,

hich

include thetrade-offsetweenbreadth

nd

radicalism; nd it fails to appreciate the

centrality

f

feministmphasisnconnecting

structuralorceswith veryday

ife.

Our Bodies

exemplifies

eminism'subver-

sive theoretical

nfluence n

its

insistence

that

body

and

sexual norms re

politically

constructed.

oday,

ome

of

the

most

theo-

retically ophisticated cholarship ims to

integrate

he

body

nto

poststructuralist

nd

social-constructionisterspectives.

ur Bod-

ies

blazed

this rail

nd, moreover,

ssumed

thetasknot

only

f

making

his nticommon-

sense argument ut

also of

leading

nonaca-

demic

readers

through t,

which

in turn

required

standard f

proof

much

higher

than

s

customary

n academicdiscourse.

Allof

thebook'seditions

est n a

critique

ofauthoritativelyegitimatedxpertise, re-

sented

n

popular anguage

but

fundamen-

tally

identical with

the

similar

critique

presented y

scholars.

The

authors

epeat-

edly

remind s

of their

ay

status

nd of the

historically

estructiverrors

and worse)

of

medical

professionals

nd moral

uthorities.

The book continues

to devote substantial







324

CONTEMPORARY

OCIOLOGY

attention

to

a

critique

of the political

economics

of the health, pharmaceutical,

food,

and other related industries.

Take, for

example,

the chaptersabout body

image and

food.

After feminist ultural

critique offear

of fatness, nd a crash course in nutritional

awareness,

the book discusses

the influence

the food industry

xercises over

the FDA and

USDA;

the

advertising

wars and constant

introduction

of new products

by the few

conglomeratesthat

control food

manufactur-

ing; how the dollar

spent

on food is

distributed mong

grower,packer,packager,

transporter, tc.;

how

women workers

are

treated

n

the food

industry. he authors

also

remind us repeatedly of the collective

process

of the book's production.

n typically

New

Left

ashion,

he first dition told

us how

"sisters added

their experiences, questions,

fears, eelings,

xcitement

.. We all learned

together."

The

last

edition adds

a more

theoretical take

on the process-"We

are

increasingly roud of

our

dependence

upon

one another

in a

culture

that so

prizes

independence"-but

also repeats

the person-

al

-"We

have seen one another

through

our

divorces and threemarriages, ne case ofhot

flashes and some

long

dramatic affairswith

men and women."

Just s some feminist

nd

minority

cholars

have challengeddominant

definitions f

what

counts

as

theory

and as science,

so Our

Bodies integrates

bstract, yntheticmascu-

line)

knowledge

with bodily, experiential

(female)

knowledge

thatproduces

immedi-

ate

personal

consequences.

Nowhere

is

this

integration

more

essential

than

in

medicine,

which faces the conundrumthat theprimary

evidence

of

illness is

pain,

unknowable by

the

physician.

Many professions

have

laid

claim

to

their status on

the

basis

of social-

control

agendas,

but

few have

had a

more

directly yrannical

ractice

than medicine

in

its attemptto

heal

bodies

while minimizing

the

authority

of the

body

in

question-the

patient.

For

at

least

150

years one response

to

expertise-in particularto "regular"medical

authority-has been

self-help

movements

that shade into

mysticism,

from the water

cure to Sylvester

Graham to feministmoon

therapies.

The

agenda

of Our Bodies

is

different.ts

goal

is not to deny

the

benefits

of

expertise

but

to democratize

access to it

and

insist hat ts

more

important alidity

est

is not the opinion of

professional peers but

that of "patients." t emphasizes the diversity

of bodily existence and

experience, resisting

the (social-)scientific

and medical tendency

to

create

norms

and measuredeviations from

them. In this priority, the book is not

uniquely feminist-i.e.,

forwomen-but con-

stitutesa larger democratic and libertarian

challenge to expertise.

The book uses cita-

tions to

medical and other

scholarly ournals

sparingly,directingreaders to studies they

could actually read,

and it provides carefully

selected

bibliographies

for every chapter.

The

recent editions

use humor to make

points

and

to

leaven political passion, as in a

cartoon that shows a woman on a gurney

saying o-her urgeon,

"I

hope you can justify

this

hysterectomy

to

my

women's health

group."

Of

course,

Our Bodies, Ourselves was

a

prime mover in the construction and diffu-

sion of feminism

nd

particularly

f

a

large

women's

health movement, erhaps the most

vibrant contemporary

expression

of

grass-

roots feminist ctivism.

The

National

Wom-

en's Health Networkemerged

in

1975

out of

the kind of activism the book stimulated,

includingwomen's

outrage at the dangersof

the oral

contraceptives

so

cavalierly

and

prematurely

mass-marketed in the 1960s.

The impact of this

movement has been so

large that

much of it has

become invisible

as

women's health

demands have

been

inte-

grated into

mainstreammedicine.

There are

women's

clinics

in

major hospitals

and

HMOs; childbirthpractices

have accommo-

dated

many

feminist

demands,

such as

birthing ooms,nursemidwives,aborcoaches,

family articipation

n

birth,

nd new meth-

ods of labor

and

delivery;

some

medical

schools now

produce

health

newsletters

for

women;

the inclusion

of women

in

clinical

trials

s

now

required (for

decades standard

drug trials

used

only men);

and there

has

been

a

(belated) upswing

in

research funds

for women's

diseases,

such as

breast

cancer.

The

changes

do not

affect

nly women;

the

women's health movement has been the

largest ingle pressure

for more democratic

medicine for

everyone.

Our

Bodies,

Ourselves

exemplifies

the

transformative

nfluence

of

feminism n

both

popular

and academic

knowledge.

Over the

last

25 years

the

impact

of

the

women's

movement on the

academy

has

been

in a







CONTEMPORARY

OCIOLOGY

325

transdisciplinary

direction, and the most

challenging edges of feminist theory and

scholarship rub against

the

grain

of

disciplin-

ary

structures

and

practices. The feminist

influenceopened for cholars an array f new

topics and challenges to traditional ssump-

tions,

uch

as

the distinctionbetween public

and

private. Our

Bodies draws together and

unfolds

a

broad swathe of

the feminist

insights, .g., into the

political construction

of bodies and the

gendered

dynamics

of

institutions, which have

challenged and

enriched the

social sciences. Now

sociolo-

gists notice and think bout gender; indeed,

by

the

1990s

the

Sex

and Gender

Section,

founded in 1973, had become the largest

research section

in

the

ASA.

But the

move-

ment of

feminist deas

into

sociology has

been

uneven-widely

transformative,

ut

also

co-opted (e.g., by

the

practice

of

using

gender

as a

variable

rather

han

using

it

as a

theoretical

ategory)

and contained

ironical-

ly, by

the

institutionalizationof feminist

sociology

as

a

subfield).

In

sociology,

as in

other

disciplines,

the

majority

f male schol-

ars do not read

feminist

work,attendfeminist

sessions at

conferences,or

incorporate gen-

der

analyses

into their

teaching.

This symposium's

emphasis on "influential

books'? skewed

the evaluation

of

scholarly

significance toward books by individual

social theorists.

Because

feminist deas are in

constant interaction

with a

vibrant social

movement,

they develop

quickly,

and any

one work is

rapidly urpassed. Feminist

deas

have evolved

collectively, mixing

genres,

rather han

through he

vehicle of

individual

"theory stars."

Social theory is

a self-

conscious

genre whose

canonized

heroes -a

symbolic

source

of

egitimacy nd

coherence

in the fragmented iscipline of sociology-

are all men. And

in

sociologythere has

been a

persistent

eparation between

works labeled

"social

theory"

and works

labeled "feminist

theory."

Our

Bodies,

Ourselves

reminds us that

knowledge

is

produced not

solely

in

the

academy,

and

that some

of

the

most

produc-

tive new veins

of research and

analysis

arise

from

radical

movements.

Sociological Visions

and Revisions

Charles Lemert

and Donald

Levine

agree

about

some

important

ssues

facing

sociol-

ogy.

Both

believe

the

discipline is

in

crisis.

Both contend it s a moral crisis, nd discover

the

same

symptom:

Professional

ociologists

have

lost their concern

for the

moral

dilemmas

of

modernity.Lemert and

Levine

each locate

the

origin

and

center of the crisis

in

sociological theory. They even both

believe

that

professional sociologists

must

submit their

discipline

to a

sort of psycho-

analysis

n an

attempt

at

"recovering buried

memories and] reinterpretingast experienc-

es"

(Levine, p. 12; see Lemert,p. 205).

But here

the agreement ends. Charles

Lemert

and

Donald Levine differ on the

meaning of those buried memories and past

experiences. Consequently,

the

visions they

offer seem

dramatically opposed. Charles

ANNE

E. KANE

University f

Texas,Austin

Sociology fter

he

Crisis, y

Charles Lemert.

Boulder,CO: Westview ress.1995. 252 pp.

$55.00

cloth.

ISBN:

0-8133-2543-9. $14.95

paper.0-8133-2544-7.

Visions of the

Sociological Tradition,

by

Donald Levine.

Chicago, IL: University f

Chicago Press. 1995. 365 pp.

$47.50 cloth.

ISBN:

0-226-47546-8. $15.95 paper.

0-226-47547-6.

Lemertfindsthat the sociological tradition,

like

moderncivilization, gnores

what he sees

as the

defining

feature

of

modernity-

differences-and,

hence,

is a

tradition of

exclusion and

distortion.

He

urges

sociolo-

gists to followthe lead of those

writing rom

a

perspective

of

difference and

exclusion:

"To a very

large extent, these are the



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