Partial Truths and the Politics of Community

Partial Truths and the Politics of Community considers what happens after feminists succeed in achieving social change or in founding organizations dedicated to accomplishing their personal and social goals. This collection of eighteen essays by scholars from the fields of international relations and feminist studies explores the theoretical dilemmas and practical politics of living with raised consciousnesses in ""worlds of our own making."" The contributors explore feminisms as dreams of human rights, as a cluster of ideologies, and as a bounty of social practices set within frameworks for tackling problems in nation-building and global governance. In essays that illustrate the impact of feminist concerns with the quality of education, the contributors offer studies of homeschooling, of the education of impoverished girls in rural Mexico, of sororities and their relation to female autonomy, and of the teaching of prisoners by volunteers in county jails. Other contributors call for a greater attention to the ecology of social life, viewing society as a complex of individuals bound to one another through webs of transactions and obligations. These contributors recount examples from Northern Ireland, Poland, and the United States in which such webs sometimes support and sometimes strangle efforts to achieve human dignity and autonomy. Evaluating progress made in the legal realm, other contributors chart the opportunities and limitations of international and domestic law as tools to advance and protect human rights. They consider gender discrimination in universities and colleges, the United Nations and its mixed record on women's issues, and the effects of adding rape to the list of prosecutable war crimes. The volume concludes with two works on how feminism supports democratic constructions of science and religion, with results that destabilize dominant institutions in both realms.