Partial Truths and the Politics of Community

Book excerpt: 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 N