Provoking Agents: Gender and Agency in Theory and Practice

"A major contribution in women's studies and in other disciplines
dealing with issues of agency. The authors raise issues that are very
important . . . and they raise them as they must be raised--by bridging
theory and action." -- Kathryn Pine Addelson, author of Moral
Passages: Toward a Collectivist Moral Theory
Both the women's liberation movement and those who have studied it characterize
agency as the capacity to make change in individual consciousness, personal
lives, and society. The seventeen contributors to Provoking Agents
explore whether--and how--feminist theory, writing, and other social practices
can help readers move beyond seeing women as a powerless group to effecting
changes in their own lives and, ultimately, becoming social activists.
Topics in this multi-disciplinary collection range from maternal surrogacy
to writing, from consciousness-raising to AIDS activism, from pornography
to local organizing.