Books by Joan Wallach Scott

Joan Wallach Scott critically examines the belief that history will redeem us, revealing the implicit politics of appeals to the judgment of history. She argues that the notion of a linear, ever-improving direction of history hides the persistence of power structures and hinders the pursuit of alternative futures.

Exploring such topics from language and gender to the politics of work and family, this text offers a contribution to the exploration of how gender can be used as a category of cultural and historical analysis.

When feminists argued for political rights in the context of liberal democracy, they insisted that the differences between men and women were irrelevant for citizenship. Yet by acting on behalf of women, they introduced the very idea of difference they sought to eliminate. Scott reads feminist history in terms of this paradox.

This award-winning study analyzes in close detail the experiences of glassworkers as mechanization transformed their trade from a highly skilled art to a semiskilled occupation. Arguing that changes in the organization of work altered the lifestyle and political outlook of the glassworker, Joan Scott uses local archival materials and demographic records to reconstruct the experience of ordinary workingmen.