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