RECONSTRUCTING GENDER IN AMERICA: SELF-DEFINITION AND SOCIAL ACTION AMONG ABORTION ACTIVISTS (MOVEMENTS, SYMBOLIC ANTHROPOLOGY, CONSERVATIVE POLITICS, NORTH DAKOTA).
Item
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Title
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RECONSTRUCTING GENDER IN AMERICA: SELF-DEFINITION AND SOCIAL ACTION AMONG ABORTION ACTIVISTS (MOVEMENTS, SYMBOLIC ANTHROPOLOGY, CONSERVATIVE POLITICS, NORTH DAKOTA).
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Identifier
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AAI8611342
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identifier
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8611342
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Creator
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GINSBURG, FAYE DIANA.
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Contributor
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Vincent Crapanzano
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Date
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1986
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Sociology, Ethnic and Racial Studies
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Abstract
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This thesis is a symbolic analysis of the contemporary battle over abortion and was organized around the controversy as it occurred in one locale, Fargo, North Dakota, following the opening in October 1981 of the first clinic in the state to offer abortions. Analysis focused on the course of this conflict over two years and, in particular, on the grassroots female abortion activists who were involved. Life story narratives with key pro-life and pro-choice women in Fargo show how abortion activism serves to organize disorderly life transitions for individuals and generational cohorts, especially those affected by socio-economic shifts in which the contradictions between wage labor and motherhood are particularly apparent. The struggle over abortion and its interpretation does not represent two pre-existent positions. Rather, the conflict is itself part of the reconstruction of gender in America as a meaningful social category in America--a process of self-definition through social action--at a time when American culture and the place of women in it seem in disarray.;Local material was analyzed in relation to the history of abortion practice and activism in America, from the 19th century to the present. Special attention is given to growth of the right-to-life movement. Its diverse and primarily female membership is organizing to protest and reverse what they see as the dehumanizing effects of the increasing commercialization of human life. These views suggest that abortion activists are the most recent manifestation of moral reform movements in America which have mobilized to resist penetration of the "domestic domain." Now, as women have fewer children and move increasingly into wage labor, domesticity is more and more defined by and reduced to reproduction. Thus, control over the womb, the last unambiguous symbol of an exclusive female arena, is particularly threatening in the current context.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
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Program
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Anthropology
