Factory Daughters - by Diane L Wolf (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Taking the reader inside the households where Javanese women live and the factories where they work, Diane Wolf reveals the contradictions, constraints, and changes in their lives. She debunks conventional wisdom about the patriarchal family, while at the same time clearly identifying the complex dynamics of class, gender, agrarian change, and industrialization in the Third World.

From the Back Cover

"The book is both theoretically sophisticated and empirically rich. Wolf draws effectively on scholarship ranging from historiography about early modern Europe to recent analyses of the economic conduct of peasant families in contemporary Asia or Latin America. . . . Wolf tells wonderful stories about vibrant, even irrevent, young women." --Frances Gouda, Women's Review of Books

"Wolf's fine study is a model of theoretically self-conscious, empirically-grounded feminist scholarship on Third World women. She forces a bracing reexamination of received wisdom on household strategies, patriarchy, proletarianization, gender relations, the life, cycle, and the impact of factory work on agrarian societies." --James C. Scott, Yale University

"The author does an excellent job of blending together qualitative interview material with more quantitative survey analysis when the latter is appropriate. This work will be a significant contribution to a number of fields." --Carmen Diana Deere, author of Household and Class Relations

"Offers a wealth of important insights on changing gender roles in Southeast Asia, on the analysis of household economies, and on international processes of industrialization." --Choice

About the Author

Diane Lauren Wolf is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Davis.