Feminism And Evolutionary Biology

Author : Patricia Gowaty
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
Page : 629 pages
File Size : 46,8 Mb
Release : 2012-12-06
Category : Science
ISBN : 9781461559856

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Feminism and Evolutionary Biology by Patricia Gowaty Pdf

Standing at the intersection of evolutionary biology and feminist theory is a large audience interested in the questions one field raises for the other. Have evolutionary biologists worked largely or strictly within a masculine paradigm, seeing males as evolving and females as merely reacting passively or carried along with the tide? Would our view of nature `red in tooth in claw' be different if women had played a larger role in the creation of evolutionary theory and through education in its transmission to younger generations? Is there any such thing as a feminist science or feminist methodology? For feminists, does any kind of biological determinism undermine their contention that gender roles purely constructed, not inherent in the human species? Does the study of animals have anything to say to those preoccupied with the evolution and behavior of humans? All these questions and many more are addressed by this book, whose contributing authors include leading scholars in both feminism and evolutionary biology. Bound to be controversial, this book is addressed to evolutionary biologists and to feminists and to the large number of people interested in women's studies.

Author : Patricia Gowaty
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
Page : 650 pages
File Size : 45,9 Mb
Release : 1997-01-31
Category : Science
ISBN : 0412073617

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Feminism and Evolutionary Biology by Patricia Gowaty Pdf

Have evolutionary biologists worked largely or strictly within a masculine paradigm, seeing males as evolving and females as merely reacting passively or carried along with the tide? Is there any such thing as a "feminist science" or "feminist methodology"? These are just two of the many vital questions examined in this up-to-date primary source, exploring the boundaries, intersections, and frontiers between evolutionary biology and feminism, particularly as they relate to Darwinian process.

Author : Patricia Gowaty
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 648 pages
File Size : 49,6 Mb
Release : 1997-01-01
Category : Electronic
ISBN : 1461559863

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Feminism and Evolutionary Biology by Patricia Gowaty Pdf

Author : Lynn Hankinson Nelson
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 279 pages
File Size : 47,6 Mb
Release : 2017-09-07
Category : Science
ISBN : 9781107090187

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Biology and Feminism by Lynn Hankinson Nelson Pdf

A balanced and accessible introduction to the engagements that feminist scientists and science scholars undertake with a variety of biological sciences.

Author : Sue Vilhauer Rosser
Publisher : Macmillan Reference USA
Page : 224 pages
File Size : 43,6 Mb
Release : 1992
Category : Social Science
ISBN : UVA:X002162842

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Biology & Feminism by Sue Vilhauer Rosser Pdf

The link between biology and feminism is well established in history. Even as recently as the nineteenth century, preeminent men of science employed skewed biological theorizing to explain the disadvantaged position of women in our society. These male scientists argued that women are mentally inferior to men by design of evolution. They erroneously "proved" that the female of the human species has a relatively smaller brain than the male, attributing this "difference" to the fact that the energy that women use to reproduce is drawn off at the expense of their intellectual development. At odds with nineteenth-century feminist critics, men such as Freud, Darwin, Broca, and Spencer did not assign the supposed inferiority of women to such factors as their decreased access to education, believing instead that tangible biological differences subjugated women to men. In the latter part of the twentieth century we again see a link between biology and feminism that expresses itself through women's health issues, reproductive rights, and ecofeminism. In Biology and Feminism: A Dynamic Interaction, Sue V. Rosser offers an intriguing explanation of the possible bias of biological theories. Rosser maintains that the modern scientific method, accepted as objective and factual, may instead be colored by the values and assumptions of the traditional, male scientist. Her study offers critiques of the traditional scientific research method from the viewpoint of a number of different feminist theories. Rosser also details the contribution of several eminent women of science, past and present, to illustrate the impact of feminism on biological theories, and points out that ironically, biology has had amuch greater impact on feminism than feminism has had on biology. Finding that the standard methods of teaching biology have changed little, Rosser presents models for transforming curricula. Her proposed changes aim to identify and correct unconscious biases and teach student store spect differences. Embracing a wide range of studies, this innovative and thoughtful commentary will be of use to biology, health sciences, women's studies, anthropology, sociology, psychology, and history students alike.

Author : Griet Vandermassen
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Page : 241 pages
File Size : 54,9 Mb
Release : 2005-02-10
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781461647072

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Who's Afraid of Charles Darwin? by Griet Vandermassen Pdf

Why should feminism and the biological sciences be at odds? And what might be gained from a reconciliation? In Who's Afraid of Charles Darwin? Vandermassen shows that, rather than continuing this enmity, feminism and the biological sciences—and in particular evolutionary psychology—have the need and the potential to become powerful allies. Properly understood, the Darwinian perspective proposed in this volume will become essential to tackling the major issues in feminism.

Author : Elisabeth A. Lloyd
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Page : 332 pages
File Size : 53,5 Mb
Release : 2009-07
Category : Medical
ISBN : 0674040309

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The Case of the Female Orgasm by Elisabeth A. Lloyd Pdf

Why women evolved to have orgasms--when most of their primate relatives don't--is a persistent mystery among evolutionary biologists. In pursuing this mystery, Elisabeth Lloyd arrives at another: How could anything as inadequate as the evolutionary explanations of the female orgasm have passed muster as science? A judicious and revealing look at all twenty evolutionary accounts of the trait of human female orgasm, Lloyd's book is at the same time a case study of how certain biases steer science astray. Over the past fifteen years, the effect of sexist or male-centered approaches to science has been hotly debated. Drawing especially on data from nonhuman primates and human sexology over eighty years, Lloyd shows what damage such bias does in the study of female orgasm. She also exposes a second pernicious form of bias that permeates the literature on female orgasms: a bias toward adaptationism. Here Lloyd's critique comes alive, demonstrating how most of the evolutionary accounts either are in conflict with, or lack, certain types of evidence necessary to make their cases--how they simply assume that female orgasm must exist because it helped females in the past reproduce. As she weighs the evidence, Lloyd takes on nearly everyone who has written on the subject: evolutionists, animal behaviorists, and feminists alike. Her clearly and cogently written book is at once a convincing case study of bias in science and a sweeping summary and analysis of what is known about the evolution of the intriguing trait of female orgasm.

Author : Sarah Blaffer Hrdy
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 274 pages
File Size : 44,7 Mb
Release : 1981
Category : History
ISBN : 0674955404

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The Woman that Never Evolved by Sarah Blaffer Hrdy Pdf

The author dispels some of the myths about the nature of females and female sexuality, and suggests new hypotheses aboutthe evolution of women.

Author : Maryanne L. Fisher,Justin R. Garcia,Rosemarie Sokol Chang
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 512 pages
File Size : 40,8 Mb
Release : 2013-01-30
Category : Psychology
ISBN : 9780199892754

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Evolution's Empress by Maryanne L. Fisher,Justin R. Garcia,Rosemarie Sokol Chang Pdf

Over the last decade, there has been increasing debate as to whether feminism and evolutionary psychology can co-exist. Such debates often conclude with a resounding "no," often on the grounds that the former is a political movement while the latter is a field of scientific inquiry. In the midst of these debates, there has been growing dissatisfaction within the field of evolutionary psychology about the way the discipline (and others) have repeatedly shown women to be in passive roles when it comes to survival and reproduction. Evolutionary behavioral research has made significant strides in the past few decades, but continues to take for granted many theoretical assumption that are perhaps, in light of the most recent evidence, misguided. As a result, the research community has missed important areas of research, and in some cases, will likely come to inaccurate conclusions based on existing dogma, rather than rigorous, theoretically driven research. Bias in the field of evolutionary psychology echoes the complaints against the political movement attached to academic feminisms. This is an intellectual squabble where much is at stake, including a fundamental understanding of the evolutionary significance of women's roles in culture, mothering, reproductive health and physiology, mating, female alliances, female aggression, and female intrasexual competition. Evolution's Empress identifies women as active agents within the evolutionary process. The chapters in this volume focus on topics as diverse as female social interactions, mate competition and mating strategies, motherhood, women's health, sex differences in communication and motivation, sex discrimination, and women in literature. The volume editors bring together a diverse range of perspectives to demonstrate ways in which evolutionary approaches to human behavior have thus far been too limited. By reconsidering the role of women in evolution, this volume furthers the goal of generating dialogue between the realms of women's studies and evolutionary psychology.

Author : Kimberly A. Hamlin
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 247 pages
File Size : 51,8 Mb
Release : 2014-05-08
Category : History
ISBN : 9780226134758

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From Eve to Evolution by Kimberly A. Hamlin Pdf

From Eve to Evolution provides the first full-length study of American women’s responses to evolutionary theory and illuminates the role science played in the nineteenth-century women’s rights movement. Kimberly A. Hamlin reveals how a number of nineteenth-century women, raised on the idea that Eve’s sin forever fixed women’s subordinate status, embraced Darwinian evolution—especially sexual selection theory as explained in The Descent of Man—as an alternative to the creation story in Genesis. Hamlin chronicles the lives and writings of the women who combined their enthusiasm for evolutionary science with their commitment to women’s rights, including Antoinette Brown Blackwell, Eliza Burt Gamble, Helen Hamilton Gardener, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. These Darwinian feminists believed evolutionary science proved that women were not inferior to men, that it was natural for mothers to work outside the home, and that women should control reproduction. The practical applications of this evolutionary feminism came to fruition, Hamlin shows, in the early thinking and writing of the American birth control pioneer Margaret Sanger. Much scholarship has been dedicated to analyzing what Darwin and other male evolutionists had to say about women, but very little has been written regarding what women themselves had to say about evolution. From Eve to Evolution adds much-needed female voices to the vast literature on Darwin in America.

Author : Marlene Zuk
Publisher : Univ of California Press
Page : 260 pages
File Size : 51,8 Mb
Release : 2002-06-04
Category : Science
ISBN : 0520240758

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Sexual Selections by Marlene Zuk Pdf

In this book the author gives an eye-opening tour of some of the latest developments in our knowledge of animal sexuality and evolutionary biology. It exposes the anthropomorphism and gender politics that have colored our understanding of the natural world and shows how feminism can help move us away from our ideological biases. As she tells many amazing stories about animal behavior--whether of birds and apes or of rats and cockroaches--the author takes us to the places where our ideas about nature, gender, and culture collide. (Midwest).

Author : Elizabeth Grosz
Publisher : Duke University Press
Page : 268 pages
File Size : 48,9 Mb
Release : 2005-06-22
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 0822386550

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Time Travels by Elizabeth Grosz Pdf

Recently the distinguished feminist theorist Elizabeth Grosz has turned her critical acumen toward rethinking time and duration. Time Travels brings her trailblazing essays together to show how reconceptualizing temporality transforms and revitalizes key scholarly and political projects. In these essays, Grosz demonstrates how imagining different relations between the past, present, and future alters understandings of social and scientific projects ranging from theories of justice to evolutionary biology, and she explores the radical implications of the reordering of these projects for feminist, queer, and critical race theories. Grosz’s reflections on how rethinking time might generate new understandings of nature, culture, subjectivity, and politics are wide ranging. She moves from a compelling argument that Charles Darwin’s notion of biological and cultural evolution can potentially benefit feminist, queer, and antiracist agendas to an exploration of modern jurisprudence’s reliance on the notion that justice is only immanent in the future and thus is always beyond reach. She examines Henri Bergson’s philosophy of duration in light of the writings of Gilles Deleuze, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and William James, and she discusses issues of sexual difference, identity, pleasure, and desire in relation to the thought of Deleuze, Friedrich Nietzsche, Michel Foucault, and Luce Irigaray. Together these essays demonstrate the broad scope and applicability of Grosz’s thinking about time as an undertheorized but uniquely productive force.

Author : Melvin Konner
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
Page : 400 pages
File Size : 51,7 Mb
Release : 2015-03-09
Category : Science
ISBN : 9780393246544

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Women After All: Sex, Evolution, and the End of Male Supremacy by Melvin Konner Pdf

“A sparkling, thought-provoking account of sexual differences. Whether you’re a man or a woman, you’ll find his conclusions gripping.”—Jared Diamond There is a human genetic fluke that is surprisingly common, due to a change in a key pair of chromosomes. In the normal condition the two look the same, but in this disorder one is malformed and shrunken beyond recognition. The result is a shortened life span, higher mortality at all ages, an inability to reproduce, premature hair loss, and brain defects variously resulting in attention deficit, hyperactivity, conduct disorder, hypersexuality, and an enormous excess of both outward and self-directed aggression. It is called maleness. Melvin Konner traces the arc of evolution to explain the relationships between women and men. With patience and wit he explores the knotty question of whether men are necessary in the biological destiny of the human race. He draws on multiple, colorful examples from the natural world—such as the mating habits of the octopus, black widow, angler fish, and jacana—and argues that maleness in humans is hardly necessary to the survival of the species. In characteristically humorous and engaging prose, Konner sheds light on our biologically different identities, while noting the poignant exceptions that challenge the male/female divide. We meet hunter-gatherers such as those in Botswana, whose culture gave women a prominent place, invented the working mother, and respected women’s voices around the fire. Recent human history has upset this balance, as a dense world of war fostered extreme male dominance. But our species has been recovering over the past two centuries, and an unstoppable move toward equality is afoot. It will not be the end of men, but it will be the end of male supremacy and a better, wiser world for women and men alike.

Author : Sarah Blaffer Hrdy
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Page : 303 pages
File Size : 41,6 Mb
Release : 2009-07-01
Category : Science
ISBN : 9780674038875

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The Woman That Never Evolved by Sarah Blaffer Hrdy Pdf

What does it mean to be female? Sarah Blaffer Hrdy--a sociobiologist and a feminist--believes that evolutionary biology can provide some surprising answers. Surprising to those feminists who mistakenly think that biology can only work against women. And surprising to those biologists who incorrectly believe that natural selection operates only on males. In The Woman That Never Evolved we are introduced to our nearest female relatives competitive, independent, sexually assertive primates who have every bit as much at stake in the evolutionary game as their male counterparts do. These females compete among themselves for rank and resources, but will bond together for mutual defense. They risk their lives to protect their young, yet consort with the very male who murdered their offspring when successful reproduction depends upon it. They tolerate other breeding females if food is plentiful, but chase them away when monogamy is the optimal strategy. When "promiscuity" is an advantage, female primates--like their human cousins--exhibit a sexual appetite that ensures a range of breeding partners. From case after case we are led to the conclusion that the sexually passive, noncompetitive, all-nurturing woman of prevailing myth never could have evolved within the primate order. Yet males are almost universally dominant over females in primate species, and Homo sapiens is no exception. As we see from this book, women are in some ways the most oppressed of all female primates. Sarah Blaffer Hrdy is convinced that to redress sexual inequality in human societies, we must first understand its evolutionary origins. We cannot travel back in time to meet our own remote ancestors, but we can study those surrogates we have--the other living primates. If women --and not biology--are to control their own destiny, they must understand the past and, as this book shows us, the biological legacy they have inherited.

Author : Robert Wright
Publisher : Vintage
Page : 496 pages
File Size : 41,5 Mb
Release : 1995-08-29
Category : Psychology
ISBN : 9780679763994

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The Moral Animal by Robert Wright Pdf

One of the most provocative science books ever published—"a feast of great thinking and writing about the most profound issues there are" (The New York Times Book Review). "Fiercely intelligent, beautifully written and engrossingly original." —The New York Times Book Review Are men literally born to cheat? Does monogamy actually serve women's interests? These are among the questions that have made The Moral Animaled one of the most provocative science books in recent years. Wright unveils the genetic strategies behind everything from our sexual preferences to our office politics—as well as their implications for our moral codes and public policies. Illustrations.