Gender and Rural Modernity: Farm Women and the Politics of Labor in Germany, 1871–1933. By Elizabeth B. Jones. Farnham: Ashgate. 2009. Pp. xvi+238. $99.95. ISBN 978-0-7546-6499-4.

摘要

As Elizabeth B. Jones remarks in the introduction to this history of farm womenrnin Germany from 1871 until 1933, most historians have not regarded thecountryside as an “obvious place to explore changing definitions of gender andrnwork identities, the interventions of reformers and bureaucrats, or how ruralrnanxieties about change were manifested in provincial and national politics” (p.rn11). Indeed, the rural world has too often appeared as the backdrop of traditionrnagainst which modern society and culture define themselves. Farm womenrnseldom appear among the daring “new women” or progressive social reformersrnwho populate the pages of works on women’s and gender history. But, as Jonesrnshows, this is a serious omission. Farm workers, among the most numerousrngroups of female workers, actually increased in number during the first partrnof the period covered here. Moreover, the farm woman did not live accordingrnto the stable and unchanging traditional culture so beloved of conservative com-rnmentators. On the contrary, both their work patterns and their sense of theirrnown possibilities and options changed considerably during this period.