The Missing Feminist Revolution

The question of whether the revolution is missing evokes for me a great deal of reflection about where we feminist sociologists have been, the amazing things we have accomplished in building a new sub-discipline in only 30 years, where we have failed, and where we still might go. Several of the authors bring up the issues of disciplinary boundaries and the many advantages of interdisciplinary work. Feminist sociology has remained so vital partly because many of its practitioners have freely crossed these boundaries, as Thorne points out. Still, organized institutional power still resides in the academic disciplines. Feminists cannot abandon attempts to change those centers of power. Still, the feminist sociology that is most institutionalized, that gets published in the ASR, stays rather close to the boundaries of the centers. That may be just as well, for the boundary crossers might be tamed by being brought into the center and it’s critical for the future of feminist sociology that they are out there, contending with the ideas of many other boundary crossers from other places.