Natural Women, Cultured Men: A Feminist Perspective on Sociological Theory

Susan Manningham teaches sociology at Queen’s University in Kingston.

R.A. Sydie, a professor of sociology at the University of Alberta,
intends through this book to fill a perceived void in the teaching of
sociology at the undergraduate level. The book tackles the work of the
classical theorists—Durkheim, Weber, Marx, Engels, and Freud—from a
feminist perspective. In addition to its presentation of theoretical and
methodological critiques of traditional sociology, the book offers a
feminist cross-disciplinary comparative perspective that serves as an
indicator of future trends in sociological thought. Sydie seeks to
replace a dichotomized, hierarchical framework of knowledge production
that contrasts “natural” women with “rational” men with an
integrative feminism that acknowledges that knowledge is situationally
determined and inherently relational. For feminist sociologists, the
development of forms of knowledge that presuppose the isolation of the
subject from the lived historical process that constitutes the everyday
work is anathema.