The Social Science Library » Feminism, Social Science, and the Meanings of Modernity: The Debate on the Origin of the Family in Europe and the United States, 1860-1914

Feminism, Social Science, and the Meanings of Modernity: The Debate on the Origin of the Family in Europe and the United States, 1860-1914

Author(s)	Allen, Ann Taylor
Abstract	Ann Taylor Allen notes that the intellectual history of Western Europe and North America at the turn of the nineteenth to the twentieth century is often characterized by such terms as “cultural pessimism” and “alienation.” She maintains that these characterizations are based on views of a minority of the population, primarily male academic, artistic, literary, and political elites. Women, Allen asserts, were also important in the intellectual life of an era in which an upsurge in feminist organizing encouraged a flowering of feminist scholarship. She develops that point by recovering the debate about the origins of the family, monogamous marriage, and the subordinate status of women. Beginning in 1860 and focusing on the years from 1890 to 1914, Allen demonstrates that feminist scholars responded to the changing intellectual paradigms of the era not, as did many of their male contemporaries, respond with anxiety, pessimism, or a flight to the irrational, but rather with a new optimism and confidence. In doing so, she revives the debates these women had with contemporaries such as Max Weber, Friedrich Engels, Carl Jung, and Sigmund Freud. Allen’s essay integrates cultural and intellectual history to make a major contribution to the history of social science.
IssueNo	4
Pages	1085-1113
Article	Access to Article
Source	The American Historical Review
VolumeNo	104
PubDate	1999
ISBN_ISSN	0002-8762
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Feminism, Social Science, and the Meanings of Modernity: The Debate on the Origin of the Family in Europe and the United States, 1860-1914