The Politics of Affirmative Action

Carol Lee Bacchi is Associate Professor of Politics at the University of Adelaide. Her publications include The Politics of Affirmative Action: ′Women′, Equality and Category Politics (Sage, 1996), and Same Difference: Feminism and Sexual Difference (Allen & Unwin, 1990)

`The Politics of Affirmative Action: ′Women′, Equality and Category Politics is a comprehensive study and clearly compares different applications of categories and political practices. Bacchi offers a useful study of historical contingencies and in this rich material she highlights the complexities very well′ - Australian Journal of Political Science`This book makes a major contribution to an issue of central concern to feminists. It is well written, thoroughly researched and thoughtfully argued. Wide-ranging and comprehensive in scope, the book is carefully structured, using different countries to illustrate the specific ways in which affirmative action is co-opted and contained in practice′ - Jeanne Gregory, Middlesex University`Affirmative action, as a means of increasing access to education, jobs and public life, is under attack internationally. Carol Bacchi′s illuminating analysis of policies for women in Australia, Canada, The Netherlands , Norway, Sweden, and the United States over the past twenty years reframes the debate by raising new questions - about citizenship; the politics of identity; the category of "women"; and the continued resistance of traditional system to women′s claims. Bacchi′s argument about the political uses of categories will engage readers across a broad spectrum from poststructuralist to empiricists, and from policy-makers to activists′ - Hester Eisenstein, SUNY`Bacchi takes a social constructionist view of categories such as "women" and "men" and explores the political uses of such categories. By looking at affirmative action, a policy that attempts to advance women′s opportunity, in a variety of progressive national contexts, Bacchi takes only positive examples - yet shows the limits that such efforts face. For the many people who have wondered why affirmative action so often yields disappointing progress, Bacchi′s examinations are a goldmine of insights. The variety of her national cases combined with the subtlety of her analysis offers a rich and textured picture of how such helping policies become entangled in definitions of women as marginal, deficient, and needy people. This is deconstruction at its best′ - Myra Marx Ferree, University of Connecticut

• The Political Uses of CategoriesSetting the StageThe Politics of (Mis)representationThe Politics of DisplacementThe Politics of Incorporation - C Bacchi and J Eveline The Politics of SolidarityThe Politics of TransformationThe Politics of DifferenceConclusionNo Final Curtain