ABSTRACT

It is no new experience for community studies to be subjected to harsh criticism, but to author knowledge no-one has so far looked at the British variety from the point of view of their adequacy in dealing with the relationships between the sexes and the significance of gender within society. More serious than unconscious/conscious humour in Michael Young and Peter Willmott, and elsewhere, is the possible lack of theoretical sophistication in the treatment of relationships between the sexes. The crucial theoretical issue, however, is whether emancipation in the fields of sex and gender in the family, in industry, and in general social life can be achieved independently of a general emancipation which only the destruction of capitalist social relations would make possible. J. Littlejohn is as highly sophisticated in his treatment of gender in Westrigg as he is of class and status. His book remains in author view the best community study yet published in Britain.