FEMINIST THOUGHT IN AOTEAROA NEW ZEALAND: CONNECTIONS AND DIFFERENCES.

• Author: Kindon, Sara
• Position: Review

edited by Rosemary Du Plessis and Lynne Alice, Oxford University Press

I was pleased to receive a copy of this book to review because of my interests as a feminist geographer and community development practitioner. I attended its launch in Christchurch in May 1998. The editors, Rosemary Du Plessis and Lynne Alice, as well as various contributors from around the country, paid testimony to the enormous effort and commitment that went into creating this volume. These women also celebrated the productive and creative tensions that this collaborative endeavour had fostered in the contexts of their own lives and work. I was impressed with the integrity and practice of feminist politics which were demonstrated at this launch, and which had sought to reflect upon, and continue to effect, change through the writing and publication of this book.

On a more personal level, the opportunity to review this book also gave me time to reflect upon the life and work of one of my colleagues and a contributor who sadly is no longer with us: Nicola Armstrong. Nicola was a lecturer in Sociology at the time of the book's launch last year and died shortly thereafter. She contributed a chapter with Rosemary Du Plessis on the complexities and practices of feminist research which reflected on her own work with the Society for Research on Women (SROW), and with self-employed women and men involved in home-based work using computers. Her writing demonstrated her rigour and clarity with respect to the practice of feminist research and a sensitivity for the importance of diverse life histories in sociological writing. She is missed.

As a collection of cross-disciplinary scholarship and political writing, "Feminist Thought in Aotearoa/New Zealand: Connections and Differences" is a remarkable achievement. It brings together forty-seven female contributors from around the country who are working mainly as lecturers and Ph.D. students in the social sciences and humanities, and also include a midwife, parliamentarian, public servant and community adviser. Four of these contributors identify as Maori and a range of others identify their ethnic and cultural heritage as an important element informing their personal experiences and professional engagements with feminist thought in Aotearoa/New Zealand. The authors provide strong contributions to the growing volume of feminist academic collections within this country.

The book is organised into an editors' introduction and...