Gender relations in public and private

the long version

This volume is a collection of papers from the 1993 British Sociological Association's conference on 'Research Imaginations', which explores the interaction of the public and private spheres. The book comprises two parts, one dealing with aspects of employment and assets, and the other with domesticity and intimacy. Topics covered include the changing emotional geography of workplace and home, the gendering of aspects of employment and organisation, marital finance and gendered inheritance, the management of food and domestic labour, researching the emotions, and understanding intimate violence. The papers variously show the manner in which beliefs and constraints deriving from, or confirmed within, the 'private sphere' can shape the organisation of the 'public sphere'. Correspondingly, we see the many and diverse ways in which the public sphere shapes the private. In the spirit of C. Wright Mills, what the book as a whole demonstrates is that the connection between 'private troubles' and 'public issues' is permeated by questions of gender.