When I wrote my PhD one of the hardest bits (although it turned out only to be about a page or so) of the 'ontology' chapter was the section on feminism. I found Mother's Milk: Breastfeeding Controversies in American Culture by Bernice L. Hausman really helpful and useful. She discusses a number of other authors and helped me come to a critique and understanding of Pam Carter, who I don't like all that much, but who has some interesting and useful things to say. She also has a useful critique which helped me with my struggles with Linda Blum's book. Although this is about N America, much is universal for the western type English speaking cultures. I remember in my mock viva, the professor doing it asked me about my feminist stance, and I had to explain that I am a feminist but I wasn't doing a feminist piece of research (which would have involved a different consideration of ontological and epistomological and methodological issues, phew). He then moved on to saying that he wondered why, in such an obviously Marxist piece of work, I hadn't been more explict about Marxist criticim, ontology, etc. This was *even more flabbergasting*, since, as I pointed out to him, I went to King's College Cambridge and did a history degree in the 1970's, and boy oh boy do I know I am not a real Marxist (in the analytical sense), but obviously the ethos of the place rubbed off. The prof said that in nursing research I would qualify as a pretty heavy-duty Marxist as well as a staunch feminist. (It was pretty funny, he was actually really nice about it, and nothing quite as freaky as this came up in my real viva!) I think it is interesting that nursing and midwifery research (the latter is where a large amount of breastfeeding research in the UK is done) should be so 'feminist lite'. And speaking of male people keeping you on your toes, I remember when my kids were small, I was feeding my daughter (aged 2+) and told her 'you've had a lot today, I don't think there's anything left'. My son's head lifted up from his Duplo and he said 'Mummy, the more she feeds, the more you will make'. So I really had to sit and let her have milk, didn't I? Magda Sachs, PhD. *********************************************** Archives: http://community.lsoft.com/archives/LACTNET.html Mail all commands to [log in to unmask] To temporarily stop your subscription: set lactnet nomail To start it again: set lactnet mail (or [log in to unmask]) To unsubscribe: unsubscribe lactnet or ([log in to unmask]) To reach list owners: [log in to unmask]