Imagining Home: Gender, Race And National Identity, 1945-1964

by Wendy Webster

Overview

Imagining Home offers a unique examination of ideas and images of home in Britain during a period of national decline and loss of imperial power. In exploring the relationship between gender, 'race' and national identity, it higlights the continuing importance of empire in imaginings of the nation during a period of decolonization. Analyzing the significance of colonialism and racism in shaping ideas of motherhood, employment and domestictiy, it traces the process by which Englishness was increasingly associated with domestic order, and the home and family constructed as white.
Drawing extensively on oral history and life-writing, Imagining Home examines the multiple meanings of home to women in narratives of beloning and unbelonging. Its focus on the complex interrelationships of white and black women's lives and identities offers a new perspective on this period.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781857283518
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	02/17/1998
Series:	Women's and Gender History
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	268
Product dimensions:	5.44(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)

Table of Contents

Homecomings; unbelongings; home and colonialism; the new England; good homes; home and work; domestic identities.

Editorial Reviews

Considers ideas and images of home in Britain and their significance in the construction of the three social dimensions. Draws on accounts by politicians, journalists, churchmen, sociologists, health professionals, novelists, and film-makers. Also examines oral narratives and life-writing to look at the different meanings for women and how they have negotiated, appropriated, or opposed the roles and identities assigned to them. Distributed in the US by Taylor & Francis. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

Booknews

'A riveting study of gender, race and national identity.' - Guardian

'Highly readable and authoratative, introducing readers to potentially difficult ideas in a thoroughly accessible way.' - Ethnic and Racial Studies

'This is an interesting and important book and should stand as a landmark study for this formative period of contemporary British history.' - Professor Mary Chamberlain, Women's History Review

From the Publisher