gained international recognition for the efficacy of its development efforts. Its great
strength is the author's own involvement in the designing and implementation of the
projects that are described. The BRAC experience is conveyed with immediacy, and
this is reinforced by including the women's opinions on key issues in the course of
informal group and individual interviews. We are given an insight not only into
programmes that succeeded but into earlier approaches which had to be modified
because of their shortcomings. The conclusions of the evaluation of the early
approaches, most importantly, that the concept of a unified village "community" may
have no basis in reality, is of great significance to future development practices. The
author makes an impassioned argument for incorporating a gender perspective into all
development planning. There is little doubt that this extremely readable book is useful
to the academician and practitioner alike.
WHITE, Sarah C. (1992) Arguing with the Crocodile: gender and class in
Bangladesh, Zed Books, London.
The issue of social stratification is exhibited by gender and by class, and its relevance to
development policy. It is based on field research in a village called Kumirpur in
Bangladesh including case studies of thirty households. The book involves a
comparative study of men and women's contribution to households' socio-economic
relations. Aspects of the daily life of the people are examined, including women's
relationship with men and other women, employment relations between women, the
organisation of the family household, and other forms of interaction. The principal
argument of the book is that it is untrue that gender relations are set, as many "women
and development" approaches assume. Rather gender is a "contested image". This
approach to gender shifts the focus from women as an exclusive group, to the actual
ways in which women and men manipulate definitions of identity according to their
own interests. An important outcome of this approach is that women are no longer
conceived of as passive victims, and the study of gender relations is opened up to
examine women's exercise of power. The study of access to, and exercise of, power is
critical to an understanding of social relations. White's research looks in detail at what
happens in the home, how women conceive of their own interests and how notions of
gender figure in interpersonal negotiations of power. Relationships between classes and
between gender groups are not always based on conflict but show complex negotiations
of mutual gain and shared interest. The notion of flexible identities is most clearly seen
in family household and patron-client relationships. The family household gives people
a common identity and common interests, but also divides them into specific roles and
places in the hierarchy. Similarly, patron-client relationships (between men, between
women, and between men and women) show elements of contradiction and solidarity.
The implication of this is that future gender-oriented research requires a more sensitive
comparative approach that includes both sexes in its analysis of social relations. White
emphasises that it is not enough to simply classify societies as more or less equal
depending on the status of women, but to explore the complexities of the nature of