212 BOOK REVIEWS ena intersect with personal biography. Abstract theoretical concepts (e.g., patriarchy, the repressive labor regime, and the logic of international capital) are transformed into tangi- ble empirical entities, as expressed in women's own words about their daily life in the factory, and in the family. The first part of the book (chapters 1, 2, and 3) describes the macro context, drawing primarily on government statis- tics. The particular development path of Taiwan's economy brought about the drastic increase of women's labor par- ticipation in the export manufacturing sector. The govern- ment's strategy of mobilizing "idle women" propelled mar- ried women into small-scale subcontracting factories. The state's labor law, which requires a minimum of 30 workers to be effective, fostered the burgeoning of small-scale facto- ries hiring less than 30 workers. Thus, a substantial number of married women working for these satellite factories are beyond the protection of the labor law. The second half of this book (chapters 4, 5, and 6) fo- cuses on the factory women's everyday lives. Women's nar- ratives from ethnographic data tell us how women manage, understand, and interpret the duality of their daily existence as workers, and wives/mothers/daughters-in-law in the cap- italist-patriarchal society. Women workers are aware of the multiple shifts they have to work in and out of the family. The gendered division of labor and unequal distribution of opportunity prohibit women workers from achieving up- ward social mobility. The personal nature of labor-manage- ment relations on the shopfloor limits workers' potential to engage in collective action. The factory's active utilization of family and acquaintance-labor diminishes the contractual aspects of the employment relationship, making the negotia- tion difficult. Dr. Hsiung argues that the lack of overt resis- tance on the Taiwanese shopfloor cannot be equated with the absence of women workers' consciousness. Workers do express their resentment by using more covert forms of re- sistance, such as talking back and gossip. The class and eth- nic divisions among workers in a factory also contribute to labor quiescence. Living Rooms as Factories is a well thought out and clearly written book. It reveals the hidden gendered realities behind the glossy pictures of a societal success. I highly rec- ommend this book for upper level undergraduate, or gradu- ate courses in anthropology, sociology and women's studies. MIKYOUNG KIM PARK UNIVERSITYOF GEORGIA DEPARTMENT OF SOCIOLOGY ATHENS, GA UNITED STATES WOMEN IN THE METROPOLIS: GENDER AND MODER- NITY IN WEIMAR CULTURE, edited by Katherine yon An- kum, 239 pages. University of California Press, California, 1997. ISBN 0 520 20465 4. US$15.95 paperback. This contribution to the Weimar and Now: German Cultural Criticism series brings together the work of (primarily) American scholars from a variety of disciplines. The focus of the book is on women in public spaces--as shoppers in the streets, workers, artists, cinema-goers--with Berlin as the site of this exploration, Berlin as "the city of women" in the 1920's and 1930's, Berlin as the site of German anxi- eties about modernization and social change after the First World War. Individual essays in the volume include examination of the way in which Weimar scientists created a typology of women's reproductive potential; the tension between male projections of the New Woman, and conflicting female iden- tities; the female Flfineur in Symphony of a Great City--the images of the artists Jeanne Mammen and Hannah Hoch; the film Metropolis; Irmgard Keun's work; fashion as a met- aphor of modernity; and the revue performances of Jose- phine Baker. Sabine Hake' s chapter, "In the Mirror of Fashion," sees Berlin as the stage where the new fashion trends were seen and seeks to approach fashion "as a phenomenon that re- veals as much as it hides--a phenomenon that simulta- neously affirms and subverts the order of things" (p. 186). Her conclusion suggests that the 1920's fashions both em- phasized and detracted from female emancipation: "Wei- mar fashions always involved the staging of ambivalences. It foregrounded the promises of betrayals of modernity it- self..." (p. 199). Women in the Metropolis provides what the editor de- scribes as, "an archaeology of Berlin as the 'city of women' in the 1920's and the 1930's" (p. 7). To this extent, the book is an interesting contribution to studies of the inter- war period, identity and gender. Inevitably in a collection of this breadth, some contributions appear more tightly fo- cused on the main theme than others. On the whole, how- ever, there is a generally shared perspective that women were active agents, involved dynamically in constructing their own modernity. As therefore a treatment of women's encounter with urbanization, technology and mass culture, it has many highly relevant things to say. The editor argues fiercely against a view of women as collaborators in their own repression, within the public sphere . . . "The ability to adapt to external circumstance while preserving internal autonomy and resistance.., may in fact be what informs specifically female reactions to and ways of coping with modernity" (p. 11). HILARY FOOT1TT UNIVERSITY OF WESTMINSTER LONDON UNITED KINGDOM FEMINIST AND ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY, edited by Julie K. Ward, 295 pages. Routledge, London, 1996. £40.00 hard- back, UK £12.99 paperback. Julie Ward has brought together in this edition a good selec- tion of articles written on ancient philosophies--principally those of Plato and Aristotle--by feminist scholars. Well- known pieces, such as Julie Annas' highly influential "Plato's Republic and Feminism," are placed along side other, less well-known articles by leading scholars in this area. Martha Nussbaum's particularly stimulating paper on sexual desire and its social construction is a highlight in this collection; and Anne-Marie Bowery's account of the philos- ophy of the teacher of Socrates, Diotima (usually dismissed as a fictional character) is equally interesting as an analysis of her distinctive philosophy. Overall, the writers included in this collection are rather critical of certain feminist approaches to Plato and Aristotle which focus on the negative aspects of their thinking and possible connections with the patriarchal formulations of much subsequent philosophy. As such, it is not surprising