This collection provides an excellent introduction for scholars and advanced students to an exciting new trend in Latin American historiography, bringing together two theoretically sophisticated literatures on the state and gender respectively. Although individual interpretations vary, all the authors explicitly engage with theories of state formation and strive to demonstrate its dynamic interaction with gender: “to analyze how . . . state politics affected gender relations and how gender conditioned state formation” (p. 3).
The editors begin with synthetic essays that propose particular trajectories for the nineteenth and twentieth centuries respectively. Although readers may find specific points of disagreement, such overviews are useful in presenting the state of the field and raising questions for future research. Elizabeth Dore, who defines the state primarily as an institution controlled by the ruling class, asserts that the nineteenth century was not one of linear progress for women, highlighting the ambivalent effects of three...
