Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

EU security governance assesses the effectiveness of the EU as a security actor. The book has two distinct features. Firstly, it is the first systematic study of the different economic, political and military instruments employed by the EU in the performance of four different security functions. The book demonstrates that the EU has emerged as an important security actor, not only in the non-traditional areas of security, but increasingly as an entity with force projection capabilities. Secondly, the book represents an important step towards redressing conceptual gaps in the study of security governance, particularly as it pertains to the European Union. The book links the challenges of governing Europe's security to the changing nature of the state, the evolutionary expansion of the security agenda, and the growing obsolescence of the traditional forms and concepts of security cooperation.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction and Acknowledgements
• Pat Kirkham
• Toward the Introduction of Gendered Objects
• Pat Kirkham and Judy Attfield
• The Gendered Interior: Nineteenth Century Essays on the 'Masculine' and the 'Feminine' room
• Juliet Kinchin
• Mother's Not Herself Today
• Jane Graves
• Sweet Nothings or an Ear for an Ear: Women, Men, and Hearing Aids
• Hillel Schwartz
• From Practicality to Femininity: Gender and the Dropped Frame Bicycle
• Nicholas Oddy
• Women and Guns: the 'Last Frontier on the Road to Equality'
• Susie McKellar
• Playing with Gender-Barbie and Action Man, Adult Dolls for Girls and Boys, 1959-1993
• Judy Attfield.
• The Strawberry Shortcake Doll: Odour, Disgust, Femininity and Toy Design
• Heather Hendershot
• Fashioning Femininity from 0 to 3 Years: the Design and Promotion of Baby and Children's Clothes
• Cheryl Buckley
• Looking the (P)art: some Observations on Male Artists and their Clothes in the Nineteenth Century
• Colin Cruise
• 'Pump up the Power': Gender, Promotion and the Training Shoe
• Christine Boydell
• Feminising Trousers for Feminism in Nineteenth Century America
• Kate Luck
• The Aesthetics of Absence: the Tie-its Gendered Presence and Absence
• Juliet Ash
• A Common Bond or a Defeated Purpose?: Gender and the Suit
• Lee Wright -That Crazy Girl with the Jacket: Engendering the Object in 'Desperately Seeking Susan'
• Anne Wales

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

This collection of 20 essays explores various ways in which current stereotypes of masculinity and femininity affect the design and marketing of the everyday objects in our lives and the implicit reversal; i.e., the various ways in which the concepts of femininity and masculinity are culturally constructed by these objects. Some of the primarily British contributors to this anthology take a fresh look at commonly explored objects (e.g., Barbie dolls, originally equipped with only five body joints versus G.I. Joe/Action Man with 20 movable joints), while many explore more unusual territories such as the gendering of hearing aids, bicycles, washing machines, room decor, guns, and cosmetics. Many articles adopt a historical perspective that makes the gendered coding of objects even more apparent. The text is enhanced by a generous interspersion of illustrations. Although the writers' styles and level of academic sophistication naturally vary, a wide range of readers should find this anthology both interesting and accessible. General readers; undergraduates through faculty. B. Ayers-Nachamkin Wilson College