This symposium examines an emergent orientation within the American feminist movement called “choice feminism.” Choice feminists are primarily concerned with increasing the number of choices open to women and with decreasing judgments about the choices that individual women make. Choice feminists are best known for their argument that a woman who leaves the remunerated labor market to care for her children is a feminist in good standing; she makes a feminist decision. While media coverage of choice feminism has been extensive, political scientists have been comparatively quiet. In this symposium, four political scientists analyze and evaluate choice feminism, revealing their disagreement about the validity of the choice feminist position and about the meaning of choice feminism for movement politics, political judgment, and liberal political theory.
A prevailing theme of the scholarship on Plato's Crito has been civil disobedience, with many scholars agreeing that the Athenian Laws do not demand a slavish, authoritarian kind of obedience. While this focus on civil disobedience has yielded consensus, it has left another issue in the text relatively unexplored-that is, the challenges and attractions of leaving one's homeland or of "exit." Reading for exit reveals two fundamental, yet contradictory, desires in the Crito: a yearning to escape the injustice of the homeland for self-preservation and freedom (voiced by Crito) and a deepseated need to honor one's obligations and attachments to the homeland (voiced by the Laws). By exposing the conflicted nature of leaving one's native land, Plato's Crito enriches an understanding of the meaning and consequences of an exit for the individual.Sometime in the 1960s, Socrates and the Crito became associated with civil disobedience. For those thinking about how to effect political change through disobedience, Socrates' defiant assertion in the Apology became a touchstone: "I, men of Athens, salute you and love you, but I will obey the god
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