Hundreds of people attended the meeting hosted by the Birkbeck Institute for Social Research (BISR) to launch the third edition of the feminist classic text, Beyond the Fragments last Friday (3 May).  Indeed the event had proved so popular that the organisers had had to change the venue, and even then there was a waiting list. Here in our Beyond the Fragments recording  the three authors – Sheila Rowbottom, Lyn Segal and Hilary Wainwright – draw out the similarities and differences between 1979, when the first edition appeared, and now.

Beyond the Fragments was a publishing phenomenon, and in her introduction at the event, Sasha Roseneil Director of BISR said that it was just this type of influential book that the Institute was set up ‘to think about, talk about, and explore’.

The authors, both then and now, have been preoccupied with the process of change.  Inspired by the activism of the 1970s they were keen for their experience in the Women’s Liberation Movement to inform solidarity movements pressing for change. All were clear that the current economic crisis, the decline of social movements over the past 30 years, and the widening gap between rich and poor are huge obstacles to overcome, but they all spotted signs of resistance and change.