HOMEBOYS, BABIES, MEN IN SUITS - THE STATE AND THE REPRODUCTION OF MALE-DOMINANCE

This article is a theoretically based ethnography of the gender practi ces of two stare institutions. Feminist scholarship on the stare has t ended to conceptualize the state as a macro-level structure, embodied in social policies, provisions, and abstract principles. By conceptual izing the state at the institutional level, I widen the scope of femin ist state theory to include the micro apparatuses of state power. In m y case studies, I depict the dynamics of two institutional gender regi mes and the distinct patterns of control and contestation that charact erize them. These ethnographic darn capture how women's relations to m en, children, and welfare programs are constructed and reconstructed b y state actors and female clients who regulate and resist each other F rom these data I demonstrate that the state is nor a uniform structure that acts to impose a singular set of gender expectations on women. R ather, I propose that feminist theorists begin to conceptualize the st ate as a network of differentiated institutions, layered with conflict ing and competing messages about gender.