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Gender Relations (gender + relation)
Selected AbstractsShamanism, Catholicism and Gender Relations in Colonial Philippines, 1521,1685 by Carolyn BrewerGENDER & HISTORY, Issue 1 2007MARY LAVEN No abstract is available for this article. [source] What Happened to Gender Relations on the Way from Chicago to Los Angeles?CITY & COMMUNITY, Issue 2 2002Daphne Spain From the Chicago human ecologists to the Los Angeles postmodernists, urban theorists have tried to understand how space is structured by technological, political, economic, and cultural forces; gender is seldom examined. Yet both women's status and urban form underwent significant changes following World War II. As the home became less predictably the center of women's lives, the monocentric city was evolving into the polycentric metropolis. This article suggests that gender relations also have spatial implications for the metropolis, and that urban theory would be more comprehensive if it incorporated historically parallel developments in the literature on gender and space. [source] Gender relations and grass-roots urban movementsINTERNATIONAL SOCIAL SCIENCE JOURNAL, Issue 177 2003François Hainard This article, based on the work of a network of seven teams from countries of the South and countries in transition, presents research findings on the themes of the environment, cities, and social relationships between men and women. The research is predicated on the view that a crosswise look at these three topics brings a useful new perspective to bear on each of these issues as such. It starts from the twofold observation that women and men are not involved in the same way in the urban environment, and that innovative approaches often emanate from women's movements concerned to change the environmental situation in cities as well as women's place and role in the decision-making process. However, research on urban issues, apart from recent research on employment and the labour market, has turned a blind eye to distinctions between men's and women's needs. The urban environment and gender relations bring into play several variables: the environment, the urban dimension, and gender. While the intermeshing of these approaches undoubtedly constitutes a large part of the originality of the work, it does not make the task any the less complex, for its impact is evident neither in methodological nor in conceptual terms. The personal motivation necessarily built into any research-action presupposes that the analysis is founded on specific experiences and not upon strictly theoretical principles, though the need for conceptual concordance between the different research teams should not be overlooked. We shall here focus on the governance of which women may be the agents or actors in cities, a focus that brings into play the different approaches to empowerment and gender relations in the context of social change, the analysis of grass-roots organisations and of men's and women's identities and roles, and the changing balance of power between men and women, whether in the domestic or the public arena. [source] Gender relations and aids: role of attachment styles and empathic competencies in men,PSYCHOTHERAPY AND POLITICS INTERNATIONAL, Issue 3 2005Edward Emery First page of article [source] "We Don't Want No Haole Buttholes in Our Stories": Local Girls Reading the Baby-Sitters Club Books in Hawai,iCURRICULUM INQUIRY, Issue 4 2001Donna J. Grace This study investigates the place of popular cultural texts in the construction of the gendered and cultural subjectivities of seven eight-year-old girls growing up in Hawai,i. Within the context of weekly literature circles held over a period of four months, Grace and Lum sought to understand how these young "local" girls engaged with a book series privileging white, middle-class, mainland values, and how they located themselves within dominant ideologies related to race, culture, and gender. Using qualitative methods, the following questions were addressed: (1) In what ways did the girls identify with particular storylines, subject positions, and views of the world? (2) Were dominant messages accommodated, negotiated, or resisted? (3) What pleasures were produced and experienced in the reading? (4) How were meanings shaped and mediated by "local" culture and the reader's personal histories? The findings suggest that rather than being manipulated by the textual images of femininity, suburban living, and western notions of beauty, the girls had alternative social and cultural discourses with which to negotiate and resist them. These discourses related to notions of the family; gender relations; peer friendships and rivalry; perceptions of beauty; and cultural identity. The findings suggest the importance of local context in understanding textual readings and interpretations. [source] Gender, Vulnerability, and the Experts: Responding to the Maldives TsunamiDEVELOPMENT AND CHANGE, Issue 5 2007Emma Fulu ABSTRACT This article examines the initial response by national and international agencies to gender issues during the aftermath of the Maldives tsunami, arguing that it was, in general, inadequate. Some agencies took a gender blind approach, ignoring different impacts on men and women, as well as the effects of complex gender relations on relief and recovery efforts. Other agencies paid greater attention to gender relations in their response but tended to focus exclusively on the universal category of the ,vulnerable woman' requiring special assistance, whilst at the same time ignoring men's vulnerabilities. This article argues that such language entrenched women as victims, excluding them from leadership and decision-making roles and as such served to reinforce and re-inscribe women's trauma. It is suggested that it is partly because of the nature of international bureaucracies and the fact that this disaster drew foreign ,experts' from around the world that the response neglected or over-simplified gender issues. [source] Democratization and State Feminism: Gender Politics in Africa and Latin AmericaDEVELOPMENT AND CHANGE, Issue 3 2002Ihejirika, Philomina E. Okeke This article addresses the link between state feminism and democratization in the global South. The authors use the contrasting cases of Chile and Nigeria to show some of the factors that encourage women to exploit the opportunities presented by transitions to democracy, and link the outcome of state feminism to the strategies and discourses available to women during democratization. Based on evidence from the cases analysed, the authors propose that the strategic options available to women are shaped by at least three factors: (1) the existence of a unified women's movement capable of making political demands; (2) existing patterns of gender relations, which influence women's access to arenas of political influence and power; and (3) the content of existing gender ideologies, and whether women can creatively deploy them to further their own interests. State feminism emerged in Chile out of the demands of a broad,based women's movement in a context of democratic transition that provided feminists with access to political institutions. In Nigeria, attempts at creating state feminism have consistently failed due to a political transition from military to civilian rule that has not provided feminists with access to political arenas of influence, and the absence of a powerful women's movement. [source] The Experience of Gender Change in Public Sector OrganizationsGENDER, WORK & ORGANISATION, Issue 5 2006Raewyn Connell The state has a twofold relationship to gender change in society, through its overall steering capacity and through the gendered character of its constituent agencies. It is therefore important to understand the experience of gender change in state organizations. The findings from a study of gender relations in ten public-sector worksites in New South Wales, Australia are presented. There is a widespread consciousness of gender change linked with new labour processes, restructuring and new patterns of management. These changes are uneven and limits to change are visible. Gender is recognized as an organizational problem in specific circumstances, most visibly where men's resistance to change appears. A number of mechanisms limit the consciousness of gender as a problem. Several trends, including the current strength of neo-liberalism, converge to make the gender-neutral workplace the principal goal of gender reform in the public-sector workplace. This, however, limits the state's steering capacity in regard to societal gender relations. [source] Constructing the Deviant Other: Mothering and Fathering at the WorkplaceGENDER, WORK & ORGANISATION, Issue 2 2006Clarissa Kugelberg Gender stereotyping is a widely described and documented process that permeates working life in western societies. It is characterized by ascribing greatly simplified attributes to women and men and forging a dualistic view of gender in which women and men are conceptualized as antipodes to each other. Through this ongoing reproduction of simplistic views; contradictions, variations and complexities are concealed, together with the richness of individuals' competence and experiences. Intimately related to this gender stereotyping are assumptions that distinct kinds of jobs and positions fit either men or women. In this article I investigate the constructions of motherhood and fatherhood as important elements in the processes of gender stereotyping. I argue that the production of stereotypes is part of an inter-discursive contest which has a significant impact on gender relations and women's opportunities. My discussion derives from an anthropological study of one workplace. [source] From Work as Sex to Sex as Work: Networks, ,Others' and Occupations in the Analysis of WorkGENDER, WORK & ORGANISATION, Issue 5 2002Jackie West While once upon a time the social science of work and organization neglected or marginalized gender and sexuality, we have now lost sight of what people actually do, that is to say the activity of work. Gender and sexuality have been identified as crucial to organizational dynamics and, notwithstanding different theoretical emphases, this paradigm has become increasingly influential. We argue (contrary to most of its protagonists) that , within this model , the significance of sex and gender for organization rests principally on their role in the production of identities rather than in what they can tell us about production or work in any wider sense. The article highlights parallels with the ways in which prostitution is now generally understood, whether the emphasis is on subordination or agency. This literature also emphasizes gender relations and identities, even where the focus is on re,writing ,sex as work'. We argue that this focus neglects the wider networks in which all work, whether mainstream or otherwise, is embedded and that a full analysis must take due account of both these networks and the discursive production of identities. Examples , of work in the finance and sex industries , are used to substantiate this argument and a case is made for the importance of the Chicago School's analysis of occupations. [source] Transnational lives, transnational marriages: a review of the evidence from migrant communities in EuropeGLOBAL NETWORKS, Issue 3 2007ELISABETH BECK-GERNSHEIM Abstract Whom do migrants marry? This question has become a popular topic of research, and existing studies identify a common trend: most of the non-European, non-Christian migrants in Europe marry someone from their country of origin. The motivations for such practices are to be found in the characteristics of transnational spaces and in the social structures that emerge in such spaces. Based on a review of research from several European countries, three such constellations are discussed: first, the obligations to kin, especially when migration regulations become more restrictive, and marriage becomes the last route by which to migrate to Europe. Second, new forms of global inequality, between the metropolitan centre and countries of the global periphery, give migrants in Europe improved status and standing in their society of origin and therefore excellent opportunities on the marriage market there. Third, gender relations have started to shift in both host society and migrant families. Men and women alike are trying to rebalance power relations within marriage and to shift them in their favour. In this process marriage to a partner from the country of family origin may promise strategic benefits. The article ends with suggestions for future research. [source] Negotiating Islam: Conservatism, Splintered Authority and Empowerment in Urban BangladeshIDS BULLETIN, Issue 2 2010Samia Huq Bangladesh has recently been seeing a rise in religiosity which has been treated as problematic, anti-secular and anti-progressive within the public sphere. Various writers describe this trend as having a disempowering effect on women and negating their self-expression. However, underlying these views is the assumption that the assertion of women's agency is not enough if it does not confront existing structures of relations. This article asks whether it is possible that in seeking changes in certain aspects of one's life, existing gender relations are not necessarily transformed, but indirectly challenged and reconfigured? The conclusion suggests that rather than a polarisation of the secular and religious ways of living most people are in fact in between, negotiating between the two camps, and borrowing ideas and ways from both. [source] International Migration and Gender in Latin America: A Comparative AnalysisINTERNATIONAL MIGRATION, Issue 5 2006Douglas S. Massey ABSTRACT We review census data to assess the standing of five Latin American nations on a gender continuum ranging from patriarchal to matrifocal. We show that Mexico and Costa Rica lie close to one another with a highly patriarchal system of gender relations whereas Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic are similar in having a matrifocal system. Puerto Rico occupies a middle position, blending characteristics of both systems. These differences yield different patterns of female relative to male migration. Female householders in the two patriarchal settings displayed low rates of out-migration compared with males, whereas in the two matrifocal countries the ratio of female to male migration was much higher, in some case exceeding their male counterparts. Multivariate analyses showed that in patriarchal societies, a formal or informal union with a male dramatically lowers the odds of female out-migration, whereas in matrifocal societies marriage and cohabitation have no real effect. The most important determinants of female migration from patriarchal settings are the migrant status of the husband or partner, having relatives in the United States, and the possession of legal documents. In matrifocal settings, however, female migration is less related to the possession of documents, partner's migrant status, or having relatives in the United States and more strongly related to the woman's own migratory experience. Whereas the process of cumulative causation appears to be driven largely by men in patriarchal societies, it is women who dominate the process in matrifocal settings. Sur la base des données des recensements, nous situons cinq nations d'Amérique latine sur une échelle d'organisation sociale entre les sexes allant du partriarcat à la matrifocalité. Nous montrons que le Mexique et le Costa Rica occupent des positions voisines avec un système de relations entre les sexes foncièrement patriarcal alors que le Nicaragua et la République dominicaine fonctionnent tous deux selon un système matrifocal. Puerto Rico se situe au milieu, avec un mélange de caractéristiques des deux systèmes. De ces divergences découlent différents modèles de répartion de la migration selon le sexe. Dans les deux environnements patriarcaux, les femmes à la tête d'un ménage présentaient de bas taux d'émigration par rapport aux hommes, alors que dans les deux pays matrifocaux le ratio entre migration féminine et migration masculine était bien plus élevé, la première dépassant parfois la seconde. Des analyses à variables multiples ont montré que dans les sociétés patriarcales toute union avec un homme, qu'elle soit officielle ou officieuse, fait considérablement baisser les chances d'émigration d'une femme, alors que dans les sociétés matrifocales, le mariage et la cohabitation n'ont aucune incidence réelle. Les facteurs qui déterminent avant tout la migration féminine dans les sociétés patriarcales sont : le statut de migrant du mari ou du partenaire, l'existence de parenté aux Etats-Unis et la possession de papiers en règle. Toutefois, dans un environnement matrifocal la migration féminine ne dépend pas tant des facteurs susmentionnés que de la propre expérience migratoire des intéressées. Alors que dans les sociétés patriarcales, le processus de causalité cumulative semble être généré principalement par les hommes, dans les sociétés matrifocales il est dominé par les femmes. Se pasa revista a datos cenales para evaluar la situació encinco países latinoamericanos en un conjunto de modelos de relaciones entre los géneros, que va del patriarcal al matrifocal. Se demuestra que Máxico y Costa Rica tienen una situación muy parecida, con un sistema muy patriarcal, mientras que Nicaragua y la República Dominicana se asemejan por tener un sistema matrifocal. Puerto Rico ocupa un lugar intermedio, con un sistema que combina las características de ambos modelos. Esas diferencias producen distintos modelos de migración femenina y masculina. Las familias encabezadas por mujeres en los dos sistemas patriarcales mostraron tasas bajas de emigración en comparación con los hombres, mientras que en los dos países con sistemas matrifocales, la relación entre migració femenina y masculina fue mucho más elevada, excediendo en algunos casos la correspondiente a los hombres. Distintos tipos de análisis demostraron que en las sociedades patriarcales, una unión formal o informal con un hombre reduce considerablemente las posibilidades de emigración de la mujer, mientras que en las sociedades matrifocales, ni el matrimonio ni la convivencia afectan realmente esas posibilidades. Los elementos determinantes de mayor importancia para la migración de la mujer en los sistemas patriarcales son la situación de migrante del esposo o compañero, el hecho de tener familiares en los EstadosUnidos, y la posesión de documentos legales. En las sociedades matrifocales, sin embargo, la migración de la mujer guarda menos relación con la posesión de documentos, la sitación de migrante del compañero o el tener familiares que residan en los Estados Unidos, y está más vinculada a la propia experiencia migratoria de la mujer. Mientras que en las sociedades patriarcales el proceso de acumulación de causas parece ser impulsado mayormento por el hombre, es la mujer la que domina el proceso en las sociedades matrifocales. [source] Gender relations and grass-roots urban movementsINTERNATIONAL SOCIAL SCIENCE JOURNAL, Issue 177 2003François Hainard This article, based on the work of a network of seven teams from countries of the South and countries in transition, presents research findings on the themes of the environment, cities, and social relationships between men and women. The research is predicated on the view that a crosswise look at these three topics brings a useful new perspective to bear on each of these issues as such. It starts from the twofold observation that women and men are not involved in the same way in the urban environment, and that innovative approaches often emanate from women's movements concerned to change the environmental situation in cities as well as women's place and role in the decision-making process. However, research on urban issues, apart from recent research on employment and the labour market, has turned a blind eye to distinctions between men's and women's needs. The urban environment and gender relations bring into play several variables: the environment, the urban dimension, and gender. While the intermeshing of these approaches undoubtedly constitutes a large part of the originality of the work, it does not make the task any the less complex, for its impact is evident neither in methodological nor in conceptual terms. The personal motivation necessarily built into any research-action presupposes that the analysis is founded on specific experiences and not upon strictly theoretical principles, though the need for conceptual concordance between the different research teams should not be overlooked. We shall here focus on the governance of which women may be the agents or actors in cities, a focus that brings into play the different approaches to empowerment and gender relations in the context of social change, the analysis of grass-roots organisations and of men's and women's identities and roles, and the changing balance of power between men and women, whether in the domestic or the public arena. [source] Agricultural Land, Gender and Kinship in Rural China and Vietnam: A Comparison of Two VillagesJOURNAL OF AGRARIAN CHANGE, Issue 2 2009DANIÈLE BÉLANGER This study examines the impact of current land policies in China and Vietnam on women's entitlement to land, women's wellbeing and gender power relations. The ethnographic study of one village in each of the two countries contextualizes women's lives in the kinship and marriage system in which power and gender relations are embedded. Current land policies, when implemented in the existing kinship and marriage system, make women's entitlement to land more vulnerable than men's, limit women's choices and weaken their power position. Variations in kinship rules in the two countries lead to different outcomes. In the Chinese village the dominance of patrilocal marriage and exogamous marriages limits women's access to land, whereas in the Vietnamese village the rigid concentration of inheritance to males puts women in a difficult position. The comparison between communities of rural China and Vietnam reveals the importance of considering gender and kinship when studying the implementation and impact of land policies. [source] Traces of the FlâneuseJOURNAL OF ARCHITECTURAL EDUCATION, Issue 1 2006From Roman Holiday to Lost In Translation This article critically considers the trope of the nineteenth-century flâneur/flâneuse as found in two films: Roman Holiday (William Wyler, 1953) and Lost in Translation (Sofia Coppola, 2003). Both films construct a traditional narrative from the adventures of a single female protagonist as she negotiates urban space. In tracing the references to the flâneur/the flanuese as found in these two films, one can begin to map a certain trajectory of contemporary gender relations in respect to urban space from the post,World War II era to the present, as well as to understand the context in which the "city" itself is seen as a site for such transformations. [source] Mainstreaming the Sex Industry: Economic Inclusion and Social AmbivalenceJOURNAL OF LAW AND SOCIETY, Issue 1 2010Barbara G. Brents This paper seeks to analyse the expansion of commercial sex through processes of mainstreaming in economic and social institutions. We argue that cultural changes and neo-liberal policies and attitudes have enabled economic mainstreaming, whilst social ambivalence continues to provide the backdrop to a prolific and profitable global industry. We chart the advancement of sexual consumption and sexual service provision in late capitalism before defining the concept of ,mainstreaming' applied here. We use the case studies of Las Vegas and Leeds to identify various social and economic dimensions to the mainstreaming process and the ways these play out in law and regulation. While social and economic processes have integrated sexual services into night-time commerce, remaining social ambivalence fuels transgression and marginalization of the industry which in fact assists the mainstreaming process. Finally, we project some implications for gender relations, work, and inequalities as a result of the integration of sexual services into the economy. [source] Old English Literature and Feminist Theory: A State of the FieldLITERATURE COMPASS (ELECTRONIC), Issue 6 2008Mary Dockray-Miller Feminist and gender scholars working in Anglo-Saxon studies in the past ten years have been asking new and important questions of a variety of Old English and Anglo-Latin texts. Most crucially, this interdisciplinary new work redefines the historiographical paradigms of Anglo-Saxon cultural production and reception so that women must now be regularly included in discussions of Anglo-Saxon cultural agency. This paradigm shift can and should inform broader cultural understandings of the history of gender relations, despite current communication problems among the varied subfields of medieval studies and gender studies. Furthermore, the pedagogy of both medievalists and faculty specializing in later periods must be informed by this shift as well. [source] Gender, Nations and States in a Global EraNATIONS AND NATIONALISM, Issue 4 2000Sylvia Walby Nations and national projects are gendered in different ways. Feminist theory has raised important questions about the conceptualisation of ,difference'. This article develops the conceptualisation of the different ways in which nations and national projects are gendered, arguing for a mid-level conceptualisation of gender relations. It argues against, on the one hand, the excessive fragmentation of gender, and on the other, too simple dichotomies of mordless unequal gender relations. This draws on a theorisation of gender relations which connects the different dimensions into specific kinds of gender regimes, either public or domestic gender regimes. This enables us to conceptualise different national projects as having a more or less public or domestic gender project. The conflicts between different national projects and with other polities, such as states, are then conflicts between differently gendered projects. The usefulness of this mid-level conceptualisation is demonstrated through examples of the competing relations between the UK, Ireland, the EU and the Catholic Church in a global era. [source] Verlaine's La bonne chanson and Romances sans parolesORBIS LITERARUM, Issue 5 2006The Vortical Link In Verlaine's La bonne chanson, the path to the lady involves centripetal circling, proceeding by degrees, toward an ever closer encounter, in hopes of achieving synthesis with her at the stillpoint of a vortex. Two episodes, located like elliptical dual centers, result in two outcomes: the first, a sudden, centrifugal reversal flinging him violently away, signifying the lady's rejection; the second, an apparently successful but short-lived fusion, as the poet's measured centrifugal withdrawing, this time of his own accord, portrays. By the time Romances sans paroles opens, estrangement from the lady has increased, but a harmonious intimacy has developed between the poet and a male companion, and the poet's bisexuality is reflected by various gender relations and shifts. His open avowal of a homosexual affair is a shock that upsets the delicate balance between conflicting desires that had been, until now, precariously maintained, resulting in the violent, vertiginous vortex that tears things apart. Although the vortex is, as phenomenon and symbol, reversible, whirling centripetally toward a calm union at the center or centrifugally away toward the furious chaos at the periphery, it is the destructive centrifuge that prevails in these works, ending all tensions and conflicts by annihilating them. [source] Mobility, Violence and the Gendering of HIV in Papua New GuineaTHE AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF ANTHROPOLOGY, Issue 2 2008Katherine Lepani The links between gender, sexuality and violence hold serious implications for HIV transmission and its social and economic effects. In Papua New Guinea, enduring and pervasive patterns of male sexual behaviour involving coercion, violence and gang rape are highly conducive to the transmission of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections and have a critical bearing on women's sexual autonomy and health. The realities of violence are intensified by the widespread view that women are responsible for the spread of the virus. This paper engages the theme of mobility to consider the fluid and dynamic character of gender relations and sexuality in contemporary Papua New Guinea, and to gain perspective on constructions of modern masculinity and the discursive representations of gender violence in the context of the escalating HIV epidemic. [source] The Social Life of Rights: ,Gender Antagonism', Modernity and Raet in VanuatuTHE AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF ANTHROPOLOGY, Issue 2 2008John P. Taylor In the northern Vanuatu town of Luganville a small group of men have responded to social and legal changes engendered by women's rights activists by forming a male support group called ,Violence Against Men'. Members of this ,backlash' movement argue that the insidious promotion of Western-style ,women's rights' is leading to discrimination against men in divorce proceedings, child custody battles, and in domestic violence and rape cases. They directly oppose recent and ongoing legal changes aimed at protecting women from domestic violence, such as Domestic Violence Protection Court Orders, and the repeatedly tabled (but long-delayed) ,Family Protection Bill'. Such interventions, they argue, undermine Vanuatu's ,natural'kastom and Christian patriarchal gender order and, in doing so, pose a serious threat to the socio-economic productivity of the nation-state. For other men, however, rather than opposing women's rights activism, such challenges have raised questions about how men might successfully negotiate their identities in ways that are sensitive to contemporary issues of gender equality without undermining existing paradigms. Thus, this paper addresses the value accorded to universalism and relativism in gender activism in Vanuatu, and especially in terms of the linked discourses of kastom, church and modernity. It therefore explores gender relations in terms of the contemporary entanglement of indigenous and exogenous epistemologies, and in doing so argues that the contextual analysis of ,rights' should consider the specific historical, political and socio-cultural circumstances in which they are put to use. [source] Employment, flexible working and the familyTHE BRITISH JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY, Issue 4 2002Rosemary Crompton ABSTRACT This paper assesses some of the implications of one of the major social changes to have taken place in the West during the second half of the twentieth century , that is, the increased employment of women, together with normative changes in gender relations and in women's expectations. These changes have been linked to an increase in individualism, which itself is associated with the transcendence of ,first modernity'. Thus it is suggested that new approaches to social analysis are required (Beck). Here it is argued that, rather than develop completely new approaches in order to grasp the changes that are under way, the ,economic' and the ,social' (that is, employment and the family) should be seen as intertwined, rather than approached as separate phenomena. Past debates in feminism, changes in the family, and flexible employment are critically examined. The growing tensions between employment and family life are discussed. It is argued that these changes are associated with the intensification of capitalist development, rather than reflecting a fundamental transformation of society. Existing approaches to the analysis of social change, including Polanyi's analysis of the development of ,counter-movements' against the ,self-regulating' market, will, therefore, still be relevant to our enquiries. In the concluding section, a programme of research that would examine these changes is outlined. [source] The place of politics: powerful speech and women speakers in everyday Pa'ikwené (Palikur) lifeTHE JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL ANTHROPOLOGICAL INSTITUTE, Issue 1 2004Alan Passes This article focuses on the practice of female scolding in a community of Pa'ikwené (or Palikur), a native Amazonian people (French Guyana and Brazil), in order to explore ideas about power and speech and the phenomenon of political speaking. The article takes issue with claims that politics are to be equated specifically with the formal public arena, and that political discourse is the exclusive province and prerogative both of leaders and of men, whether institutionally ,authorized' or not. It is argued, on the contrary, that the everyday speech of common villagers, in this case women, is among other things integrally political, and no more powerless in effect than the so-called ,empty' speech of Amerindian chiefs postulated by Clastres. It is further proposed that Pa'ikwené women's scolding not only embodies their own power but also regenerates symmetrical gender relations, and thus the polity itself. [source] New shapes to shift: war, parks and the hunting person in modern West AfricaTHE JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL ANTHROPOLOGICAL INSTITUTE, Issue 4 2000Melissa Leach The deployment of Mande hunters' brotherhoods in environmental defence around Guinea's national parks, and in civil defence in Sierra Leone's war, represent two cases where international and fragmented state interests are interlocking transformatively with ,traditional' organizations in modern West Africa. Emphasizing the embeddedness of hunting in ideas and practices linking social and ecological processes, this article explores how the construction and representation of gender and authority domains are negotiated in articulation with larger political-economic processes in these two cases. Important parallels and interconnections include the ambiguous basis of hunters' identity, distinctiveness, and sociality in the region; the reproduction of both hierarchies and ambiguities in gender relations; potent linkages between environmental protection and conflict, and the ways apparently technocratic or peace-building initiatives can serve to fuel oppositional politics and the creation of armed ethnic regionalisms. [source] Multiple geographies of the Arab InternetAREA, Issue 1 2007Barney Warf The Arab world plays a relatively minor role in the rapidly changing geographies of global cyberspace. This paper explores the multiple geographies of the Arab Internet. First, it addresses Internet penetration rates, which averaged 7.8 per cent in 2006, although these varied widely among and within the region's countries. Between 2000 and 2006, the number of users jumped by 830 per cent, indicating these geographies are in rapid flux. It then examines the telecommunications infrastructure of the Middle East and North Africa, including fixed and mobile telephone networks and Internet cafes. Third, it turns to the reasons why the Internet has experienced relatively late adoption among Arab countries, including the dominance of the Latin alphabet, high access costs reflecting state-owned telecommunications monopolies, low Arab literacy rates, and restrictive gender relations that keep the proportion of female users low. The paper pays special attention both to government censorship of the Arab Internet as well as resistance to such controls and attempts to utilize the Internet counter-hegemonically. Finally, it explores the impacts of the Internet on some Arab societies, including the opening of discursive communities of politics, the Palestinian,Israeli conflict, Iraq and electronic commerce. [source] Administering Romance: Government Policies Concerning Pre-marriage Education ProgramsAUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION, Issue 1 2003Elizabeth Van Acker Recent policy objectives surrounding the institution of marriage are based on strategies aimed at sustaining a stable and morally cohesive society. Policy-makers disapproving of marriage breakdowns often focus on the behaviour of individuals to explain the breakdowns. Policy initiatives seek to ,cure' individuals to overcome the problem of marriage failure. Pre-marriage education programs encourage self-help and depend on individuals solving their own problems. I argue in this paper that this rational view of marriage is flawed because it does not engage with the issue of romance. This is an important concern to administrators because romance often plays a central role in partner choice and people's expectations of marriage. Policy-makers either ignore romance or treat it as a myth to be countered; they rarely discuss how it influences a couple's decision to marry in the first place. I argue that romance should not be dismissed so easily as it plays a significant role in gender relations. Acknowledging romance ought to be a significant part of administering marriage education programs. [source] What Happened to Gender Relations on the Way from Chicago to Los Angeles?CITY & COMMUNITY, Issue 2 2002Daphne Spain From the Chicago human ecologists to the Los Angeles postmodernists, urban theorists have tried to understand how space is structured by technological, political, economic, and cultural forces; gender is seldom examined. Yet both women's status and urban form underwent significant changes following World War II. As the home became less predictably the center of women's lives, the monocentric city was evolving into the polycentric metropolis. This article suggests that gender relations also have spatial implications for the metropolis, and that urban theory would be more comprehensive if it incorporated historically parallel developments in the literature on gender and space. [source] Shopping in Jenin: women, homes and political persons in the GalileeCITY & SOCIETY, Issue 2 2001Tania Forte For the past fifteen years, Palestinian women from the Galilee, who are citizens of Israel, have been going to Jenin, a large town in the West Bank, in order to shop. These excursions have profoundly modified home life, gender relations, and domestic and political identities. This paper examines the very processes by which women's shopping activities significantly contribute to the making and transformation of the household and social roles. Moreover, this new mobility among women has spurred both men and women in the Galilee to reflect upon citizenship, nationalism, and modernity. Thus an in,depth analysis of shopping provides insights on the relationship between consumption and social production, on the one hand, and political identities on the other. [Consumption, shopping, women, Israel, Palestinians] [source] | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||