Anthropology of Gender Research Papers (original) (raw)

This was a research paper for a course entitled Feminist and Multicultural Theologies. I unpack what gender complementarianism is, examine its history, and compare it to how Scripture and earlier Christian Tradition understood gender. This allows me to establish that gender complementarianism is a recent innovation in secular and Christian thinking about gender, and that it can be described as a "trajectory" from Scripture and Tradition on gender, influenced by social, ideological, and intellectual developments in secular societies. I then pursue a critique of gender complementarianism, arguing that it is an "unsatisfactory trajectory" because it has troubling implications for orthodox theology, is not borne out by empirical experience and observation, and has harmful effects on human beings and societies and on ethical development.

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- History, Gender Studies, Ethics, Normative Ethics

Research and critical studies into men and masculinity has originated as one of the most emerging areas of sociological investigation. More books and articles have been published on this study area alone as well as the introduction of two specialized journals and the creation of several websites all providing different explanations of their understanding of men and masculinity at the millennium age. Masculinity is an area of sociology that has, since the mid-1950s, drawn on many theories, including structural functionalism, Marxism, psychoanalysis, critical structuralism, and more recently, post-structuralism and theories of the post-modern (Whitehead & Barrett, 2001). Within popular culture, the media have also come across the perceived 'crisis of masculinity' in Western cultures – newspapers, documentaries and talk shows have increasingly pondered the changing meaning of manhood in our modern age (Alsop et al, 2002). The purpose of this writing is to understand men and masculinity in the modern world putting into consideration the sociology of masculinity, the social construction of masculinity, the crisis within masculinity as well as a fair contrast with masculinity and feminism.

- by Flourish Itulua-Abumere
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- Gender Studies, Sex and Gender, Feminist Theory, Literature

First published in 1988, this volume redefined the anthropological study of menstrual customs. Examining cultures as diverse as long-house dwellers in North Borneo, African farmers, Welsh housewives, and postindustrial American workers, it challenged the previously widespread image of a universal "menstrual taboo" as well as the common assumption of universal female subordination that underlay it. Offering feminist perspectives on comparative gender politics and symbolism, the book has interested students and scholars in anthropology, women's studies, religion, and comparative health systems. Originally listed as a “Notable” book in Choice, it later won the first Most Enduring Edited Collection Prize, awarded by the Council for the Anthropology of Reproduction (a unit of the American Anthropological Association.). The book continues to be taught regularly around the world.

- by Alma Gottlieb
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- Gender Studies, Sex and Gender, Women's Studies, Feminist Theory

Under Turkey’s neoconservative government, the Directorate of Religious Affairs deploys state-employed religious functionaries to provide Sunni Muslim citizens with advice and guidance on family life. By inculcating government-sanctioned sensibilities and dispositions related to kinship, these Islamic authorities have become instrumental to extending state power into the domestic lives of the religious majority. This particular entwinement of religion with state power is no aberration. Indeed, the Turkish case reveals a contradiction that lies at the heart of secular governance: the continuing involvement of religion in the politics of the family despite the assumed separation of religion and politics. Secular states may appropriate religious discourses and authority in regulating intimacy and the family while aligning these with biopolitical rationalities, as well as with secular laws and expertise. [secularism, kinship, family, intimacy, governmentality, the state, expertise, Islam, Turkey].

- by Hikmet Kocamaner
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- Religion, Sociology of Religion, Gender Studies, Anthropology

Insofar as gender is still so often equated with women alone, the move from Women in Development to Gender in Development has changed very little. Men as a human category have always been present, involved, consulted, obeyed and disobeyed in development work. Yet men as a gendered category in a feminist sense-involving unequal power relations between men and women and between men-have rarely been drawn into development programmes in any substantial way. This paper addresses conceptual and ...

- by Matthew Gutmann
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- Human Geography, Gender Studies, Development Studies, Gender History

... a typical naive set of assumptions about "group oriented" cultures it that the participants within them are basically altruistic, self-effacing, self-sacrificing and sociable. A society of such individuals should exhibit the very best of human civilization working in equitable, democratic communities. By contrast, those from individualistic cultures should be cold, grasping, selfish, egotistical and almost incapable of the cooperation demanded by a civil society. Indeed, a society of individualists, by this stereotype would be a dog eat dog affair, dedicated to conflict, riven with disloyalty and betrayal, forever failing to build a stable and humanistic community.

- by Thorold (Thor) May
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- Sociology, Environmental Sociology, Economic Sociology, Media Sociology

Gender and technology might seem unrelated on first sight because technology is often considered a neutral other that does not have anything to do with gender. Yet, taking a closer look at the language we use to talk about technology, at the images we rely on to represent technology, its uses and users, it becomes clear that gender stereotypes are more present than ever in the context of technology. Rather than subverting traditional gender roles, technology often reinforces and re-inscribes stereotypical behavior and ideas. Analyzing Apple iPad/iPhone advertisements, this paper will uncover some of the gender biases present in popular techno-narratives.

- by Alexander Darius Ornella
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- Religion, Sociology of Religion, Gender Studies, Sex and Gender

Le tasfih (littéralement « fermage », « scellement ») est un rituel profane de protec-tion de la virginité féminine auquel se soumettent par deux fois certaines jeunes filles tunisiennes, obtenant ainsi le statut de msafha: avant leur entrée dans la puberté (séquencefermeture) ; et avant leur entrée dans la conjugalité (séquence ouverture). Pratiquées en mi-lieu urbain et rural, des variantes du rituel coexistent. C’est dans un contexte familial et féminin qu’une opératrice (mère, tante, grand-mère, matrone, voisine, etc.) effectue une légèreincision sur le genou, recueillant le sang avec sept fruits secs. À chaque ingestion, l’enfant doit alors prononcer une formule d’engagement impliquant l’impuissance sexuelle de tous lesprétendants avant son mariage : « je suis un mur, et le fils d’autrui un fil ». La veille des noces, la jeune femme offre sa virginité en inversant la formule.

- by Samuel LÉZÉ
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- Cultural Studies, Gender Studies, Anthropology, Women's Studies

The ideologies that keep women from opening up about their experiences with rape and sexual abuse are not located simply in Hollywood of course, but are part of a wider systemic problem the world over. Furthermore, when women do open up they are immediately shut down and silenced–sending a clear message to others that they do not have power, and that their experiences are negligible, unwanted reminders of the abuse committed by men against women in a society that still heralds men as superior. The experiences of women become labelled as insignificant. The #MeToo campaign however, resists these normative concepts, and though this is not its first outing, this recincarnation has allowed women and girls a platform through which to share and express themselves as a group rather than simply as individuals—a powerful tool for social change.

- by Libby Beckmann
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- Anthropology, Ethnography, Gender (Anthropology), Social and Cultural Anthropology

Spinning and weaving were, in Viking Age Scandinavian societies, exclusively the domain of women. Woven in weaving huts (dyngja), textile production was associated with female embodiment, with beliefs about sorcery, fate, death, fertility and reproduction, while male involvement often resulted in allegations of homosexuality or death. Based on current research looking at gender and cloth in Viking and medieval Iceland new ideas have come to light regarding these age-old associations of female embodiment and the eventual transformation of cloth into a form of legal currency in the 12th century.

In a compelling mix of literary narrative and ethnography, anthropologist Alma Gottlieb and writer Philip Graham continue the long journey of cultural engagement with the Beng people of Cote d'Ivoire that they first recounted in their award-winning memoir Parallel Worlds. Their commitment over the span of several decades has lent them a rare insight. Braiding their own stories with those of the villagers of Asagbe and Kosangbe, Gottlieb and Graham take turns recounting a host of unexpected dramas with these West African villages, prompting serious questions about the fraught nature of cultural contact. Through events such as a religious leader's declaration that the authors' six-year-old son, Nathaniel, is the reincarnation of a revered ancestor, or Graham's late father being accepted into the Beng afterlife, or the increasing, sometimes dangerous madness of a villager, the authors are forced to reconcile their anthropological and literary gaze with the deepest parts of their personal lives. Along with these intimate dramas, they follow the Beng from times of peace through the times of tragedy that led to Cote d'Ivoire's recent civil conflicts. From these and many other interweaving narratives - and with the combined strengths of an anthropologist and a literary writer - "Braided Worlds" examines the impact of postcolonialism, race, and global inequity at the same time that it chronicles a living, breathing village community where two very different worlds meet.

- by Alma Gottlieb
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- Creative Writing, Creative Nonfiction, Comparative Literature, Anthropology

Early paper on Rebaibal in Telefolmin, situating it in the context of: a previous movement known as Ok Bembem; Christian evangelism, mineral exploration and the cash economy; the men's cult, gender relations, and household consumption. That now seems to me like contextual overkill - a kind of grab-bag of stuff. Made sense at the time, but 30 years in retrospect now make it clear that it wasn't so easy to figure out where this was going...

Memes have become an important linguistic tool not only for communicating emotions and ideas, but also are integral to constructing the self in online space. This paper concentrates on copper miners in northern Chile and the ways they use memes to make claims related to (hetero)sexuality, mestizaje, and nationalism. With men at the mine during week-long shifts and families in towns several hours away, social media is important for maintaining communication as well as representing the self. Miners present their labor as central to their sense of self, with memes that indirectly index heterosexuality, modernity associated with resource extraction, and racial mestizaje linked to nationalism. The visibility of these memes across spaces of both mine and town gives men an opportunity to construct a cohesive digital self, with implications for reinforcing assumptions about what is appropriate gender performance.

This special section examines how people in various contexts of the Global South “construct the self” in online spaces. With examples from Chile, Senegal, and Trinidad, the papers show the wide range of discursive practices, encompassing the textual and the aesthetic, which individuals use to enact gendered and sexual selves online. By privileging gender and sexuality as central components of selfhood, we draw from the long-standing attention paid to gender and sexuality in linguistic studies of identification (see Bucholtz & Hall 2004). In placing this concept within digital worlds, we pay attention to the ways in which daily life is now lived and experienced online. Authors in this issue think critically about practices of self-formation and the performance of gender and sexuality that differ from those that have normalized in the Global North, considering both revolutionary possibility, and re-entrenchment of constraint.

- by Nell Haynes and +1
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- Gender Studies, Queer Studies, Linguistic Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
- by Nicholas Harney
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- Gender Studies, Ethnography, Transnationalism, Immigration
- by Alma Gottlieb
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- Gender Studies, Sex and Gender, Women's Studies, Gender and Sexuality
- by Emma E Cook
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- Japanese Studies, Gender Studies, Anthropology of Gender, Masculinities

En los últimos años hemos vivido y estamos viviendo un conjunto de transformaciones en las formas de reproducción y filiación que han sido acompañadas por similares transformaciones en los estudios so- bre ellas desde la antropología.
A principios de la década de 1990, las obras de Ginsburg y Rapp (1991), Strathern (1992), Bouquet (1993) y Ragoné (1994), entre otras, iniciaban un nuevo camino en el estudio de la reproducción y la filiación marcado por la expansión de la reproducción asistida.
Como señalaron Ginsburg y Rapp en una obra posterior (1995) uno de cuyos objetivos era transformar el tradicional análisis antropológico de la reproducción, las «nuevas» formas de reproducción asistida, a través de tecnologías de reproducción (TRA), subrogación o adopción, requerían de nuevos paradigmas teóricos deabordaje. en una línea que vinculaba sus orígenes a las obras de S. Colen (1986, 1989, 1990 y 1995) sobre reproducción estratificada, J. Collier y S. Yanagisako (1987) sobre género y parentesco y A. Anagnost (1991) sobre violencia eufemística, F. Ginsburg y R. Rapp (1995) propusieron abordar la reproducción y la filiación teniendo en cuenta la existencia de personas con capacidad para reproducirse, criar y enculturar y otras incapacitadas para ello. si bien las autoras no circunscribían, explícitamente, su propuesta de transformación del tradicional análisis antropológico de la reproducción al análisis de la maternidad, su reconocimiento en el prefacio de la misma obra de haberse «criado», antropológicamente, a caballo entre la teoría feminista y el activismo social, y las contribuciones incluidas en la obra —mayoritariamente centradas en diversas formas de maternidad—, convirtieron la misma en una de las más importantes aportaciones a la antropología del maternaje (anthropology of mothering), definido como el trabajo de madre o de maternar.
M. Walks (2011), en uno de los más recientes estados de la cuestión sobre la antropología del maternaje realizado para prologar una obra coral, luego de señalar que la antropología ha estudiado desde el principio a las madres, la maternidad, el maternaje y el trabajo de las madres, ubica el origen del incremento sistemático del interés y la producción sobre el tema en la obra de S. Kitzinger (1978) y vincula su expansión a los estudios de género y parentesco (Collier y Yanagi- sako, 1987) y de la antropología de la reproducción (Ginsburg y Rapp, 1991 y 1995).

- by David Berliner
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- African Studies, Gender Studies, Queer Studies, Women's Studies
- by Don Seeman
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- Anthropology, Ethnography, Anthropology of Gender, History of Anthropology

We describe an anthropological and interdisciplinary field school, primary involving female undergraduates. Our field program was conducted in 2009 and 2010 on a remote island in Fijian archipelago, in the context of a patriarchal society where gender avoidance is practiced. We had two broad objectives for this program: to conduct research on the understanding of cultural and marine biological resources; and to evaluate the effectiveness of the field experience in promoting anthropological and scientific learning principles. We summarize qualitative and quantitative outcomes of the educational evaluation of the student learning experience. We also discuss educational aims and the unique gender-associated challenges of conducting this program in a patriarchal cultural setting.

- by Sharyn Jones
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- Anthropology of Gender, Fieldwork in Anthropology, Gender Equality, Fiji

As a research collective we have discussed a range of methodological issues here and simultaneously worked towards dissolving existing boundaries between self with the field as the Other (Grossman and Kimball, Dass) while constituting or understanding social memory (Wood and Latham, Weber) and framing them as a field for our enquiry. Long-standing epistemological divisions between object and subject (Grossman and Kimball, Wood and Latham, Dass, Weber), observation, participation and performance (Grossman and Kimball, Dass, Rossmanith, Ila Jones and Arries, Winkewinder), notions of inside and outside (Dass, Karl, Weber), and place, space and imagined spaces (Rossmanith, Peaslee) need to fade away. We take positions in the field, off the field, in writing and by not writing ethnographically (Arora 2006). Far from arrogantly claiming to represent others, some of the contributors admit the transformative impact of ethnographic research on themselves (Weber, Grossman and Kimball, Hurst). The evolution of us as persons and as researchers undertaking fieldwork is intertwined and not distinct or separable.
We arhue that in as much as we are governed and shaped by our disciplinary roots, in traversing these disciplinary boundaries we are equally in turn shaping future fields. We value disciplinary appropriation and are committed to translation and the evolution of shared vocabularies. Interdisciplinary methodologies can blur or change existing boundaries but not erode them altogether.

The Ifugaos seem to be the only people in the world who have developed peacemaking ideology in a typically aggressive genre of oral literature. The rich literature on epic traditions worldwide portrays a highly male-centered genre of song glorifying heroic values and warlike acts. Ifugao male epics represents aggressive ideology, which it shares with all the corresponding genres from India to Iceland. But what is specific of the Ifugao epic lore is that it contains two trends. The /hudhud/, female epic tradition of the Ifugaos, is a unique specimen of peacemaking, even pacifist ideology in epic form. This ideology has developed in the peak of headhunting period, i.e. it is genuine, not imposed by the influence of other cultures as, for instance, the motives of regret that appeared in Kalinga Ullalim under the influence of Christianization and American "order".

- by Maria V. Stanyukovich
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- World Literatures, Comparative Literature, Gender Studies, Anthropology
- by Saida Hodzic
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- Gender Studies, Women's Studies, Anthropology of Gender, Feminist Anthropology

David Graeber and David Wengrow's new book The Dawn of Everything is energetic, committed and kaleidoscopic, but also flawed. We suggest an alternative way of understanding the emergence of equality in social evolution, and the emergence... more

The 11 new marble headstones erected at the small village cemetery at the outskirts of Hegići in late July 2007 outnumbered the number of people who had returned to the village. Only the dates of death engraved on the white headstones revealed that most of the people buried that day died together on the same day in July 1992. The small congregation of some 50 people, made up of surviving relatives and neighbours coming from afar, mourned in dignity and prayed for the souls of the victims of the massacre. Through ethnography of a collective funeral for the victims of ‘ethnic cleansing’ in a small Bosnian village, and reflexive narrative analysis of the past and present realities of the survivors, this article explores the complex relationship between memory, place and reconciliation in post-war Bosnia and Herzegovina.

- by Hariz Halilovich
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- Anthropology, Humanities, Human Rights, Refugee Studies

Back cover text: Real Social Science presents a new, hands-on approach to social inquiry. The theoretical and methodological ideas behind the book, inspired by Aristotelian phronesis, represent an original perspective within the social sciences, and this volume gives readers for the first time a set of studies exemplifying what applied phronesis looks like in practice. The reflexive analysis of values and power gives new meaning to the impact of research on policy and practice. Real Social Science is a major step forward in a novel and thriving field of research. This book will benefit scholars, researchers, and students who want to make a difference in practice, not just in the academy. Its message will make it essential reading for students and academics across the social sciences.

- by Bent Flyvbjerg and +1
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- Screenwriting, Critical Theory, Critical Theory, Critical Theory

- by Bent Flyvbjerg and +1
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- Screenwriting, Critical Theory, Critical Theory, Critical Theory

Rape is being the second most commonly reported form of violence against women in Bangladesh, the challenges related to the use of medical evidence in rape trials can be a great burden on hundreds of women each year. While a large number of women never report as they are being sexually assaulted and among those who intended to come forward confront great challenges in seeing their offender convicted. Indeed, the cumulative effect of social, procedural and other challenges result in a very low conviction rate for rape. As a crucial part of any rape investigation, the collection and subsequent reliance on medical evidence usually can prove the case true or false. As such, the purpose of this study is to identify the socio-cultural challenges related to both the collection and use of medical evidence, analysis how and in what process this challenges are strongly inherited in our patriarchal values and intertwined with this reality how a rape survivor merely finds the languages of law oppose her owned splitting experiences. As a final caveat, I politically believe this article should be used to identify areas deserving to be investigated further.

اکنون پژوهش‌های اندکی در زمینه تاریخ جنسیت و سکسوالیته در ایران شکل گرفته است. مقالات پراکنده‌ای نیز در این رابطه منتشر شده است. در تمامی‌این پژوهش‌ها جریانهای اجتماعی و تاریخی سه دهه اخیر به طور اخص مورد بررسی قرار نگرفته است. بررسی تاریخی و جامعه‌شناختی روشمند این برهه از تاریخ می‌تواند دانش تاریخی‌ای برای فعالان و کنشگران حوزه‌ی جنسیت و سکسوالیته ایرانی فراهم نماید. این پژوهش با ارائه یک الگوی جامعه شناختی مبتنی بر بستر تاریخی، فرهنگی و اجتماعی بازنمایی‌های صورت گرفته از این صحنه را به چالش می‌کشد.

- by Michelle Walks
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- Archaeology, Gender Studies, Anthropology, Biological Anthropology

Donne non si nasce ma si diventa, affermava Simone de Beauvoir nel suo celebre Le deuxième sexe (1949), proponendoci una visione nuova e fondamentale della differenza di genere e della sua genesi. Ovunque e in ogni epoca le donne sono il prodotto di specifici processi culturali, in grado di plasmare profondamente le identità femminili e le attese sociali di cui esse sono investite. Il risultato di tali processi rinvia a un’infinita varietà di modelli, irriducibile al motivo dell’eterno femminino (che si suppone universalmente intriso di un’essenza naturale). Allo stesso tempo, però, le costruzioni di genere sono in primo luogo chiamate a rispondere proprio al problema della riproduzione e al controllo che la donna esercita sulla sua fisiologia. Il tema del potere riproduttivo è dunque al centro delle politiche di genere, dando luogo a strategie variamente orientate nel senso della gerarchia o della complementarità, come ci mostrano i casi etnografici presentati in questo volume.

This article examines five common misunderstandings about case-study research: (a) theoretical knowledge is more valuable than practical knowledge; (b) one cannot generalize from a single case, therefore, the single-case study cannot contribute to scientific development; (c) the case study is most useful for generating hypotheses, whereas other methods are more suitable for hypotheses testing and theory building; (d) the case study contains a bias toward verification; and (e) it is often difficult to summarize specific case studies. This article explains and corrects these misunderstandings one by one and concludes with the Kuhnian insight that a scientific discipline without a large number of thoroughly executed case studies is a discipline without systematic production of exemplars, and a discipline without exemplars is an ineffective one. Social science may be strengthened by the execution of a greater number of good case studies.

- by Bent Flyvbjerg
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- Critical Theory, Business, Entrepreneurship, Organizational Behavior

In the early 1970s we made more than 100 hours of tape recordings, as part of our ethnographic fieldwork among the Piruzai, Pashtun farmers and semi-nomadic pastoralists in northern Afghanistan. These village voices create a remarkable community self-portrait of a social world now lost and irretrievable. Maryam's story is the perfect exemplar of an unconventional form of auto-ethnography. Maryam was married some thirty years before, as part of a series of marriage exchanges intended to settle a feud between the two main Piruzai families. Her husband, Tuman, became village headman, a Haji, and in 1971 our host. Later, Pakiza, Tuman's second wife and Maryam's co-wife, became the bane of her life. Her account captures something of the depth and colour of people's lives. It gives voice to the ensuing silence over the past nearly fifty years and offers a radical challenge to the gendered stereotypes which have dominated the global and Afghan media during the past forty years of war and occupation.

- by Nancy Lindisfarne and +1
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- Ethnohistory, Anthropology of Gender, Afghanistan, Oral history
- by Alice Elliot
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- Gender Studies, Anthropology, Middle East Studies, Anthropology of Gender
- by Denise L Spitzer
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- Transnationalism, Immigration, Anthropology of Gender, Gender and Work

Questo articolo tenta di tracciare alcune traiettorie che, seppur limitate da oggettive esigenze di spazio editoriale, intendono introdurre la prospettiva antropologica attorno al femminile sul piano ideologico, discorsivo e delle pratiche quotidiane. Una prospettiva che non può sfuggire lo sguardo sullo specifico materno, così strettamente e culturalmente correlato al femminile, che ho voluto affrontare a partire dal mio campo etnografico sull’esperienza adottiva delle donne che si sono trovate nell’impossibilità di generare e nella condizione di ‘ammaternare’ un bambino ‘Altro’ da sé. Un’esperienza che si configura a tutti gli effetti come ‘laboratorio a cielo aperto’ dell’azione categoriale delle nozioni di ‘natura’ e ‘cultura’ sugli individui e sulla comunità sociale.

- by Rossana Di Silvio
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- Anthropology of Gender, Mothering and Sociology
- by Frank Meier
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- Critical Theory, Business, Entrepreneurship, Organizational Behavior

Al centro di questo lavoro etnografico c’è una comitiva di circa quindici ragazzi, cresciuti in un blocco urbano, ai margini della multiforme metropoli romana. Dipinti come “gang” dai media, la narrazione intende restituire la complessità delle esistenze di questi giovani – che provano a navigare la difficile transizione verso una complessa età adulta –, analizzando e decostruendo stereotipi e pregiudizi, senza trascurare quei locali rapporti di potere in grado di mutare continuamente l’orizzonte morale. Nel lavoro emergono anche gli “altri” abitanti di Marozia (nome fittizio per questa porzione di periferia, ripreso da Le città invisibili di Italo Calvino): immigrati, Rom, operatori del sociale, volontari, forze dell’ordine, ricercatori, giornalisti, politici. Nonostante tali presenze, ciò che risalta è la quasi totale assenza sul territorio di agenti istituzionali. D’altronde è la stessa genesi di Marozia (un complesso abitativo rimasto vuoto, occupato e infine “negoziato” con la politica romana) che ne sottende il destino: l’isolamento. L’analisi antropologica tenta di indagare la dimensione della violenza e della sofferenza – fisiche e simboliche – che si sommano all’illegalità, la quale può apparire l’unica via praticabile per alimentare una diffusa etica della sussistenza e di mutuo aiuto dal basso.
Il testo di Marasco rende giustizia dei tanti facili luoghi comuni con i quali si guarda alle periferie in generale. Ne ricostruisce la complessità e le contraddizioni, con sguardo lucido, non indulgente ma senz’altro partecipato. Riflette sui rapporti di forza che regolano la costruzione dei destini individuali, senza dimenticare le pratiche di resistenza e i tentativi di riscatto.

- by Mario Marasco and +1
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- Political Anthropology, Urban Anthropology, Anthropology of Gender, Violence (Anthropology)