Southern Africa

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alex Schoeman
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Southern Africa ◽  
Female Body ◽  
Sex And Gender ◽  
Farming Community ◽  
Historical Figures ◽  
Adult Body ◽  
And Gender

Excavations of Southern African farming community sites have yielded two figurine types. The first comprises coarse clay figurines found in clusters in central areas in homesteads. These clusters contained anthropomorphic and animal figurines that resemble material culture used in twentieth-century southernmost African initiation schools. The second figurine type, associated with domestic areas, is finer and included toys and stylized human figurines. The stylized human figurines resemble historical figures that embodied ideas about male ownership over the female body, procreative powers, and spirit. The decorations on the stylized female figurines resemble body scarification that might have been used to express personhood. This chapter suggests that the production and use of these clay figurines were enmeshed in ideas about sex and gender, and that figurines materialized ideas, in both ceremonial and domestic contexts, about the adult body as sexed and gendered.

Reverse tomboy: (Re)definitions of gender fluidity through sensory engagement with material culture

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 149-170
Author(s):  
Charlie Athill
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Subject Position ◽  
Sex And Gender ◽  
Key Factors ◽  
Sensory Ethnography ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Cross Dressing ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Embodied Practice

This narrative case study explores how material culture, in the form of dress, grooming and accessories, is utilized to establish a gender-fluid presentation of the self. It focuses on Tim Mustoe, a 42-year-old heterosexual creative living and working in London, whose embodied practice contributes to the problematization of gender normativity through a disruption of culturally established links between appearance, gender and sex. The study considers how a particular form of non-spectacular cross dressing is used to integrate into a work environment and also operate within a non-queer social environment. The study explores the affective power of material culture in the reification of subject position and as a means of resilience and empowerment through everyday practice and also considers its significance on a social, intersubjective level. The methodology used for this case draws on sensory ethnography and includes a queer reflexive turn to consider parallels and contrasts between my own and Tim’s experience and practice. Conceptualizations of subjectivity, sex, gender are considered in relation to those on material culture, and the study draws on scholarship related to cross-dressing in the United Kingdom. Tim identifies as a man, as do I; however, his embodied practice and gender identification proffer a particular response to culturally embedded norms relating to the binaries of sex and gender. Therefore, in relation to male femininity, I propose the notion of feminizing as an amendment to the concept of femaling, which assumes the identification with or transition to a cisgender position. This study explores the phenomenology of dress as an expressive tool of gratification and as a means of integration for which the imperatives of professionalism, age and respectability are key factors.

Gender Identity without Gender Prescriptions

1998 ◽  
pp. 104-111
Author(s):  
Janet C. Wesselius
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Gender Identity ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Social Practices ◽  
Sex And Gender ◽  
Feminist Politics ◽  
Emancipatory Politics ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Gender Categories ◽  
Susan Bordo

The feminist philosopher Susan Bordo suggests that the dilemma of twentieth-century feminism is the tension between a gender identity that both mobilizes a liberatory politics on behalf of women and that results in gender prescriptions which excludes many women. This tension seems especially acute in feminist debates about essentialism/deconstructionism. Concentrating on the shared sex of women may run the risk of embracing an essentialism that ignores the differences among women, whereas emphasizing the constructed natures of sex and gender categories seems to threaten the very project of a feminist politics. I will analyze the possibility of dismantling gender prescriptions while retaining a gender identity that can be the beginning for an emancipatory politics. Perhaps feminists need not rely on a reified essentialism that elides the differences of race, class, etc., if we begin with our social practices of classification rather than with a priori generalizations about the nature of women.

Conflicts Within the Anglican Communion

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jane Shaw
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Gay Marriage ◽  
First Century ◽  
Sex And Gender ◽  
Same Sex ◽  
The West ◽  
Same Sex Couples ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The Church

The churches of the Anglican Communion discussed issues of sex and gender throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty-first century. Arguments about gender focused on the ordination of women to the diaconate, priesthood, and episcopate. Debates about sexuality covered polygamy, divorce and remarriage, and homosexuality. In the first decade of the twenty-first century, these debates became intensely focused on homosexuality and were particularly fierce as liberals and conservatives responded to openly gay bishops and the blessing and marriage of same-sex couples. By the second decade of the twenty-first century, the sex and gender debates had become less acrimonious, the Anglican Communion had not split on these issues as some feared, but the ‘disconnect’ between society and the Church, at least in the West, on issues such as the Church of England’s prevarication on female bishops and opposition to gay marriage, had decreased the Church’s credibility for many.

scholarly journals Reconstructing sexual divisions of labor from fingerprints on Ancestral Puebloan pottery

2019 ◽  
Vol 116 (25) ◽  
pp. 12220-12225 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Kantner ◽  
David McKinney ◽  
Michele Pierson ◽  
Shaza Wester
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Chaco Canyon ◽  
Economic Systems ◽  
Sex And Gender ◽  
Pottery Production ◽  
Left Behind ◽  
Ancestral Puebloan ◽  
The Us ◽  
Males And Females ◽  
And Gender

An understanding of the division of labor in different societies, and especially how it evolved in the human species, is fundamental to most analyses of social, political, and economic systems. The ability to reconstruct how labor was organized, however, especially in ancient societies that left behind few material remains, is challenged by the paucity of direct evidence demonstrating who was involved in production. This is particularly true for identifying divisions of labor along lines of age, sex, and gender, for which archaeological interpretations mostly rely upon inferences derived from modern examples with uncertain applicability to ancient societies. Drawing upon biometric studies of human fingerprints showing statistically distinct ridge breadth measurements for juveniles, males, and females, this study reports a method for collecting fingerprint impressions left on ancient material culture and using them to distinguish the sex of the artifacts’ producers. The method is applied to a sample of 985 ceramic sherds from a 1,000-y-old Ancestral Puebloan community in the US Southwest, a period characterized by the rapid emergence of a highly influential religious and political center at Chaco Canyon. The fingerprint evidence demonstrates that both males and females were significantly involved in pottery production and further suggests that the contributions of each sex varied over time and even among different social groups in the same community. The results indicate that despite long-standing assumptions that pottery production in Ancient Puebloan societies was primarily a female activity, labor was not strictly divided and instead was likely quite dynamic.

Conclusion

Post-Mandarin ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ben Tran
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
National Culture ◽  
State Power ◽  
Cultural Representation ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
Partisan Politics ◽  
Sex And Gender ◽  
Political Ideologies ◽  
Aesthetic Modernity ◽  
And Gender

To consider modern Vietnamese literature and its politics through questions of gender and sexuality is to challenge Vietnamese Marxist criticism that was made orthodox and inflexible by the machinations of state power and partisan politics. This book has aimed to contribute to this reassessment with its primary arguments: that the post-mandarin engagement with and representation of colonial sex and gender fostered an inclusive field of cultural representation and, more broadly speaking, a democratic national culture from which Vietnamese Marxism emerged. Vietnam’s anticolonial national movement during the twentieth century was not the singular Marxism narrated and codified by the state but was rather conditioned and formed in conjunction with modernity’s sociohistorical transformations, various political ideologies, and, most pertinent here, an aesthetic modernity attending to questions of gender and sexuality.

scholarly journals Body, Sex and Gender in Archeology: Revisiting Some Multidisciplinary Aspects

2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 140
Author(s):  
Sergio Francisco Serafim Monteiro Silva ◽  
Viviane Maria Cavalcanti de Castro
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
The State ◽  
The Body ◽  
Sex And Gender ◽  
The Past ◽  
Human Sociobiology ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
And Gender

This article presents the main problems related to the inclusion of the body, gender, sex and its relations with the material culture in the production of modern archaeological knowledge about populations of the past. It outlines an outline of recurring speculations, terms, and concepts that function as paradigmatic umbrella to estimate the state of the art of such approaches from archaeological and ethnographic examples from America, Africa, and the Mediterranean. Convergent perspectives were selected, even in the scope of bioculture and human sociobiology, for the explanation of a sometimes transverse bias of scientific knowledge. Corpo, Sexo e Gênero na Arqueologia: Revisitando Alguns Aspectos Multidisciplinares Este artigo apresenta os principais problemas relacionados à inclusão do corpo, gênero, sexo e suas relações com a cultura material na produção do conhecimento arqueológico moderno sobre populações do passado. Traça um esboço das especulações recorrentes, termos e conceitos que funcionam como guarda-chuva paradigmático para estimar o estado da arte dessas abordagens a partir de exemplos arqueológicos e etnográficos da América, África e Mediterrâneo. Foram selecionadas perspectivas convergentes, mesmo no âmbito da biocultura e da sociobiologia humana para a explanação de um viés por vezes transversal de conhecimento científico.

Funny Girls

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michelle Ann Abate
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
The United States ◽  
Young Female ◽  
Critical Study ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
Female Protagonists ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
And Gender ◽  
National Attitudes

Funny Girls: Guffaws, Guts, and Gender in Classic American Comics is the first full-length critical study to examine the important cadre of young female protagonists that permeated US newspapers strips and comics books during the first half of the twentieth century.Many of the earliest, most successful, and most influential titles from this era featured elementary-aged girls as their central characters, such as Little Orphan Annie, Nancy, and Little Lulu. Far from embodying a now-forgotten facet of twentieth century print culture, these figures remain icons ofUS popular and material culture. Recognizing the cadre of Funny Girls who played such a significant role in the popular appeal and commercial success of American comics during the first half of the twentieth century challenges longstanding perceptions about the gender dynamics operating during this era.In addition, they provide information about a wide range of socio-political issues, including the popular perceptions about children, mainstream representations of girlhood, and changing national attitudes regarding youth and youth culture.Finally, but just as importantly, strips like Little Lulu, Little Orphan Annie, and Nancy also shed light on another major phenomenon within comics:branding, licensing, and merchandising. In discussing these are other issues, Funny Girls gives much needed attention to an influential, but long neglected, aspect of comics history in the United States.

scholarly journals The female body in early Buddhist literature

2011 ◽  
Vol 23 ◽  
pp. 100-114
Author(s):  
Céline Grünhagen
Keyword(s):  
Gender Equality ◽  
Female Body ◽  
Social Background ◽  
The Body ◽  
Sex And Gender ◽  
Social Changes ◽  
Buddhist Literature ◽  
The Status ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Over Time

In this paper the author presents Theravāda Buddhist perceptions of the female body and their impact on sexuality, gender equality and salvation. In doing so the author draws on a selection of texts from the Buddhist canonical literature, which are relevant to the Theravāda tradition. Early Buddhist literature reflects an understanding of the female body as being more closely connected to the material world and the cycle of reincarnation, due to its biological qualities. This has a severe impact on the woman’s status and her chances of attaining enlightenment. Considering the early teaching of individuals possessing equal capacities to attain liberation, no matter what sex or social background, Buddhism as it developed over time failed to translate the equality of the sexes into a social reality. In fact, the perception of a distinct female ‘nature’ which was deemed a hindrance could not easily be erased from the collective consciousness. It is, however, important to note that Buddhist countries are subject to diverse influences that affect attitudes towards the female body, sexuality and the status of women—thus one has to be very careful with generalizations regarding norms and practices. Over time the negative attitudes and restrictions have been questioned; social changes have given way to new interpretations and perspectives. Pondering religious and cultural implications of the Buddhist attitude towards the body and its sex while also considering, for example, modern Mahayana Buddhist interpretations—especially by Western Buddhists and Buddhist Feminists—can lead to an acknowledgement of its potential of interpreting anattā, selflessness and an equality of capacity to practice Dhamma in favour of a general sex and gender equality.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document