Gender in Flux: Papers from a Conference Held at University College Chester,November 2001 - Brossura

Papers from a conference organised for undergraduates at Univesity College Chester, November 2001. Three major themes are expored in this book: masculinities; embodiment and culture; and the gender division of labour. While most of the contributions are concerned with the experience of contemporary Western societies, two focus on aspects of gender in, respectively, Nigeria and Mexico. Contents: Transforming masculinities: bodies, power and emotional lives, by Victor Seidler. (Examines changing pressures on men in a postmodern society, focusing on the aftermath of the attacks on the World Trade Center, New York, on September 11, 2001.) Normal and offenders: classification systems, complacency and critical masculinities, by Malcolm Cowburn. (Discusses the significance of masculinities for understanding the prevalence of violence, particularly sexual violence, in contemporary society.) My wife's tongue delivers more punishing blows than Muhammed Ali's fists: bargaining power in Nigerian Hausa society, by Fatima L. Adamu. (Explores the reaction to, and management of, dominant masculinity by secluded women of the Muslim Hausa society of Northern Nigeria.) A short history of nature: feminism and transcendental physiology, by Jill Marsden. (An analysis of the history of feminist resistance to biological determinist accounts of women's bodies, from a philosophical standpoint.) Becoming gendered: feminist beauty ri(gh)tes, by Karen Stevenson. (Discusses the construction of appearance as an aspect of embodiment, arguing that women are far more dependent than most men on their appearance for social acceptance.) Cutting up: making sense of self-harm, by Mairead Owen. (Examines the phenomenon of cutting up, by which some women deliberately harm their own bodies with knives and razor blades; research indicates that the practice is more widespread than is usually assumed.) Caring or not caring: academic responses to household and labour market change, by Jane Wheelock. (Considers the changing dynamics of the gendered division of labour, focusing on the ways in which formal waged employment interacts with unpaid domestic work.) Approaches to gender and development: perspectives from urban Mexico, by Katie Willis. (Examines the role of the gendered division of labour in providing solutions to the problem of equity and underdevelopment for men and women in a developing country.)