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- Convenors:
-
Julie Billaud
(Geneva Graduate Institute)
Julie Castro (University of Applied Sciences and Arts Western Switzerland HES-SO)
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- Chair:
-
Katarzyna Grabska
(Peace Research Institute Oslo)
- Formats:
- Workshops
- Location:
- V410
- Sessions:
- Friday 13 July, -
Time zone: Europe/Paris
Short Abstract:
This panel will investigate the ways in which actors caught in situations of extreme political and economic uncertainty routinely respond, through performance and irony, to different sources of pressure related to their gender.
Long Abstract:
Contexts of armed conflict or chronic economic vulnerability together with the increased influence of global forces (militarization, economic crisis and the development of inequalities, hegemonic extension of development discourses and practices, etc.) deeply impact on gender identities, dynamics and relations. This panel will investigate the ways in which gendered actors caught in situations of extreme political and economic uncertainty routinely respond to these different sources of tension. How do 'subaltern' men and women resist or challenge or compose with the transformations of gender identities and relationships ? We are particularly interested in papers that highlight the ironic and performative dimensions of the ways in which people deal with local norms of gender and global forces which tend to reshape them, and how these unfold in everyday practices. Irony is intended here both as a way to capture and respond to the inconsistencies, contradictions, ambiguities generated by those encounters. Following Marcus (2001), we argue that the ethnographic situations where irony prevails exemplify and document with great acuteness the uncertainty that marks the contemporary world. Caught between local constructions and global politics, the ironies of gender appear to be very useful in the comprehension of the ways in which contemporary uncertainties reshape social realities.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Friday 13 July, 2012, -Paper short abstract:
A travers cette communication, je propose d'examiner la manière dont les visions stéréotypées des identités de genre polynésiennes sont mises en scène ou contestées - par l'usage de l'humour notamment - dans les performances touristiques tongiennes.
Paper long abstract:
Since the first contacts between Europeans navigators and the inhabitants of what is now called « Polynesia », the image of Polynesian women that predominates in literature, films and other media is one of sensual beauty and sexual freedom, while men - Maori men in particular - are thought as fierce and strongly-built warriors. These images not only apply to Tahiti and French Polynesia, but also to other archipelagos such as Samoa, Tonga, or the Cook islands. Images now used for tourism marketing are shaped according to these representations. Tongan tourist brochures for example display young, smiling and welcoming women. This idealized Polynesian femininity is also displayed in tourist performances, where the Tahitian hip-shaking dances are generally performed (Tahitian dances being very different from the Tongan dance performances).
I will thus examine whether the Polynesian feminine identity as defined by tourism marketing correspond to the normative femininity as it is defined in Tonga or not. If the two definitions do not fit with each other, this will take us to investigate the following questions : how do local actors and performers cope with the hegemonic definition of feminine identity ? Is it performed to satisfy tourists or is it contested? If the feminine identity as defined by the tourism industry is locally contested during tourist performances, what are the strategies used to do so and what is the place of irony in this process?
Paper short abstract:
In Cairo, counselling centres specialised in matters of love and sex flourish. However, like most of young Egyptians, a great part of the staff working at these centres has to wait very long before marriage. How do they deal with the paradox of counselling people on a subject they did not experience and their own dreams and fears regarding love and sex?
Paper long abstract:
In Cairo, commercial events like Valentine's Day, films and advertisements presenting love and sex as a mean of self-fulfilment are all around. At the same time, counselling centres specialised on these subjects also flourish in the city, promoting a moralised version of the former discourse. However, like most of young Egyptians, a great part of the staff working at these centres has to wait very long before marriage. How do they cope with the paradox of counselling people on a subject they did not experience? How do they deal with their own dreams and fears regarding love and sex? For women involved in these programs, for instance, possible spinsterhood is a major cause of anguish. On one hand, presenting their methods as scientific truths can be a way out of this paradox, as it permits to disconnect them from personal experience. On the other hand, religion is considered as an unquestionable source for moral principles. Ethnographic data should permit to explore further the intricacies of science, religion, life incentives found in the social environment and the way these unmarried counsellors account of their own personal needs.
Paper short abstract:
For the social imaginary there is the idea of a natural womanhood alienated from war and violence. The indictments for woman warriors who 'live outside of the gender' resulted not only in the stigmatization by the public opinion, but also in the aggravation of the criminal penalties.
Paper long abstract:
The significant participation of women in the organitzation of the Communist Party of Peru - Shining Path (CPP-SP) has puzzled many observers of this political and armed struggle in Peru.
The participation of women in the armed struggle has been seen as a threat. For the social imaginary of the hegemonic ideology -conservative- there is the idea of a natural womanhood forcibly alienated from war and violence. As a consquence, the figure of the woman warrior of the CPP-SP resulted in a contradiction with the hegemonic type of womanhood displayed by the Peruvian mediatic powers. They have developed a discourse of denigration of the image of the CPP-SP woman combatent. There has emerged a stereotype of an 'asexual automaton' and a 'nymphomaniac thirsty of blood", "a participant of the Shining Path orgy". These indictments for 'living outside of the gender' resulted not only in the stigmatization by the public opinion, but also in the aggravation of the criminal penalties (longer imprisonments).
Taking into account the ethnografic research developped for the last 3 years in the Maximum Security Prison in Lima, I want to show the ways in which the CPP-SP women have opposed to this stigmatization, and also the ways they have endeavoured to reshape their gender identity when facing their new existential conditions.
Paper short abstract:
I examine the manner in which self-identified effeminate males in Ghana, commonly referred to as kwadwo besia, negotiate with the shifts on Ghana's sexual landscape. I examine 'reluctance,' as it manifests in the lives of these men and at the vectors of homophobia and Western discourses of rescue.
Paper long abstract:
In this paper, I use 'reluctance' as an optic for engaging with the manner in which self-identified effeminate males in Ghana, commonly referred to as 'kwadwo besia' negotiate with both the local and transnational politics of same-sex visibility. I am of the view that the kwadwo besia, long recognized as a subject of gender parody in the Ghanaian context has recently become Ghana's homosexual. I anchor my analysis in the ethnographic time frame of 2006, Ghana's 50th birthday, and during which the popular song titled "The Queens Visit" was played as part of the publicity for the anniversary. The song began with the lyrics "This is the day five million Ghanaians will go gay." Owing to the popularity of the song, the International Lesbians and Gay Association capitalized on the opportunity to speak to lesbian and gay liberation in Ghana. Their decision to hold a conference in Ghana will incite anti-homosexual rhetoric from the State and Church, which will in turn, dramatically influence the lives of kwadwo mesia (pl). Thus, I argue that the kwadwo besia's body is a contested site of masculinity, gender and sexuality. In so doing, I problematize 'reluctance' as it relates to the kwadwo besia, by articulating how Western discourses of rescue while exposing the vulnerabilities of sexual minorities in Ghana at the same time heighten those vulnerabilities to which they attend. In this regard, it is the kwadwo besia's refusal to be labeled homosexual or vulnerable which remains the locus of my analysis.
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines the experiences of help seeking amongst men, and the effect that depression and anxiety, and engaging in different forms of support has on reshaping masculine identities.
Paper long abstract:
This presentation draws on the findings of a qualitative study looking at how best to support men with depression and anxiety, and the possible role of group therapy in that support. The study explored men's experiences of depression and anxiety, as well as their approach to, and experiences of, help seeking. We mapped the mental health groups available within one UK city, observed three different mental health groups, interviewed 22 men with depression / anxiety, and interviewed 12 people who worked with depressed and anxious men. The findings show that support for men is primarily offered and preferred initially by most men on a one-to-one basis. However, peer-led structured community groups, professionally run psycho-educational groups and unstructured informal support groups are also popular with some men. The available groups were generally mixed gender and there was found to be a reluctance by most men to attend or set up men-only groups. While a few men-only mental health groups existed they recruited members by first developing trust with key individuals. Preliminary analysis demonstrates that men tackled the stigma of admitting to anxiety and depression and struggled with trying to live up to the ideals of masculine coping behaviour. The issue and importance of diagnosis was also relevant to men as it was to the framing of services by providers. While some men attempted to rebuild new identities and masculinities by engaging with various therapeutic strategies, other men described the ongoing difficulties of help seeking and remained in distressed and marginalised positions.
Paper short abstract:
In a Sardinian town performance and genetics are the foundations of a project that aims at proffer to youths solidarity and industriousness as values from women of recent agro-pastoral past, pitting them against the common imagined identity of men, characterized by violent behavior and hostility
Paper long abstract:
In a Sardinian town notoriously marked by stereotypes of violence that denote the moral world of men, a local woman, supported by discourse and tools made available by genetics, has been getting a group of girls involved in an identity project that revolves around values of the opposite sign.
Feminine solidarity and industriousness from recently faded away agro-pastoral society are pitted against the masculine world of balentìa ("gallantry"). As it is "scientifically confirmed" by the genealogical trees drawn by geneticists working in the area for a biomedical research project (Parco Genos), all the local dwellers are united among themselves and to the previous generations through blood ties. According to local ideology that supports and reifies this genetic discourse, those kinship ties certify that the whole community still possesses in its genes the true values of the past, those positive values that used to be a sign into the life of feminine communities, now the only chance for redemption and the future survival of the community.
During the annual exhibition of local material culture, young women wear the enshrined traditional costumes and take active part into the reconstruction by geneticists of genealogical trees to be displayed in the exhibition. This way, they bring into being a peculiar form of community based on a secular cult of foremothers, far-away in time, yet close to them in terms of culture and moral values.