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- Convenor:
-
Ivana Katarinčić
(Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Research)
- Stream:
- Gender and sexuality, media and the visual arts
- Location:
- A208
- Sessions:
- Wednesday 24 June, -, -
Time zone: Europe/Zagreb
Short Abstract:
This panel will focus on disclosing some of the relevant gendered realities of the 21st century. The aim of this panel is to interrogate how gender influences identities as performed in everyday realities within a social, historical and cultural context.
Long Abstract:
In contemporary academic scholarship, gender is quantitatively (as well as qualitatively) analysed more now than it was a few decades ago. Yet gender-related issues still abound, making gender a central aspect in many fields of contemporary ethnographic research.
This panel will therefore focus on disclosing some of the relevant gender realities of the 21st century. The aim of this panel is to interrogate how gender influences identities as performed in everyday realities within a social, historical and cultural context.
Questions within this panel concern a wide range of 21st century gender ethnographies, such as:
- Can gender be a norm in a certain practices?
- Are there normative bodies in terms of profession and gender?
- To what extent are certain roles and activities still gendered?
- Is there a difference in perception and understanding of gender when discussed from outside as opposed to inside certain communities?
- How can gender discourse be influenced by state laws and be analysed within a national discourse?
- What happens when gender is disregarded as a category?
- Finally, since unequal gender treatment is still a reality, is it utopian to hope that this will change during the 21st century?
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 24 June, 2015, -Paper short abstract:
This paper examines the everyday practices of Croatian women who entered the labor market under socialism and continue to work there. I discuss the strategies that these women have adopted in surrendering to, resisting and renegotiating the new social order.
Paper long abstract:
Based on ethnographic research conducted in Zagreb, Croatia (2011-2013), this paper discusses the lived experiences of women who entered the labor market during socialism and are working in the neoliberal present. Specifically, I address the everyday practices of Croatian women in their negotiations with the new capitalist order. My paper is relevant to the general theme of the conference, as it discusses ordinary daily living practices and expressions of "social heritages," located in my study participants' historical memories and lived realities of the present. I address the ways in which different women participate, rework and resist the labor—and consumer—market, which has come to exemplify the new capitalist era in Croatia. I point out that, with the republic's preparation for European Union membership, a greater confidence in the for-profit industry has arisen. The view among certain sectors of the population of socialism as less modern, less European and more isolationists helped to produce a national discourse of global consumer capitalism as irresistible and inevitable. However, the growing resistance to and renegotiation of the economic mechanisms that have resulted in a decline of "the good life" have also become apparent. Examining these patterns, this case study offers examples of how Croatian women transgress as well as enact neoliberal models of capitalist globalization.
Paper short abstract:
In Thai naming practices, gender identities can be identified by sounds. Thais start to adopt different naming practices whereby newly chosen first names do not always conform to traditional ones so it is now difficult to identify male or female identities which in the past could be very easily done
Paper long abstract:
This paper is a follow-up on previous research (NAME, 2012) which found that gender identity can be easily recognized by the sounds of Thai names. Recently, however, this behavior has changed as Thais start to adopt different naming practices whereby newly chosen first names do not always conform to traditional Thai naming practices, and as a result, it is difficult to identify male or female gender identities which in the past could be very easily done. This follow-up research investigated the phonetic and phonological features of syllables of newly chosen first names of male and female Thais. A sociophonetic analysis was then conducted and the result revealed that in recent naming practices in Thai, male chosen names revoke traditional Thai naming practices, and as a result male names can be mistakenly identified as female. Number of syllables and the phonetic characteristics of the final segment of the syllable of their chosen new names are the most crucial factors to support such cases of mistaken gender identity. One of the sociolinguistic implications of this includes transgendered person in Thai culture because a straight man whose name sounds feminine maybe mistaken for an assumed female identity.
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores the tension between utopic and dystopian fantasies in the realities of institutional practices in compulsory care. Masculinity is a substantial part of the fantasmatic narratives in the institutional setting.
Paper long abstract:
Utopia may be a central theme in the envisioning of possible futures, but so is also its opposite: dystopia. In this paper the tension between these two poles of imaginaries of the future are explored, in the analysis of ethnographies of compulsory care. Tools of analysis are a discourse theoretical logics approach as well as the concept of fantasy in lacanian psychoanalysis.
In the realities of compulsory care narratives that take the form of utopic and dystopian fantasies contribute to the construction of staff identity and treatment practices.
Masculinity is a central part of the organization of the care of delinquent teenagers, and is also present in narratives of and in institutional practices. First of all, the understanding of teenagers with psychosocial problems is to a high degree constructed through narratives of problematic masculinity.
Secondly, the staff culture of the institution is masculine in its character. Here, masculinity is a prerequisite for being able to carry out ones work, and (paradoxically) considered to be a positive qualification. Men are norm amongst staff and this is also legitimated with reference to male and muscular bodies able to uphold security and prevent violence. Women are deemed a security risk, often only valued for their motherly qualifications. Dystopian fantasies in the institutional context are therefore often narratives of women interfering with the natural order of masculinity.
Paper short abstract:
The paper presents the patriarchal relationship between men and women in 19th and 20th century Northern Dalmatia (Croatia) based on a semiotic reading of traditional costume as a nonverbal transmitter of all crucial values of a certain social and cultural milieu – a cultural sign and a symbolic phenomenon.
Paper long abstract:
The paper presents the patriarchal relationship between men and women in 19th and 20th century Northern Dalmatia (Croatia) based on a semiotic reading of the traditional costume as a cultural sign and a nonverbal transmitter of the crucial values of a certain social and cultural milieu. It is shown how the traditional costume, or its parts, symbolizes the dynamics of structuring and the structured status through the life cycle (shown from the early childhood, puberty, adolescence, the mature age until old age) of men and women who accept and confirm the gender value system characteristic of the milieu they belong to. The traditional costume, along with the visual and written sources about it, as well as the material gotten from field-research at the end of the 20th century is analysed in the context of the opposition between the Adriatic (Mediterranean) and Dinaric area - its hinterland.
The paper is concluded with another dichotomy: 1) the relationship towards the traditional costume in traditional culture as the place of gender construction (on the basis of the theoretical postulates of J. Butler, S. Ortner and examples of Northern Dalmatia) and 2) today's "second life of the traditional costume" in the context of the relationship of artistic associations and individuals towards the traditional costume as a symbol of their own cultural heritage in the function of the identity performance.
Paper short abstract:
This paper unveils the meaning around the profile pictures from gay dating sites of young men posing with the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin, in order to understand how these pictures redefine the Holocaust Memorial and redraw the boundaries between everyday practices and mourning
Paper long abstract:
Profile pictures from gay dating sites of young men posing with the stelae of the Memorial to the Murdered Jews in Europe in Berlin have been subject to an art exhibition at the Jewish Museum in New York and a tribute online blog. The sexual poses and flirtatious gazes of the depicted individuals contrast with the solemn and abstract Memorial designed by New York-based American architect Peter Eisenman. Provocative and insulting to some, these pictures redefine the meaning and interpretation of the Memorial. For some supporters it creates a new kind of commemoration, while for its critics it is an indecorous subversion. This paper unveils the meaning of these pictures on this particular site, in an effort to understand why these men chose to portray themselves at the Holocaust Memorial in order to cruise the digital sphere of gay dating websites. In three consecutive sections, the paper asserts that, on the one hand, the conversion of the Holocaust Memorial into a cruising scenario is facilitated by a design that —putting forward autonomy and abstraction— allows and even invites its constant resignification in terms of everyday practices. And, on the other hand, it posits that the images exhibited at the Jewish Museum can be interpreted as a performative memorial, which reinscribes sexuality and gender into Holocaust narratives.
Paper short abstract:
The aim of this paper is to interrogate masculinity in western societies considering male dancers and interrogate yet insufficiently discussed stigmatization of male dancers. Paper will consider how masculinity in dance can be comprehended and interpreted.
Paper long abstract:
The aim of this paper is to interrogate masculinity in western societies considering male dancers and reexamine yet insufficiently discussed stigmatization of male dancers.
Paper will consider how masculinity in dance can be comprehended and interpreted. Unlike being a woman, being a man in dance brings much more prejudice.Those prejudice are often conditioned by the degree of non/includedness.
Inside the dance world, among dancers, choreographers and others included in the dance realm, male dancers are extremly appreciated, admired and wanted since they are still outnumered by women. Also, very often they are at very high and powerful positions like directors of dance companies or choreographers.
On the other hand, perceptions about male dancers outside the dance world are very different from the ones from inside. They include preconceptions about male dancers which seem paradoxical and may not be logical.
Paper short abstract:
This paper deals with how professionalism is gendered in the painting industry in Sweden. The male body is normative for the profession, women as seen as the other painter. Today this is challenged by a quarrel between different forms of masculinity and femininity, as ruling norms of professional ability.
Paper long abstract:
This paper deals with how professionalism is gendered and challenged in the painting industry in Sweden. A Swedish painter is still expected to be a man, but today the traditional masculinization of the job has become a huge problem. The number of women under painting education has increased rapidly, and a large amount of male painters will soon retire. But women can't find their place. Integrating and keeping women has become a severe problem for the trade - they don't know how to reproduce their workforce. The male body is normative for the professional painter, resulting in female competences coded as complementary; women are positioned as the other painter.
In-depth interviews give access to how internal definitions and understandings of painter professionalism are related to hegemonic masculinity (Connell 2005), and shows how the professional identity is challenged, and at the core for an on-going redefinition. During the process painters as well as managers are constructing the professional painter by describing "the competent body". Negotiations of the body affect the definitions of positions, competences and divisions of tasks in the profession, clearly articulated and performed by gender (i.e. Butler 1999, Skeggs 2004). Today this transformative phase make the profession fragile and insecure. Specific attributes, earlier fixed and taken for granted as male, based on distinct discourses of masculinity, has now escalated to a quarrel between different forms of masculinity and femininity. If the gender of the future painter will be insignificant is an open question.