Sociocultural approaches help us understand the different ways in which people conceptualize and comprehend death. But they do not address a very fundamental question: How do we determine that someone has died? The medical and legal communities have grappled with this question for centuries and continue to do so today. Let’s see what the current […]
День: 16.10.2015
In the Name of the Nation: Images of Palestinian and Israeli Women Fighters
DORIT NAAMAN1 [ 15 ] Introduction Since the beginning of 2002 the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has seen a new flavour of resistance, whereby Palestinian women have joined the ranks of suicide bombers. Previously, upon revealing that I am from Israel, the North American response was often pity and compassion for having come from a war zone. […]
The Somaliland Constitution
Article 57 of the Somaliland Constitution, referring to the rights of women: • Women and men are equals as far as the rights, freedom and responsibilities outlined in the Somaliland Constitution are concerned. • The Government should promote the rights of women to be liberated from customs and traditions which are against the shari’a and […]
The Articulation of Interests
The crucial moment in the social dynamic of politics is the constitution of interests. In chapter 6 interests were defined in terms of the inequalities constructed by gender relations. At that level the interests are inert, and though they structure practice it is only as the external conditions of practices which are directed to other […]
CELEBRATING SEX
By the end of the eighteenth century, a new openness about sex had transformed the culture of the English-speaking world. A whole range of sexual ideas and practices, within and without marriage, was now discussed, celebrated, and indulged more publicly than ever before. From our own perspective it is easy to see the limits of […]
Why would a woman make a false accusation of rape?
When I first heard of date rape allegations and the possibility of false accusations, my personal response was, ‘ Lots of guys don’t know when to take no for an answer, and besides, what would motivate a woman to make a false accusation if there wasn’t at least some truth to it?” But when the […]
THE SLOW DEATH OF THE FAMILY
The increasing erosion of the functions of the family by modern technology should, by now, have caused some signs of its weakening. However, this is not absolutely the case. Though the institution is archaic, artificial cultural reinforcements have been imported to bolster it: Sentimental sermons, manuals of guidance, daily columns in newspapers and magazines, special […]
‘INTERPRETIVE COMMUNITIES’
As we saw in our brief account of the Victorian woman reader, the idea of a mass public has typically been a source of worry to the main centres of respectable middle-class opinion and has often been seen as possessing feminine characteristics. In the late 1850s the novelist Wilkie Collins was shocked to discover that […]
Sociocultural Definitions of Death
What comes to mind when you hear the word death? A driver killed in a traffic accident? A transition to an eternal reward? Flags at half-staff? A cemetery? A car battery that doesn’t work anymore? Each of these possibilities represents a way in which death can be considered in Western culture, which has its own […]
Aren’t false accusations of rape rare?
To my considerable chagrin, we found that at least 60 percent of all the rape allegations were false. Dr Charles P. McDowell, Supervisory Special Agent, U. S. Air Force, Office of Special Investigations55 When the U S. Air Force investigated 556 cases of alleged rape, 27 percent of the women eventually admitted they had lied […]