versity of Namibia were commissioned to study (male and female) initiation in the mid-1990s, word quickly made the rounds that they were researching ‘female genital mutilation’(FGM). The local Namibian variant is framed by an international gender-and-develop — ment discourse and a concomitant school of thought in feminist Africanist research. With its stress on the perceived […]
Месяц: Октябрь 2015
Contemporary China
Lucetta Yip Lo Kam Introduction Many aspects of love and intimate relationships have undergone transformation in China since the economic reform period (after 1979). Both state interventions, in terms of policies and law, and economic imperatives play a significant role in shaping people’s private lives. Guided by these, the social expectation to lead a ‘normal’ […]
Militarised sex, prostitution and violence in Okinawa
The main island of Okinawa today is an intensely militarised US ‘garrison island’ in the Pacific. US Forces in Japan (USFJ) are concentrated here and more than 18 per cent of the main island is occupied by US airfields, warehouses, barracks, firing ranges, hospitals, and post-exchange shops, making up what are known as ‘America Towns’ […]
THE FACTUALITY OF SEX
This narrow conception of the application of scientific method found passionate adherence among sexual researchers for the obvious reason that it provided protection and legitimacy. The language of science, its postures, even its costumes, became the conceptual rubber gloves that allowed for the examination of what the larger social world predominantly viewed as “dirty business”. […]
Influence of Gender on Group Process
From our data, gender seems to influence the group process. Generally, females avoided direct conflict in communication as seen from Team C. When women perform a task, they try to foster cooperation and connection within the group. As a result, members of an all-female learning group tend to reserve their opinions and agree readily to […]
INFORMATION PLEASE: EXPLANATION WITHOUT. UNDERSTANDING
The naturalization of sex occurred in the larger context of the application of scientific method to a wide number of human activities, not all of which could equally be subjected to this objectifying approach. A new sexual science was viewed as the accumulation of the exhaustive and precise delineation of the parts constituting the sexuality […]
The Non-Fixity of Meaning
The plurality of language and the impossibility of fixing meaning once and for all are basic principles of poststructuralism. (Weedon, 1997: 82) As a ‘post’-theorization, poststructuralism follows on from the work of structuralist theories of language. This is an important point because it draws attention to what is both common and distinctive to structuralism and […]
Recession Proof
When we started writing this book, women friends and colleagues would say nervously, as they watched Wall Street struggle to stay afloat, “Wow, that’s great news about our clout in the business world, but what happens in a recession? Doesn’t that mean we all have to go back to keeping our noses to the grindstone […]
Testing for Disabilities
Professional middle-class parents spoke knowledgeably about learning disabilities. When their children did not perform at a satisfactory level, they had their children tested to find out whether there might be some psychological or physiological cause. If tests confirmed one of the new class of learning disabilities (e. g., ADD, ADHD), parents requested that schools make […]
. Efundula: Women’s Initiation, Gender and Sexual Identities in Northern Namibia
scale premarital pregnancies of young women (‘teenage pregnancies’) and AIDS. The social significance of efundula in regulating female sexuality and fertility, which, as informants in Owambo have suggested, need more attention in research and education, has certainly not been recognised by the Christian churches. Instead, the Lutheran church particularly persists in its policy that young […]