Author: Ylva Hernlund
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 0813541387
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 387
Book Description
Female "circumcision" or, more precisely, female genital cutting (FGC), remains an important cultural practice in many African countries, often serving as a coming-of-age ritual. It is also a practice that has generated international dispute and continues to be at the center of debates over women's rights, the limits of cultural pluralism, the balance of power between local cultures, international human rights, and feminist activism. In our increasingly globalized world, these practices have also begun immigrating to other nations, where transnational complexities vex debates about how to resolve the issue. Bringing together thirteen essays, Transcultural Bodies provides an ethnographically rich exploration of FGC among African diasporas in the United Kingdom, Europe, and Australia. Contributors analyze changes in ideologies of gender and sexuality in immigrant communities, the frequent marginalization of African women's voices in debates over FGC, and controversies over legislation restricting the practice in immigrant populations.
Transcultural Bodies
Author: Ylva Hernlund
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 0813541387
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 387
Book Description
Female "circumcision" or, more precisely, female genital cutting (FGC), remains an important cultural practice in many African countries, often serving as a coming-of-age ritual. It is also a practice that has generated international dispute and continues to be at the center of debates over women's rights, the limits of cultural pluralism, the balance of power between local cultures, international human rights, and feminist activism. In our increasingly globalized world, these practices have also begun immigrating to other nations, where transnational complexities vex debates about how to resolve the issue. Bringing together thirteen essays, Transcultural Bodies provides an ethnographically rich exploration of FGC among African diasporas in the United Kingdom, Europe, and Australia. Contributors analyze changes in ideologies of gender and sexuality in immigrant communities, the frequent marginalization of African women's voices in debates over FGC, and controversies over legislation restricting the practice in immigrant populations.
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 0813541387
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 387
Book Description
Female "circumcision" or, more precisely, female genital cutting (FGC), remains an important cultural practice in many African countries, often serving as a coming-of-age ritual. It is also a practice that has generated international dispute and continues to be at the center of debates over women's rights, the limits of cultural pluralism, the balance of power between local cultures, international human rights, and feminist activism. In our increasingly globalized world, these practices have also begun immigrating to other nations, where transnational complexities vex debates about how to resolve the issue. Bringing together thirteen essays, Transcultural Bodies provides an ethnographically rich exploration of FGC among African diasporas in the United Kingdom, Europe, and Australia. Contributors analyze changes in ideologies of gender and sexuality in immigrant communities, the frequent marginalization of African women's voices in debates over FGC, and controversies over legislation restricting the practice in immigrant populations.
Transcultural Cities
Author: Jeffrey Hou
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135122040
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 338
Book Description
Transcultural Cities uses a framework of transcultural placemaking, cross-disciplinary inquiry and transnational focus to examine a collection of case studies around the world, presented by a multidisciplinary group of scholars and activists in architecture, urban planning, urban studies, art, environmental psychology, geography, political science, and social work. The book addresses the intercultural exchanges as well as the cultural trans-formation that takes place in urban spaces. In doing so, it views cultures not in isolation from each other in today’s diverse urban environments, but as mutually influenced, constituted and transformed. In cities and regions around the globe, migrations of people have continued to shape the makeup and making of neighborhoods, districts, and communities. For instance, in North America, new immigrants have revitalized many of the decaying urban landscapes, creating renewed cultural ambiance and economic networks that transcend borders. In Richmond, BC Canada, an Asian night market has become a major cultural event that draws visitors throughout the region and across the US and Canadian border. Across the Pacific, foreign domestic workers in Hong Kong transform the deserted office district in Central on weekends into a carnivalesque site. While contributing to the multicultural vibes in cities, migration and movements have also resulted in tensions, competition, and clashes of cultures between different ethnic communities, old-timers, newcomers, employees and employers, individuals and institutions. In Transcultural Cities Jeffrey Hou and a cross-disciplinary team of authors argue for a more critical and open approach that sees today’s cities, urban places, and placemaking as vehicles for cross-cultural understanding.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135122040
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 338
Book Description
Transcultural Cities uses a framework of transcultural placemaking, cross-disciplinary inquiry and transnational focus to examine a collection of case studies around the world, presented by a multidisciplinary group of scholars and activists in architecture, urban planning, urban studies, art, environmental psychology, geography, political science, and social work. The book addresses the intercultural exchanges as well as the cultural trans-formation that takes place in urban spaces. In doing so, it views cultures not in isolation from each other in today’s diverse urban environments, but as mutually influenced, constituted and transformed. In cities and regions around the globe, migrations of people have continued to shape the makeup and making of neighborhoods, districts, and communities. For instance, in North America, new immigrants have revitalized many of the decaying urban landscapes, creating renewed cultural ambiance and economic networks that transcend borders. In Richmond, BC Canada, an Asian night market has become a major cultural event that draws visitors throughout the region and across the US and Canadian border. Across the Pacific, foreign domestic workers in Hong Kong transform the deserted office district in Central on weekends into a carnivalesque site. While contributing to the multicultural vibes in cities, migration and movements have also resulted in tensions, competition, and clashes of cultures between different ethnic communities, old-timers, newcomers, employees and employers, individuals and institutions. In Transcultural Cities Jeffrey Hou and a cross-disciplinary team of authors argue for a more critical and open approach that sees today’s cities, urban places, and placemaking as vehicles for cross-cultural understanding.
Law's Cut on the Body of Human Rights
Author: Juliet Rogers
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134097239
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 180
Book Description
Scenes of violence and incisions into the flesh inform the demand for law. The scene of little girls being held down in practices of female circumcision has been a defining and definitive image that demands the attention of human rights, and the intervention of law. But the investment in protecting women and little girls from such a cut is not all that it seems. Law's Cut on the Body of Human Rights: Female Circumcision, Torture and Sacred Flesh considers how such images come to inform law and the investment of advocates of law in an imagination of this scene. Drawing on psychoanalytic and postcolonial theory, and accompanying ideas in political theology, Juliet Rogers examines the language, imagery and excitement that accompanies recent initiatives to legislate against what is called 'female genital mutilation'. The author compliments this examination with a consideration of the scene of torture exposed in images from Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay. Rogers argues that the modes of fascination and excitement that accompany scenes of torture and female circumcision betray the fantasy of a political condition against which the subject of liberal law is imagined; this is subjectivity in a state of non-mutilation, non-prohibition or, in a psychoanalytic idiom, non-castration. To support the fantasy of this subject, the mutilated subject, the authors suggests, is rendered as flesh cut from the democratic nation state, deserving of only selective human rights, or none at all.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134097239
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 180
Book Description
Scenes of violence and incisions into the flesh inform the demand for law. The scene of little girls being held down in practices of female circumcision has been a defining and definitive image that demands the attention of human rights, and the intervention of law. But the investment in protecting women and little girls from such a cut is not all that it seems. Law's Cut on the Body of Human Rights: Female Circumcision, Torture and Sacred Flesh considers how such images come to inform law and the investment of advocates of law in an imagination of this scene. Drawing on psychoanalytic and postcolonial theory, and accompanying ideas in political theology, Juliet Rogers examines the language, imagery and excitement that accompanies recent initiatives to legislate against what is called 'female genital mutilation'. The author compliments this examination with a consideration of the scene of torture exposed in images from Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay. Rogers argues that the modes of fascination and excitement that accompany scenes of torture and female circumcision betray the fantasy of a political condition against which the subject of liberal law is imagined; this is subjectivity in a state of non-mutilation, non-prohibition or, in a psychoanalytic idiom, non-castration. To support the fantasy of this subject, the mutilated subject, the authors suggests, is rendered as flesh cut from the democratic nation state, deserving of only selective human rights, or none at all.
Consuming Bodies
Author: Jackie Hogan
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1040258808
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 332
Book Description
Our bodies reveal the values, priorities, anxieties, and material realities of the society in which we are situated, and in contemporary consumer societies, human bodies both reflect the defining characteristics of our time and carry the markers of social hierarchies based on categories such as gender, race, and class. Consuming Bodies: Body Commodification and Embodiment in Late Capitalist Societies explores the ways our bodies are increasingly commodified, from before birth to after death, through both long-standing forms of commodification (captive labor, sex work, and spectator sports) and newer forms (commercial surrogacy, the thriving trade in human biomaterials, female genital “rejuvenation” surgery, global romance tourism, and green burial practices, among others). As this diverse range of topics demonstrates, body commodification reaches increasingly into every realm of our lives, from our most intimate experiences to encounters with pop culture, the “beauty” industries, the medical-industrial complex, and the state. This volume takes a critical perspective on body commodification and embodiment both in the US and across the globe, making an important contribution to social scientific understandings of the body, both by going beyond the Eurocentric approach that typifies much of the extant scholarly literature, and by addressing newly emerging practices that are growing out of techno-scientific and social changes.
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1040258808
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 332
Book Description
Our bodies reveal the values, priorities, anxieties, and material realities of the society in which we are situated, and in contemporary consumer societies, human bodies both reflect the defining characteristics of our time and carry the markers of social hierarchies based on categories such as gender, race, and class. Consuming Bodies: Body Commodification and Embodiment in Late Capitalist Societies explores the ways our bodies are increasingly commodified, from before birth to after death, through both long-standing forms of commodification (captive labor, sex work, and spectator sports) and newer forms (commercial surrogacy, the thriving trade in human biomaterials, female genital “rejuvenation” surgery, global romance tourism, and green burial practices, among others). As this diverse range of topics demonstrates, body commodification reaches increasingly into every realm of our lives, from our most intimate experiences to encounters with pop culture, the “beauty” industries, the medical-industrial complex, and the state. This volume takes a critical perspective on body commodification and embodiment both in the US and across the globe, making an important contribution to social scientific understandings of the body, both by going beyond the Eurocentric approach that typifies much of the extant scholarly literature, and by addressing newly emerging practices that are growing out of techno-scientific and social changes.
Compromised Bodies
Author: Sarah O'Neill
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 1512827258
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 273
Book Description
This ethnography unravels the continuing political tensions surrounding Senegal’s 1999 national ban on “female genital mutilation” The Senegalese parliament authorized a national ban on “Female Genital Mutilation” in 1999. Because only a third of the Senegalese population practiced female genital cutting (FGC) at the time, policy makers did not expect that the new law would cause controversy or provoke commotion. Yet, in Fouta Toro and among Fulani, who traditionally practiced FGC, the response to the new law was fury, and frustrations often turned violent. More than a decade after the ban, Fouta Toro was considered “the most difficult region” for anti-FGC activists, both from inside and outside the government. Tires were burned, international NGO delegates were threatened, and activists publicly speaking out against the practice were religiously condemned. Animosity toward the ban remains palpable in the region to this day. The ban, many (but not all) locals say, is nothing other than an overt act of Western cultural imperialism imposed on their community. For these individuals, resisting the ban is critical for maintaining the autonomy and integrity of a traditional way of life. And from the outside, opposition to the law and NGOs can seem unified. However, anthropologist Sarah O’Neill discovers that on the ground, there are tensions between those who oppose the ban and those who support it—even as that support is nuanced and often complicated. This ethnography unravels the continuing political tensions surrounding both national and international interventions in Fouta Toro and in Senegal that place protection of the female body at the center of their concerns. By way of the many stories of ordinary women and men caught up in debates around the value of the practice and meaning of FGC, Compromised Bodies reveals the personal struggles and difficult decisions Fulani face, be they traditional cutters, religious leaders, mothers, husbands, divorced women, or anti-FGC activists.
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 1512827258
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 273
Book Description
This ethnography unravels the continuing political tensions surrounding Senegal’s 1999 national ban on “female genital mutilation” The Senegalese parliament authorized a national ban on “Female Genital Mutilation” in 1999. Because only a third of the Senegalese population practiced female genital cutting (FGC) at the time, policy makers did not expect that the new law would cause controversy or provoke commotion. Yet, in Fouta Toro and among Fulani, who traditionally practiced FGC, the response to the new law was fury, and frustrations often turned violent. More than a decade after the ban, Fouta Toro was considered “the most difficult region” for anti-FGC activists, both from inside and outside the government. Tires were burned, international NGO delegates were threatened, and activists publicly speaking out against the practice were religiously condemned. Animosity toward the ban remains palpable in the region to this day. The ban, many (but not all) locals say, is nothing other than an overt act of Western cultural imperialism imposed on their community. For these individuals, resisting the ban is critical for maintaining the autonomy and integrity of a traditional way of life. And from the outside, opposition to the law and NGOs can seem unified. However, anthropologist Sarah O’Neill discovers that on the ground, there are tensions between those who oppose the ban and those who support it—even as that support is nuanced and often complicated. This ethnography unravels the continuing political tensions surrounding both national and international interventions in Fouta Toro and in Senegal that place protection of the female body at the center of their concerns. By way of the many stories of ordinary women and men caught up in debates around the value of the practice and meaning of FGC, Compromised Bodies reveals the personal struggles and difficult decisions Fulani face, be they traditional cutters, religious leaders, mothers, husbands, divorced women, or anti-FGC activists.
Genital Autonomy:
Author: George C. Denniston
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9048194466
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 258
Book Description
Circumcision affects 15.3 million children and young adults annually. In terms of gender, 13.3 million boys and 2 million girls are subjected to the involuntary removal of part or all of their external sexual organs every year. The problem of female circumcision has been addressed on an international level, but male circumcision remains a controversial subject that many academics have been reluctant to examine. Circumcision is tolerated today because it has been practiced for millennia by a small but vocal minority of religious and ethnic groups, however, when the practice is examined through the lens of modern legal, ethical, and human rights advancements, no place remains in civilized society for this body-altering ritual. In Genital Autonomy: Protecting Personal Choice, international experts address various types of genital modifications, the impact of these harmful traditional practices on the child, on human rights, and on the development of the concept of bodily integrity. The papers presented in this volume address these topics from a variety of angles. They question and dissects the true motivations of the doctors, witch doctors, and “holy men” who promote and profit from circumcision.
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9048194466
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 258
Book Description
Circumcision affects 15.3 million children and young adults annually. In terms of gender, 13.3 million boys and 2 million girls are subjected to the involuntary removal of part or all of their external sexual organs every year. The problem of female circumcision has been addressed on an international level, but male circumcision remains a controversial subject that many academics have been reluctant to examine. Circumcision is tolerated today because it has been practiced for millennia by a small but vocal minority of religious and ethnic groups, however, when the practice is examined through the lens of modern legal, ethical, and human rights advancements, no place remains in civilized society for this body-altering ritual. In Genital Autonomy: Protecting Personal Choice, international experts address various types of genital modifications, the impact of these harmful traditional practices on the child, on human rights, and on the development of the concept of bodily integrity. The papers presented in this volume address these topics from a variety of angles. They question and dissects the true motivations of the doctors, witch doctors, and “holy men” who promote and profit from circumcision.
Women's Activism
Author: Francisca de Haan
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0415535751
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 226
Book Description
Women's Activism brings together twelve innovative contributions from feminist historians from around the world. They look at how women have always found ways to challenge or fight inequalities and hierarchies as individuals, in international women's organizations, as political leaders, and in global forums such as the United Nations. This book addresses women's internationalism and struggle for their rights in the international arena; it deals with racism and colonialism in Australia, India and Europe; women's movements and political activism in South Africa, Eastern Bengal (Bangladesh), the United Kingdom, Japan and France.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0415535751
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 226
Book Description
Women's Activism brings together twelve innovative contributions from feminist historians from around the world. They look at how women have always found ways to challenge or fight inequalities and hierarchies as individuals, in international women's organizations, as political leaders, and in global forums such as the United Nations. This book addresses women's internationalism and struggle for their rights in the international arena; it deals with racism and colonialism in Australia, India and Europe; women's movements and political activism in South Africa, Eastern Bengal (Bangladesh), the United Kingdom, Japan and France.
Yoga Traveling
Author: Beatrix Hauser
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 3319003151
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 255
Book Description
This book focuses on yoga’s transcultural dissemination in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In the course of this process, the term “yoga” has been associated with various distinctive blends of mental and physical exercises performed in order to achieve some sort of improvement, whether understood in terms of esotericism, fitness, self-actualization, body aesthetics, or health care. The essays in this volume explore some of the turning points in yoga’s historico-spatial evolution and their relevance to its current appeal. The authors focus on central motivations, sites, and agents in the spread of posture-based yoga as well as on its successive (re-)interpretation and diversification, addressing questions such as: Why has yoga taken its various forms? How do time and place influence its meanings, social roles, and associated experiences? How does the transfer into new settings affect the ways in which yogic practice has been conceptualized as a system, and on what basis is it still identified as (Indian) yoga? The initial section of the volume concentrates on the re-evaluation of yoga in Indian and Western settings in the first half of the twentieth century. The following chapters link global discourses to particular local settings and explore meaning production at the micro-social level, taking Germany as the focal site. The final part of the book focuses on yoga advertising and consumption across national, social, and discursive boundaries, taking a closer look at transnational and deterritorialized yoga markets, as well as at various classes of mobile yoga practitioners.
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 3319003151
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 255
Book Description
This book focuses on yoga’s transcultural dissemination in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In the course of this process, the term “yoga” has been associated with various distinctive blends of mental and physical exercises performed in order to achieve some sort of improvement, whether understood in terms of esotericism, fitness, self-actualization, body aesthetics, or health care. The essays in this volume explore some of the turning points in yoga’s historico-spatial evolution and their relevance to its current appeal. The authors focus on central motivations, sites, and agents in the spread of posture-based yoga as well as on its successive (re-)interpretation and diversification, addressing questions such as: Why has yoga taken its various forms? How do time and place influence its meanings, social roles, and associated experiences? How does the transfer into new settings affect the ways in which yogic practice has been conceptualized as a system, and on what basis is it still identified as (Indian) yoga? The initial section of the volume concentrates on the re-evaluation of yoga in Indian and Western settings in the first half of the twentieth century. The following chapters link global discourses to particular local settings and explore meaning production at the micro-social level, taking Germany as the focal site. The final part of the book focuses on yoga advertising and consumption across national, social, and discursive boundaries, taking a closer look at transnational and deterritorialized yoga markets, as well as at various classes of mobile yoga practitioners.
Exploring Medical Anthropology
Author: Donald Joralemon
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1315470608
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 170
Book Description
Now in its fourth edition, Exploring Medical Anthropology provides a concise and engaging introduction to medical anthropology. It presents competing theoretical perspectives in a balanced fashion, highlighting points of conflict and convergence. Concrete examples and the author’s personal research experiences are utilized to explain some of the discipline’s most important insights, such as that biology and culture matter equally in the human experience of disease and that medical anthropology can help to alleviate human suffering. The text has been thoroughly updated for the fourth edition, including fresh case studies and a new chapter on drugs. It contains a range of pedagogical features to support teaching and learning, including images, text boxes, a glossary, and suggested further reading.
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1315470608
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 170
Book Description
Now in its fourth edition, Exploring Medical Anthropology provides a concise and engaging introduction to medical anthropology. It presents competing theoretical perspectives in a balanced fashion, highlighting points of conflict and convergence. Concrete examples and the author’s personal research experiences are utilized to explain some of the discipline’s most important insights, such as that biology and culture matter equally in the human experience of disease and that medical anthropology can help to alleviate human suffering. The text has been thoroughly updated for the fourth edition, including fresh case studies and a new chapter on drugs. It contains a range of pedagogical features to support teaching and learning, including images, text boxes, a glossary, and suggested further reading.
Adriana Cavarero
Author: Elisabetta R. Bertolino
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351259547
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 321
Book Description
Critical legal scholars have made us aware that law is made up not only of rules but also of language. But who speaks the language of law? And can one lawfully speak in one’s voice? For the Italian philosopher Adriana Cavarero, to answer these questions we must not separate who is speaking from the very act of speaking; moreover, we must recuperate the material singularity and relationality of the mouth that speaks. Drawing on Cavarero’s work, this book focuses on the potentiality of the voice for resisting law’s sovereign structures. For Cavarero, it is the voice that expresses one’s living and unrepeatable singularity in a way that cannot be subsumed by the universalities and standards of law. The voice is essentially a material and singular passage of air and vibration that necessarily reveals one’s uniqueness in relationality. Speaking discloses this uniqueness, and so one’s vulnerability. It therefore leads to possibilities of resistance that, here, bring a fresh approach to longstanding legal theoretical concerns with singularity, ethics and justice.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351259547
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 321
Book Description
Critical legal scholars have made us aware that law is made up not only of rules but also of language. But who speaks the language of law? And can one lawfully speak in one’s voice? For the Italian philosopher Adriana Cavarero, to answer these questions we must not separate who is speaking from the very act of speaking; moreover, we must recuperate the material singularity and relationality of the mouth that speaks. Drawing on Cavarero’s work, this book focuses on the potentiality of the voice for resisting law’s sovereign structures. For Cavarero, it is the voice that expresses one’s living and unrepeatable singularity in a way that cannot be subsumed by the universalities and standards of law. The voice is essentially a material and singular passage of air and vibration that necessarily reveals one’s uniqueness in relationality. Speaking discloses this uniqueness, and so one’s vulnerability. It therefore leads to possibilities of resistance that, here, bring a fresh approach to longstanding legal theoretical concerns with singularity, ethics and justice.