scholarly journals ‘Transforming’ Women's Lives: Bobby Baker's Performances of ‘Daily Life’

2000 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elaine Aston
Keyword(s):  
Social Transformation ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
The Body ◽  
Performance Space ◽  
Women's Lives ◽  
Theatre Studies ◽  
Contemporary Performance ◽  
Women's Theatre

In an earlier issue of New Theatre Quarterly, NTQ55 (August 1998), Marcia Blumberg examined the setting of the kitchen in performances by Bobby Baker and Jeanne Goosen, arguing for the ‘transitional and transgressive’ possibilities of this domesticcum-performance space. Here, Elaine Aston returns to the ‘kitchen’ in Bobby Baker's performances of ‘daily life’. The article examines Baker's ‘language’ of food which ‘speaks’ of domesticity, and her conjunction of comic playing and the hysterical marking of the body, to show how her performance work constitutes an angry, feminist protest at the lack of social transformation in women's lives. Elaine Aston has authored a number of studies on contemporary women's theatre, and is Chair of Contemporary Performance and Theatre Studies, Lancaster University.

The Crossing of Boundaries: Transgression Enacted

2011 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 278-282 ◽  
Author(s):  
SHONAGH HILL
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
Virgin Mary ◽  
Cultural Representations ◽  
Irish Theatre ◽  
Feminist Theatre ◽  
Women's Participation ◽  
Women's Lives ◽  
Theatre Studies ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Social Subordination

Feminist discourse has proven to be a vital component in the expanding field of Irish theatre studies owing to its exposure of elided work and the articulation of unrepresented voices. Irish women's participation in the public sphere and cultural fabric of society has been hindered in the course of the twentieth century and this is reflected in limiting representations of femininity as perpetuated by discourses of nationalism and Catholicism: the dominant imagery of the idealized mother which merges the feminized nation – Mother Ireland – and the Virgin Mary. In Hegemony and Fantasy in Irish Drama, 1899–1949, Paul Murphy highlights the ‘contradiction between the symbolic centrality of Woman as fantasy object and the social subordination of women as social subjects’. The incongruity between the shifting realities of Irish women's lives and the inflexible institutions that shape cultural representations is the focus of much feminist theatre research in Ireland. This research examines work which articulates the experience of estrangement from the dominant cultural imaginary and attends to the possibilities of staging more accommodating models through three interlinked strands: self-representation and the unhomely experience; constraint and freedom as explored through space and form; and a shift in focus to performance and the body.

Myriad Aspects of Secular Thinking on Malayali Cuisine

GIS Business ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 202-206
Author(s):  
SAJITHA M
Keyword(s):  
Social Status ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Social Indicators ◽  
The Body ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Healthy Life ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Civilized Society

Food is one of the main requirements of human being. It is flattering for the preservation of wellbeing and nourishment of the body.  The food of a society exposes its custom, prosperity, status, habits as well as it help to develop a culture. Food is one of the most important social indicators of a society. History of food carries a dynamic character in the socio- economic, political, and cultural realm of a society. The food is one of the obligatory components in our daily life. It occupied an obvious atmosphere for the augmentation of healthy life and anticipation against the diseases.  The food also shows a significant character in establishing cultural distinctiveness, and it reflects who we are. Food also reflected as the symbol of individuality, generosity, social status and religious believes etc in a civilized society. Food is not a discriminating aspect. It is the part of a culture, habits, addiction, and identity of a civilization.Food plays a symbolic role in the social activities the world over. It’s a universal sign of hospitality.[1]

The Woman Who Turned Into a Jaguar, and Other Narratives of Native Women in Archives of Colonial Mexico

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa Sousa
Keyword(s):  
Gender Relations ◽  
Civil Disobedience ◽  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
The Body ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Criminal Records ◽  
Native Women ◽  
Women's Lives ◽  
Important Position ◽  
The One

The Woman Who Turned Into a Jaguar examines gender relations in indigenous societies of central Mexico and Oaxaca from the 1520s to the 1750s, focusing mainly on the Nahua, Ñudzahui (Mixtec), Bènizàa (Zapotec), and Ayuk (Mixe) people. This study draws on an unusually rich and diverse corpus of original sources, including Ñudzahui- (Mixtec-), Tíchazàa- (Zapotec-), and mainly Nahuatl-language and Spanish civil and criminal records, published texts, and pictorial manuscripts. The sources come from more than 100 indigenous communities of highland Mexico. The book considers women’s lives in the broadest context possible by addressing a number of interrelated topics, including: the construction of gender; concepts of the body; women’s labor; marriage rituals and marital relations; sexual attitudes; family structure; the relationship between household and community; and women’s participation in riots and other acts of civil disobedience. The study highlights subtle transformations and overwhelming continuities in indigenous social attitudes and relationships. The book argues that profound changes following the Spanish conquest, such as catastrophic depopulation, economic pressures, and the imposition of Christian marriage, slowly eroded indigenous women’s status. Nevertheless, gender relations remained inherently complementary. The study shows how native women and men under colonial rule, on the one hand, pragmatically accepted, adopted, and adapted certain Spanish institutions, concepts, and practices, and, on the other, forcefully rejected other aspects of colonial impositions. Women asserted their influence and, in doing so, they managed to retain an important position within their households and communities across the first two centuries of colonial rule.

Feminist Theory

2021 ◽  
pp. 488-503
Author(s):  
Jean Mills
Keyword(s):  
Feminist Theory ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Life Writing ◽  
The Body ◽  
Feminist Politics ◽  
Feminist Thought ◽  
Feminist Discourse ◽  
Women's Lives ◽  
Feminist Community ◽  
Critical Responses

This chapter examines Virginia Woolf’s foundational role in the development of feminist theory, placing her theoretical positions on women’s lives and life-writing, privacy, the body, and self-expression in dialogue with a diverse and actively changing continuum of feminist thought. Focusing on the return of rage to the forefront of feminist discourse and social media’s effect upon feminist politics, the chapter chronicles the changing critical responses to Woolf’s feminisms, in relation to her positions on feminist identities and feminist community. The chapter also investigates the ways in which women of colour feminists disclosed Woolf’s racialized self and racist thinking to assess the place of Woolf’s feminism in contemporary political thought. From issues seeking to reconcile and value difference and diversity with the uses of ambivalence and calls for unity and integration, the chapter places the concepts and vocabulary of feminist theory within the context of Virginia Woolf’s work and example.

An Intimate Economy

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexandra J. Finley
Keyword(s):  
Slave Trade ◽  
The Body ◽  
Cotton Production ◽  
Women's Labor ◽  
Enslaved Women ◽  
Slave Traders ◽  
Women's Lives ◽  
Personal Histories ◽  
Southern Society ◽  
Lower South

Alexandra Finley adds crucial new dimensions to the boisterous debate over the relationship between slavery and capitalism by placing women's labor at the center of the antebellum slave trade, focusing particularly on slave traders' ability to profit from enslaved women's domestic, reproductive, and sexual labor. The slave market infiltrated every aspect of southern society, including the most personal spaces of the household, the body, and the self. Finley shows how women’s work was necessary to the functioning of the slave trade, and thus to the spread of slavery to the Lower South, the expansion of cotton production, and the profits accompanying both of these markets. Through the personal histories of four enslaved women, Finley explores the intangible costs of the slave market, moving beyond ledgers, bills of sales, and statements of profit and loss to consider the often incalculable but nevertheless invaluable place of women's emotional, sexual, and domestic labor in the economy. The details of these women's lives reveal the complex intersections of economy, race, and family at the heart of antebellum society.

scholarly journals Sign Language Interpreting in Theatre: Using the Human Body to Create Pictures of the Human Soul

2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 45
Author(s):  
Michael Richardson
Keyword(s):  
Sign Language ◽  
Mirror Neuron System ◽  
Mirror Neuron ◽  
The Body ◽  
Literary Translation ◽  
Human Soul ◽  
Neuron System ◽  
Theatre Studies ◽  
Neurological Research ◽  
Sign Language Interpreting

This paper explores theatrical interpreting for Deaf spectators, a specialism that both blurs the separation between translation and interpreting, and replaces these potentials with a paradigm in which the translator's body is central to the production of the target text. Meaningful written translations of dramatic texts into sign language are not currently possible. For Deaf people to access Shakespeare or Moliere in their own language usually means attending a sign language interpreted performance, a typically disappointing experience that fails to provide accessibility or to fulfil the potential of a dynamically equivalent theatrical translation. I argue that when such interpreting events fail, significant contributory factors are the challenges involved in producing such a target text and the insufficient embodiment of that text. The second of these factors suggests that the existing conference and community models of interpreting are insufficient in describing theatrical interpreting. I propose that a model drawn from Theatre Studies, namely psychophysical acting, might be more effective for conceptualising theatrical interpreting. I also draw on theories from neurological research into the Mirror Neuron System to suggest that a highly visual and physical approach to performance (be that by actors or interpreters) is more effective in building a strong actor-spectator interaction than a performance in which meaning is conveyed by spoken words. Arguably this difference in language impact between signed and spoken is irrelevant to hearing audiences attending spoken language plays, but I suggest that for all theatre translators the implications are significant: it is not enough to create a literary translation as the target text; it is also essential to produce a text that suggests physicality. The aim should be the creation of a text which demands full expression through the body, the best picture of the human soul and the fundamental medium of theatre.

scholarly journals Subtle invasions: Aspects of Samoan women's wartime experiences

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Saui'a Louise Marie Tuimanuolo Mataia-Milo
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Social Transformation ◽  
Women's History ◽  
Women's Agency ◽  
Effect Change ◽  
The Social ◽  
Women's Lives ◽  
Women’S Agency ◽  
Sexual Encounters ◽  
Women’S History

<p>During World War Two the peaceful “occupation” of the Samoa Islands by US Forces combined with existing colonial conditions to transform the lives of Samoans in important yet also subtle ways. Drawing on thirty two oral history interviews and the papers of the colonial administrations this thesis examines the wartime lives of Samoan women. Their accounts of their experiences reveal how they understood the war at the time and after years of life experience. Using approaches from social history and women’s history this thesis illustrates women’s agency in finding ways to manage the new social contexts and situations created by the war.  The central argument of this thesis is that it was the ordinary business of negotiating daily life during the war that engaged and normalised social changes. These mundane everyday acts were significant historical moments that wove new and unique motifs into the tapestry of Samoan women’s history. The war brought to Samoa a multitude of American servicemen who saw Samoa through a ‘romantic’ lens as an arcadia of unrestrained social mores. In contrast, through this research Samoan women reveal their wartime experiences in their own words. The women’s narratives indicate that the war interrupted lives in many ways causing them to rethink their roles in response to the changes.  The four areas of Samoan women’s lives that this thesis examines are their roles in their families and communities, their involvement with the churches, their engagement with wartime popular culture and lastly their wartime sexual encounters. The discussion opens with a portrait of Samoan society during the 1920s and 1930s, depicting the social and political forces that shaped women’s lives and influenced their understandings of their wartime experiences. This discussion highlights how colonial entanglements had a bearing on the different trajectories that women’s lives took during the war. The thesis then turns to explore the arrival of the war, examining the women’s initial experiences and reactions with a particular focus on what they learnt from their experiences and how they adapted to change in the context of their communities and families. The study finds that social transformation was a response to the war’s disruption of physical and cultural space and the critical structures and ideologies that are central to Samoans’ way of life.  The second part of this enquiry examines how wartime circumstances affected Samoan women’s sometimes tense relations with the Christian churches. The churches occupied a central place in Samoan society as a provider of both spiritual nurture and secular education for women during the war years, so they deserve specific attention. Wartime conditions created opportunities that expanded and rejuvenated the scope of Samoan women’s agency which had been marginalised and narrowed by Christian influence before the war. At the same time, the war heightened the pre-war tensions between Samoan women’s agency and the power of the churches. Despite the clergy’s reluctance, the churches provided spaces in which American troops socialised with the Samoan population, creating social situations that were difficult to control.  The third area analyses Samoan women’s engagement with wartime popular culture and how the consumption of introduced material culture galvanised their autonomy and enabled them to tailor social transformation to suit their personal perceptions. Wartime popular culture in its many forms contributed to the rapid absorption of new ideas and the adaptation of cultural practices. Women’s engagement with this popular culture resulted in ‘on the ground changes’ that stimulated social transformation and which should be appreciated as significant historical moments in their own right.  The fourth area of discussion investigates Samoan women’s wartime sexual encounters. The perception that Samoan women’s sexual encounters with American servicemen were characterised by an unrestrained morality on their part ignores other factors that shaped these encounters, including violence and their own bodily knowledge and preparedness. This study shows that Samoan women had a variety of sexual encounters during the war and their narratives speak volumes about the pains of such life-changing moments.  There was no single or archetypal wartime experience. The thirty two interviewees experienced the war in different parts of the Samoa islands and their social and political alignment has influenced their perceptions and understanding of their wartime lives. The social transformation brought by the war involved considered responses from the women who sought to balance personal and family interests and Samoan values. Exploring the women’s wartime lives reveals their resilience and their ability to overcome difficulties and effect change for the better of their community.</p>

scholarly journals Społecznie konstruowane ciała i performatywna magia: Teoria socjologiczna Pierre’a Bourdieu w badaniach performatywnych

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucyna Kopciewicz
Keyword(s):  
Social Construction ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Performance Studies ◽  
Sociological Theory ◽  
Cultural Anthropology ◽  
The Body ◽  
Communication Studies ◽  
Spatial Practices ◽  
Theatre Studies ◽  
The Subject

Social construction of the body and the performative magic: Pierre Bourdieu’s sociological theory in performance studiesPerformance studies are a developing field of social science which draws on the insights of sociology, ethnography, cultural studies, cultural anthropology, theatre studies and communication studies. The object of performance studies is human activity seen as expression which constitutes the process of production and reproduction of subjectivity. In this text the author analyses Pierre Bourdieu’s sociological theory from the perspective of performance studies: of questions about social agency, understood as constructing the subject within a specific field of power. The author focuses particularly on the following aspects of individual and collective practices as described by Pierre Bourdieu: spatial practices, bodily practices, and masculine domination. Społecznie konstruowane ciała i performatywna magia: Teoria socjologiczna Pierre’a Bourdieu w badaniach performatywnychPerformatyka jest rozwijającą się dziedziną badań społecznych, która korzysta z dorobku socjologii, etnografii, studiów kulturowych, antropologii kulturowej, teatrologii, studiów nad komunikowaniem. Przedmiotem badań performatywnych jest aktywność ludzka rozumiana jako ekspresja, która stanowi proces wytwarzania i reprodukowania podmiotowości. W niniejszym tekście autorka analizuje teorię socjologiczną Pierre’a Bourdieu w perspektywie performatyki: pytań o społeczną sprawczość rozumianą jako konstruowanie podmiotu w określonym polu władzy. Szczególnemu namysłowi autorka poddaje następujące aspekty indywidualnych i zbiorowych praktyk opisane przez Pierre’a Bourdieu: praktyki przestrzenne, praktyki cielesne, męska dominacja.

The Delayed Effect of Parental Control on the Adaptation of Men and Women in Adulthood

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 294-303
Author(s):  
Borys A. Yakymchuk ◽  
◽  
Iryna P. Yakymchuk ◽  
Iryna P. Yakymchuk ◽  
Iryna O. Vakhotska ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Parental Control ◽  
The Body ◽  
Delayed Effect ◽  
Negative Effects ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Delayed Effects ◽  
Personal Boundaries ◽  
Women's Lives ◽  
Paternal Control ◽  
Maternal Autonomy

Parental control is an integral part of parent-child relations and a traditional tool of socialization. However, numerous negative effects of parental intervention in the child’s inner world are known. This study clarifies the delayed effects of parental control and a detached parenting style. 270 men and women are aged 35-44 years filled in the questionnaires of hardiness, the sovereignty of the psychological space, and perceived behavior by the father and mother. The results confirmed the prevalence of parental control, especially its manifestations on the part of mothers about daughters. In adult women's lives, mothers' directiveness correlates with hostility and violation of personal boundaries as regards the body, personal territory, things, habits, social connections, and values; men noted maternal interference in the formation of sovereign habits and values. At the same time, parental non-involvement is widespread; the autonomy of fathers about children is significantly greater than mothers. Correlation analysis confirmed the assumption that parental directivity/autonomy determines the hardiness and sense of integrity of personal boundaries in adulthood. The effect of parental control in adulthood depends on the gender of the children and the parents. Maternal control is a strong negative factor for daughters, while maternal autonomy positively correlates with indicators of hardiness. Paternal control was a neutral factor for daughters. For sons, the directivity of father and mother contributes to the formation of resilience. The conclusion was made about the need for differentiation of positive and negative effects of parental control, taking into account gender positions.

scholarly journals Development of Sexuality in Female Children and Adolescents*

1989 ◽  
Vol 34 (9) ◽  
pp. 879-883 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margaret Whitfield
Keyword(s):  
Sex Differences ◽  
Children And Adolescents ◽  
Sexual Desire ◽  
Female Sexuality ◽  
The Body ◽  
Childhood And Adolescence ◽  
The Past ◽  
Female Children ◽  
Women's Lives ◽  
The Impact

Female sexuality (meaning sexual desire, excitement and orgasm) has been of considerable interest in psychiatry. Women's efforts to define and legitimize their own experience of their sexuality have increased in the past 25 years. However, the integration of these new views into the body of psychiatric (especially psychoanalytic) theory has not occurred very actively or successfully. Very little is known about the development of sexuality in childhood and adolescence. This paper looks at various behaviours, interests and events in women's lives that might reveal something about the development of their sexuality. The literature on female masturbation is reviewed and some sex differences highlighted. The literature on interest in babies, the wish to have babies, and menarche is explored for possible associations with sexuality. Rather than sexuality being a central organizer of experience, it seems quite possible that experience is an organizer of sexuality. Therefore, to better understand female sexuality we need to consider the impact of experiences during childhood and adolescence.

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