Contraculture: Bird Names and the Degendering of Contra Dance

2019 ◽  
Vol 51 ◽  
pp. 187-215
Author(s):  
ANDREW SNYDER
Keyword(s):  
Role Expectations ◽  
Long Line ◽  
Contra Dance ◽  
Left Figure

At Oakland’s Circle Left contra dance, I notice my hands fumbling as I take “hands four” with my partner and our neighbour couple to form one of many foursomes in a long line of contra dancers. My partner and I place our hands facing palm up expecting to find a hand to hold facing palm down. In “traditional” contra, it is the person in the “lady” role who places their hand palm down on the hand of the person in the “gent” role. But this time it is I, a cisgendered male,1 who am in the wrong, since we decided before the dance that I am dancing the “raven” part, traditionally the “lady,” and my partner is dancing the “lark,” traditionally the “gent.” I correct myself and place my hand upon theirs. When I adopt the “raven” role, thirty-three years of contra dancing, that is, thirty-three years of gendered behaviour that have contributed to how I have learned to be male, are slightly difficult, but, as it turns out, not too difficult to unlearn. As we advance down and back up the hall, I make other, less minute mistakes, some that have to do with the new role expectations and some that are just part of a customary failure at executing dance moves perfectly. Like “traditional” contra dance, Circle Left (Figure 1) is a communitarian, participatory activity, and forgiveness is quickly given with a smile.

Sati

Crisis ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 73-77 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dinesh Bhugra
Keyword(s):  
Mental Illness ◽  
Psychiatric Disorders ◽  
Indian Subcontinent ◽  
Cultural Factors ◽  
Role Expectations ◽  
Prevention Strategies ◽  
Social Causation ◽  
Gender Role Expectations ◽  
Good Wife ◽  
And Gender

Abstract. Sati as an act of ritual suicide has been reported from the Indian subcontinent, especially among the Hindus, for several centuries. Although legally proscribed, these acts occur even now in modern India. The principle behind such acts has been put forward as the principle of good wife. There is little evidence to suggest that women who commit this act suffer from a formal mental illness. Cultural factors and gender role expectations play a significant role in the act and its consequences. Using recent examples, this paper illustrates the cultural factors, which may be seen as contributing to the act of suicide. Other factors embedded in the act also emphasize that not all suicides have underlying psychiatric disorders and clinicians must take social causation into account while preparing any prevention strategies.

Role Expectations Questionnaire

1984 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victoria Berger-Gross ◽  
Allen I. Kraut
Keyword(s):  
Role Expectations

Theorizing Charismatic Authority in Early Islamic Law*

2007 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 129-158
Author(s):  
Jonathan E. Brockopp
Keyword(s):  
Dynamic Model ◽  
Islamic Law ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Islamic Studies ◽  
Long Line ◽  
Charismatic Authority ◽  
Early Islamic ◽  
Do So

In Islamic Studies, charisma has usually been reserved for the study of marginalized individuals. I argue here that charisma may also be applied to leadership among legal scholars. To do so, I join a long line of scholars who have modified Max Weber’s initial insights, and put forth a new, dynamic model of charismatic authority. The purpose of my model is to account for the fact that religious histories emphasize the uniqueness of the originating charismatic event, be that Prophet Muhammad’s revelations, Jesus’ theophany or the Buddha’s enlightenment, while at the same time recognizing that the charismatic cycle never quite ends. In contrast with Weber, I argue that charismatic authority in religious traditions is best understood as a network of influence and interaction through which the routinization of charisma reinterprets and redefines the meaning of the originating charismatic event.

Selfi es

2018 ◽  
Vol 2018 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-96
Author(s):  
Ramon Reichert
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
Digital Communication ◽  
Role Expectations ◽  
Digital Culture ◽  
Final Part ◽  
Human Face ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Media ◽  
Front Stage

The history of the human face is the history of its social coding and the media- conditions of its appearance. The best way to explain the »selfie«-practices of today’s digital culture is to understand such practices as both participative and commercialized cultural techniques that allow their users to fashion their selves in ways they consider relevant for their identities as individuals. Whereas they may put their image of themselves front stage with their selfies, such images for being socially shared have to match determinate role-expectations, body-norms and ideals of beauty. Against this backdrop, collectively shared repertoires of images of normalized subjectivity have developed and leave their mark on the culture of digital communication. In the critical and reflexive discourses that surround the exigencies of auto-medial self-thematization we find reactions that are critical of self-representation as such, and we find strategies of de-subjectification with reflexive awareness of their media conditions. Both strands of critical reactions however remain ambivalent as reactions of protest. The final part of the present article focuses on inter-discourses, in particular discourses that construe the phenomenon of selfies thoroughly as an expression of juvenile narcissism. The author shows how this commonly accepted reading which has precedents in the history of pictorial art reproduces resentment against women and tends to stylize adolescent persons into a homogenous »generation« lost in self-love

The Boko Haram Reader

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Cook
Keyword(s):  
West Africa ◽  
Northern Nigeria ◽  
Boko Haram ◽  
Islamic Theology ◽  
Long Line ◽  
Islamic Thought ◽  
The World

Since it erupted onto the world stage in 2009, people have asked, what is Boko Haram, and what does it stand for? Is there a coherent vision or set of beliefs behind it? Despite the growing literature about the group, few if any attempts have been made to answer these questions, even though Boko Haram is but the latest in a long line of millenarian Muslim reform groups to emerge in Northern Nigeria over the last two centuries. The Boko Haram Reader offers an unprecedented collection of essential texts, documents, videos, audio, and nashids (martial hymns), translated into English from Hausa, Arabic and Kanuri, tracing the group's origins, history, and evolution. Its editors, two Nigerian scholars, reveal how Boko Haram's leaders manipulate Islamic theology for the legitimization, radicalization, indoctrination and dissemination of their ideas across West Africa. Mandatory reading for anyone wishing to grasp the underpinnings of Boko Haram's insurgency, particularly how the group strives to delegitimize its rivals and establish its beliefs as a dominant strand of Islamic thought in West Africa's religious marketplace.

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