Contemporary Public Art and Nation: Contesting “Tradition” in Post-Socialist Cultures and Societies

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 305-330 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diana T. Kudaibergenova
Keyword(s):  
Gender Roles ◽  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
Value Systems ◽  
Socialist Society ◽  
Social Actors ◽  
Art Works ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Conservative Values ◽  
Official Sources

The contemporary art movement attempts to remain independent from official sources of power in order to generate ideas and discourses focusing on temporality and contemporaneity. In addition to art works and performances, some artists transmit their ideas through their public discussions and activism. But without a new value systems, a post-socialist society may fall into the trap of “inventing and re-inventing traditions,” and thus many social actors tend to block artists’ access to the discourses of temporality, “tradition,” nation, and gender. This article analyzes three instances where these “traditions” guided artistic discussions in the fields of sexuality, gender roles, and the sacredness of nation, which are all connected to the newly formed conservative values of the national and traditional that allow many nationalist conservatives to justify control over and criticism of independent cultural production.

“Leftover Women” or Single by Choice: Gender Role Negotiation of Single Professional Women in Contemporary China

2020 ◽  
Vol 41 (11) ◽  
pp. 1956-1978
Author(s):  
Tianhan Gui
Keyword(s):  
Gender Roles ◽  
Marriage Market ◽  
Professional Women ◽  
Value Systems ◽  
Chinese Society ◽  
Career Women ◽  
Role Negotiation ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Traditional Femininity ◽  
Leftover Women

In today’s Chinese society, we see more and more well-educated, well-paid, and independent career women. However, as traditional femininity has been associated with subordination and sacrifice, well-educated career women are perceived as less feminine and less like proper “women” or prospective wives. Career women who remain single until their late twenties have been referred to within Chinese popular culture as “leftover women.” The current research explores the negative discourses that single career-oriented women encounter in their lives, as well as their own perceptions on work, marriage, and gender roles. Through in-depth interviews with 30 single, professional women, I examined whether these women are really “leftover” on the marriage market and how they perceive their independent, single life. The study aims to explore how these career-oriented women live within conflicting social expectations and value systems, as well as how they perceive gender roles, marriage, and career.

Cross-border Migration and Gender Boundaries in Central Eastern Europe – Female Perspectives

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 499-509
Author(s):  
Ágnes Erőss ◽  
Monika Mária Váradi ◽  
Doris Wastl-Walter
Keyword(s):  
Gender Roles ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Labour Migration ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Livelihood Strategy ◽  
Central Eastern Europe ◽  
Cross Border ◽  
Dual Earner ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Gender Boundaries

In post-Socialist countries, cross-border labour migration has become a common individual and family livelihood strategy. The paper is based on the analysis of semi-structured interviews conducted with two ethnic Hungarian women whose lives have been significantly reshaped by cross-border migration. Focusing on the interplay of gender and cross-border migration, our aim is to reveal how gender roles and boundaries are reinforced and repositioned by labour migration in the post-socialist context where both the socialist dual-earner model and conventional ideas of family and gender roles simultaneously prevail. We found that cross-border migration challenged these women to pursue diverse strategies to balance their roles of breadwinner, wife, and mother responsible for reproductive work. Nevertheless, the boundaries between female and male work or status were neither discursively nor in practice transgressed. Thus, the effect of cross-border migration on altering gender boundaries in post-socialist peripheries is limited.

Values and Gender Equality between Islam and the West

2016 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 79-94
Author(s):  
Moulay Rachid Mrani
Keyword(s):  
Gender Equality ◽  
Virtual Space ◽  
Value Systems ◽  
Women And Gender ◽  
The West ◽  
Living Together ◽  
The Status ◽  
Muslim Intellectuals ◽  
Multiple Challenges ◽  
And Gender

If the development of technology, means of communication, and rapid transportation have made continents closer and made the world a small village, the outcome of the ensuing encounters among cultures and civilizations is far from being a mere success. Within this new reality Muslims, whether they live in majority or minority contexts, face multiple challenges in terms of relating to non-Muslim cultures and traditions. One of these areas is the status of women and gender equality. Ali Mazrui was one of the few Muslim intellectuals to be deeply interested in this issue. His dual belonging, as an African and as a westerner, enable him to understand such issues arising from the economic, political, and ethical contrasts between the West and Islam. This work pays tribute to this exceptional intellectual’s contribution toward the rapprochement between the western and the Islamic value systems, illustrating how he managed to create a “virtual” space for meeting and living together between two worlds that remain different yet dependent upon each other. 

Bottles of Art, Works of Alcohol

2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 54-70
Author(s):  
Jim Drobnick
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Art Works ◽  
Art And Society

Alcohol has gained a notable prominence in contemporary art, particularly in artists’ bars and other convivial situations at biennials and art fairs. What happens, though, when an artwork features alcohol that cannot or is not meant to be drunk? If the point of drink in contemporary art involves engaging spectators in sensorial, embodied encounters, what remains of the specialness of alcohol when it stays in the bottle? This article examines artists’ multiples and distillation projects where drinking is teasingly possible but downplayed. In these works, partaking is less important than the inebriating affect, in which drunkenness is experienced at a remove, and so infuses the imagination to instigate thought beyond the act of drinking. Even when contained, the intoxicating potential of alcohol has the ability to disrupt norms and aesthetic conventions, as well as to make compelling comments on art and society.

‘I can’t leave everything in the hands of my husband’: Economic constraints and gender roles in care-seeking in post-Ebola Guinea

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Zoé Mistrale Hendrickson ◽  
Natalie Tibbels ◽  
Sidibé Sidikiba ◽  
Hannah Mills ◽  
Claudia Vondrasek ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Gender Roles ◽  
Care Seeking ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Economic Constraints

scholarly journals “I Am Not Good at Any of This.” Playing with Homoeroticism in The Arabian Nights

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (7) ◽  
pp. 480
Author(s):  
Frank G. Bosman
Keyword(s):  
Gender Roles ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
The Self ◽  
French Translation ◽  
The West ◽  
Arabian Nights ◽  
Safe Environment ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Cross Dressing ◽  
And Gender

The story collection known in the West as The Arabian Nights or One Thousand and One Nights, is famous, among other things, for its erotic playfulness. This eroticism was (and is) one of the key reasons for its continuous popularity after Antoine Galland’s French translation in 1704. The Arabian Nights includes, besides traditional, heterosexual acts, play, and desires, examples of homoerotic playfulness—even though we must tread lightly when using such Western concepts with an oriental text body such as this one. The homoerotic playfulness of The Arabian Nights is the subject of this article. By making use of a text-immanent analysis of two of the Nights’ stories—of Qamar and Budûr and of Alî Shâr and Zumurrud—the author of this article focuses on the reversal of common gender roles, acts of cross-dressing, and, of course, homoerotic play. He will argue that these stories provide a narrative safe environment in which the reader is encouraged to “experiment” with non-normative sexual and gender orientations, leaving the dominant status quo effectively and ultimately unchallenged, thus preventing the (self-proclaimed) defenders of that status quo from feeling threatened enough to actively counter-act the experiment.

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