T-Shirts, style and the social construction of modern masculinities in urban Fiji

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 91-110 ◽  
Author(s):  
Geir Henning Presterudstuen
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Social Construction ◽  
Sexual Identity ◽  
Body Shape ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
The Body ◽  
Social Categories ◽  
Social Scripts ◽  
The Social

In this article I consider fashion as a key modality through which young Fiji citizens experience modernity and construct contemporary self-identities in dialogue with global popular culture. A multi-dimensional tool, fashion is effectively used as self-performance; a way of carrying the body in public spaces, including dress and style as well as mannerisms, demeanour, body shape and comportment. It follows that fashion also intersects with other social categories such as gender, sexual identity and race in order to inform local social scripts in which people judge their own and others’ appearance and define the nature of a desirable, modern body.

scholarly journals The Dichotomy of Sexuality

2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sophia Fantus
Keyword(s):  
Social Construction ◽  
Social Control ◽  
Sexual Identity ◽  
Best Practice ◽  
Social Categories ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Sexual Identities ◽  
The Social ◽  
Western Perspective ◽  
Epistemological Framework

This paper examines sexuality and the social construction of the sexual binary divide, illustrating how sexual identities have progressed, developed, and transformed.  Social categories have been created as a form of social control and have therefore perpetuated stereotypical attitudes and discriminatory acts.  This paper will illustrate how institutional and individual level harms have occurred due to the continued dichotomization of sexuality; and simultaneously how such categorizations have, in contrast, helped to form supportive and cohesive communities. Concluding, this paper will contend that dichotomous categories leave no room for individuals to question or explore their own sexuality; the sexual divide ignores the changing sexualities within today’s modern western perspective.  Deriving from a social work perspective, this paper argues that a narrative epistemological framework remains the best practice to recognize and address the complex and multifaceted nature of sexual identity.

Moral Thresholds of Outrage

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 40-57 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lorenzo D’Orsi
Keyword(s):  
Social Construction ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
State Violence ◽  
Social Boundaries ◽  
Moral Outrage ◽  
National History ◽  
Social Actors ◽  
The Social ◽  
Large Audience ◽  
Emotional Identification

This article analyses the social construction of moral outrage, interpreting it as both an extemporaneous feeling and an enduring process, objectified in narratives and rituals and permeating public spaces as well as the intimate sphere of social actors’ lives. Based on ethnography carried out in Istanbul, this contribution focuses on the assassination of the Turkish Armenian journalist Hrant Dink in 2007. This provoked a moral shock and led to an annual commemoration in which thousands of people—distant in political, religious, ethnic positions—gather around a shared feeling of outrage. The article retraces the narratives of innocence and the moral frames that make Dink’s public figure different from other victims of state violence, thus enabling a moral and emotional identification of a large audience. Outrage over Dink’s murder has become a creative, mobilizing force that fosters new relationships between national history and subjectivity, and de-reifies essentialized social boundaries and identity claims.

Religion, Race, and Popular Culture

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lerone A. Martin ◽  
J. Kameron Carter
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Social Construction ◽  
Hip Hop ◽  
Religious History ◽  
American Religious History ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
Racial Identities ◽  
The Social

This chapter discusses the intersection of race, religion, and popular culture. Race is posited here not as synonymous with people of color, but rather as an analytic category that examines the social construction and very real reality of racialization: the process of becoming and identifying whiteness, blackness, and so on. Two broad approaches to the study of race, religion, and popular culture are examined: Popular Culture in Religion, and Religion as or in Popular Culture. The chapter then offers a brief overview of how these two approaches have both broadened standard narratives of American religious history as well as illuminated scholarly understandings of how religio-racial identities are constructed, perpetuated, challenged, and queered through the use of popular culture forms such as print, phonograph, radio, televangelism, celebrity, and hip-hop.

A Brief History of Body Shape

2021 ◽  
pp. 7-46
Author(s):  
Nathan Denton
Keyword(s):  
Human Body ◽  
Body Shape ◽  
Modern Human ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Meanings ◽  
History Of ◽  
Winning Strategies ◽  
Physical Features ◽  
Over Time

Like the vast numbers of other organisms that roam, or have roamed, the earth, the modern human represents a finely honed tool—one forged through millennia as it struggled to survive and thrive in more or less unaccommodating environments. Displaying the battle scars and winning strategies of its brutal, but ultimately triumphant battle against the elements, our bodies hold vast amounts of encrypted information that describe our biological lineage. In addition to the countless mechanisms that have evolved to support our existence, however, the human body is somewhat unique in that it exhibits striking permanent physiological differences that identify and define the sexes. The biology that arises from, and the social meanings attributed to, these physical features penetrate deep into the heart of what it means to be human, as well as a man or a woman. Before delving into the biology of fat, we must first therefore consider the history of body shape. This chapter begins by discussing several explanations for why the modern human body might have evolved the shape it has, and why the body differs between the sexes. Building from this foundation, it examines how societal attitudes toward body shape are ascribed and their shift over time.

Tomb, Temple, Machine and Self: The Social Construction of the Body

1992 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 79 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony Synnott
Keyword(s):  
Social Construction ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Social

scholarly journals On Not to be Gay: Aversion therapy and transformation of the self in Postsocialist China

2012 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 132-149
Author(s):  
H Bao
Keyword(s):  
Social Construction ◽  
South China ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Self ◽  
Critical Reading ◽  
Authentic Self ◽  
The Social ◽  
Affective Experiences ◽  
Self Formation

In this article, through a critical reading of the published diaries written by gay ‘patients’ who received aversion therapy in south China in the 1990s, I examine how the transformation of subjectivities from gay to straight was made possible by such ‘self-technologizing’ practices as writing and communication. I also consider the centrality of the body and affect in the process of subject (trans)formation, and ask how a new, coherent and authentic ‘self’ was fabricated through bodily and affective experiences. This discussion not only reveals the social construction of the self as central to China’s postsocialist governmentality, but also the central role that gender and sexuality play in processes of self-formation.

La medicalizzazione della riproduzione umana: il corpo e il genere

2009 ◽  
pp. 185-201
Author(s):  
Lia Lombardi
Keyword(s):  
Social Construction ◽  
Reproductive Technology ◽  
The Body ◽  
Human Reproduction ◽  
Western Society ◽  
Critical Approach ◽  
The Social ◽  
Biomedical Technologies ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Sociology Of Health

- This article is focussed on the medicalization of human reproduction and its effects on the body and on the gender. Particularly, the analysis is carried under two perspectives. The first one is the social construction and the social control on the body in Western society. Specifically, the question is how medicine surveilles bodies and behaviors of women and men. Moreover, the first part of this article analyses sexualities, reproduction/procreation and gender relationships. The second subject regards how stereotypes on gender and parenthood are connected to the social construction of infertility and of articial reproduction. All the topics are analysed through the lences of the sociology of health and of the body, in connection with the most recent advances in biomedical technologies. The gender perspective and a critical approach are the theoretical mainframes which have driven this research.Keywords: body, Gender, medicalization, human reproduction; reproductive technology, sociology of health.Parole chiave: genere, medicalizzazione, riproduzione umana, tecnologie riproduttive, sociologia della salute.

The Medicalization of Human Reproduction: Body and Gender

2009 ◽  
pp. 172-188
Author(s):  
Lia Lombardi
Keyword(s):  
Social Construction ◽  
Reproductive Technology ◽  
The Body ◽  
Human Reproduction ◽  
Western Society ◽  
Critical Approach ◽  
The Social ◽  
Biomedical Technologies ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Sociology Of Health

- This article is focussed on the medicalization of human reproduction and its effects on the body and on the gender. Particularly, the analysis is carried under two perspectives. The first one is the social construction and the social control on the body in Western society. Specifically, the question is how medicine surveilles bodies and behaviors of women and men. Moreover, the first part of this article analyses sexualities, reproduction/procreation and gender relationships. The second subject regards how stereotypes on gender and parenthood are connected to the social construction of infertility and of articial reproduction. All the topics are analysed through the lences of the sociology of health and of the body, in connection with the most recent advances in biomedical technologies. The gender perspective and a critical approach are the theoretical mainframes which have driven this research.Keywords: body, Gender, medicalization, human reproduction; reproductive technology, sociology of health.Parole chiave: genere, medicalizzazione, riproduzione umana, tecnologie riproduttive, sociologia della salute.

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