scholarly journals Re-imagining family and gender roles in Aminatta Forna's Ancestor Stones

2017 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 86-99
Author(s):  
Yunusy Castory Ng'umbi

This paper examines the interplay between polygyny and gender by exploring the way in which family structure and gender roles are negotiated, imagined and exercised in fiction. Aminatta Forna's Ancestor stones (2006) is read in order to explore how the institution of polygyny changes over time and how it influences gender role negotiation. Using an African feminist approach, the paper juxtaposes the historical and contemporary institution of polygyny in relation to gender role negotiation and how contemporary writers build on their literary precursors in re-writing the history of polygyny and gender according to the socio-cultural needs of twenty-first century Africans. These changes in socio-cultural, economic and political spheres in Africa have played a pivotal role in altering family structure and arrangements. I therefore argue that the changes in familial structure and arrangement necessitate gender role negotiation.

2015 ◽  
Vol 70 (01) ◽  
pp. 45-56
Author(s):  
Nicolas Delalande

Abstract The interaction between economic analysis and political action is one of the major issues raised by Capital in the Twenty-First Century and by any work of political economy. However, the way this interaction works and changes over time is not always clear in Thomas Piketty’s book. This critical review, informed by history and political science, aims to open up three areas of discussion. Are redistributive tax policies a mere accident, produced by the chaotic history of the twentieth century, and, if so, what might their future be? On what grounds could capitalism’s tendency to create inequality be regulated in the absence of any alternative system? Finally, can deliberative democracy offer any solution, or has it already been profoundly weakened by the very economic processes that Piketty’s brings to the fore in his book? A political history of capital seems more essential than ever.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 (11) ◽  
pp. 267-1-267-8
Author(s):  
Mitchell J.P. van Zuijlen ◽  
Sylvia C. Pont ◽  
Maarten W.A. Wijntjes

The human face is a popular motif in art and depictions of faces can be found throughout history in nearly every culture. Artists have mastered the depiction of faces after employing careful experimentation using the relatively limited means of paints and oils. Many of the results of these experimentations are now available to the scientific domain due to the digitization of large art collections. In this paper we study the depiction of the face throughout history. We used an automated facial detection network to detect a set of 11,659 faces in 15,534 predominately western artworks, from 6 international, digitized art galleries. We analyzed the pose and color of these faces and related those to changes over time and gender differences. We find a number of previously known conventions, such as the convention of depicting the left cheek for females and vice versa for males, as well as unknown conventions, such as the convention of females to be depicted looking slightly down. Our set of faces will be released to the scientific community for further study.


2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Alper Çuhadaroğlu

In this study, the relationships between university students and their perceptions of gender roles and epistemological beliefs were investigated. Gender roles are a phenomenon that are determined by culture, and begin to emerge at an early age, which may include some stereotypical behaviors along with a number of attitudes, duties and obligations that the individual is expected to perform as a woman or a man. Epistemological belief is seen as an individual feature of how knowing and learning take place. In this study, a mixed method was used. The quantitative study group consists of 517 students from both universities, while the qualitative study group consists of 85 people. Gender Role Attitudes Scale and Epistemological Beliefs Scale were used to collect quantitative data. In order to obtain qualitative data, participants were given a form consisting of open-ended questions. According to the analyses, it was determined that there was a significant relationship between the participants' epistemological beliefs and gender roles attitudes and, epistemological beliefs were a significant predictor of gender roles attitudes. The results obtained are discussed in line with the existing literature. <p> </p><p><strong> Article visualizations:</strong></p><p><img src="/-counters-/edu_01/0798/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /></p>


1986 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 203-220 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alice H. Eagly ◽  
Carole Chrvala

The experiment examines status and gender role explanations of the tendency for women to conform more than men in group pressure settings. Subjects believed they were assigned to groups containing two males and two females in addition to themselves and received these other group members' opinions, which were represented as deviating from the opinions that subjects had given earlier. Subjects then gave their opinions with the other group members either having or not having surveillance over these opinions. In addition, subjects were required to form impressions of each other's likability or expertise. The findings indicate that subjects' sex and age affected the extent of their conformity. Among older (19 years and older) subjects, females conformed more with surveillance than without it, whereas surveillance did not affect males' conformity. Among younger (under 19 years) subjects, surveillance had no effects. Analysis of sex differences revealed that older females were significantly more conforming than older males when under surveillance as well as when subjects formed impressions of one another's likability. Among younger subjects, there were no sex differences. These findings are discussed in terms of the theories that (a) both sex and age function as status characteristics and (b) gender roles determine conformity.


2018 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 321-338 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stewart Cunningham ◽  
Teela Sanders ◽  
Lucy Platt ◽  
Pippa Grenfell ◽  
P.G. Macioti

This article presents an analysis of occupational homicides of sex workers in the United Kingdom, 1990-2016. Characteristics of 110 people murdered between 1990 and 2016 are explored including the location of their murder, ethnicity, migration status, and gender. Key changes over time are noted including an increase in the number of sex workers murdered indoors as well as an increase in murdered migrant sex workers. By developing the concept of “occupational homicide,” we argue that sex worker homicide should be viewed as an occupational issue and that the distinction between work-related homicide and nonwork-related homicide should be accounted for in future studies and is essential to inform prostitution policy.


2020 ◽  
pp. 20-37
Author(s):  
David S. Pedulla

This chapter considers what nonstandard, mismatched, and precarious employment can entail and details the changing nature of the broader economy. There is a growing emphasis on the institutional arrangements and changes that have resulted in economic strain and anxiety for many workers in the United States. The chapter delves into the ways that these nonstandard, mismatched, and precarious employment experiences are evaluated by employers during the hiring process. It also provides basic definitions and background information about these types of employment experiences and how they overlap with race and gender divisions in the labor market. Finally, the chapter examines the existing scholarship on changes over time in these positions and how they impact the lives of workers, their families, and the organizations where they labor.


Author(s):  
Maroussia Bednarkiewicz

The Qurʾan itself refers to a call to prayer (although using another term, nidāʾ, not adhān) without laying down a form. Several stories are told of how the call to prayer was originally formulated. Some describe fire, horns, and even semantrons as alternative means suggested or even tried at the earliest stage. Maroussia Bednarkiewicz traces variant wordings to different stages in history, regional centres, traditionists, and jurisprudents. Changes over time suggest that verbatim transmission was a low priority, yet an original core story can be discerned.


2019 ◽  
pp. 178-195
Author(s):  
Angela McShane

This chapter argues that drinking things are of central importance to our understanding of the long relationship between humans and alcohol. It explores the history of the English man (and woman’s) pint of beer, as an object, a drink, and a measure, from the late-sixteenth to the twenty-first century, to show how the relationships between objects, drinks, and measures have been socially and culturally constructed over time. Drawing upon a wide range of objects, images, and textual sources, and benefiting from the theoretical lenses of material performativity and praxeology, it argues that material insights not only help us to understand the deeper cultural processes at play in the routines and rituals of convivial drinking, but also help us to understand their wider role in social and political change.


Author(s):  
Agnieszka Legutko

Celia Dropkin, one of the greatest yet lesser-known Yiddish poets, revolutionized modern Yiddish poetry with her pioneering exploration of gender dynamics. Bold erotic motifs in Dropkin’s poetry shocked her contemporaries, while her poems, written mostly in the 1920s and 1930s, sound au courant in the twenty-first century. In her poetry, Dropkin addressed themes such as sexuality, love, artistic creativity, motherhood, and nature — as well as domination and sexual politics in man-woman relationships. Born in Bobruisk, Belarus as Tsilye Levin, she wrote her first poems in Russian at the age of 10. After her immigration to the USA in 1912, she began writing in Yiddish, making her literary debut in 1918. She was affiliated with modernist groups formed by Yiddish poets in America, such as Di Inzikhistin [Introspectivists] and Di Yunge [The Young]. During her lifetime, she published only one volume of poetry, In heysn vint. Her children reissued the volume after her death, updating it to include her short stories and reproductions of paintings that she created later in life. Dropkin’s modernist poetry shattered cultural stereotypes about the social and gender roles imposed on men and women, making her a path-breaking poet who ‘filled the stillness of Yiddish poetry with a passionate breath’ (Yakov Glatshtayn).


2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 20-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keya Das ◽  
T. S. Sathyanarayana Rao

Human sexuality has been researched, documented, and scrutinized through the centuries but persists in retaining its unfathomable depths in its layers. Sexuality in India has undergone paradigm shifts from the Bronze Age civilization to present-day India. Ever changing facets dependent on the cultural, social, religious, political, regional, and timely aura have resulted in sexuality in India having many hues. The manner of experience and expression has also undergone significant changes over time in individual desires, attitudes to sex, beliefs, values, behaviors, gender roles, and relationships. We chronicle the conceptualization of sexuality in its inception in ancient India and its journey through the ages.


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