scholarly journals A Constructivist Perspective of Rape as a Military Strategy: A Comparative Analysis of the Rwandan Genocide and the Bosnian War

Author(s):  
Jacqueline Ashley Schoenfeld

This paper explores how the social construction of a peoples’ ethnic or national identity can influence the use of rape as a military strategy. In exploring this concept, the Rwandan genocide and Bosnian War will be used as case studies. It is argued that rape as a military strategy derives coercive power from social constructions of ethnicity, nationality and gender in patriarchal societies. In presenting this argument, the constructivist school of thought is used to analyze the processes that led to social constructions of ethnicity, nationality and gender. This paper considers the subsequent social environment that allowed rape to be used as an effective military strategy in both Rwanda and Bosnia.

2017 ◽  
Vol 70 (6) ◽  
pp. 1235-1243 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jaime Alonso Caravaca Morera ◽  
Maria Itayra Padilha

ABSTRACT Objective: To analyze the social representations of sex and gender among transsexual people, through their life histories. Method: Qualitative, multicenter and descriptive research. The participants were 70 transsexuals from Brazil and Costa Rica. Data were analyzed according to the technique of Content Analysis. Results: Two complementary representations related to sex were identified: “Sex as a natural categorical imposition sealed and acquired (irremediably) at birth” and “Sex as an element that labels, condemns and differentiates people.” Regarding gender, a single representation was associated with “synthetic-social constructions associated with (necro/bio) power, cisnormativity and culture.” Final considerations: The former absolute division of gender as social construction and of sex as considered as natural must be questioned in order to analyze both concepts as an interconnected dyad. In addition, it should be recognized that this dyad presents itself as an organizational and cognitive construct, mediated by the still prevalent cispatriarchal (necro/bio) power.


Author(s):  
Gabriela Soto Laveaga

In my brief response to Terence Keel’s essay “Race on Both Sides of the Razor,” I focus on something as pertinent as alleles and social construction: how we write history and how we memorialize the past. Current DNA analysis promises to remap our past and interrogate certainties that we have taken for granted. For the purposes of this commentary I call this displacing of known histories the epigenetics of memory. Just as environmental stimuli rouse epigenetic mechanisms to produce lasting change in behavior and neural function, the unearthing of forgotten bodies, forgotten lives, has a measurable effect on how we act and think and what we believe. The act of writing history, memorializing the lives of others, is a stimulus that reshapes who and what we are. We cannot disentangle the discussion about the social construction of race and biological determinism from the ways in which we have written—and must write going forward—about race. To the debate about social construction and biological variation we must add the heft of historical context, which allows us to place these two ideas in dialogue with each other. Consequently, before addressing the themes in Keel’s provocative opening essay and John Hartigan’s response, I speak about dead bodies—specifically, cemeteries for Black bodies. Three examples—one each from Atlanta, Georgia; Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; and Mexico—illustrate how dead bodies must enter our current debates about race, science, and social constructions. 


Author(s):  
Beth Hatt

The legacy of the social construction of race, class, and gender within the social construction of smartness and identity in US schools are synthesized utilizing meta-ethnography. The study examines ethnographies of smartness and identity while also exploring what meta-ethnography has to offer for qualitative research. The analyses demonstrate that race, class, and gender are key factors in how student identities of ability or smartness are constructed within schools. The meta-ethnography reveals a better understanding of the daily, sociocultural processes in schools that contribute to the denial of competence to students across race, class, and gender. Major themes include epistemologies of schooling, learning as the production of identity, and teacher power in shaping student identities. The results are significant in that new insights are revealed into how gender, class, and racial identities develop within the daily practices of classrooms about notions of ability.


2019 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
María José Rodríguez Jaume

The increase in international adoptions of minors (quiet migration) all over Spain has coincided in time with the rise of immigration. The links between these two phenomena give rise to a hybrid line of research focused on the racial experiences shared by both the adopted population and the immigrant population. A comparative analysis of data coming from three public opinion research sources reveals: (a) the presence of “racism without race” within Spanish society, even though phenotypic differences play a determining role in the social construction of race; and (b) a low “racial awareness” amongst interracial adoptive parents, which leads them to reproduce the ideology of “color-blind racism.”


2016 ◽  
Vol 19 (5) ◽  
pp. 480-502 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roni Strier ◽  
Zvi Eisikovits ◽  
Laura Sigad ◽  
Eli Buchbinder

Despite the alarming numbers of workers living in poverty in developed countries, work is still commonly seen as a way out of poverty. From a social constructivist perspective and based on qualitative research of the working poor in Israel, the article explores low-income Arab and Jewish working men’s views of poverty. It addresses research topics such as the meaning of work, the perception of the workplace, and the experience of poverty and coping strategies. In addition, the article examines the presence of ethnic differences in the social construction of in-work poverty. At the theoretical level, the article questions dominant views of work as the main exit from poverty, highlights the impact of gender and ethnicity in the construction of in-work poverty, and suggests the need for more context and gender-informed policies to respond to the complexity of the male working poor population.


2014 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 135-152 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kendra Coulter

Abstract This study centers on equestrian show culture in Ontario, Canada, and examines how horses are entangled symbolically and materially in socially constructed hierarchies of value. After examining horse-show social relations and practices, the paper traces the connections among equestrian culture, class, and the social constructions of horses. Equestrian relations expose multiple hierarchical intersections of nature and culture within which both human-horse relations and horses are affected by class structures and identities. In equestrian culture, class affects relations within and across species, and how horses are conceptualized and used, as symbols and as living animal bodies.


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