scholarly journals Medical Patriarchy: The Case of Legal Midwives in Lebanon

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (Summer) ◽  
pp. 132-147
Author(s):  
Hiba Abbani

The economic status of women today is neither a mere coincidence, nor a result of their ability (or lack thereof) to take on other jobs; it has nothing to do with their “nature,” despite the legends propagated on their behalf, starting with the creation myth. The existence of Eve was a sufficient motive to fight her, an approach that persists to this day, albeit using different tools and weapons, and that is engrained in our very structures. These violent battles have been bloody, despotic, or both, but they all served to transform myths into beliefs or general rules that inform how women are perceived. Not always visible or evident, these myths can have malicious consequences, especially when they claim that women lack the capacity, merit, eligibility, and credibility to reach certain positions in the social and economic ladder. As a result, women are left at the bottom of the ladder in terms of professional status, wages, working conditions, and, most importantly, the value attributed to their work. Throughout this essay, I seek to contribute to refuting the myths about women at work, especially those involved in the healthcare fields. To do so, I shed light on the work of legal midwives (kabila), and traditional midwives (daya), and the fundamental role they play in the health of women and mothers. I also aim to highlight some historical and contemporary facts to address the historical erasure of women’s achievements, and to contribute to bringing justice to midwives in the face of the ongoing distortion, prejudice, and isolation under the current health system.

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-7
Author(s):  
Ebhomienlen, T. O. ◽  
Aitufe V. O

This essay portrays Female Education in Nigeria as a key to Development in Esan North East Local Government Area, Edo State. The need to break the barrier of sex discrimination at the crucial time that Nigeria needs all round development is more appealing. The female folks are supposed to be co – pilots of the wheel of progress. It is evident in Esan North East Local Government Area that the traditional view of women has not drastically changed. Most women are still into petty business, like trading, farming, menial fashion making, hair making and so on. The new wind of change that is blowing in some parts of Nigeria has not sufficiently reflected in the area of this study. This study therefore, aims at encouraging females themselves and their parents to change their past view on education and respond positively on female education campaign initiates. To achieve the objectives of this essay the researcher adopts the historical, analytical and phenomenological methodology. It discovers that the training of girls/ women will enhance the social, political and economic status of women themselves and the society at large and this will form the bedrock for holistic development.


2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 435-452 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Leduc Browne

Why do so many people remain so passive in the face of today’s massive, looming economic, political, and ecological crises, such as climate change? Despite some notable rhetorical and regulatory examples, attempts to stem climate change have, as a rule, not come to frame the activities of most citizens. The inability to confront the imperative of social transformation today is a complex, manifold problem. At root, it has to do with fundamental systemic features of a global social system that we all contribute to reproducing in our everyday lives. While these features do not preclude political engagement, innovation, and action, they do undermine the bases of movements towards truly systemic transformation. This article focuses on one such feature, reification, as a social-structural foundation of passivity that impedes the social innovations required to tackle the climate crisis.


2007 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 103-105
Author(s):  
Nasrin Rahimieh

This ambitious undertaking, comprising 6 chapters, 16 tables, 4 appendixes,and a glossary, is the culmination of a doctoral program at McGill University’sInstitute of Islamic Studies. A specialist in Islam, world religions, andgender studies, Minoo Derayeh is now an assistant professor at York Universityin Toronto.Gender Equality in Iranian History seeks to uncover the social, political,and economic status of women across the vast expanse of Iranian history.In her “Foreword,” Ratna Gosh (McGill University) applauds theauthor’s contribution for showing that the “concept of Islamic feminism isfounded on the idea of complementary rather than equal rights” and, equallyimportantly, for laying bare “the root of cultural patriarchy” (p. ii). The veryidea of complementarity, as the book’s chapters reveal, has not always beenunproblematically present in Iran’s encounter with Islam ...


Target ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Esther Monzó-Nebot

Abstract Remarkable efforts have been made in Translation and Interpreting Studies to test the subservient habitus hypothesis formulated by Simeoni (1998) in his seminal work. In the face of increasing evidence that translators tend to reproduce a given society’s or community’s prevalent norms and contribute to the stability of such norms (Toury 1978), subversive translation practices have been reported (Delabastita 2011; Woods 2012) and indeed promoted as a way of fostering social and cultural change (Levine 1991; Venuti 1992). However, insights into how translators’ subservient or subversive habitus develop and depart from each other are still lacking. In order to shed light on this gray area, this article scrutinizes the contrasts between the habitus of professional legal translators who acquiesce to and who reject the norms governing their positions in the field. Special attention is given to those who decide to abandon the translation field. Their behavior is examined by relating habitus to forms of socialization and studying the implications of their strategies. Based on a case study drawn from interview data, this article focuses on the social practices of resistance and rebellion vis-à-vis subservience, and the impact of both on translation workplaces, work processes, and translators’ futures.


Author(s):  
Arturo Ezquerro

This article aims to explore some of the implications of the coronavirus pandemic on attachment-based psychotherapy practice, in the wider context of lockdown in a traumatised society fighting for survival. In the midst of this unprecedented crisis, it is a duty for psychotherapists and other mental health professionals to carry on working with emotionally vulnerable people, maximising the use of digital technology. The article suggests that this traditional duty may fall short under exceptional circumstances and, so, it might become necessary to go beyond the comfort of the consulting room — in order to address problems effectively in the social, cultural, and political arenas. This article includes an ongoing piece of online clinical work with a patient recovering from psychosis, whilst further reflecting on the current health, economic, and social emergency.


1993 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carol L. Meyers ◽  
Eric M. Meyers

This commentary and new translation of Zechariah 9-14 continues the appraoch adopted in the authors' 1987 Anchor Bible volume (25B) on Haggai and Zechariah 1-8. Authors Carol and Eric Meyers are perhaps uniquely qualified for this work because of their backgrounds in biblical archaeology and the social sciences. Employing the highest standards of pilological, literary, and historical research, they shed light on many enigmatic passages and offer an entirely new perspective on the history of Israel and its religion in the Persian period. Whereas many scholars have viewed this point in the history of Israel as a time of deterioration of the beliefs and practices of biblical religion, the Meyerses paint a picture of an innovative and vibrant community struggling to maintain its identity within a rapidly changing world dominated by the mighty Greeks and Persians. In the face of this the author of Zechariah 9-14 makes extensive and transformative use of earlier biblical writings and of the sayings of previous prophets, and articulates a radically new view of Israel's future. The Meyerses are the first modern commentators to see in these ancient texts the central role played by the Greco-Persian Wars in shaping the postexilic Restoration Community of Israel and its views of an expansive and glorious future. And althought Zechariah 9-14 is often regarded as the swan song of biblical prophecy, the Meyerses clearly demonstrate that the new modes of prophetic discourse found within this text helped biblical religion to meet one of the greatest challenges in its long history.


2020 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 467-487 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine Horne ◽  
Stefanie Mollborn

Norms are a foundational concept in sociology. Following a period of skepticism about norms as overly deterministic and as paying too little attention to social conflict, inequalities, and agency, the past 20 years have seen a proliferation of norms research across the social sciences. Here we focus on the burgeoning research in sociology to answer questions about where norms come from, why people enforce them, and how they are applied. To do so, we rely on three key theoretical approaches in the literature—consequentialist, relational, and agentic. As we apply these approaches, we explore their implications for what are arguably the two most fundamental issues in sociology—social order and inequality. We conclude by synthesizing and building on existing norms research to produce an integrated theoretical framework that can shed light on aspects of norms that are currently not well understood—in particular, their change and erosion.


Africa ◽  
1996 ◽  
Vol 66 (3) ◽  
pp. 367-385 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ole Bjørn Rekdal

This article focuses on the symbolic qualities of sorghum beer and milk among the Iraqw of northern Tanzania. The author illustrates how the villagers in a southern Mbulu village handle and make use of these two products, and seeks to illuminate the manner in which they both become associated with qualities that are perceived as positive and desirable. With the spread of the market economy, and of money as a medium of exchange, the symbolic content of sorghum beer and milk has come under considerable pressure. As products in demand, they may today circulate in impersonal relations which lack the social and religious qualities that they traditionally communicated. The monetisation of sorghum beer and milk has not, however, caused a breakdown in established practices, or in the structures of meaning in which such practices are embedded. The article illuminates some of the processes which seem to be of importance in explaining this remarkable cultural continuity in the face of fairly radical social change. The examples of sorghum beer and milk seem to reflect and highlight more general dynamics of change and continuity among the Iraqw, and it is suggested that they may help to shed light on certain seemingly paradoxical ways in which the Iraqw have been conceived by outsiders and by members of neighbouring ethnic groups.


1993 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 317-323 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen D. Holl ◽  
Gretchen C. Daily ◽  
Paul R. Ehrlich

The decline and subsequent above-replacement plateau in Costa Rican fertility rates illustrates a demographic pattern that is apparent in other developing countries. This paper discusses the complexity of factors that contribute to the fertility plateau in Costa Rica. These contributory factors include the social and economic status of women, socio-economic conditions in general, lack of government commitment to and supply of family planning services relative to demand, deficient sex and family-planning education, and the powerful institutional influence of the Catholic Church.We then discuss possible strategies, for developing and developed nations alike, to slow and eventually halt the exponential growth of the global human population. For this quintessential need the most important strategies, we suggest, are targeted education for both sexes and provision of comprehensive contraceptive and abortion services.


2012 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 38-81 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ma So Mui

Abstract Over the period October 2006-July 2008, the author conducted a detailed survey of five historic buildings in Malaya constructed by 19th-century Chinese immigrants. These buildings feature roof decorations made in and imported from Shiwan 石灣, China, during that period. The decorations include scenes and figurines representing events and characters taken from Cantonese operas, Chinese legends and classical novels. In studying these decorations the author has come across several recurring themes illustrating concepts such as justice, sworn brotherhood, loyalty and courage in the face of adversity, which shed light on the cultural identities and thinking of the Cantonese migrants. In this paper these themes are interpreted against the background of the social and political circumstances in China and Southeast Asia during the period under discussion, showing how an understanding of the concerns of these Chinese migrants of the past can help one to understand contemporary migrant communities worldwide.


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