Critical Perspectives on Femininities and Masculinities
Convenors: Ana Dragojlovic and Adelyn Lim, Australian National University
Panel description: This panel focuses on the changing representations of femininities and masculinities in the contemporary world. Rapid development and modernisation coupled with globalisation have resulted in vast changes in all aspects of life, including how men and women look at themselves, and respond to their identity, sexuality, marriage and family. We aim to situate critical perspectives of femininities and masculinities within broader processes of cultural and economic globalisation, addressing the questions:
(1) How are identities being recreated and renegotiated as a result of the global cultural supermarket? Are representations of femininities and masculinities simply a consumer choice?
(2) How does migration shape and reshape gender relations of both hetero- and homosexual peoples?
(3) How are various social movements engaged with the global changes, challenges and crises in the social organisation of gender, as well as the politics of femininity and masculinity?
(4) What are the globally circulating discourses on gender and sexuality in literature, the media and popular culture? How are these discourses localised? More importantly, are these femininities and masculinities new? Or are current celebrations of diversity in the lived experience and performance of men’s and women’s identities largely Eurocentric?
(5) How do constructions and contestations of femininities and masculinities reflect gender inequalities embedded within global/local geographies of social and economic change?
Abstracts
Narelle Warren and Lenore Manderson, School of Psychology, Psychiatry and Psychological Medicine, Monash University - Masculinity, Physicality, and Amputee Rehabilitation
Peter Mewett and Kim Toffoletti, School of History, Heritage and Society, Deakin University - Women as Consumers of a Male Domain: Australian Rules Football and Its Female Fans
Ngo Thi Ngan Binh, Department of Anthropology, Cornell University / Department of Anthropology, RSPAS, Australian National University - Social Drinking among Vietnamese Civil Servants: The Sociality of Male Sexual Impotence
Ana Dragojlovic, Department of Anthropology, RSPAS, Australian National University - Migrating Masculinities: Balinese Men in the Netherlands
Adelyn Lim, Department of Anthropology, RSPAS, Australian National University - Globally Circulating Feminist Discourses and Their Localisation in Singapore
Sharyn Graham Davies, School of Social Sciences, Auckland University of Technology - Localising Globalised Male Femininities: A Queer Muslim Fashion Parade
Warren Mayes, Department of Anthropology, RSPAS, Australian National University - Regimes of Beauty in Post-Revolutionary Laos
Åse Ottosson, Central Land Council, Alice Springs - Putting Aboriginal Masculinities into Play in Central Australia
