By Suzette Heald
ISBN-10: 0415185777
ISBN-13: 9780415185776
'An remarkable and meticulously crafted African ethnography, which has theoretical and functional relevance for figuring out masculinity and violence in general'- David Parkin, Professor of Anthropology, Cambridge college Manhood and Morality explores problems with male identification one of the Gisu of Uganda and the ethical hindrance confronted through males who outline themselves via their means for violence. Drawing commonly on 20 years of fieldwork and on mental thought the ebook covers: circumcisionOedipal feelingswitchcraftdeviancejokingsexualityand ethnicity.This ethnographic learn demanding situations our preconceptions of manhood, specially African virility, inviting a much broader re-examination of masculinity.
Read or Download Manhood and Morality: Sex, Violence and Ritual in Gisu Society PDF
Best gender studies books
Women, Pleasure and the Gambling Experience
Drawing on a extensive diversity of ancient and sociological literature, this booklet lines the standard playing reports of a various crew of ladies. It offers attention-grabbing and unique insights into the pleasures afforded to girls via their playing participation and attracts on a number of feminist literature to appreciate women's motivations and adventure of play, and to ascertain the ways that girls negotiate their correct to gamble with no reprimand.
Flesh wounds : the culture of cosmetic surgery
Whilst did plastic surgery turn into a standard perform, the stuff of daily dialog? In a piece that mixes a provocative ethnography of cosmetic surgery and a penetrating research of attractiveness and feminism, Virginia L. Blum searches out the social stipulations and imperatives that experience made ours a tradition of plastic surgery.
Re-visiting Angela Carter: Texts, Contexts, Intertexts
Targeting questions of intertextuality, authorship and illustration, this e-book deals a re-evaluation of 1 of the 20th century's most vital British writers. A provocative assortment either deals new readings of Carter's opus, and contributes to modern severe debates relating gender, postmodernism and intertextual concept.
- Women, Men and Language: A Sociolinguistic Account of Gender Differences in Language
- Zeitgenössische Gesellschaftstheorien und Genderforschung: Einladung zum Dialog
- Cather, canon, and the politics of reading
- Paradoxes of Gender
- Transforming Damascus: Space and Modernity in an Islamic City
Extra info for Manhood and Morality: Sex, Violence and Ritual in Gisu Society
Sample text
One feature is an almost fatalistic acceptance of violence in the community. After a 35 THE RITUAL USE OF VIOLENCE murder a commonly voiced sentiment was not just that the killer was a bad man but that the Gisu were just bad people and what could one do? This capacity for violence is attributed to lirima. What must be stressed is that, for the Gisu, the ambivalence of lirima is a basic fact of life and regarded as inherent in the nature of men. It is central to the transformational purpose of circumcision, for this is the first time at which the boy is expected to display the emotion.
In the first place, they are undoubtedly considered to be powerful in themselves. The importance attached to the smearing rites, the magical charge of the last three days and the fact that even the bravery of the smearing elder is held to have a direct effect on the fortitude of the boy, support the idea that the smearing substances are believed to have the power to not only represent qualities but actually impart them. Second, it appears that the figurative power of the rites is to this end restricted.
In other respects, too, circumcision gives the son a formal identity with his father since it gives him full adult status, carrying with it the all-important rights to marry, to inherit land and to enjoy such other privileges of adult life as drinking beer. In the previous chapter, it was argued that the ritual can be understood to do far more than formally bequeath status. Undergoing the ordeal is regarded by the Gisu as having a basic effect on the personality and powers of the individual. The ritual thus has a definite ontological purpose; it is seen to create in the boy the capacity to experience lirima, and it is this capacity which critically marks the divide between boys and men.