Gender Studies

Gendering Place and Affect: Attachment, Disruption and Belonging

Alex Simpson

This book uses affect theory to explore how placed surroundings shape experiences of gender. Drawing on debates in sociology, geography and organization studies, it examines what it means to be ‘in’ or ‘out’ of place and analyses how gender shapes meanings, attachments and identities relating to place.

Routledge Handbook of Gender and Water Governance

Tatiana Acevedo-Guerrero, Lisa Bossenbroek, Margreet Zwarteveen, Irene Leonardelli, Seema Kulkarni

This handbook provides a comprehensive overview of the field of gender and water governance, exploring how the use, management and knowledge of water resources, services and the water environment are deeply gendered. In water there is a recognized gender gap between water responsibilities and water rights and bridging this gap is likely to help achieve not just goals of equity but also those of sustainability. Building on a rich legacy of feminist water scholarship, the Routledge Handbook of Gender and Water Governance is a collection of reflections and studies that can be used as a prismatic lens into a thriving and ever proliferating array of feminist water studies. It provides a clear testimony of how hydrofeminism has evolved from rather instrumental gender and water studies to scholarship that uses feminist tools to pry open, critically reflect on and formulate alternatives to water development-as-usual. The book also shows how the community of feminists interested in studying water has diversified and expanded, from often white female scholars studying projects and gender relations in the so-called Global South, to a varied mix of scholars and activists theorizing from diverse geographical and political locations – prominently including the body. It is organized into five interconnected Part Positionality and embodied waters Part Revisiting water diplomacy, security, justice and heritage Part Sanitation stories Part Precarious livelihoods Part New feminist futures Each of these parts brings out the gendered nature of water, shedding light on the often neglected care and unpaid labour of women and its relationship with extractivism and socioeconomic inequalities. The overall aim of the handbook is to apply social science insights to water governance challenges, creating synergies and linkages between different disciplines and scientific domains. The Routledge Handbook of Gender and Water Governance is essential reading for students, scholars and professionals interested in water governance, water security, health and sanitation, gender studies and sustainable development more broadly.

The Making of a Makbul Father: The Portraits of Fathers as Affective Negotiators in Turkey

Mürüvet Esra Yıldırım

This book draws upon qualitative interviews with lower-middle class men with adult children. It provides important insight into a region of the world that has not been sufficiently studied in the field of Masculinity Studies and analyzes manhood/fatherhood from a novel perspective. It uses Margaret Wetherell’s (2012) theory of “affective practice” to focus on moments men experience masculinity as “essence” and “free play” as formulated by Todd W. Reeser (2010). Elaborating on affective practices which stabilize and destabilize makbulhood, manhood, and fatherhood, it focuses on a long-excluded generation of men in the literature and illuminates men’s “Iamnotlikethem” and “Iamlikeallmenontheearth” moments. It is relevant to researchers in gender studies, masculinity studies, social psychology, and family sociology.

Women in Bengal

Sudarshana Sen

This book analyses the status of women in Bengal, India, by examining the versatile everyday living conditions of women, and how they are represented as individuals and as a category in the media. Contributors to the book start their discussion from the point that women in India have a varied experience of living, thinking, and acting specific to the regional cultural context. Caste ideology specified privileges and sanctions according to innate attributes, differ by sex as well as ethnicity, class, caste, minority status, and marginal position intersect lives and render unique life experiences. With a focus on women and their lived experiences, performances by them and performances imitating women’s roles, the book offers a complex and rich analysis of the reality of women’s lives based on research and reflections by 25 scholars. Organised into two sections, the book presents women in reality, their living conditions, struggles, and women as represented in films, stories, framed in plots sometimes by women and sometimes by men. The chapters provide insights on how institutionalised gender distinctions create subordination and marginality of women and their struggles to survive in a society dominated by heteropatriarchal ideology and its practice. This book improves our understanding of various dimensions of gender and transgender relations in India. It will be of interest to researchers in Gender Studies, South Asian Culture and Society, and Studies on India.