Femininities And Masculinities In The Digital Age

This book provides a fresh overview on the debate about the remarkable regression of gender equality in the Balkans and South Caucasus caused by the fall of socialism and by the revitalization of religion in Turkey. Contrary to the prevailing opinion of researchers who state continuous male domination, the book presents strong arguments for an alternative outlook. By contrasting the realia of gender relations with the utopia of new femininities and new masculinities driven by digital visual communication, the book provokingly concludes with the arrival of two utopias: the Marlboro Man – still authoritative but lonely – conquering and refusing family obligations; and with the emergence of a new femininity type – strong and beautiful. As such this book provides a great resource to anthropologists, demographers, sociologists, gender and media researchers and all those interested in feminist issues.

This book provides a fresh overview on the debate about the remarkable regression of gender equality in the Balkans and South Caucasus caused by the fall of socialism and by the revitalization of religion in Turkey. Contrary to the prevailing opinion of researchers who state continuous male domination, the book presents strong arguments for an alternative outlook. By contrasting the realia of gender relations with the utopia of new femininities and new masculinities driven by digital visual communication, the book provokingly concludes with the arrival of two utopias: the Marlboro Man - still authoritative but lonely - conquering and refusing family obligations; and with the emergence of a new femininity type - strong and beautiful. As such this book provides a great resource to anthropologists, demographers, sociologists, gender and media researchers and all those interested in feminist issues.

Digital Femininities: The Gendered Construction of Cultural and Political Identities Online examines the role of new media technologies in the production of girls’ cultural and political identities. The book argues that the varied and complex spaces which make up our ‘social media’ should be conceptualised as important terrains upon which neoliberal and postfeminist subjectivities can be both reproduced and subverted. In doing so, the book explores many key issues underpinning current debates around gender politics and digital media, including gendered spatial politics, visibility, surveillance and regulation, beauty politics, and civic and political engagement and activism. Over the last decade, the position of girls and young women within the digital landscape of social media has been a topic of much debate. On the one hand, girls’ social media practices are presented as a key site of concern, wherein new digital technologies are said to have produced an intensification of individualised, neoliberal and postfeminist identities. Conversely, others have championed access to social media for young people as a potentially useful political tool, enabling previously marginalised political subjects (such as girls) to access and participate within new and exciting political cultures. Locating itself at the intersection of these two approaches, this book offers a fresh contribution to these debates. Based upon the findings from focus groups with girls and young women aged between 12 and 18 in England, the book offers an in-depth analysis of the digital cultures that emerged from the study. This timely book will be essential reading for anyone interested in contemporary femininity and feminism and the role of digital media in the production of cultural, political and gendered identities.

Analyzes the interrelations of gender and technology. The contributors explore the complex territory between the lust for technology and the fear of technology and asks the question, who actually benefits from technology?

This book provides a unique analysis of the intersection between gender, sexuality, race, and social media. While early scholarship identified the internet as being inherently egalitarian, this volume presents the internet as a “real” social place where inequalities matter and manifest in particular ways according to the architectures of particular platforms. This volume utilizes innovative methodologies to analyze how internet users both re-inscribe and resist inequalities of gender, sexuality, and race. It describes how the internet has ameliorated and bridged geographic and numerical limits on community formation, and this volume examines how the functioning of social inequalities differs on- and offline.

Social media has helped boost the culture of intoxication, a central aspect of young people’s social lives in many Western countries. Initial research suggests that these technologies enable highly-nuanced, targeted marketing and innovations – creating new virtual spaces that alter the dynamics and consequences of drinking cultures in significant ways. Youth Drinking Cultures in a Digital World focuses on how pervasive social networking technologies contribute to drinking cultures. It brings together international contributions from leading researchers in this emerging field to explore how new technologies are reconfiguring the key themes, traditional interests, practices and concerns of alcohol-related research with young people. It is particularly concerned with three important areas, namely: identities, social relations and power alcohol marketing and commercialisation public health and regulating alcohol promotion. This innovative book includes original research and commentary and is a must-read for academics and researchers in the areas of public health, psychology, sociology, media studies, youth studies and alcohol studies.

Thoughtful, witty, and illuminating, in this book Michele White explores the ways normative masculinity is associated with computers and the Internet and is a commonly enacted online gender practice. Through close readings and a series of case studies that range from wedding forums to men's makeup video tutorials, White considers the ways masculinities are structured through people's collaborations and contestations over the establishment of empowered positions, including debates about such key terms and positions as "the nice guy," "nerd," "bro," and "groom." She asserts that cultural notions of masculinity are reliant on figurations of women and femininity, and explores cultural conceptions of masculinity and the association of normative white heterosexual masculinity with men and women. A counterpart to her earlier book, Producing Women, White has crafted an excellent primer for scholars of gender, media, and Internet studies.

Taking a non-essentialist approach, this book provides a number of compelling and fascinating accounts of how gender intersects with nationality, ethnicity, economy, age, sexuality and class. The identity processes discussed richly illustrate the complexity, constructedness and contestability of gender.