Theorising Cultures Of Equality

This book sets out a theoretical framework for thinking about equality as a cultural artefact and process, drawing on work from the GRACE (Gender and Cultures of Equality in Europe) project. In revisiting and reframing conventional questions about in/equality it considers the processes through which in/equalities have come to be regarded as issues of public concern, the various ways that equalities have been historically defined, and how those ideas and imaginings of equalities are produced, embodied, objectified, recognized and contested in and through a variety of cultural practices and sites. Bringing together an international and interdisciplinary group of contributors, the book will be of interest to scholars from across the humanities and social sciences, including anthropology, sociology, and women’s and gender studies.

This book examines the enactment of gendered in/equalities across diverse Cultural forms, turning to the insights produced through the specific modes of onto-epistemological enquiry of embodied performance. It builds on work from the GRACE (Gender and Cultures of Equality in Europe) project and offers both theoretical and methodological analyses of an array of activities and artworks. The performative manifestations discussed include theatre, installations, social movements, mega-events, documentaries, and literary texts from multiple geopolitical locales. Engaging with the key concepts of re-enactment and relationality, the contributions explore the ways in which in/equalities are relationally re-produced in and through individual and collective bodies. This multi- and trans-disciplinary collection of essays creates fruitful dialogues within and beyond Performance Studies, sitting at the crossroads of ethnography, event studies, social movements, visual studies, critical discourse analysis, and contemporary approaches to textualities emerging from post-colonial and feminist studies.

This volume explores the processes of investigating cultures of equality and sets out an epistemological framework for generating a more just and response-able knowledge. It offers a tapestry of inventive, self-reflexive, collective, and situated praxis of conducting politically informed research. Such efforts contest—or occasionally reinvent—the social and cultural worlds that we currently inhabit, in an attempt at building cultures of equality across different locations and contexts. The book engages with the idea of producing knowledge with others, indicating the political potential of scientific practice and offering a view of knowledge as a collective affective-intellectual effort. It provides an inventory of creative engagements with concepts and methodologies enabling production of socially responsible knowledges. By critically exploring new possibilities of scientific inquiry, the contributors reflect on how knowledge can be generated to serve the political agenda of movements for equality and social justice. The chapters also elucidate different conceptualisations of and approaches to who the researcher is and how they interact with cultural and social worlds.

Groundbreaking theoretical and legal approaches to resolving conflicts between gender equality and cultural practices

After the multidimensional financial crisis of 2008, the member states of the Eurozone imposed a set of economic policies to save their economies. Socially unpopular cuts contributed to the occurrence of violent movements that both opposed austerity policies and created animosity towards the politicians who implemented them. Combining qualitative and quantitative comparative analyses from anti-austerity movements in 14 Eurozone states from 2007 to 2015, Joanna Rak develops an original typology of patterns of a culture of political violence to explain why some anti-austerity movements turned to violence and others did not, despite having shared goals and political values. She uncovers the very nature of the differences and similarities between cultures of political violence, identifies their sources, and determines their differing results. Simultaneously, she opens a discussion on the exploratory and explanatory utility of the category of a culture of political violence in the Social Sciences. Theorizing Cultures of Political Violence in Times of Austerity casts new light on the scholarly debate on cultures of political violence and anti-austerity violent behavior, making it a compelling read for scholars of political sociology, political behavior, comparative politics, European politics, and sociology.

The Routledge Handbook of Feminist Bioethics is an outstanding resource for anyone with an interest in feminist bioethics, with chapters covering topics from justice and power to the climate crisis. Comprising forty-two chapters by emerging and established scholars, the volume is divided into six parts: I Foundations of feminist bioethics II Identity and identifications III Science, technology and research IV Health and social care V Reproduction and making families VI Widening the scope of feminist bioethics The volume is essential reading for anyone with an interest in bioethics or feminist philosophy, and will prove an invaluable resource for scholars, teachers and advanced students Chapters 2, 22, and 30 of this book will soon be freely available as downloadable Open Access PDFs under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license at www.taylorfrancis.com

Reproductive healthcare is choreographically delivered—an intricate collection of seemingly disparate but deftly balanced elements all come together in a complex dance. It is choreographed in ways that presume that the person accessing it—the dancer-patient—will be, among other things, cisgender. As a result, trans people are altogether erased, systematically unanticipated, insufficiently accommodated, or understood only in relation to hegemonic, regulatory frameworks. Trans People and the Choreography of Reproductive Healthcare: Dancing Outside the Lines draws on data from a research study involving qualitative interviews and participatory photography with fourteen trans people from British Columbia, Canada. It uses dance as a metaphor to expose facets of the restrictive choreography of reproductive healthcare, and to document the improvisational tactics used by trans people in their pursuit of care that is competent, safe, and affirming.

Addresses one of the central crises in critical theory today: how to theorise the subject as both a construct of oppressive discourse and a dialogical agent.