Changing genders in intercultural perspectives

In Anthropology the catchall concepts of gender sex male female catch both too much and too little. In contrast this collection explores the shifting difference... » 

In Anthropology the catchall concepts of gender sex male female catch both too much and too little. In contrast this collection explores the shifting differences within them as well as the mutable differences between. Drawing on extensive fieldwork these essays develop contextual and strategic analyses of the way sexgender constellations can be configured as political identities as a resource or in response to unforeseen contingencies. These constellations of sexgender can be used instrumentally by colonial neocolonial or patriarchal regimes by global communications networks and by local moralities they can govern blinkered research strategies gender neutrality objective discourse they can be ambivalent mediators in bridewealth negotiations as a strategy for immigrant success or they may constitute a subversive counterstrategy as with the appropriation of the lsquotwospiritrsquo notion. These examples show that there is nothing useful to be said about gender sex male female outside the concrete specificity of the relations in which they are defined produced and reproduced.Drawing on recent theorising in Anthropology and Gender Studies this collection addresses a unique and vitally challenging set of issues exploring both new kinds of gender configurations as well as their changing circumstances. «