In this pathbreaking book, a well-known feminist and sociologist--who is also the Founding Editor of Gender & Society--challenges our most basic assumptions about gender. Judith Lorber views gender as wholly a product of socialization subject to human agency, organization, and interpretation. In her new paradigm, gender is an institution comparable to the economy, the family, and religion in its significance and consequences. Drawing on many schools of feminist scholarship and on research from anthropology, history, sociology, social psychology, sociolinguistics, and cultural studies, Lorber explores different paradoxes of gender: --why we speak of only two "opposite sexes" when there is such a variety of sexual behaviors and relationships; --why transvestites, transsexuals, and hermaphrodites do not affect the conceptualization of two genders and two sexes in Western societies; --why most of our cultural images of women are the way men see them and not the way women see themselves; --why all women in modern society are expected to have children and be the primary caretaker; --why domestic work is almost always the sole responsibility of wives, even when they earn more than half the family income; --why there are so few women in positions of authority, when women can be found in substantial numbers in many occupations and professions; --why women have not benefited from major social revolutions. Lorber argues that the whole point of the gender system today is to maintain structured gender inequality--to produce a subordinate class (women) that can be exploited as workers, sexual partners, childbearers, and emotional nurturers. Calling into question the inevitability and necessity of gender, she envisions a society structured for equality, where no gender, racial ethnic, or social class group is allowed to monopolize economic, educational, and cultural resources or the positions of power.

Key Directions in Legal Education identifies and explores key contemporary and emerging themes that are significant and heavily debated within legal education from both UK and international perspectives. It provides a rich comparative dialogue and insights into the current and future directions of legal education. The book discusses in detail topics including the pressures on law schools exerted by external stakeholders, the fostering of interdisciplinary approaches and collaboration within legal education and the evolution of discourses around teaching and learning legal skills. It elaborates on the continuing development of clinical legal education as a component of the law degree and the emergence and use of innovative technologies within law teaching. The approach of pairing UK and international authors to obtain comparative insights and analysis on a range of key themes is original and provides both a genuine comparative dialogue and a clear international focus. This book will be of great interest for researchers, academics and post-graduate students in the field of law and legal pedagogy.

Masculinity without men. In Female Masculinity Judith Halberstam takes aim at the protected status of male masculinity and shows that female masculinity has offered a distinct alternative to it for well over two hundred years. Providing the first full-length study on this subject, Halberstam catalogs the diversity of gender expressions among masculine women from nineteenth-century pre-lesbian practices to contemporary drag king performances. Through detailed textual readings as well as empirical research, Halberstam uncovers a hidden history of female masculinities while arguing for a more nuanced understanding of gender categories that would incorporate rather than pathologize them. She rereads Anne Lister's diaries and Radclyffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness as foundational assertions of female masculine identity. She considers the enigma of the stone butch and the politics surrounding butch/femme roles within lesbian communities. She also explores issues of transsexuality among "transgender dykes"--lesbians who pass as men--and female-to-male transsexuals who may find the label of "lesbian" a temporary refuge. Halberstam also tackles such topics as women and boxing, butches in Hollywood and independent cinema, and the phenomenon of male impersonators. Female Masculinity signals a new understanding of masculine behaviors and identities, and a new direction in interdisciplinary queer scholarship. Illustrated with nearly forty photographs, including portraits, film stills, and drag king performance shots, this book provides an extensive record of the wide range of female masculinities. And as Halberstam clearly demonstrates, female masculinity is not some bad imitation of virility, but a lively and dramatic staging of hybrid and minority genders.

In this fifth edition of A Cognitive Psychology of Mass Communication, author Richard Jackson Harris continues his examination of how our experiences with media affect the way we acquire knowledge about the world, and how this knowledge influences our attitudes and behavior. Presenting theories from psychology and communication along with reviews of the corresponding research, this text covers a wide variety of media and media issues, ranging from the commonly discussed topics – sex, violence, advertising – to lesser-studied topics, such as values, sports, and entertainment education. The fifth and fully updated edition offers: highly accessible and engaging writing contemporary references to all types of media familiar to students substantial discussion of theories and research, including interpretations of original research studies a balanced approach to covering the breadth and depth of the subject discussion of work from both psychology and media disciplines. The text is appropriate for Media Effects, Media & Society, and Psychology of Mass Media coursework, as it examines the effects of mass media on human cognitions, attitudes, and behaviors through empirical social science research; teaches students how to examine and evaluate mediated messages; and includes mass communication research, theory and analysis.

Historicism is the essential introduction to the field, providing its readers with the necessary knowledge, background and vocabulary to apply it in their own studies. Paul Hamilton's compact and comprehensive guide: * explains the theory and basics of historicism * presents a history of the term and its uses * introduces the reader to the key thinkers in the field, from ancient Greece to modern times * considers historicism in contemporary debates and its relevance to other modes of criticism, such as feminism and post-colonialism * contains an extensive bibliography of further reading.

Bringing together several well-known scholars, this volume offers an assessment of the consequences of social movements in Western countries. Policy, institutional, cultural, short- and long-term, and intended and unintended outcomes are among the types of consequences the authors consider in depth. They also compare political outcomes of several contemporary movements -- specifically, women's, peace, ecology, and extreme right-wing movements -- in different countries. Book jacket.

This book questions the sociocultural dimensions of remembering. It offers an overview of the history and theory of memory studies through the lens of sociology, political science, anthropology, psychology, literature, art and media studies; documenting current international and interdisciplinary memory research in an unprecedented way.