Feminist Poststructuralist Perspective Research Articles

"I Sing the Body Electric": Embodied Presence in the Community of Inquiry Framework

Even prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, more K-12 teachers in the United States were teaching online than ever before, particularly in rural and economically distressed communities (US Department of Education, 2011), and since March 2020, nearly every teacher has become, at least for a little while, a virtual teacher. The purpose of this study was to better understand the embodied experiences of women “sojourner” teachers—that is, teachers who move among online, face-to-face, and hybrid teaching spaces (Howell, 2020). Working from a feminist poststructuralist perspective, I gathered qualitative data from four sojourner teachers in the Midwestern and Mid-Atlantic United States. These data revealed participants’ complex relationships with their bodies while teaching online and how their bodies fit into their perceptions of what it means to be a good virtual teacher. I argue that the current domains of the Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework (Garrison et al., 2000) are limited and would benefit from the explicit inclusion of embodiment to facilitate discussion about the interplay of physical and intellectual labor and, potentially, the real effects embodied identities have on teachers’ experiences in virtual classrooms.

Productive and repressive power: The influence of gender norms on parents' decisions on children's consumption

AbstractThis study examines how parents exert productive and repressive power in influencing their children's gender socialization through consumption. We interviewed 20 parents responsible for educating 36 children to investigate their challenges when confronted with their children's consumption demands that deviate from gender‐appropriate norms. Under a queer feminist poststructuralist perspective, our results reveal the conflicts between parents and their children and between mothers and fathers when making consumption decisions that affect gender socialization. Our findings contribute to the consumer socialization literature by recognizing how gender norms influence parents' decisions about their children's consumption. We also shed light on the deployment of productive and repressive power tactics by parents in shaping their children's gender identity toward an “ideal” norm.

“Only What’s Right”: Normalising Children’s Gender Discourses in Kindergarten (The Case of Montenegro)

This article presents results from qualitative research on children’s dominant gender discourses in kindergarten and the influence of the socio-pedagogical aspects of kindergarten culture, transmitted via teachers’ gender discourses and personal epistemologies, on the construction of children’s gender discourses and identities. The main questions guiding our research were: What gender stories are narrated in a group, and under which influences do these stories become established as norms? Our understanding of gender is based on the feminist poststructuralist perspective. Our research in two Montenegrin kindergartens with 54 children and four teachers during a two-week period showed a dominance of the binary opposition discourse of “hegemonic masculinity” and “emphasised femininity”, with an emphasis on gender-stereotyped toys, games, role-play, and professions. Additionally, it has been found that the kindergarten culture strongly shapes and “normalises” children’s perception of “right” gender practices, by reflecting and mirroring teachers’ gender-typed expectations and a value system based on an objectivist personal epistemology that implicitly promotes “feminine” values of subordination, peace, silence and obedience. The findings suggest the need for research focusing particularly on the relationship between teachers’ epistemological theories and the dominant gender discourses in kindergarten. It is also recommended that Montenegro’s early childhood education policy and strategy documents consider and elaborate more thoroughly the concept of gender identity and gender-flexible pedagogies.

Discourses on fathers who use intimate partner violence: an example from Icelandic mass media

ABSTRACT Despite an increased interest in studying masculinity in terms of the merging experiences of fatherhood and violence, the way this subject position appears in the media is often left out of the academic debate on fatherhood and masculinity. This paper offers a contribution to extant research on fatherhood and masculinity by providing a discourse analysis of how fathers and violence are constituted in Icelandic mass media from a feminist poststructuralist perspective. Our findings indicate that ‘good and involved’ versus ‘bad and violent’ fathers are framed in the media as two fundamentally different types of fathers. This paper demonstrates the critical role mass media plays in reproducing individualized discourses about IPVAW by presenting fathers who have been violent as a certain type of ‘strange’ and ‘dangerous’ men. Through this representation of fathers who have been violent, the media fails to acknowledge gendered social norms and structures that continue to produce IPV against women and children.

Identity markers in the Internet usernames adopted by female users of a Persian public discussion forum: A sociolinguistic analysis

Abstract Drawing on the feminist poststructuralist perspective, the current study explored the usernames adopted by female users of Ninisite, that is, a Persian discussion forum, and aimed at identifying their identity markers. To this end, a corpus of 947 usernames in Ninisite was compiled. Using thematic analysis, the recurrent themes in the usernames were pinpointed, which led to the identification of six themes as identity markers, namely, gender, religion/ideology, ethnicity, occupation/profession, being humorous, and sense of uniqueness. With regard to the socioculturally unique context of Iran, a continuum of specificity versus generality can be observed in the usernames on Ninisite, with specificity emphasizing differences, sense of uniqueness, and individualization of the users, and generality highlighting neutrality, commonalities, and conventionality.

Discursive construction of the perception of gender identity: The case of tenants and owners in re-privatization/property restitution in Warsaw

The article examines how the perception of gender identities of tenants and owners was constructed in normalizing discourses regarding re-privatization/property restitution in Warsaw in 2004-2016. As a theoretical approach, it applies the feminist post-structuralist perspective developed by Sophie Watson (2000a). The data were collected with discourse analysis, as proposed by Judith Baxter (2008a). The article identifies two discourses pertaining to re-privatization/property restitution in Warsaw: 1) property restitution discourse, under which returning property to former owners (or their heirs) is presented as a moral imperative; and 2) expropriation of tenants discourse, focusing on abuse, fraud and human misfortune stemming from the passage of municipal housing stock to the descendants of former owners. In both discourses, tenants were ascribed a feminine identity, and owners a masculine one (G. Hofstede, G.J. Hofstede, 2007). That affected the tenants' and owners' positions in the housing policy process.

The Women Want The Fall of The (Gendered)Regime

The post-2011 breakdown of state media authority in Syria exposed a multilayered terrain of competing counter-discourses, in which citizen journalists were positioned as narrators of events on the ground. Conceptualized in this paper as Emerging Syrian Media (ESM), the rapid pluralization of Syria’s media landscape has irrevocably transformed how citizens engage with the discourse disseminated by the al-Assad regime. However, this phenomenon has not been examined through a gender-based approach. Employing a feminist post-structuralist perspective and utilizing subaltern counterpublic theory, this paper examines whether the opening up of a virtual space has enabled the creation of an online feminist counterpublic, through which Syrian women are able to challenge the dominant representations of gender within the Syrian state feminism discourse. A Critical Discourse Analysis of texts produced by two state-affiliated media outlets reveals the intrinsically patriarchal nature of Syrian state feminism, while a narrative analysis of seven interviews with women participating in Emerging Syrian Media explores the ways in which such a discourse is being challenged. Through their performance of ‘active narrator’ identities, production of anti-regime discourses, and participation in women’s discussion groups, all seven women expressed an ability to counter the gender discourse of the regime. The occurrence of such challenges within confined spheres of activity results in the theorizing of a specifically ‘inward-oriented’ online feminist counterpublic within the ESM online space, whereby alternative discourses on gender can be both established and enacted.

Amrita Nandy. Motherhood and Choice: Uncommon Mothers, Childfree Women

In Motherhood and Choice: Uncommon Mothers, Childless Women the author wishes to shed light on gender roles and gendered structures in ideas and practices of motherhood and (non-) mothering in (North) India across “institutions, experience and agency” through a feminist post-structuralist perspective. Struck by her own uncertainty about motherhood despite the apparent ubiquity and compulsions of pro-natalism and the naturalization of women as mothers, Amrita Nandy selected the theme for her d...

Muted resistance: The deployment of youth voice in news coverage of young women’s sexuality in Aotearoa New Zealand

Youth sexuality is typically constructed as a social problem, and associated with a range of negative consequences for larger society and for young people themselves – especially young women. The media play a role in perpetuating this dominant construction, but may also offer a space for resistance. In this article, mainstream news media reportage on youth sexual and reproductive issues in Aotearoa (New Zealand) is discursively analysed to identify instances of resistance to oppressive discourses. Taking a feminist poststructuralist perspective, the aim is to connect news reporting, as a representational practice, with broader relations of power. The focus of the analysis, therefore, is on whether and how young people are allowed a voice in news reportage, and to what effect their voices are deployed. The analysis demonstrates not only that youth voice is relatively muted in comparison to experts, but also that it is frequently used to reinforce the dominant constructions of youth sexuality (as problematic and risky). Yet, instances of resistance are also evident. These are assessed in relation to their impact on gender power relations, and possibilities for amplifying resistance are discussed.

A feminist poststructuralist critique of talent management: Toward a more gender sensitive body of knowledge

The field of talent management (TM) has grown over the last two decades, and much theoretical and methodological progress has been made in an effort to better conceptualize the field. Despite these efforts, the construction of knowledge within TM research has ignored power and gender dynamics. In this paper, we adopt a feminist poststructuralist perspective and unveil how talent management theory is underpinned by predominant masculinist discourses that create and sustain business elites in a neoliberal world order. Based on a textual and discourse analysis of foundational texts on TM, we identify the power effects of language in shaping current TM theory. This study raises questions concerning the epistemological foundations of talent management as objective, neutral, and observable. We suggest that future researchers adopt critical methods of inquiry to ensure that gender and equity issues are interrogated within dominant talent management writings.

Talent Management: A Feminist Post-Structuralist Perspective

Talent Management as a field has been growing over the last couple of decades and much theoretical and methodological progress has been made in an effort to better conceptualize TM. Despite these e...

Tomorrow’s dance and health partnership: the need for a holistic view

ABSTRACTDifferent types of dance initiatives are being designed for people across their entire lifespan, and implemented in a wide range of health and well-being settings. The aims of these initiatives are to improve their physical and mental conditions. Research on the use of dance for health and well-being is also rapidly gaining momentum which suggests a need to value and assess the process (the dance intervention) as much as the product (the results of the research). In this position paper, I critically examine some of these issues from my own research experiences anchored in a feminist poststructuralist perspective. Using the apparently simplistic WH questions (what, where, who, when, whose) and examples from my own research, I present an overview of the field and propose some directions to take for the future. Despite the fact that the paper is anchored in the Canadian society, I believe it can find resonance in many different other cultures since the questions being asked are generic and therefore invite for contextual answers.

“I can be your Tinder nightmare”: Harassment and misogyny in the online sexual marketplace

On Instagram, the accounts Bye Felipe and Tinder Nightmares feature screen-grabbed messages of sexist abuse and harassment women have received from men on dating apps. This paper presents a discursive analysis of 526 posts from these Instagrams. Utilising a psychosocial and feminist poststructuralist perspective, it examines how harassing messages reproduce certain gendered discourses and (hetero)sexual scripts, and analyses how harassers attempt to position themselves and the feminine subject in interaction. The analysis presents two themes, termed the “not hot enough” discourse and the “missing discourse of consent”, which are unpacked to reveal a patriarchal logic in which a woman's constructed “worth” in the online sexual marketplace resides in her beauty and sexual propriety. Occurring in response to women's exercise of choice and to (real or imagined) sexual rejection, it is argued these are disciplinary discourses that attempt to (re)position women and femininity as sexually subordinate to masculinity and men. This paper makes a novel contribution to a growing body of feminist work on online harassment and misogyny. It also considers the implications for feminist theorising on the link between postfeminism and contemporary forms of sexism, and ends with some reflections on strategies of feminist resistance.

‘If you look at me like at a piece of meat, then that’s a problem’ – women in the center of the male gaze. Feminist Poststructuralist Discourse Analysis as a tool of critique

ABSTRACTThis article proposes a discursive approach to beauty, which it illustrates with a close data analysis of women's relationship with the ‘male gaze’. In gender and feminist studies, the male gaze is invoked with reference to the patriarchal surveillance of women's bodies. The article complements studies that approach the surveillance as a socio-cultural phenomenon by investigating it as a discursive accomplishment of a social relation and identification. Taking a Feminist Poststructuralist Discourse Analysis approach to the matter (and combining it with a discursive psychological perspective), this article focuses on the complexities and ambiguities underwriting individuals’ personalized ways of dealing with being looked at. Women's positioning to the male gaze by means of culturally available discourses is found to reveal ambiguous sites of agency and submission within its scope. Examining them, the article addresses the importance of combining a feminist poststructuralist perspective on the relations of gender with women's lived understandings of being implicated in them. (How) can lived and academic sensibilities be set side by side in gender research? Is there a methodology of discourse analysis that facilitates this?

‘(Dis)empowered by what we see … ’: exploring the use of video-stimulated reflection in physical education pedagogy and practice

ABSTRACTReflexive accounts of physical education (PE) pedagogy and practice offer potential to reveal much about the intended and unintended learning, for both students and teachers, that can result from certain pedagogic encounters. Despite the promotion of reflective practice/s as a possible ‘panacea’ for improved teaching and learning, there is widespread concern that such approaches have relatively little influence in ‘shaking or stirring’ the deep-seated notions of effective pedagogy that are held by many physical educators [Mordal-Moen, K., & Green, K. (2014). Neither shaking nor stirring: A case study of reflexivity in Norwegian PE teacher education. Sport, Education and Society, 19(4), 415–434]. Inherent here are concerns that an increase in critical awareness alone does not necessarily lead to pedagogic translation [Hickey, C. (2001). “I feel enlightened now, but … ”: The limits to the pedagogic translation of critical social discourses in PE. Journal of Teaching in Physical Education, 20(3), 227–246]. Against that backdrop, we continue to support the use of reflective practice techniques as tools through which to interrogate the socio-cultural conditions and power relations that install enduring notions of effective pedagogy and dominant professional identities [Coia, L., & Taylor, M. (2017). Let’s stay in the swamp: Poststructural feminist reflective practice. In R. Brandenburg, K. Glasswell, M. Jones, & J. Ryan (Eds.), Reflective theory and practice in teacher education (pp. 49–62). Singapore: Springer Singapore]. In this paper, we explore PE pedagogy and practice through reflective practice with two female teachers in all-boys’ schools. Specifically, we critique the use of video-stimulated reflections from a feminist poststructuralist perspective to make visible the possibilities, challenges and tensions inherent in this methodological approach.

Healthy habits are no fun: How Dutch youth negotiate discourses about food, fit, fat, and fun.

In this article, we use the notion of "biopedagogical practices" to explore how Dutch youth respond to health messages that focus on body weight. Previous studies suggest that such health messages encourage body dissatisfaction in youth. Few studies, however, focus on the local/cultural specificity of youth's responses to these biopedagogical practices. In this article, we address questions about the re-interpretation of and resistance to health messages that Dutch youth engage in and how these can be understood in their local context. The data were drawn from two previously conducted studies in which a total of 64 Dutch teenagers (aged 12-18 years) took part. We employed a variety of qualitative data collection methods and a feminist poststructuralist perspective to analyze how Dutch youth negotiate biopedagogical practices about health. The results show that our participants constructed health in terms of appearance and reproduced negative constructions regarding fat embodiment. Yet they also often circumvented "healthy" lifestyle behaviors prescribed by biopedagogies of health. They did so first by avoiding physical activities because they were afraid of displaying fat embodiment in the settings of sport and physical education where surveillance is omnipresent. Second, they disregarded advice about healthy eating by drawing on having fun as an alternative discursive resource. We argue that having fun is both part of youth culture and characteristic of the discourse about sociability ( gezelligheid) that is a central element of Dutch culture.

Re-conceptualizing women’s marginalization in heavy metal: A feminist post-structuralist perspective

Abstract The continuing expansion of the field of metal music studies has evoked an increased interest from scholars to critically explore women’s participation within heavy metal, along with other axes of identity, from a variety of theoretical perspectives and methodological approaches. Since Weinstein’s ([1991] 2000) canonical sociological study of heavy metal the notion that heavy metal is masculinist remains theoretically pervasive in gendered analyzes of heavy metal and its practices. The upcoming special issue ‘Metal and Marginalization’ signals the ‘disruptive return of the excluded’ (Butler 2004) whereby concepts of marginalization, inclusivity and agency are called into question. Drawing upon my own doctoral research, this article deconstructs the synonymous and obstructive relationship heavy metal has with masculinity by focusing on women’s embodied practices. Influenced by Butler’s (1990) theory of performativity and poststructural notions of ‘equality’ and ‘inclusivity’ (Butler et al. 1997; Scott 1988), I discuss how heavy metal scenes should be considered spaces of equality and potentiality as they permit different performativities and understandings; thus, creating real pathways for doing metal fandom differently.

‘It's actually very normal that I'm different’. How physically disabled youth discursively construct and position their body/self

In this paper, we explore how physically disabled youth who participate in mainstream education discursively construct and position themselves in relation to dominant discourses about sport and physicality that mark their bodies as ‘abnormal’ and ‘deviant’. We employ a feminist poststructuralist perspective to analyze the narratives about sport, physical education (PE), the body and self of four physically disabled Dutch youngsters. Our results indicate that although dominant societal discourses about sport and physicality construct disabled bodies as deviant, vulnerable and lacking and the disabled as ‘abnormal’, these youth constructed the self as ‘normal’. However, they did so in different ways. One of the interviewees used the alternative discourse ‘everyone is different, everyone is normal’ to position her disabled self as different and normal simultaneously. Hereby she resisted dominant notions about the abled body embedded in discourses about sport and physicality. This act of resistance enabled her to accept her disability as part of her self. Others normalized their disabled bodies by attempting to pass as able-bodied. They tried to minimize and/or hide their disability and in this manner reproduced ableist discourses about sport and physicality. Our interviewees also engaged in various performative acts of resistance. They challenged these dominant discourses by strategically using the possibilities a different/disabled self provided them. Overall the data indicate the important role that visible signifiers of disability played in the exclusionary practices that these disabled youth encountered and the subject positions they could claim. Since alternative constructions and positionings regarding the abled/normal body suggest ways in which the dominance of ableism may be disrupted, we conclude with an emphasis on the need for future research that explores such alternatives.

Curb Your Enthusiasm: A Case of Young Malaysian Women’s Emotional Embodiment

The purpose of this research was to explore, from a cultural psychological perspective, how young Islamic women experience themselves being physically active in the Islamic State of Malaysia. Open-ended, in-depth interviews were conducted with five Muslim women (aged 20-21) who actively participate in sports and physical activities of their choice. Drawing on a feminist poststructuralist perspective, young women’s narratives were examined as cultural manifestations of gender control in the context of sport and exercise through discourse analysis. One narrative explicitly revealed the workings of power in emotion regulation and restriction while other narratives highlighted power mechanisms operating through other forms of emotional constitution of the young female body. This paper is an attempt to (re)construct the compelling case of a culturally constituted expression of joy and enjoyment in the exercise setting. The key findings are discussed in relation to panoptical power exercised through the socio-cultural medium of the Islamic state.

Community home-based care – a cost-effective model of care: who benefits?

Statistics indicate that the HIV and AIDS pandemic is rampant in the province of KwaZulu-Natal (KZN). Increasingly, people with HIV and AIDS rely on voluntary community home-based caregivers for care and support. Drawing on original research conducted in 2005 and a subsequent study in 2009, this article presents the socio-economic context of care and women's perspectives on care giving. The study was conducted in three different communities in KZN. The feminist post-structuralist perspective provided the theoretical framework. Data collection methods included in-depth semi-structured interviews, observations and documentary review. The data were analysed using the grounded theory approach. The study revealed that it is poor, black, unemployed Zulu women who provide community home-based care (CHBC) in the province. The findings further suggested that the CHBC programme overlooks the realities of women, who operate in a context of poverty and unemployment. It is therefore argued that while the National HIV and AIDS Strategic Plan 2007–2011 has made progressive strides, implementation of the set targets remains a formidable challenge. In practice, the Plan remains gender-blind to poor women's social, political and economic imperatives. The article proposes a model of care that takes into cognisance the interests of women caregivers.