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This article unravels the process of objectification by empirically examining a social context where it occurs almost incessantly: fashion modeling. Drawing on an ethnography of fashion modeling in Amsterdam, Paris and Warsaw, I argue that objectification is neither ubiquitous nor one-dimensional: it takes place in specific social contexts and unfolds itself differently under different social conditions. Moreover, objectification is not unidirectional: it is done by and happens to both men and women. By taking an experiential perspective which involves models' subjective responses to being objectified, I call into question theoretical arguments of objectification pertaining to disempowered subjects, and the assumption that objectification is inherently negative or immoral. Instead, I argue that objectification is socially rooted in institutions and specific situations and that this matters considerably for its varying forms, levels of intensity and the emotional and practical responses it evokes in people. This does not imply that objectification is less compelling as a process, or easy to avoid. Objectification might be all the more effective exactly because the process is embedded in different social contexts, and adapts itself accordingly.

This volume focuses on the meaning and potential of archiving for enhancing gender equality and the position of women worldwide. More than just storehouses of knowledge, archives offer new ways of understanding the past, and make it possible to imagine other ways of living in the present. Focusing on both traditional and non-traditional archival practices, in various parts of the world, the Yearbook explores the meaning of archiving for women and women's history. Besides investigating the feminist potential of the archive, it also examines questions of erasure and forgetting. While archives may have emancipatory or democratizing potential, practices of discarding equally shape the histories that can be written, and the stories that can be told. This volume has been produced by the editorial board of the 'Yearbook of Women?s History' in collaboration with the 'Atria Institute on gender equality and women's history' in Amsterdam, the Netherlands