Suchergebnisse

Post-genocide politics in Rwanda aim to construct a new, modern and developed nation. Gender equality is one of the issues highlighted to this end. However, in order to defend current reforms, politicians and feminist lobbyists generally refer to women's traditional position as wives and mothers, embedded in the sacred value attributed to fertility. This article explores Rwandan dance to examine the evolution of views on feminine specificity and gender complementarity within the socio-political context of the promotion of gender equality. Through examining a government-supported youth troupe, founded by Tutsi returnee students, and contrasting it with a female drum troupe, which brings together mostly uneducated, middle-aged Rwandan-born women, the article interrogates the widely held view of a linear evolution from tradition, gender complementarity and women's subordination to modernity, gender equality and women's emancipation. Instead, it explores the degree to which divergent views on feminine difference in Rwanda foster women's empowerment.

In rural Punu society, song‐dance performances of rejoicing are deeply connected with forces of regeneration; they not only celebrate the sexual encounter but also, in their constituent dynamic, aim progressively to awaken a shared feeling of joy that leads to the intensification of the dancing and to the creation and diffusion of new songs. I seek to account for this regenerative potential by pursuing Turner's processual view of ritual performance, which acknowledges moments of structure and lack of structure. In this regard, I develop the dynamic of community‐making and creative flow in the performances with reference to Collins's reading of Durkheim's collective effervescence and Tarde's idea of imitation. As a whole, I argue that paying attention to rhythm and affect, inasmuch as they are a lived realization of structure and flow, is essential for understanding the revitalizing articulation between these terms and for following the ongoing movement of the social.

In this article I intend to examine the rising popularity of erotic dances as a leisure activity practiced in a feminist dance school situated in Brussels, and question what exactly it is these dancers are reclaiming when using a discourse about sexual liberation and empowerment. To address the complexity of gender, sexuality and performance, this study uses a queer post-structuralist analysis and an ethnographic methodology when studying erotic dances. Based on observations and in-depth interviews with students and instructors, this study argues that writing off erotic dance solely as a hype within the trend to commercialize sexuality, is ignoring the useful and subversive ways in which these erotic dancers are investigating the production of their sexed bodies to disrupt and deconstruct normative ideas about sexuality and gender.

Intensité viscérale et vitale, l'affect s'est imposé comme sujet d'étude en sciences sociales durant la dernière décennie au point de déclencher un «tournant affectif» (Clough et al. 2007). L'enjeu de ce numéro est d'explorer l'intérêt de développer cette thématique en anthropologie et le potentiel des ethnographies de l'affect ou, plus précisément comme nous le suggérons, des affects. Nous allons dans un premier temps situer l'émergence d'un intérêt en sciences sociales pour le thème de l'affect, puis, dans un deuxième temps nous esquisserons les critiques anthropologiques à l'encontre du courant affectif. Celles-ci concernent principalement la définition de l'affect en opposition au langage et à la subjectivité humaine. Sa présentation en tant que catégorie unitaire et abstraite qui minimise toute contextualisation historique et socioculturelle est aussi visée car elle ne permet pas une prise en compte de conceptualisations emic.

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