Gender and Sexuality in Ghanaian Societies explores cultural dynamics embedded in the interstices of agency, vulnerability, and power within patriarchal structures that seek to regulate the sexual lives of women in Ghana. Emphasizing the centrality of gender as a motive force for sexual expression, the book stresses that contemporary Ghanaian women's sexual expressions are caught at the intersection of traditional gender expectations of heteronormativity and women’s perceptions of how heteronormativity should operate in their lives. The book's emphasis on women's agency is significant because it highlights a flaw in earlier, Western accounts of African women's lives under Africa's special brand of patriarchy that held women in total subjection to men. Gender and Sexuality debunks that trope and presents Ghanaian women's dynamism, resilience, and vulnerabilities embedded in the diverse cultures in which they live.

In Gender and Sexuality in Kenyan Societies: Centering the Human and the Humane in Critical Studies, edited by Besi Brillian Muhonja and Babacar M’Baye, contributors explore the application of ubuntu/utu responsive perspectives and methods to critical studies. Through the lens of ubuntu/utu, the contributors to this Kenya-focused volume draw from the diverse fields of postcolonial studies, literary studies, history, anthropology, sociology, political science, environmental studies, media studies, and development studies, among others, to demonstrate the urgency and necessity of humane scholarship/research in gender and queer studies. By centering decolonial approaches and the human and humane, concentrating on subjects and identities that have been largely neglected in national and scholarly debates, the chapters are subversive, complex, and inclusive. They advance within Kenyan studies themes and elements of alternative, non-binary, variant, and non-heteronormative gender identities, sexualities, and voices, as well as approaches to doing knowledge. Underscoring the timeliness of such a text is evidence rendered in sections of the collection highlighting the significance of ubuntu/utu-centric scholarship. Challenging the erasure of the human in academic works, the chapters in this volume look inward and locate the voices and experiences of Kenyan peoples as the pivotal locus of analysis and epistemological derivation.

Since the turn of the millennium, in Ghana and in other African countries, there has been a vociferous debate over the history and present condition of the family. The debate has largely fragmented the Ghanaian constituency into two nearly intransigent camps: those who think the indigenous family system should experience cultural osmosis to accommodate the seismic Western cultural revolutions and the overwhelming religious constituency who advocate the retention of conservative family system. This book is a contribution to the debate. Written by an African Studies academic, it seeks to use the resources of both the social sciences and religion to assess the merits of the various parties to the debate. The author believes in the legitimacy of the traditional family system as conditio sine qua non for preserving human civilization. Nevertheless, the goal of this book is not to further polarize the Ghanaian front, but build bridges, by inviting the various parties to the debate to walk the complex pathways of exercising compassion without compromising the values that support human flourishing. Charles Prempeh is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Cultural and African Studies, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi-Ghana.

This book provides a timely contribution to the field of gender and development in the face of the looming failure of international development targets, the deepening HIV/AIDS pandemic and the increased incidence of civil conflict in Sub-Saharan Africa.

This state-of-the-art Research Handbook provides a challenging and critical examination of the complex issues surrounding sports in contemporary societies. Featuring contributions from world-leading scholars, it focuses upon the impact of their research, together with significant social issues and controversies in sport.

--A completely updated one-volume edition of the 4-volume International Encyclopedia of Sexuality--Includes nearly 60 countries and places--12 not previously covered--by more than 200 authorities--It is the only reference work of its kind in any language

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Integrating interdisciplinary and cross-cultural analysis, this volume advances our understanding of sexual violence in intimacy through the development of more nuanced and evidence-based conceptual frameworks. Sexual violence in intimacy is a global pandemic that causes individual physical and emotional harm as well as wider social suffering. It is also legal and culturally condoned in much of the world. Bringing together international and interdisciplinary research, the book explores marital rape as individual suffering that is best understood in cultural and institutional context. Gendered narratives and large-scale surveys from India, Ghana and Africa Diasporas, Pacific Islands, Denmark, New Zealand, the United States, and beyond illuminate cross-cultural differences and commonalities. Methodological debates concerning etic and emic approaches and de-colonial challenges are addressed. Finally, a range of policy and intervention approaches—including art, state rhetoric, health care, and criminal justice—are explored. This book provides much needed scholarship to guide policymakers, practitioners, and activists as well as for researchers studying gender-based violence, marriage, and kinship, and the legal and public health concerns of women globally. It will be relevant for upper-level students and scholars in anthropology, sociology, psychology, women’s studies, social work and public and global health.

Since the 1950s when most African countries gained political independence, schooling has presented very difficult challenges. In the discussion of these challenges, however, the issue of diversity has received relatively little attention. Schooling and Difference in Africa aims to understand how differences such as ethnicity, class, gender, language, religion, and disability play out in African schools systems, and more specifically in Ghana. Together, George J. Sefa Dei, Alireza Asgharzadeh, Sharon Eblaghie Bahador, and Riyad Ahmed Shahjahan promote 'educational inclusion' in the context of African schooling. The aspects of diversity explored in this study include: minority / majority relations, race, ethnicity, gender, language, class, religion, and physical (dis)ability. The authors build their analyses of these issues around a series of interviews, which project a perspective that policy makers and administrators rarely seek out. By studying the challenges of inclusive education in Ghana and, further, by making comparisons with the Canadian context, this volume seeks to shed light on the ongoing struggle for an empowering school system in Africa and elsewhere.

This Handbook brings together a groundbreaking collection of chapters that uses a gender lens to explore health, health care and health policy in both the Global South and North. Empirical evidence is drawn from a variety of different settings and points to the many ways in which the gendered dimensions of health have become reworked across the globe. This collection includes insightful contributions from 56 leading authorities from Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East, offering a wealth of knowledge, theoretical reflection, and empirical detail on the essential elements surrounding gender and health. Topics covered include theoretical approaches to understanding gender and health, migration, sexuality, ageing, masculinities, climate change and sexual and reproductive rights. Split into four thematic sections, this book strives to develop a clear road map towards achieving gender justice in health. The Handbook on Gender and Healthwill be an important resource for researchers, students, and instructors of health policy and family and gender studies. Contributors include:G. Alvarez Minte, E. Ansoleaga Moreno, L. Artazcoz, A.-E. Birn, R.A. Burgess, A. Coates, I. Cortès-Franch, S. Del Pino, K. Devries, X. Díaz Berr, L. Doyal, K. Elzein, V. Escribà-Agüir, B. Eveslage, C. Ewig, J. Gideon, J. Gonçalves Martín, B. Gough, H. Grundlingh, M. Gutmann, R.R. Habib, M.C. Inhorn, D. Johnston, D.M. Kamuya, L. Knight, M. Koivusalo, R. Kumar, M. Leite, J. Lyra, E. MacPherson, A.M. Cardarelli, P. McDonough, B. Medrado, L.M. Morgan, S.F. Murray, J. Namakula, L. Núñez Carrasco, S. Payne, E. Richards, N. Richardson, M. Richter, S. Robertson, M. Robinson, J. Samuel, S. Sexton, J.A. Smith, S. Smith, D.L. Spitzer, S.N. Ssali, S. Theobald, R. Tolhurst, J. Vearey, P. Vero-Sanso, S. Witter, N. Younes, F. Zalwango