Gender performativity, its variances depending on their historical, social and cultural contexts, and the rituals, representations and institutions involved in gender performances are some of the issues the authors addressed in this collection. Gender under Construction takes a non-essentialist view of gender and provides illustrative examples of gender constructive processes by pursuing them in various contexts and by means of diverse methodologies. In so doing, the book demonstrates that it is unfeasible to consider gender as a fixed biological trait. Instead, the authors propose to look at gender performance as ongoing processes in which femininities and masculinities enter multiple and dynamic intersections with a myriad of categories, including those of nationality, ethnicity, class, sexuality and age. Contributors are Iqbal Akthar, Renata Ćuk, Ewa Glapka, Deirdre Hynes, Borja Ibaseta, Martin King, Ana Cristina Moreira Lima, Mervi Patosalmi, Marcia Bastos de Sá, Andréa Costa da Silva, Vera Helena Ferraz de Siqueira, Christi van der Westhuizen and Isabelle V. Zinn.

Despite various decades of research and claim-making by feminist scholars and movements, gender remains an overlooked area in development studies. Looking at key issues in development studies through the prisms of gender and feminism, the authors demonstrate that gender is an indispensable tool for social change.

Growing numbers of young adults are either nonreligious or "spiritual but not religious," but this does not signal a lack of interest in religion and meaning-making. Though the lexicon describing sexuality and gender is quickly evolving, young people do not yet have satisfactory language to describe their fluid religious and spiritual identities. In Identities Under Construction Pamela Dickey Young and Heather Shipley undertake a focused study of youth sexual, religious, and gender identity construction. Drawing from survey responses and interviews with nearly five hundred participants, they reveal that youth today consider their identities fluid and open to change. Young people do not limit themselves to singular identity categories, experiencing the choice of one religion, of maleness or femaleness, or of a fixed sexuality as confining. Although they recognize various forces at work in identity construction - parents, peers, the internet - they regard themselves as the authors of their own identities. For most of the young adults in the study, even those who are most traditionally religious, religious opinions and values should adapt to changing social mores to ensure that people are not judged for their sexual choices or identities. Further, they are not judgmental of others' choices, even if they would not make these choices for themselves. Engaging religion and sexuality studies in new ways, Identities Under Construction calls for a new grammar of religion that better captures lived realities at a time when religious choice has broadened beyond choosing a single organized religious tradition.

Since the late 1960s, the lives of south Koreans have been reconstructed on the shifting ground of urbanization, industrialization, military authoritarianism, democratic reform, and social liberalization. Class and gender identities have been modified in relation to a changing modernity and new definitions of home and family, work and leisure, husband and wife. Under Construction provides an illuminating portrait of south Koreans in the 1990s--a decade that saw a return to civilian rule, a loosening of censorship and social control, and the emergence of a full-blown consumer culture. It shows how these changes impacted the lives of Korean men and women and the very definition of what it means to be "male" and "female" in Korea. In a series of provocative essays written by Korean and Western scholars, we see how Korean women and men actively engage, and at times openly contest, the limitations of gender. Under Construction is part of a decisive turn in the anthropology of gender--from its early quest for the causes of female subordination to a finely tuned analysis of the historical, cultural, and class-based specificities of gender relations and the tension between gender as an ideological construct and as a lived experience. Firmly grounded in the political and economic history of south Korea, this long-awaited volume fills an important gap in Korean studies and East Asia gender studies in English. Contributors: Nancy Abelmann, Cho Haejoang, Roger L. Janelli, Laurel Kendall, June Lee, So-Hee Lee, Seungsook Moon, Dawnhee Yim.

While currently identitarian ideologies and essentialist notions of identity that tend to simplify and reduce life experience to simple factors are globally regaining massive attention, it becomes inevitable to recollect the thorough discussions of identity concepts of the past three decades. It also calls for an ever keener awareness of and capacity to deal with the complexity and diversity of the world we live in. Artists play a major role in the potential reflection and transformation of perceptions and conceptions of the world – musicians, dancers, choreographers, spoken word artists, performance artists, actors, also fine art, installation, media artists or photographers alike. “Performing critical identity” points to performative practices of artists that bring to the fore a critical (self-)awareness and (self-)positioning concerning identification and belonging. Social identities such as gender, sexuality, race, class, dis/ability, age or non/religiosity are closely linked to the historical, social, regional and political dimensions of their formation. From this perspective, identities are hardly one-dimensional but complex and intersectional, and are rather to be thought of as a process of identification and belonging than as a consistent essence. As different, maybe contradictory among themselves, as they are, the performative works of artists such as Lerato Shadi, Liad Hussein Kantorowicz, Nora Chipaumire, Shu Lea Cheang, Zanele Muholi, Ohno Kazuo, Anohni Hegarty, Neo Hülcker, “We’re Muslim. Don’t Panic” or of theatre collectives such as RambaZamba and Thikwa Theater in Berlin or Theater Hora in Zurich, to name but a very small quite random selection of artists, share a critical approach towards hegemonic norms or stereotyping of identities and their representations, and empower diversity. This edition puts a specific focus on the performativity of the aesthetic practices, and wants to explore different artistic approaches, strategies, tactics and perspectives of artists when they address identity issues, when they target power relations and structures of oppression and inequality, when they empower concepts of diversity. This Call for Papers invites academic as well as artistic contributions that delve into case studies of artists performing critical identity or into more general theoretical reflections on the subject. Contributions can relate to, but are not limited to following topics: - intersectionality - subversion - (self-)empowerment - resistance - subalternity - exploitation - manipulation - (anti-)feminism - appropriation - cultural globalisation - transculturality - hybrid identities - collectives - body - stage - audience - de-/construction of the difference of aesthetic genres and of high/popular culture - capitalism - colonialism - (re-)production of exclusion Dr. Marie-Anne Kohl Editor

Is grammatical gender merely stored as a syntactic property of nouns, or is it computed according to a noun’s semantic, morphological and phonological properties every time it is required? In many languages, gender appears to resist systematic treatment and can even cause problems for non-native learners. Native speakers of these languages appear to have no difficulty in assigning the correct grammatical gender to thousands of nouns in their language. Being an offshoot of Arabic, Maltese inherited a system comprising two gender categories, masculine and feminine. Numerous nouns were introduced in Maltese through contact with Sicilian and subsequently with Italian, two languages that also have a masculine/feminine-based gender system. However, the more recent contact, with English, seems to have complicated matters. This work investigates how grammatical gender functions in Maltese, how native speakers apply different criteria to classify nouns, and how this choice is reflected in syntactic agreement. It also takes into consideration the wider psycholinguistic context that influences the choice of category, and provides valuable data for theories that seek to explain the linguistic categorization of nouns in various languages.

Valuing People in Construction provides contemporary perspectives on the ‘glue’ that binds the construction process together; people. The book addresses people issues in the construction industry where behavioural outcomes impact upon business and project performance. The main proposition of the book is that as people continue to lead the completion of construction activities, their health, safety, and well-being should be seen as a priority, and valued by stakeholders. As employers and employees, the role of people in construction must be to strive for the improvement of individual lives and society. This edited collection, which is the first book to focus specifically on placing value on people in construction, focuses on people at work, gender at work, conditions at work, and respect at work. In addition to an editorial overview, the book presents tested and refined empirical work and case studies by leading construction researchers from Africa, Australia, and Europe. Essential reading for researchers, students and professionals interested in construction management, the sociology of construction, HRM in construction, gender, work and health studies.

This edited book aims to provide a collection of scientific evidence on gender issues in the construction industry that contributes to discussions on equality, gender diversity, and inclusion in the built environment; it also provides baseline data for policy design and future research on women in the built environment. Presenting research findings from Africa, India, and Australia, the aims of this book are broad and it begins with an assessment of the gender-based challenges in the construction sector from the perspective of two generations of women. It goes on to discuss the issues affecting the recruitment and career progression of women in construction and also to proffer solutions to the low turnout of women in the construction industry. Further chapters cover issues on the retention and persistence of women in the sector despite the perceived gender-rooted challenges. Research into female leadership in the construction industry is also presented in this book with specific focus on the management of construction sites, quantity surveying practice, and digital leadership. This book ends with a discussion on the impact of gender consideration on the sustainability of construction businesses, accessibility of housing finance, and infrastructure provisions such as markets. The research in this book is key reading for scholars of construction management, gender studies, and DEI and the workplace.

This book explores how climate institutions in industrialized countries work to further the recognition of social differences and integrate this understanding in climate policy making. With contributions from a range of expert scholars in the field, this volume investigates policy-making in climate institutions from the perspective of power as it relates to gender. It also considers other intersecting social factors at different levels of governance, from the global to the local level and extending into climate-relevant sectors. The authors argue that a focus on climate institutions is important since they not only develop strategies and policies, they also (re)produce power relations, promote specific norms and values, and distribute resources. The chapters throughout draw on examples from various institutions including national ministries, transport and waste management authorities, and local authorities, as well as the European Union and the UNFCCC regime. Overall, this book demonstrates how feminist institutionalist theory and intersectionality approaches can contribute to an increased understanding of power relations and social differences in climate policy-making and in climate-relevant sectors in industrialized states. In doing so, it highlights the challenges of path dependencies, but also reveals opportunities for advancing gender equality, equity, and social justice. Gender, Intersectionality and Climate Institutions in Industrialized States will be of great interest to students and scholars of climate politics, international relations, gender studies and policy studies. The Open Access version of this book, available at https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003052821, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.