Gendered modernities: Ethnographic perspectives

Abstract

Based on long-term ethnographic research, the book chapters explore the intersection of 'gender' and 'modernity' as they are mediated in the lives and subjectivities of diverse individuals and groups. How are the messages of modernity/tradition gendered? How are the material practices and cultural meanings of modernity shaped by local ideas of gender and 'progress'? Together these chapters demonstrate that the ideas of progress, rationality, order, and development encompassed by 'modernity' are profoundly gendered, whether conveyed by mass media images of consumption, agendas of nation-building, or legal discourse. Furthermore, the mutual inflections of gender and modernity are at once pervasively 'global,' occurring in different locales and ways; and deeply 'local,' shaping and shaped by the structures and experiences of culture, class, ethnicity, and nation.