Bewitching women, pious men : gender and body politics in Southeast Asia / edited by Aihwa Ong and Michael G. Peletz.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Ong, Aihwa.

Peletz, Michael G.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Sex role--Southeast Asia.

Sex role.

Power (Christian theology)--Southeast Asia.

Power (Christian theology).

Power (Mechanics)--Southeast Asia.

Power (Mechanics).

Power (Philosophy)--Southeast Asia.

Power (Philosophy).

Power (Social sciences)--Southeast Asia.

Power (Social sciences).

Power resources--Southeast Asia.

Power resources.

Southeast Asia--Social life and customs.

Southeast Asia.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (321 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Berkeley : University of California Press, c1995.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

This impressive array of essays considers the contingent and shifting meanings of gender and the body in contemporary Southeast Asia. By analyzing femininity and masculinity as fluid processes rather than social or biological givens, the authors provide new ways of understanding how gender intersects with local, national, and transnational forms of knowledge and power. Contributors cut across disciplinary boundaries and draw on fresh fieldwork and textual analysis, including newspaper accounts, radio reports, and feminist writing. Their subjects range widely: the writings of feminist Filipinas; Thai stories of widow ghosts; eye-witness accounts of a beheading; narratives of bewitching genitals, recalcitrant husbands, and market women as femmes fatales. Geographically, the essays cover Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and the Philippines. The essays bring to this region the theoretical insights of gender theory, political economy, and cultural studies. Gender and other forms of inequality and difference emerge as changing systems of symbols and meanings. Bodies are explored as sites of political, economic, and cultural transformation. The issues raised in these pages make important connections between behavior, bodies, domination, and resistance in this dynamic and vibrant region.

Contents:

Front matter

CONTENTS

CONTRIBUTORS

PREFACE

Introduction

ONE. Why Women Rule the Roost: Rethinking Javanese Ideologies of Gender and Self-Control

TWO Narrating Herself: Power and Gender in a Minangkabau Woman's Tale of Conflict

THREE. Neither Reasonable nor Responsible: Contrasting Representations of Masculinity in a Malay Society

FOUR. Senior Women, Model Mothers, and Dutiful Wives: Managing Gender Contradictions in a Minangkabau Village

FIVE. State Versus Islam: Malay Families, Women's Bodies, and the Body Politic in Malaysia

SIX. State Fatherhood: The Politics of Nationalism, Sexuality, and Race in Singapore

SEVEN. Alternative Filipina Heroines: Con tested Tropes in Leftist Feminisms

EIGHT. Attack of the Widow Ghosts: Gender, Death, and Modernity in Northeast Thailand

NINE. Narratives of Masculinity and Transnational Migration: Filipino Workers in the Middle East

INDEX

Notes:

Based on a conference held at the University of California, Berkeley, in the winter of 1992.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9786613382139

9781283382137

128338213X

9780520915343

0520915348

9780585131429

0585131422

OCLC:

44956388