Theorising Performing Gender

Elisabeth Kelan
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Elisabeth Kelan: King’s College London

Chapter 3 in Performing Gender at Work, 2009, pp 40-69 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract In many everyday discussions and social science research, gender is perceived as static and as a property of people. To challenge this essentialism, which constructs men and women as fixed entities, the notion of the social construction of gender has become central to gender theories over recent decades. However, this theoretical insight is often difficult to translate into research practice. Instead of showing how gender is constructed, many studies claim to see gender as socially constructed but then treat gender as a stable, self-evident category within the research (Alvesson and Billing, 2002; Cameron, 1995; Hagemann-White, 1994; 1995; Speer, 2005). Cameron expresses this as follows: [A] huge proportion of empirical investigations begin by repeating the axiom that gender is constructed and then blithely proceed to ignore it. The question they pose is not how social subjects come to be constituted as women and men, but rather how these already constituted and gendered subjects behave, and especially how their behaviour differs. … This is to assume the very thing you ought to be explaining. (1995: 143)

Keywords: Gender Identity; Gender Norm; Subject Position; Concrete Situation; Conversation Analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:palchp:978-0-230-24449-8_3

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DOI: 10.1057/9780230244498_3

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