Collective Consciousness And Gender

This book explores collective consciousness and how it is applied to the pursuit of gender justice in international law. It discusses how the collective mode of behaviour and identity can lead to unconscious role-playing based on the social norms, expectations or archetypes of a group. Alexandra Walker contends that throughout history, men have been constructed as archetypal dominators and women as victims. In casting women in this way, we have downplayed their pre-existing, innate capacities for strength, leadership and power. In casting men as archetypal dominators, we have downplayed their capacities for nurturing, care and empathy. The author investigates the widespread implications of this unconscious role-playing, arguing that even in countries in which women have many of the same legal rights as men, gender justice and equality have been too simplistically framed as ‘feminism’ and ‘women’s rights’ and that giving women the rights of men has not created gender balance. This book highlights the masculine and feminine traits belonging to all individuals and calls on international law to reflect this gender continuum.

This research uses psychological and sociological theory to conduct an original analysis of the narratives, themes and values of gender in international law. The thesis conceptualises international law as a reflection of the' global personality,' which is a socially constructed 'collective self' possessing conscious and unconscious material. The thesis combines the sociology of human consciousness model of Burns and Engdahl with Jungian theories of the collective unconscious to create a Collective Self Theoretical Framework. This theoretical framework is used to establish that the global community constitutes a collective self or agent with conscious and unconscious aspects. The conscious material of the global collective self manifests itself in the external facts of public international law (multilateral conventions, declarations, tribunals and international organisations), whereas the unconscious material of the global collective self manifests itself in the underlying narratives, destructive patterns and paradoxes of international law. As such, the thesis forms a new theory of public international law as an expression of the conscious and unconscious dynamics of the global collective self. By way of case study, the thesis analyses the relationship between masculine and feminine consciousness in the global collective self. This relationship is given expression in contemporary international laws, which expose the conscious and unconscious material of global gender dynamics from 1945 to the present. The thesis shows that since the foundation of the United Nations, the pursuit of gender justice has focused on the creation of 'women's rights' in international law. This approach assumes that men and the public sphere are intrinsically empowered, while women and the private sphere are intrinsically disempowered. This gender narrative conflates men with a masculine consciousness (the primary, empowered, public sphere) and women with a feminine consciousness (the secondary, devalued private sphere). This unconscious split between masculine and feminine consciousness is evident in international laws and organisations specifically relating to women, and international laws relating to gender-based violence in armed conflict. The thesis concludes that the narratives and language of gender in international law must be transformed in order to integrate masculine and feminine consciousness in the global collective self. The thesis suggests that it may be necessary to explicitly give men private sphere rights, and to incorporate men in international gender organisations as corrective mechanisms to reach authentic gender justice. Furthermore, the thesis argues that it is necessary to recognise same-sex couples in international law , as the concept of masculine and feminine consciousness applies to both men and women. The ultimate objective of the thesis is to create awareness of the impact of unconscious narratives in international law, and the importance of bringing collective consciousness to the values that underpin gender.

During the past three decades, feminist scholars have successfully demonstrated the ubiq uity and omnirelevance of gender as a sociocultural construction in virtually all human collectivities, past and present. Intrapsychic, interactional, and collective social processes are gendered, as are micro, meso, and macro social structures. Gender shapes, and is shaped, in all arenas of social life, from the most mundane practices of everyday life to those of the most powerful corporate actors. Contemporary understandings of gender emanate from a large community of primarily feminist scholars that spans the gamut of learned disciplines and also includes non-academic activist thinkers. However, while in corporating some cross-disciplinary material, this volume focuses specifically on socio logical theories and research concerning gender, which are discussed across the full array of social processes, structures, and institutions. As editor, I have explicitly tried to shape the contributions to this volume along several lines that reflect my long-standing views about sociology in general, and gender sociology in particular. First, I asked authors to include cross-national and historical material as much as possible. This request reflects my belief that understanding and evaluating the here-and-now and working realistically for a better future can only be accomplished from a comparative perspective. Too often, American sociology has been both tempero- and ethnocentric. Second, I have asked authors to be sensitive to within-gender differences along class, racial/ethnic, sexual preference, and age cohort lines.

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This dissertation approaches oppression of women and trans people in the disability community from the vantage point of resistance movements. Research in this area has, so far, largely excluded gender-based violence. I begin to fill this gap through research with self-advocates and community organizers. My project asks, under what conditions do movements for women and trans people with disabilities emerge? I also propose that movements to end violence can transform individual and collective consciousness about disability and gender oppression. Participants were recruited by networking with organizations in Canada and internationally. Snowballing and social media outreach were also used as recruitment methods. Semi-structured, face-to-face and virtual interviews were conducted with thirteen participants from nine countries. An objectivist grounded content analysis identified experiences of gender and disability oppression as well as transformative conditions for individual and collective consciousness. I use an intersectional analysis to help frame movement from and between disability oppression, consciousness, and empowerment a process that is not necessarily cyclical, parallel, or linear. Through this research I propose two aspects of social movement organizing. The first is the individual aspect, whereby an individual experiences oppression, but with support and education a raised consciousness about disability and gender oppression emerges and from that there is resistance. Individuals may also participate in the second aspect, which is social movement organizing, whereby the group is equipped with a collective understanding of their circumstances and an awareness of the possibilities to take action. I conclude that individuals and movements organizing around gender-based violence in the disability community can experience oppression, resistance, and empowerment in a number of ways; whether it is linear, cyclical or simultaneous. In short, in order for social movements to be ongoing and progressive, they require supporters and actors who individually and collectively recognize a common struggle, share a desire to ensure better for themselves and others, and exhibit a propensity to act.

“Articulations and expressions of gender can be destabilising, transgressive, revolutionary and radical, encompassing both a painful legacy of oppression and a joyous exploration of new experience.” Analysing key texts from the 19th to 21st centuries, this book explores a range of British and Anglophone authors to contextualise women’s writing and feminist theory with ongoing debates in consciousness studies. Discussing writers who strive to redefine the gendered world of “sexualized” space, whether internal or external, mental or physical, this book argues how the “delusion” of gender difference can be addressed and challenged. In literary theory and in representations of the female body in literature, identity has increasingly become a shifting, multiple, renegotiable—and controversial—concept. While acknowledging historical and cultural constructions of sexuality, “writing the body” must ultimately incorporate knowledge of human consciousness. Here, an understanding of consciousness from contemporary science (especially quantum theory)—as the fundamental building block of existence, beyond the body—allows unique insights into literary texts to elucidate the problem of subjectivity and what it means to be human. Including discussion of topics such as feminism and androgyny, agency and entrapment, masculinities and masquerade, insanity and emotion, and individual and social empowerment, this study also creates a lively engagement with the literary process as a means of fathoming the “enigma” of consciousness. Daphne Grace is Professor of English, specializing in postcolonial and transnational literature, gender and women’s studies, in addition to British literature of the 19th to 21st centuries. She currently teaches at the University of the Bahamas, and has also previously taught at Sussex University, England, and Eastern Mediterranean University in Cyprus.

This text provides an analysis of collective behaviour - a central topic in social psychology. It considers why individuals do or don't get involved in collective action.

Modern Western culture is saturated with images, imprinting visual standards of concepts such as beauty and femininity onto our collective consciousness. Blindness Through the Looking Glass examines how gender and femininity are performed and experienced in everyday life by women who do not rely on sight as their dominant mode of perception, identifying the multiple senses involved in the formation of gender identity within social interactions. Challenging visuality as the dominant mode to understand gender, social performance, and visual culture, the book offers an ethnographic investigation of blindness (and sight) as a human condition, putting both blindness and vision “on display” by discussing people’s auditory, tactile, and olfactory experiences as well as vision and sight, and by exploring ways that individuals perform blindness and “sightedness” in their everyday lives. Based on in-depth interviews with 40 blind women in Israel and anthropological fieldwork, the book investigates the social construction and daily experience of blindness in a range of domains. Uniquely, the book brings together blind symbolism with the everyday experiences of blind and sighted individuals, joining in mutual conversation the fields of disability studies, visual culture, anthropology of the senses, and gender studies.

This book examines the emergence of gender consciousness among women as a significant force in American politics. The author bases her argument on an in-depth empirical analysis of data derived from the U.S. biennial National Election studies of 1974 to 1984, the year of the emergence of the so-called gender gap. The author discusses the fact that while feminism is central to womens' political orientation, the simple awareness of gender differences and group consciousness is a powerful force of change.