Is There a Need to (un)Gender the Past?

Abstract

This paper is concerned with identifying and discussing how archaeologists may have engendered the past in unintended ways and produced versions of social relations that, in the course of searching for antagonistic gender relations, project our own (feminist) desires of equality, autonomy, and agency onto past societies. It is proposed that an adequate recognition of the different dimensions of gender may help us to differentiate cultural understandings of gender from the ideological use of gender categories to establish hierarchical social relations.

Citation

Pahl Schaan, D. (2006), "Is There a Need to (un)Gender the Past?", Demos, V. and Texler Segal, M. (Ed.) Gender and the Local-Global Nexus: Theory, Research, and Action (Advances in Gender Research, Vol. 10), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 45-60. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1529-2126(06)10003-X