Abstract
Even if the substantial content of gender distinction has varied in history according to time and place, most cultures in the world have seen the distinction itself as a quite natural thing without much need for explanation (Burguière et al., 1996a; Therborn, 2004). In the course of European and North American modernization, however, this deceptive surface of the self-evidence of gender distinction broke down, and at least three successive waves of gender radicalism emerged, starting roughly in the latter half of the nineteenth century, in the 1960s and the 1980s (Jallinoja, 1980; Burguière et al., 1996b; Therborn, 2011). All the waves have sought to promote equality between the sex groups by understanding men and women, in the case of the first wave, as naturally different but equal; in the case of the second wave, as being in different sex role positions, the holders of which should be entitled to equal rights and duties; and in the case of the third wave, as cultural constructions. Due to the publication time the context of this chapter is the third wave of gender radicalism in the tumult of which queer theories such as Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble. Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990) and other forms of radical cultural constructionism emphasize the cultural nature of the established binary gender distinction. As one of its consequences, the emergence of such thoroughly cultural interpretations has made room for such sociobiological reverse mirror images as David C. Geary’s Male, Female. The Evolution of Human Sex Difference (1998), which has it that much of gender is actually based on biology. In this chapter, instead of choosing our side in the aforementioned debate, we attempt to outline a synthetic conception to provide a frame for cumulative research.
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Notes
- 1.
See also Weatherford, 1997: 93–108.
- 2.
Another and more recent example of institutionalist thought is provided by Gøsta Esping-Andersen in his The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism (Esping-Andersen, 1990; see also 1999). There he provides a description of the diverging paths taken by the Anglo-American liberal welfare regime, the North-European social democratic welfare regime and the Central and South European conservative welfare regime. These form the three alternative paths that emerged in the West after the Second World War to cure and compensate the vulnerabilities of market turbulences to the citizens. In the first regime, markets and private insurances are central; in the second regime, the welfare state is central and provides universal services and, finally, in the third regime, services are dependent on the labour market position of the head of the household and family, and church and other communities are central. Once a regime emerges it tends to respond to all problems according to the same pattern and there is plenty of inertia that resists attempts to change the developmental path.
- 3.
W. Richard Scott hints towards the former route when he mentions in passing a fourth institutional view which he calls cathectic or emotional (Scott, 2001: note 4 on page 70). However, the latter path might be more promising because there are several predecessors who have attempted to interpret one or more of the columns/slices so that they can deal with ideological misrecognition. Freudomarxism of the Frankfurt School can be interpreted as such a version of the rational choice approach (providing that we follow Parsons and see Marxism as a variant of the rational choice approach on class level). Another route for psychoanalysis to social theory was Parsons’s socialization theory, which provides an example of integrating Freud’s themes into normative institutionalism. More recently, Lacan and others have tried to integrate Freud even into discursive (and, to some extent, habitual) institutionalism. Bourdieu’s work can also be interpreted as a different kind of an attempt to deal with the issue of misrecognition in the context of discursive and habitual institutionalism. All of the mentioned attempts to create theoretical synthesis have their faults, but their sheer volume hints towards the direction that the idea itself should not be rejected without further study.
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Husso, M. (2021). The Power of Institutions: The Case of Gendered Agency. In: Semiotic Sociology. Palgrave Studies in Relational Sociology. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79367-8_7
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