Contenu du sommaire : Homme/Femme

The extreme male brain theory of autismVerbal and spatial aptitudes are key mental operations used to study differences between the sexes. The hypothesis is advanced that “empathization” and “systemization” are two overlooked dimensions for understanding these differences. The male brain is defined psychometrically as a brain where systemization develops significantly better than empathization. The female brain is defined by the opposite cognitive profile. Using these definitions, autism can be considered to be an extreme form of the normal male profile. A growing body of data from research in psychology supports the theory of autism as an extreme form of the male brain.

“New fathers” and “last wives”: Forms of parenthood in France in the light of family law (1999-2003)This ethnological analysis of parenthood in France studies changes in family law from the Napoleonic Code till late 20th-century reforms. Between 1999 and 2002, various important laws were enacted: domestic partnership legislation, the granting of access to adoptees to records about their origins, and reforms of survivors' benefits, illegitimate children's rights, the concept of a parental authority and family (last) names. We might add to this list the 1975 bill on divorce reform. All this provides evidence of the growing distance between marriage and filiation, which have struck out in two quite distinct directions even though the traditional family firmly juxtaposed them. The principle of equality — in the couple, between the sexes, between spouses, and between successive marriages, children and generations —, which is sometimes compensated by the principle of freedom underlies this whole process. Love is restored to its place among the honest motives underlying marriage and filiation.

Be a widow in traditional RussiaFamous widows (Olga, princess of Kiev, Marfa the burgomaster, Catherine II…) stand out in Russia's history. What was the situation for widows in general in this country? Despite their shortcomings, the sources show that Russian widows were not wards. On the contrary, they were the guardians of their children; they managed their husband's estate and even inherited it under certain conditions; and they could become, and remain, the head of family. In noble or ruling families, the highest offices were open to them. This invalidates using “patriarchy” to describe traditional Russian society insofar as this term implies the domination of men over women and inheritance by men alone.

Equality, a quest in vain? Men, women and parental leave in SwedenThe establishment in 1974 of “parental insurance” in Sweden came out of a political determination to readjust the sharing of family responsibilities. Under this insurance, which can cover a long-term parental leave of absence, fathers and mothers are considered to be equal, even interchangeable, in parenthood. Since the 1970s, several public campaigns have tried to persuade fathers to take a parental leave; and public opinion very much agrees that the two parents should share this leave. As official statistics show however, the participation of fathers is still lagging far behind; and more mothers take these leaves and, too, take longer leaves. According to a quantitative and qualitative survey, the uses and objectives of parental leaves of absence also differ depending on the parent's sex.

From one gender to the otherHarold Garfinkel has shed light on the process whereby individuals learn to “pass” so as to maintain the meaning of the reality of what they say they are. To maintain the meaning of what they are for themselves and for others, transsexuals and transgenders do not just work on their physical appearances, they also work out a posteriori a life story that they can narrate so as to give roots to their new gender identity. Their interventions on their public or private appearances and the narration of their own life-stories are partly contingent, but they also depend on the social order established in institutions. These institutions shape individuals; and transsexuals and transgenders have to cope with them. The tensions between individual expectations and the requirements of medical and legal institutions have helped shape a collective transgender identity.

Making men and women: The transsexualization procedureAnalyzing transsexualization as a procedure for making a man out of someone with female origins, or a woman out of someone with male origins helps us understand how a medical program proves capable of furnishing the ingredients necessary for making and stabilizing a sexed being. The effects as well as the stakes during three major phases — visits with psychiatrists and endocrinologists followed by treatment involving hormones and surgery — are examined in the light of the sex-based definition of the body undergoing an operation.

Gender displayBy applying the ethological concept of “parading” to the analysis of social situations, Goffman studies how men and women use the resources of parading to present, at strategic moments, a version of themselves and their relations. Presenting gender through the use of parading sequences does not refer directly to the social structure, nor even to relations between the sexes in general. Nonetheless, parading, which is transmitted from one generation to the next, fits into a belief system. This culturally dated “doctrine of natural expression” interprets the elements of parading distributed between women and men as properties of a female/male “essence”. This doctrine is so well incorporated in culture that it justifies the implicit asymmetry between the sexes, which it keeps from being put in question.

Obstacles in the way of research on death camps: Science caught between being insignificant or becoming an insultHow can social scientists study the violence committed in Nazi death camps? Even though works of literature and philosophy have dwelled on the genocide and the concentration camps, and even though the history of the political, administrative process of exterminating the Jews has been written, ethnology has stalled at tackling this subject for several reasons: the strong presence of parties who advocate legal protection over the events, the “duty of memory”, essayists who write and write that only witnesses can bear testimony, modesty about describing the horrid facts, researchers who have difficulty putting atrocities into words…. Describing the behavior of executioners can help us understand “mankind” in terms of dehumanization.

The difficult politicization of the ethnological heritageEthnology was, in the early 1980s, endowed with an institution in the state establishment for managing France's national heritage and “patrimony”. The author's professional experiences serve as the basis for comments on the benefits of this meeting between science and administration and on the specific place of government actions in favor of a category of the national heritage characterized by the immateriality of its objects. This specificity has placed this discipline's representatives in a position that breaks with classical procedures for managing historical monuments and museums. This position takes a “reflexive turn” sanctioning research-action based on a double reversal of perspectives: turn any ethnological or other national heritage into the subject matter for an ethnology of activities in relation to this heritage; and shift expertise toward the center of national heritage policies so as to make ethnologists' documentary expertise into a participatory one.