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Waking up to the reactivity of concepts, to their myriad possibilities for signification, to the range and strength of affective responses they provoke, can happen at any time, in any place. Conceptual contestations shake up the comfortably consolidated foundations of sociological knowledge production, but they also have consequences for the ways in which lives are understood, researched and legislated for. This book is dedicated to exploring the definitional politics which surround the concept of gender in 'live' knowledge production. While conferences remain an under-researched phenomenon, this volume places conference knowledge production under the spotlight; conferences, in particular national women's studies association conferences in the UK, the US and India, are explored as sites where definitional politics play out. The cumulative theorisation of 'live' conceptual knowledge production that is developed throughout the book draws on established constructs such as performativity, citationality, intersectionality, materiality and events, but works with them in combination in a new, unique way. The book as a whole calls for more attention to be paid to conceptual knowledge production, so as to make more space for potentially transformative conceptual change.
List of contents
Chapter 1: Gender, definitional politics and ‘live’ knowledge production
Chapter 2: Foregrounding conferences as sites of ‘live’ knowledge production
Chapter 3: Theorising concepts and conceptual performativity
Chapter 4: Citationality, elsewhereness and the definitional politics of intersectionality
Chapter 5: Bodies in spaces at conferences – the citationality of materiality
Chapter 6: Eventful performatives in ‘live’ knowledge production
Chapter 7: Contesting concepts at conferences
References
About the author
Emily F. Henderson is Assistant Professor in the Centre for Education Studies, University of Warwick.
Summary
By bringing discussions around the concept of gender together with academic contexts and processes that shape understandings of gender, this volume demonstrates the academic, political, and everyday implications of gender’s inherent fluidity.
