Andrea Cornwall, Frank G. Karioris and Nancy Lindisfarne 

With all the immense pressure on young scholars to present at conferences, to publish and find jobs, it is easy to forget that we got into academia because we were excited about thinking, reading and grappling with new ideas – and that academia is full of people who have those enthusiasms. In the early summer of 2014, at the University of Sussex in Falmer, we tried out a formula for a symposium which celebrated these values. The symposium wasn’t perfect, but it was pretty damn good, and we think the format will be of interest to others. We’ve decided to call it the Falmer Method.

Too many academic conferences bore senior scholars and scare young ones, sometimes quite badly. They are a way to test people, favour a few and put others down. And keep them down.

In essence, that is what the usual format does. As Kircher and Biswas (2017) put it, writing in The Guardian, expensive academic conferences give us old ideas and no new faces.

The symposium was Frank’s idea. He spoke to Andrea. And Andrea caught up with Nancy.

The three of us organized the conference together. We called it Dislocating Masculinity Revisited, after the book Andrea and Nancy had co-edited twenty years earlier, which had proved remarkably durable (Cornwall and Lindisfarne, 1994, Second edition, 2016).

We wanted the symposium to be as different from convention as we could make it. Above all, we did not want it to be dominated by older white men. Instead, we wanted collaboration between senior and junior scholars in a setting where no one was left behind. And we wanted an exciting intellectual experience whose outcome we could not anticipate.

Masculinities is a contentious subject. That was one reason we were interested in doing things differently. The second reason was that the subject has grown vastly in the last twenty years, as have many areas in the social sciences – lots more people, more pressure, more hierarchy and more niche topics guarded ferociously by niche bouncers.

Guiding principles

We had several guiding principles. We knew from the beginning that we wanted about forty people – we wanted to create a space where everyone would have a chance to speak and be heard. We reckoned two full days would give us plenty of time to create a buzz we could sustain throughout the whole event. We also knew that we did not want formal presentations. And absolutely no power-point. But we did want the symposium to catch the eye of a range of scholars. To do that we sought out a couple of stars. We approached Raewyn Connell, she accepted our invitation, and we found dates for the symposium which fit with her travel plans from Australia to the UK. Her dates locked us into a very tight schedule. Then, with Raewyn as our keynote speaker on the first evening, we asked Mairtin Mac an Ghaill to start the morning on the second day. Raewyn and Mairtin were whole-hearted participants over the full two days. Having them join in was a terrific boon.

We were also concerned that the symposium not cost much money. We decided we’d charge a fee of £30/$50 dollars from everyone who came to give a paper. We wanted people to understand this wasn’t a Facebook event where, for every five people who reply ‘yes, they’re coming’, one turns up. We sought commitment, and asking a modest amount locked people in.

We used this money to pay for Raewyn’s hotel and part of her flight, and we bought a train ticket for Mairtin. The rest went on tea and coffee and three light meals for participants. We waived the fee for about ten undergrad student attendees who weren’t expected to write papers, and spent fifty pounds here and fifty pounds there so that several grad students without much dosh could join us. This was discretionary, we had no formula. People registered online and were asked to find their own way to Sussex and their own accommodation in Brighton. This reduced the administrative labour. Andrea was able to draw on support from Sussex to do the logistics, while a lot of the organising fell on Frank’s shoulders. Nancy and Andrea felt this was a very good idea.

We wanted people to see what that you don’t have to take a lot of time, or have pots of money and a Wenner-Gren or Wellcome Foundation grant to organize a conference. Find a free venue (in our case, through Andrea), and all you need is the confidence to think people will be up for it and to have fun.

Our call for papers went out barely three months before the date of the symposium, and must have sounded weirdly ambitious. We made it clear that our aim was to find new ways to talk with each other in the hope of generating some truly new ideas. That was, of course, a very high bar. The call asked for abstracts of 300 words, and the timing was very tight. This was useful. We had a deadline of one month, and this is part of why it worked. And the speed and urgency of what we were doing kept us from being bogged down in endless discussions about tea and coffee.

In response to our call, we received nearly 100 abstracts. To deal with them, we created a spreadsheet and each of us gave comments. We were looking for lively writing and for papers that raised genuine questions about gender theory. We were also looking for ethnographic depth, not generalization, but also ethnographic spread: we were determined to avoid an area studies or topical selection. Most important of all, we hoped to find clear arguments you could get your hands on and your heart into.

Choosing was hard. Sometimes we had to vote to decide, but we also allowed a place for our differences, and had a system of trust and veto. That meant we could also say, ‘I’m going to override your veto, trust me on this’. We knew that if the symposium was going to work, we would have to take some risks, and to dare to fail. Frank starts all his classes by telling his students that any intellectual achievement requires some failure, and if you are not failing, you are not doing it right. Andrea and Nancy agree.

We invited some forty-five people to write a short paper, not longer than 2,000 to 3,000 words, that could be circulated in advance and developed for publication after the symposium. We asked for short papers to discourage abstract waffle and pseudo-theory. We gave people a month to get their papers back to us, and bar one or two, they all came back in good time.

We knew we were going to get people to break up into small groups of eight. We wanted to be sure that everyone’s paper was read by all the people in their group. We also thought the short form would showcase people’s ideas and bring them into sharp relief. We’d encouraged paper givers to think radically about notions of masculinity and gender difference, and to make use of ethnography, and to include reflexive and aut0-ethnographic material in the mix. Not all those we invited were anthropologists, so we encouraged participants to see ethnography as a method, not a disciplinary boundary. The papers we got back were terrific.

We got down to dividing our paper givers into groups. We started by saying that here’s a group of people doing similar things. Then we said, fuck that. We did not want all the Africanists at one table, and those interested in violence, or sex work, or LGBT issues at other tables. That was guaranteed to limit the scope of the discussions from the start. For two days, we wanted people to enjoy being as open to unexpected new ideas as possible. And to take risks, initially by challenging disciplinary and area studies conventions and the biases that have grown up in gender and masculinity studies

So, we purposely avoided geographic and topical themes when we juggled our participants into small groups. The only thing we kept a close eye on was making sure there was no one group of senior scholars, and all the rest left behind. Five groups of six to eight people, with one very senior and one very junior person in each. And we asked the members of each group to read all the papers of the people in their group before the symposium began. And they did. After all, if you want people to read your paper, you are going to have to do the same in return.

The idea was to use the papers as starting place, but that there would be no presentations. That way we would avoid long periods where one person was speaking and the rest were listening.  And we had facilitators for each of our five groups. These were practiced teachers – friends and colleagues – we asked specially to help us out. None of them were among our paper-givers. Being neutral and having no dog in the fight would, we thought, make it easier to chair without being tempted to take over the conversation.

The first day

At the end of June, some forty-five of us arrived in large airy room A108 at the University of Sussex in Falmer. We got people to sign in and began to work out who was who. There was tea and coffee out on tables, chairs were arranged in a broad semi-circle, and almost on time, we started the morning by ‘setting up the conversation’.

We introduced our stars, Raewyn and Mairtin, and then ourselves. Andrea is an expert in participatory research methodologies and teaching techniques. We drew on that. Frank has a wonderfully loud voice for calling us to order, and a lot of experience building and breaking up groups from his years as a resident assistant in a college dorm. Nancy has a long-standing interest in novel teaching methods and had been a regular participant in the innovative Slovenian MESS (Mediterranean Ethnological Summer Symposia) she reported on for AT. We greatly admired the work of Paolo Friere and bell hooks and we aimed to do engaged, and engaging, anthropology. Frank had been Andrea’s student and Andrea had been a student of Nancy’s. In years, there was a 20/20/20 spread between us.[1]

Frank went over the importance of the format. Andrea laid out how Dislocating Masculinity came about. Nancy talked about what had happened since, in gender studies and in the neoliberal world we live in. The forty papers we’d received were all based on new ethnography, and each one described how neoliberalism was changing people’s lives. So we knew neoliberalism was going to be a theme, and one generated by the papers themselves.

Each of us took only fifteen minutes to say our piece. There were very few questions. There was nervous energy about what would come next, and maybe a bit of fright. And we quickly reorganized the chairs and got into our prearranged groups.

We explained that people weren’t to talk to their papers, but to treat them as part of a shared background since the others would have read these already. We’d given our facilitators some basic questions to start people off, and use if and when needed. And we briefed our facilitators about the round robin format we wanted them to use. Jonathan Neale had told us about the round robin method he’d learned it from the United Teachers Union in New Orleans who had learned it in the American movement for Civil Rights. At their meetings the teachers relied heavily on the round robin technique because it built confidence, and was a great equalizer. Jonathan said it could work a treat.

The idea is simple. The conversation goes in a circle. Each participant has the chance to speak, perhaps to ask a question, or make a comment, but one lasting no more than two minutes.  First one person speaks. Then the person on her left, and the person on that person’s left and so on. People can also can pass, if they so wish. The key is that people only speak when it’s their turn. Even if they are burning to clarify something or make a helpful suggestion, the chair is expected to stop this happening. The idea is to preclude hierarchy and ensure no one is silenced.

So the conversations began. And they did not flag. Meanwhile, the three of us roved, listening to the discussions. Nancy says, ‘I sat down with different groups to listen. But I allowed myself to intervene a couple of times when I felt a facilitator was dominating the discussion. It was hard being a facilitator, it was such an unfamiliar role. Being academics, the facilitators sometimes succumbed to the temptation to lead the discussion, rather than keep the round robin going. I would interrupt, nod to the person next in the circle and say ‘I think it’s your turn now’. Frank says, ‘I did more touching base than intervening. I asked where people were at. When people try to explain themselves to someone outside the group, they have to pause and reflect’. Andrea says, ‘I looked on with pleasure as a man who would have otherwise dominated the discussion waited his turn and had to pass the word on to the person next to him. It really felt the process gave people who would likely not have spoken a voice.’

What the round robin method does is that it makes people think before they talk. Too often you respond immediately, and just blurt out the first response that comes into your mind. With the round robin method, you have time. You can reflect on your first thought, and listen to the responses of others. And when your turn does come round, you can incorporate what several people said in what you have to say. It makes the group tighter and individuals less distinct.

The round robin habit keeps the conversation from becoming linear. With structured conversations, things come up and then get lost. In this format, people can retrieve topics that would otherwise be forgotten. People can say, ‘I want to come back to what Jack said’. So, there is more collective innovation, and it becomes difficult to tell whose ideas are whose. The collective process is exciting, partly because the comments are short, and there is an energy in the fast turnaround. And partly because it stops grandstanding, when people interrupt and monologue.

A round robin habit encourages active listening. And it creates a safe space for the people who might say things that they fear are off the wall, out of line, dangerous. Respectful listening allows people to hear things which are way outside of their usual experience. So some people leave safe spaces, while others find them. And no one is asked to be the group rapporteur, another way people can often find themselves dominating or on the side line.

The conversations at each table was livelier than the next. And at the end of the hour, Frank had to shout to get people to wind up, because we had plans for the coffee break as well.

The coffee breaks were when we paired people up. Part of our intention for the symposium was to create intergenerational links. In practice, we did this during the breaks, morning and afternoon, by pairing up a young scholar with someone more senior. It was a directed form of networking – though we don’t like that term, it sounds way too business school-y.

The main thing the parings did was oblige people to mix, which, Frank says, is massively important for a young scholar. Too often at conferences there is a room full of seniors while all the grad students find themselves in desperate huddles, with great empty spaces in between. And Frank remembers another conference where the senior academics acted as hosts at tables for special invitees, a process which produced, as he said, ‘an appalling, hierarchical, ass-kissing praxis’.

After coffee, we went straight into our first full group discussion, thus avoiding the tedious breakout group report-back stage which is guaranteed to slow things down.

One of us chaired each of the big group discussions. We had talked about strong chairing beforehand, and wanted to make sure no one dominated the discussion. Again, people were limited to brief comments of no more than two or three minutes, with a rider that no one could speak a second time until everyone in the room who wanted to speak had spoken once. This opened the space for a plurality of voices. And, as it turned out, it pissed off some of the masculinists among us.

We were wary of other pitfalls. As a chair, your role is to invite other contributions, and then wait. But so often in that interval, the chair, fearful of silence, gets nervous and steps in, either to blather on, or turn to a reliable senior person, and say, ‘Oh, George, can you add something here?’ Instead, the trick is to wait, and wait, and simply wait – in pleasant expectation and certain knowledge that someone will eventually pipe up, usually with the best question or comment of the whole session.

Then we had lunch – of tasty, no-frills sandwiches bought from a local deli rather than provided by expensive conference catering – followed by the day’s Hard Talk. The first day this was a conversation between Diana Jeater and Jonathan Neale, both older radical historians. They didn’t interrogate or interview each other, nor did they begin by asking each other leading questions, Rather, they just talked, and in a wide semi-circle, the rest of us sat and listened to a dialogue about capitalism and gender that drew on many decades of engagement with issues of class and difference.[2]

Which meant there was a lot for us to talk about in our new pairings over tea, and during the second hour of breakout group conversations.

At the end of the afternoon, with no further ado, we did a card sort. We had people write down, using a marker pen on a bright coloured card, one thing they felt was absolutely critical that we had talked about during the day and one thing they thought was equally important that we had not yet talked about enough. It took five or ten minutes for people to come up with these. Then we got everyone to stand in a circle, while each person, one by one, read out what they had written and put their card down on the floor.

People were encouraged to clump their cards in whatever way felt right. As we went on, people started moving the cards, reshaping and shuffling the piles, until, as more and more people added their cards, a picture began to emerge. Some of the piles were thematic – leisure, for example, was one. Some were not – one pile was devoted to thinking further about theory. The piles were wild and diverse, and included topics we could not have predicted, but could certainly have foreclosed.

After the card sort, we shared a supper of Lebanese mezze from a local takeaway. It was delicious and the portions were smaller than we’d anticipated, but no one complained as we trooped to a lecture hall to hear Raewyn speak. The raked seating seemed strange after the informality of the day, but it added weight to her talk about masculinities seen from the perspective of the global south.

The next morning

The next morning we sat in a big semi-circle and Mairtin Mac an Ghaill started us off with a less traditional talk that was far more driven by questions than answers. We were walking a fine line verging on formality, but it turned out that having two keynote speakers lent our meetings gravitas without unsettling our commitment to dialogue and collective work.

Then after coffee and more pairings, we reorganized ourselves again into small breakout groups. But this time, people selected the group they wanted to join on the basis of the card sort the night before. Which was fine, except that we saw that the conversations were quickly becoming uneven. This was partly because the interest groups reintroduced familiar biases, and partly because there were no facilitators to keep the round robin idea going. Some of the groups were too big for comfortable conversation, some very small. Some people were unsure where they wanted to go, and some groups became dominated by someone with a particular passion. It was unsettling. But because we’d not set it up beforehand, we felt that as rovers we didn’t have the authority to intervene and recreate the round robins on the spot.

The three of us had an urgent chat at lunch, asking ourselves why had the wheels come off.  We were pleased with the card sort and the self-selected groups. And we agreed that losing the round robins was a bigger loss than the question of group size. What we saw was how vulnerable academic conversations are, and how it is easy for the default setting of inequality to prevail. We had not planned to have facilitators on the second day. If we had, the problems would have disappeared. People still thought these conversations were valuable, but they could have been much better. We were so grateful that our facilitators were up for helping with the breakout groups and another set of topics in the afternoon.

But first there was a second Hard Talk. We knew all along we wanted one, but we’d only asked Rachel and Lewis the night before – we’d waited to see who might emerge from the day’s conversations. Rachel O’Neill was just finishing fieldwork and a PhD at KCL, while Lewis Turner, a PhD student at SOAS, had yet to begin fieldwork in Jordan. We knew Rachel’s work from the paper she’d written for us. Though Lewis not done a paper, it turned out he had considerable expertise in NGO work. In truth, we asked them because they both had been so interesting and articulate on the first day. Rachel and Lewis were at beginning stages of everything, and they talked about the pressures and concerns they faced. We asked them thinking they would do a splendid job. And they did.

We suggested they talk about themselves, and they were very honest about the intellectual and practical problems of doing research nowadays. They reflected on aspects of the present which could not have been anticipated two decades before. Their perspective was global, and bold. They asked how masculinities have changed in a world now seeming shrunk by the internet and social media while being stretched to breaking point by the widening divisions between rich and poor, and those at peace and war.[3]

Their Hard Talk had an electric effect. Why? First, because they were so good. But also, if you give young scholars a chance to say something, you may be shocked by what they say, if they are not burdened by a need for deference. And they had a sympathetic audience among whom honesty was prized more than pretentious expertise. No one in the room had ever seen such a thing before.

It probably helped that we were super vague in our instructions to Rachel and Lewis, giving them zero ground to walk on, but neither fencing them in. And we of course praised them lavishly ahead of time. But they still had to talk for an hour in front of a group, a number of whom were senior academics. In one way, the Hard Talks paralleled the coffee break pairings. We all gained from having older, and then younger, scholars in the hot seat.

Rachel and Lewis energized us all as we broke up again into small groups to consider other topics of special interest. Chaired disinterestedly, the groups worked much better.

And onto the final plenary and wrap up. Again we suggested we keep to the two minute rule, but we did ask David Forrest and Chenjerai Shire, both contibutors to Dislocating Masculinity, draw comparisons between then and now.[4] Like Rachel and Lewis, Dave and Chenj were daring and insightful in their comments, and as the final discussion kicked off, so did some fireworks.

We were proud that in Falmer for two days, there were no monologues – from anyone, top or bottom, men or women or men, seniors or juniors, no one monologued. But holding on tight to the method for two days finally became too much for one senior academic. This was a fellow who had suggested himself as a keynote speaker when he sent in his paper. In this final session, he was deeply offended when he was asked to wait to speak a second time until after others had spoken. In high dudgeon, he and several of his acolytes made a dramatic exit from the room. Nancy had to smile, remembering that at the MESS meetings she so dearly loved, there were also several occasions when senior academics could not stick a format they felt didn’t afford them the recognition they deserved.

Much more important was how many people stayed on to the end and to the midnight hour. Almost everyone, apart the angry professor and his students, went to a pub one stop away on the railway. We hadn’t made a reservation, but it was a big pub. And some thirty-five of us stayed talking until closing time.

The better the conference, the better the conversation in the pub. Frank remembers good talks with Chenj, Raewyn, Charlie Walker and Andrea. One of the other participants needed a place to stay for two days. Dave offered. And there were conversations that encouraged further conversations, about everything, and about masculinity.  Andrea and Nancy, as the senior organizers, became merry and drunk, while Frank, as the junior scholar, remained the responsible adult.

After the weekend

We’d done it: another kind of conference is possible. And at the end of the weekend, we had forty papers, and we knew we had a lively book. It took us two days and a lot of talking to agree which twenty of the forty scholars we would invite expand and shape their papers into final contributions of 4,500 words with a deadline of a month. Again, we were looking for balance, and accessible papers that did not emphasize theory. We actually said that. We knew we wanted new ethnography with – by that time we were sure – a sharp focus on neoliberalism. There was attrition, and some people had other places to publish. From the glimmer of an idea to publication took two years.[5]  Everything was wildly quick, and the momentum of the event made it easy.

MASCULINITIES UNDER NEOLIBERALISM

CONTENTS
About the Contributors
Preface
1. Introduction: Masculinities under Neoliberalism
Andrea Cornwall
2. Masculinities and the Lived Experience of Neoliberalism
Nancy Lindisfarne and Jonathan Neale
3. In Search of ‘Stability’: Working-Class Men, Masculinity and Wellbeing in Contemporary Russia
Charlie Walker
4, Filial Son’, Dislocated Masculinity and the Making of Male Migrant Workers in Urban China – Xiaodong Lin
5. Taking the Long View: Attaining and Sustaining Masculinity across the Life Course in South India – Penny Vera-Sanso
6. Desperate Markets and Desperate Masculinities in Morocco
Joe Hayns
7. Neutralized Bachelors, Infantilized Arabs: Between Migrant and Host –
Gendered and Sexual Stereotypes in Abu Dhabi
Jane Bristol-Rhys and Caroline Osella
8. Windsurfers, Capoeiristas and Musicians: Brazilian Masculinities in Transnational Scenarios – Adriana Piscitelli
9. ‘I Must Stand Like a Man’: Masculinity in Crisis in Post-War Sierra Leone
Luisa Enria
10. Fatherhood and Intergenerational Struggles in the Construction of Masculinities in Huambo, Angola – John Spall
11. Masculinity, Marriage and the Bible: New Pentecostalist Masculinities in Zimbabwe – Diana Jeater
12. From Big Man to Whole Man: Making Moral Masculinities at the YMCA
Ross Wignall
13. (Dis)locating Masculinities: Ethnographic Reflections of British Muslim Young Men
Mairtin Mac an Ghaill and Chris Haywood
14. Football Field, Bar, and Street Corner: Sports, Space, and Masculinities in Rural Jamaica – William Tantam
15. Ducks, Dogs, and Men: ‘Natural’ Masculinities in New Zealand Duck Hunting
Carmen McLeod
16. (Dis)Locations of Homosociality: Men in an All-Male University Residence Hall
Frank G. Karioris
17. Homosociality and Heterosex: Patterns of Intimacy and Relationality among Men in the London ‘Seduction Community’ – Rachel O’Neill
Index

One established academic, a non-native speaker of English, reflected afterward that the symposium was the most open space he had been in during all his years in the UK, while Mairtin Mac an Ghaill said, ‘I am a radical pedagogue and did not think this would ever work, but I have to tell you it did’.

We had three things going for us. A determination to keep things equal. A method and format which made that possible. And our determination to work collectively to look for new ideas. Of course, all three go together. We knew from the start that the symposium was about revisiting Dislocating Masculinity, but finding out it was about neoliberalism was magic. It was about allowing that space for this to happen. And we know there are other people out there wanting to try something similar: a conference on David Graeber’s work, Debt: 5000 Years and Counting was planned specifically with the Falmer Method in mind.[6]

Bibliography

Cornwall, A. 2016. Towards a Pedagogy for the Powerful. IDS Bulletin, 47 (5): 75-88.

Cornwall, A. & N. Lindisfarne, eds., 1994 (2^nd ed. 2017), Dislocating Masculinity: Comparative Ethnographies. London: Routledge.

Cornwall, A., F.G. Karioris & N. Lindisfarne, eds., 2016. Masculinities under Neoliberalism. London: Zed.

Eriksen, T.H. 2006. Engaging Anthropology: The Case for a Public Presence. Oxford: Berg.

Forrest, D. 1994. ‘We’re here, we’re queer, and we’re not going shopping’: Changing gay male identities in contemporary Britain. In Cornwall and Lindisfarne, 93-107.

Freire, P. 1972. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

hooks, b. 1994. Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. London: Routledge.

Jeater, D. 2016. Masculinity, Marriage and the Bible: New Pentecostalist Masculinities in Zimbabwe. In Cornwall, Karioris and Lindisfarne, 165-182.

Karioris, F. G. 2013. Educating Men: Equality and the Institution. The Activist: Human Rights Journal at CEU, July.

Karioris, F. G. 2017. Preparing Teachers to Teach: or, Globalizing Universities as Pedagogic Epicentres. Alatoo Academic Studies, 12 (1), 177-182.

Kircherr, J. and A. Biswas. 2017. Expensive academic conferences give us old ideas, and no few faces. The Guardian, 30 August.

Lindisfarne, N. 2003, ‘Challenging the Experts’, Anthropology Today, 19 (5), 26-7.

Neale, J. 2008. Ranting and Silence: The Contradictions of Writing for Activists and Academics. In Armbruster, H. & A. Larke, eds., Taking Sides: Ethics, Politics and Fieldwork in Anthropology, Oxford: Berghahn, 217-256.

O’Neill, R. 2016. Homosociality and Heterosex: Patterns of Intimacy and Relationship among Men in the London ‘Seduction Community’. In Cornwall, Karioris & Lindisfarne, 261-276.

Shire, C. 1994. Men don’t go to the moon: Language, space and masculinities in Zimbabwe. In Cornwall and Lindisfarne, 138-148.

Tapper, N., A. Akeroyd & R. Grillo. 1980, Training and Employment of Social Anthropologists. RAIN, 41, 5-7.

Turner, L. 2016. Are Syrian Men Vulnerable Too? Gendering the Syrian Refugee Response’, London Middle East Institute. http://www.mei.edu/content/map/are-syrian-men-vulnerable-too-gendering-syria-refugee-response .

Author Details

Andrea Cornwall is Professor of Global Development and Anthropology, and Pro-Director Research and Enterprise at the School of Oriental and African Studies,  University of London. She has done ethnographic fieldwork in Brazil, Nigeria and widely in the field of Development Studies.

Frank G. Karioris is Visiting Lecturer of Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies at the University of Pittsburgh. Frank has taught at Sussex, the University of Central European University and the American University of Central Asia, and is the author of  An Education in Sexuality and Sociality: Heteronormativity on Campus, 2019.

Nancy Lindisfarne taught anthropology at SOAS, London for many years. She has done extensive fieldwork in the Middle East and elsewhere, and written widely on gender, politics and Islam.

NOTES

[1] See Cornwall, 2016; Karioris, 2013; Karioris, 2017; Tapper, Akeroyd and Grillo, 1980; Lindisfarne, 2003; Freire, 1972; hooks,  1994; Eriksen, 2006.

[2] See, for examples, Jeater, 2016, and Neale, 2008.

[3] O’Neill (2016) and Turner (2016).

[4] Forrest (1994) and Shire (1994).

[5] Cornwall, Karioris and Lindisfarne (2016)

[6] http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/schools/historycultures/research/events/2018/debt-500.aspx