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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
An astonishing and astute study, May 27, 2008
This review is from: Imagining Transgender: An Ethnography of a Category (Paperback)
David Valentine has already won severa; prizes for this book, and no wonder. His book is an astonishing look at the idea of transgender--as a category. Smug Americans msy think they know what transgender is, but as Professor Valentine unpacks this concept, the reader is treated to a myriad of meanings and nuances that show the amazing variety to be found in human gender. In looking at transgender, Valentine forces all readers to consider what normal gender definitions are. This healthy self-reflective exercise should help everyone to broaden their minds--and their categories. It is beautifully written, and hard to lay down once started. Though I am a colleague of the author, I am no less impressed by this work.
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2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
The World of Transgender, May 17, 2009
This review is from: Imagining Transgender: An Ethnography of a Category (Paperback)
Valentine, David. "Imagining Transgender: An Ethnography of a Category", Duke University Press, 2007.
The World of Transgender
Amos Lassen
Transgender has now emerged as a category of both political activism and collective identity. This began in the 1990's and gained momentum in the fields of public health, social service, education and government. The book looks at the range of political and value questions. It chronicles and documents the transgender movement and as a category and field of knowledge, activism and power. It also makes us think about the ways we think about identity, gender, sexuality and politics.
David Valentine happened to be doing anthropological field work in New York when the term "transgender" first began to be widely used. Because of that we are now able to read his ethnographic insight into what transgender is and means. We are presently experiencing a shift in what the Western world views of gender and identity. Valentine conducted ethnographic research among mostly male-to-female "transgender identified people" at various venues--clubs, bars, organizations, support groups and the like and he found that many of the people who were labeled by activists as transgender were not familiar with the term and did not use it. Rather they self-identified as gay, a sexual category that does not include gender. He looks at the differences between the terms and what those differences could potentially mean and how social theory is involved.
Valentine claims that the term "transgender" came into use so quickly and it clarifies gender and not sexuality like the term "gay" does. We see a paradigm in which gender and sexuality are different and distinct and are considered differently by different groups of people. He advocates social justice which must include attentiveness to the politics of language as well as an understanding and recognition of how some social theoretical models and political economies function in daily politics.
The book is not only important ethnographically but theoretically and historically. His look at transgender as a category is both fascinating and astonishing. He dissects the concept and we get many meanings and nuances of the term, We are, in turn, forced to look at how we feel about gender. Valentine writes beautifully and his look at people and society and the creation and shaping of identity is a must-read. This is our world now and everyone is entitled to live in it.
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6 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
A Different World, October 11, 2007
This review is from: Imagining Transgender: An Ethnography of a Category (Paperback)
If you're intrigued about people and society, how different groups form, how identity is shaped and created, read this. Anthropology isn't just about societies in the so-called Third World; it's about the so-called civilized world too, as Dr Valentine shows. Read it and be intrigued.
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