Among numerous ancient Western tropes about gender and procreation, “the seed and the soil” is arguably the oldest, most potent, and most invisible in its apparent naturalness. The Gender Vendors denaturalizes this proto-theory of procreation and deconstructs its contemporary legacy. As metaphor for gender and procreation, seed-and-soil constructs the father as the sole generating parent and the mother as nurturing medium, like soil, for the man’s seed-child. In other words, men give life; women merely give birth. The Gender Vendors examines seed-and-soil in the context of the psychology of gender, honor and chastity codes, female genital mutilation, the taboo on male femininity, femiphobia (the fear of being feminine or feminized), sexual violence, institutionalized abuse, the early modern witch hunts, the medicalization and criminalization of gender nonconformity, and campaigns against women’s rights. The examination is structured around particular watersheds in the history of seed-and-soil, for example, Genesis, ancient Greece, early Christianity, the medieval Church, the early modern European witch hunts, and the campaigns of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries against women’s suffrage and education. The neglected story of seed-and-soil matters to everyone who cares about gender equality and why it is taking so long to achieve.

2005 — Best Book Award – New England Council of Latin American Studies Selling handicrafts to tourists has brought the Maya peoples of Guatemala into the world market. Vendors from rural communities now offer their wares to more than 500,000 international tourists annually in the marketplaces of larger cities such as Antigua, Guatemala City, Panajachel, and Chichicastenango. Like businesspeople anywhere, Maya artisans analyze the desires and needs of their customers and shape their products to meet the demands of the market. But how has adapting to the global marketplace reciprocally shaped the identity and cultural practices of the Maya peoples? Drawing on over a decade of fieldwork, Walter Little presents the first ethnographic study of Maya handicraft vendors in the international marketplace. Focusing on Kaqchikel Mayas who commute to Antigua to sell their goods, he explores three significant issues: how the tourist marketplace conflates global and local distinctions. how the marketplace becomes a border zone where national and international, developed and underdeveloped, and indigenous and non-indigenous come together. how marketing to tourists changes social roles, gender relationships, and ethnic identity in the vendors' home communities. Little's wide-ranging research challenges our current understanding of tourism's negative impact on indigenous communities. He demonstrates that the Maya are maintaining a specific, community-based sense of Maya identity, even as they commodify their culture for tourist consumption in the world market.

Charity bazaars were a key method women used to intervene in political, social, and cultural affairs. Bazaar Literature reorients our understanding of Victorian social reform fiction by reading it in light of the copious amount of literature generated for charity bazaars--which shaped the social, political, and literary movements of its time.

Markets and traders in Vietnam are on the move, literally and figuratively. The chapters in this volume offer rich ethnographic exploration of daily interactions among small-scale traders, suppliers, customers, family members, neighbors, and officials within contemporary Vietnam and across its borders.

A comprehensive account of face-to-face interactions in commercial and non-commercial service encounter settings.

On the path of achieving inclusive growth and adhering to the Sustainable Development Goals 2030, which envisages inclusive and sustainable economic growth and decent work for all, the ground-level situation of this huge section of the informal sector in India needs to be mainstreamed into the economic policies. Studies estimate that 11% per cent of the urban workforce in India is engaged in street vending. The problems faced by these sellers are unique, as they struggle not only to make their ends meet by selling on the streets facing all vagaries of the whether but also many times are at the receiving end of the civic bodies and law enforcement agencies. The government in India has taken commendable initiatives to bring this informal sector into the formal financial sector through its financial inclusion. Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana, the flagship financial inclusion scheme started by the Government in 2014 aims at assuring financial access to everyone without a bank account. The drive of financial inclusion does not stop just at opening an account but also aims to facilitate access to credit and micro insurance. This book will be good and resourceful reading for anyone interested to know about the global, national and regional status of the financial inclusion of street vendors and would initiate further discussions on the subject through the in-depth analysis of various critical issues covered in this book.

The Handbook on Gender in Asia critically examines, through a gender perspective, five broad themes of significance to Asia: the ‘Theory and Practice’ of researching in Asia; ‘Gender, Ageing and Health’; ‘Gender and Labour’; ‘Gendered Migrations and Mobilities’; and ‘Gender at the Margins’. With each chapter providing an overview of the key intellectual developments on the issue under discussion, as well as empirical examples to examine how the Asian case sheds light on these debates, this collection will be an invaluable reference for scholars of gender and Asia.

This is a comprehensive overview on the existing literature on gender in Africa. It covers areas such as Western perceptions, colonial morality, religion and politics.

This book addresses the multifaceted issue of the state vis-a-vis those perceived as actors in the informal or simple commodity production economy. It discusses both state and traders' strategies to display recurrent themes, emphasized and combined differently in specific contexts.