No abstract

This article contributes to the discussion of hegemonic and alternative femininities through an ethnographic study of Women's Flat Track Roller Derby. As a site for construction of alternative femininities in the image of a "derby girl," derby reveals how the understudied intragender relations between femininities can be important in challenging hegemonic gender relations. The dynamics between femininities, and the women who practice them, affect the motivations for challenging hegemonic gender, the transportation of symbolic discourses deployed in the challenges, and the creation of new organizational networks to sustain these challenges. One sees these effects in the organized ways the athletes feminize their participation in an aggressive sport through resistance, adaptation, mockery, and parody of hegemonic femininity, pariah femininities, and sport. This study gives particular attention to the interpretation of the events by the skaters and the histories of the social actors as well the interactions in the collective.

No abstract

No abstract

This research continues the discourse on the role of religion in sociopolitical change. Focusing on one of the new religious movements that has attracted feminists, Dianic Wicca, the conclitions uncler which religion promotes rather than inhibits political activista ate analyzed. Rates of political participation ate high among this group and appear linked to the mediating variable of "personal efficacy." The interpretation is that new religious movements oriented toward transfomu~tion of self have the potential … change-oriented politics ir they challenge the systemic link of self-evaluations and power.