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Gender, Citizenship and Subjectivity: Some Historical and Theoretical Considerations
Author(s) -
Canning Kathleen,
Rose Sonya O.
Publication year - 2001
Publication title -
gender and history
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.153
H-Index - 30
eISSN - 1468-0424
pISSN - 0953-5233
DOI - 10.1111/1468-0424.00238
Subject(s) - bourgeoisie , citizenship , amateur , suffrage , subjectivity , autonomy , sociology , citizen journalism , competence (human resources) , masculinity , rationality , object (grammar) , contest , gender studies , aesthetics , epistemology , social science , law , political science , social psychology , psychology , politics , philosophy , linguistics
Because the French Revolution failed to produce a widely acceptable definition of citizenship, the limits of manhood suffrage in the early nineteenth century were uncertain. Social practices, in particular scientific activity, served as claims to the status of citizen. By engaging in scientific pastimes, bourgeois Frenchmen asserted that they possessed the rationality and autonomy that liberal theorists associated both with manliness and with civic capacity. However, bourgeois science was never a stable signifier of masculinity or of competence. As professional science emerged, the bourgeois amateur increasingly became the feminised object of satire rather than the sober andmeritorious citizen‐scientist.