The first book-length critical reception of Barrie Thorne’s classic book, Gender Play. Read the introduction here!
Barrie Thorne’s Gender Play was a landmark study of the social worlds of primary school children that sparked a paradigm shift in our understanding of how kids and the adults around them contest and reinforce gender boundaries. Thirty years later, Gender Replay celebrates and reflects on this classic, extending Thorne’s scholarship into a new and different generation.
Freeden Blume Oeur and C. J. Pascoe’s new volume brings together many of the foremost scholars on youth from an array of disciplines, including sociology, childhood studies, education, gender studies, and communication studies. Together, these scholars reflect on many contemporary issues that were not covered in Thorne’s original text, exploring new dimensions of schooling, the sociology of gender, social media, and feminist theory. Over fourteen essays, the authors touch on topics such as youth resistance in the Trump era; girls and technology; the use of play to challenge oppressive racial regimes; youth activism against climate change; the importance of taking kids seriously as social actors; and mentoring as a form of feminist praxis. Gender Replay picks up where Thorne’s text left off, doing the vital work of applying her teachings to a transformed world and to new configurations of childhood.
“Prior to Barrie Thorne, sociologists viewed children as little more than future adults, not worthy of serious attention. She taught us how to treat children as full human beings. Gender Replay honors the creativity of children and the scholar who started it all.” Christine L. Williams, author of Gaslighted: How the Oil and Gas Industry Shortchanges Women Scientists
“Through both her pioneering work in childhood studies and her decades of thoughtful mentorship, Barrie Thorne defined the genre of feminist sociology. She taught us that adulthood and expertise are ideological constructs, that learning is living, that play is an engagement with possibility, and that social change is made possible, not by oppositionality, but by mutuality in opposition. This book is a cogent, illuminating, and loving tribute to Barrie’s work, intellectual legacy, and the generations of feminist sociology she inspired. After decades of reflection on Gender Play and its afterlives, I still found novel lessons here, new ideas, and exciting new insights on old ones.” Tey Meadow, author of Trans Kids: Being Gendered in the Twenty-First Century
“For those of us who have had the privilege of knowing the feminist sociologist Barrie Thorne, Gender Replay reads like a love letter to her legacy of mentoring, her marvelous ethnographic eye, her moral compass, her transformational work on the sociology of childhoods, and her ability to build community. And for those who do not know Barrie Thorne, the chapters of Gender Replay model for all how to do responsible ethnography, how to mentor with love and creativity, and how to persist with the questions that enable transformational scholarship. In both cases, the book is an absolute delight.” Raka Ray, co-author of The Social Life of Gender
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