{"title":"The Good, the Bad and the Disney: Employing princesses to examine Hungarian tweens’ understanding of gender","authors":"Anna Zsubori","doi":"10.1177/13675494231159332","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"By relying on diverse scholarly works within several fields – such as communication, cultural, feminist media, film and tweenhood studies – on the one hand, and conducting audience research with Hungarian informants on the other, this interdisciplinary study, as part of a bigger project, examines Hungarian tweenagers’ negotiation of gender. It does so by investigating the concept of ‘the’ princess, including but not limited to Disney Princesses, while offering unique contributions on both theoretical and methodological levels. Theoretically, it shines a light on the limitations of applying Western, post-feminist, liberal theories in a non-Western, post-socialist and ‘illiberal’ environment, and it discusses complexities of the Princess Phenomenon which have been overlooked in academia. From a methodological perspective, it presents innovative short-term ethnographic approaches, specifically in terms of conducting a gender-centred audience study with young people in an anti-gender milieu. To achieve these objectives, this work first introduces the historical, social and political contexts in contemporary Hungary. This is followed by a discussion of the theoretical and methodological approaches which it was necessary to consider before undertaking the fieldwork in Hungary. The article then analyses Hungarian children’s notions of gender by discussing their ideas about ‘the’ princess as a concept. Finally, as a summary, this study outlines its contributions to diverse academic disciplines.","PeriodicalId":47482,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Cultural Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.7000,"publicationDate":"2023-03-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"European Journal of Cultural Studies","FirstCategoryId":"90","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13675494231159332","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"CULTURAL STUDIES","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
By relying on diverse scholarly works within several fields – such as communication, cultural, feminist media, film and tweenhood studies – on the one hand, and conducting audience research with Hungarian informants on the other, this interdisciplinary study, as part of a bigger project, examines Hungarian tweenagers’ negotiation of gender. It does so by investigating the concept of ‘the’ princess, including but not limited to Disney Princesses, while offering unique contributions on both theoretical and methodological levels. Theoretically, it shines a light on the limitations of applying Western, post-feminist, liberal theories in a non-Western, post-socialist and ‘illiberal’ environment, and it discusses complexities of the Princess Phenomenon which have been overlooked in academia. From a methodological perspective, it presents innovative short-term ethnographic approaches, specifically in terms of conducting a gender-centred audience study with young people in an anti-gender milieu. To achieve these objectives, this work first introduces the historical, social and political contexts in contemporary Hungary. This is followed by a discussion of the theoretical and methodological approaches which it was necessary to consider before undertaking the fieldwork in Hungary. The article then analyses Hungarian children’s notions of gender by discussing their ideas about ‘the’ princess as a concept. Finally, as a summary, this study outlines its contributions to diverse academic disciplines.
期刊介绍:
European Journal of Cultural Studies is a major international, peer-reviewed journal founded in Europe and edited from Finland, the Netherlands, the UK, the United States and New Zealand. The journal promotes a conception of cultural studies rooted in lived experience. It adopts a broad-ranging view of cultural studies, charting new questions and new research, and mapping the transformation of cultural studies in the years to come. The journal publishes well theorized empirically grounded work from a variety of locations and disciplinary backgrounds. It engages in critical discussions on power relations concerning gender, class, sexual preference, ethnicity and other macro or micro sites of political struggle.