Technologies of the
Gendered Body
Module Outline 2010-11
Term 2
1
Module outline
Term 1
2. Course introduction
3. Gender and the body
4. Technology, feminism and the body
5. Gendered bodies in the media
Part II: Disciplining the body
6. Disciplining the body
7. Fighting fat
8. Resisting the “war on obesity”
9. The sporting body
10. Reproductive and genetic technologies
Term 2
Part III: Body Modification: (un)natural bodies
11. Body projects
12. Cosmetic surgery
13. Body modification
14. Technologies of enhancement
15. Student presentations
16. Reading week
17. Makeover TV (Lecture: Carol Wolkowitz)
Part IV: Rejected bodies
18. Disabled bodies and technologies of normalisation
19. Leaky bodies (caring work) (Lecture: Carol Wolkowitz)
20. Conclusions
23. Revision
24. Revision
2
Term 2 Class Work
In addition to the assessed work (as circulated separately), you will be asked to
complete two pieces of work this term:
 A group presentation
 A 2000 word class essay or short project
One 20 minute group presentation: Week 5, Term 2
At the beginning of Term 2, within your seminar groups, you will be divided into
groups of 4-5, and working together, you will give a group presentation to the other
students on the module in Week 5, Term 2 (using the lecture and seminar times).
To prepare for the presentation, you will be asked to collect up to three images, news
or magazine articles, advertisements or published materials (e.g. press releases or
policy statements) on a topic covered in the module. These could be materials which
have a lot in common (for example, a series of ads for a cosmetic surgery clinic), or
you could choose contrasting materials (for example, an ad for a weight loss
organisation, and a newspaper column written by a size acceptance activist). In the
presentation, you will be invited to critically discuss these materials, supporting your
analysis with the academic literature that you have read during the module. You might
ask, for example: What assumptions about gender, technology and the body are at
work in those materials? What do those materials try to communicate about the
gendered body and its management? How have those ideas been critiqued? You will
get plenty of help and advice in preparing for your presentation, and each group will
get written feedback after the presentations.
This is important practice and preparation for the assessed project (see below), and
will be a good opportunity to develop these skills and learn what is required.
However, it is important to note that while you can draw on aspects of your group
presentation for your assessed project, you cannot focus on the same published
materials, and the final assessed project output needs to clearly be your own work.
Class essay or short project
The class essay for this term should be handed in at the beginning of the seminar in
Week 7. There is a limit of 2000 words.
For this class essay, you can EITHER do a shorter version of the project that you will
be doing as part of the assessed work (if you are taking the module 50:50 or 100%
assessed), OR one of the essay titles below.
For the short project, you should critically discuss one image, news or magazine
article, advertisement or other published material (e.g. press release or policy
statement) on a topic covered in the module. You should support your analysis with
reference to the relevant academic literature. Copies of the materials you are using
should be appended to the project.
Your short class essay project cannot use the same materials as your assessed
project, but it can be on the same topic.
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If you would prefer to do an essay, please choose a title from the list below:
1. Why do people join slimming clubs?
2. Evaluate Nick Crossley’s claim that gym users have moral careers.
3. Critically evaluate the claim that the “war on obesity” is morally, and not
scientifically, driven.
4. In what ways are body projects gendered? Illustrate your answer with specific
examples.
5. How is the concept of the “body project” useful for thinking about cosmetic
surgery?
6. Evaluate the argument that non-normative body modification is empowering.
7. Critically assess Orlan’s claim that the body is no longer adequate for the
current situation.
8. To what extent are interventions to “normalise” disabled bodies complicit with
problematic bodily norms.
9. Is gender or social class the more central to TV programmes involving the
makeover of participants’ embodied selves?
10. Why is the care of ‘leaky bodies’ perceived to be problematic?
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Week 11: Body Projects
In this lecture we take up the notion, implicit in
previous lectures, of body projects (the way, that is to
say, in which we reflexively work on our bodies for
particular ends, goals or purposes). The lecture, as such,
involves both a theoretical discussion of the concept of
body projects -- evident in the work of writers such as
Giddens, Shilling and Crossley -- and some illustrative
examples of contemporary body projects and reflexive
body techniques.
Seminar questions:


What is meant by body projects and reflexive modes of embodiment?
In what ways are body projects gendered?
Key reading:
Gill, R, Henwood, K and McLean, C (2005) “Body projects and the regulation of
normative masculinity” Body and Society 11 (1) 37-62
Recommended readings:
Crossley, N. (2004) The circuit trainer’s habitus: reflexive body techniques and the
sociality of the workout. Body and Society. 10 (1): 37-69.
Crossley, N. (2005), Reflexive Embodiment in Contemporary Society. Buckingham:
Open University Press (Chpt. 9 ‘Mapping reflexive body techniques).
Davis, K. (1994) Reshaping the Female Body: The Dilemma of Cosmetic Surgery.
London: Routledge.
Featherstone, M. (1991) “The body in consumer culture”, in Featherstone, M.,
Hepworth, M and Turner, B.S. The Body: Social Process, Cultural Theory. London:
Sage.
Giddens, A. (1991) Modernity and Self-Identity. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Monaghan, L (1999) “Creating the ‘perfect body’: a variable project”. Body &
Society. 5 (2-3): 267-90.
Shilling, C. (2003) The Body and Social Theory (2nd Edition). London: Sage ( Chpt. 1
‘Intro’ and Afterword)
Further readings:
Crawford, R (1984) “A cultural account of health: control, release and the social
body”, in McKinlay, J.B. (ed.) Issues in the Political Economy of Health. London:
Tavistock.
Gilman, S. (1999) Making the Body Beautiful: A History of Aesthetic Surgery.
Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press.
Lande, B. (2007) “Breathing like a soldier”, in Shilling C. (ed.) Embodying
Sociology. Oxford: Blackwell.
Monaghan, L. (2001) Looking good, feeling good. Sociology of Health and Illness.
23, (3): 330-56.
Shilling, C. (2005) The Body in Culture, Technology and Society. London: Sage
(Chpts. 5 ‘Sporting bodies’ and 8 ‘Technological bodies’).
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Wacquant, L. Body and Soul: Notebooks of an Apprentic Boxer/ Oxford NY: Oxford
University Press.
Williams, S.J. (2003) Medicine and the Body (Chpt. 8 ‘High Tech bodies’).
Williams S.J. and Bendelow, G.A. (1998) The Lived Body. London: Routledge (Chpt
4, ‘The body in high modernity and consumer culture’).
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Week 12: Cosmetic Surgery
Drawing on last week’s lecture on “body projects”, this session will explore the ways
in which the phenomenon of cosmetic surgery has been addressed by sociologists. In
particular, we will consider the ways in which those undergoing surgery are
characterised by others, and how they account for their own decisions to go “under
the knife”.
Seminar questions
1. In what ways can cosmetic surgery be seen as a “body project”?
2. Why have many feminists expressed concern about cosmetic surgery?
Key reading
Davis, K (2003) “Surgical stories: constructing the body, constructing the self” in
Dubious Equalities and Embodied Differences: Cultural Studies on Cosmetic
Surgery Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield
Recommended reading
Balsamo, A (1996) “On the cutting edge: cosmetic surgery and new imaging
technologies” in Technologies of the Gendered Body: Reading Cyborg
Women Durham; London: Duke University Press
Brooks, A (2004) “Under the knife and proud of it: an analysis of the normalization of
cosmetic surgery” Critical Sociology 30 (2): 207
Davis, K (1994) Reshaping the Female Body: the dilemma of cosmetic surgery
London: Routledge
Davis, K (1997) “My Body is My Art” in Embodied Practices: Feminist Perspectives
on the Body London: Routledge
Davis, K (2003) “Surgical passing: why Michael Jackson’s nose makes “us” uneasy”
in Dubious Equalities and Embodied Differences: Cultural Studies on
Cosmetic Surgery Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield (or Feminist Theory
(2003) 4 (1))
Gilman, S (1999) Making the Body Beautiful: a cultural history of aesthetic surgery
Princeton University Press
Gimlin, D (2000) “Cosmetic surgery: beauty as commodity” Qualitative Sociology 23
(1): 77-98
Morgan, K P (1998) “Women and the Knife: cosmetic surgery and the colonisation of
women’s bodies” in Hopkins, P D (ed.) Sex / Machine: readings in culture,
gender and technology Indiana: Indiana University Press
Pitts-Taylor, V (2007) Surgery Junkies: Wellness and Pathology in Cosmetic Culture
New Brunswick; Rutgers University Press
Further Reading
Blum, V L (2003) Flesh Wounds: the Culture of Cosmetic Surgery Berkeley:
University of California Press
Dally, A (1991) Women Under the Knife London: Hutchinson
Davis, K (2002) “A dubious equality: men, women and cosmetic surgery” Body &
Society 8 (1): 49-65
Davis, K (2003) Dubious Equalities and Embodied Differences: Cultural Studies on
Cosmetic Surgery Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield RD119 D26
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Gagne, P and McGaughey (2002) “Designing women: cultural hegemony and the
exercise of power among women who have undergone elective mammoplasty”
Gender and Society 16 (6): 814-838
Gilman, S (1998) Creating Beauty to Cure the Soul: race and psychology in the
shaping of aesthetic surgery
Gimlin, D L (2002) Body Work: Beauty and Self-Image in American Culture
Berkeley: University of California Press
Greer, G (1999) The Whole Woman London: Doubleday
Haiken, E (1997) Venus Envy: A History of Cosmetic Surgery Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press
Jacobson, N (2000) Cleavage: technology, controversy and the ironies of the manmade breast London: Rutgers University Press
Jones, M (2004) “Architecture of the body: cosmetic surgery and postmodern space”
Space and Culture 7 (1): 90-101
Jones, M (2008) Skintight: An Anatomy of Cosmetic Surgery Oxford: Berg
Negrin, L (2002) “Cosmetic surgery and the eclipse of identity” Body & Society 8
(4): 21-42
Tiefer, L (2008) “Female genital cosmetic surgery: freakish or inevitable? Analysis
from medical marketing, bioethics and feminist theory” Feminism and
Psychology 18: 466-479
Urla, J and Swedlund, A C (2000) “The Anthropometry of Barbie: unsettling ideals of
the feminine body in popular culture” in Schiebinger, L (ed.) Feminism and
the Body Oxford: Oxford University Press
Wolf, N (1990) The Beauty Myth London: Chatto & Windus
Zimmerman, S M (1998) Silicone Survivors: women’s experiences with breast
implants Philadelphia: Temple University Press
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Week 13: Body modification
In this session we will be exploring body modification
practices (and projects) that violate beauty norms, and
consider the competing claims that these practices either
reproduce gendered and raced bodily norms, or subvert
them.
Seminar questions
1. Is body modification a means of reclaiming the
female body, or just another means of objectifying it?
2. How do people account for non-normative body projects? How are those
accounts different from those of people engaging in normative body projects?
Key reading
Pitts, V (2003) “Reclaiming the female body: women body modifiers and feminist
debates”. Ch. 2 in In The Flesh: the Cultural Politics of Body Modification
Houndmills: Palgrave
Plus at least ONE of the following recommended readings:
Recommended readings
Klesse, C (1999) “Modern primitivism: non-mainstream body modification and
racialized representations” Body and Society 5 (2-3): 15-38
Pitts, V (1999) “Body modification, self-mutilation and agency in media accounts of a
subculture” Body and Society 5 (2-3): 291-303
Pitts, V (2003) In The Flesh: the Cultural Politics of Body Modification Houndmills:
Palgrave
Sweetman, P (1999) “Anchoring the (postmodern) self? Body modification, fashion
and identity” Body and Society 5 (2-3): 51-76
Turner, S (1999) “The possibility of primitiveness: towards a sociology of body
marks in cool societies” Body and Society 5 (2-3): 39-50
Further Readings
Anderson, C (2004) Legible Bodies: Race, Criminality and Colonialism in South Asia
Oxford: Berg
Atkinson, M (2003) Tattooed: the Sociogenesis of a Body Art Toronto: University of
Toronto Press
Atkinson, M (2002) “Pretty in ink: conformity, resistance and negotiation in women’s
tattooing” Sex Roles 47 (5-6) 219-235
Caplan, E (ed.) (2000) Written on the Body: The Tattoo in European and American
History London: Reaktion Books
DeMello, M (1993) “The convict body: tattooing among male American prisoners”
Anthropology Today 9 (6): 10-13
Deschesnes, M, Fines, P and Demers, S (2006) “Are tattooing and body piercing
indicators of risk-taking behaviours among high school students?” Journal of
Adolescence 29 (3): 379-393
Fisher, J (2002) “Tattooing the body, marking culture” Body and Society 8 (4): 91107
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Jeffreys, S (2000) “ ‘Body art’ and social status: cutting, tattooing and piercing from a
feminist perspective” Feminism and Psychology 10 (4): 409-429
Kosut, M (2006) “Mad artists and tattooed perverts: deviant discourse and the social
construction of cultural categories” Deviant Behavior 27 (1): 73-95
Riley, S and Cahill, S (2005) “Managing meaning and belonging: young women’s
negotiation of authenticity in body art” Journal of Youth Studies 8 (3): 261279
Sanders, C (1990) Customizing the Body: The Art and Culture of Tattooing
Philadelphia: Temple University Press
Shildrick, M (1999) “This body which is not one: dealing with differences” Body and
Society 5 (2-3): 77-92
Van Lenning, A (2002) “The system made me do it? A response to Jeffreys”
Feminism and Psychology 12 (4) 546-552
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Week 14: Technologies of Enhancement
Continuing the theme of ‘technologies of the self’, in this session, we will explore
technologies which are oriented towards “enhancing” the body’s capacities. Drawing
examples from sport and medicine, and with particular reference to the concept of the
“cyborg”, we will be asking what “enhancement” is and what challenges it poses to
categories of normal / abnormal and natural / unnatural embodiment. We will ask
what social structures of inequality are exposed through a focus on enhancement
technologies, what assumptions are at work in those practices, and what (potential)
impacts those technologies (both imagined and in reality) have on both sociality and
subjectivity.
Seminar questions
1. What are “technologies of enhancement”?
2. Is enhancement cheating?
3. In what ways do technologies of enhancement disrupt the categories of
normal/abnormal and natural / unnatural? How do they reaffirm those
categories?
4. How useful is the concept of the cyborg for thinking about technologies of the
gendered body?
5. Donna Haraway says that she would rather be cyborg than a goddess? Do you
agree?
Key reading
Hogle, L (2005) “Enhancement technologies and the body” Annual Review of
Anthropology 34: 695-716
Recommended reading
Balsamo, A (1999) Technologies of the Gendered Body: Reading Cyborg Women
Durham: Duke University Press (esp. Ch 1: Reading cyborgs, writing
feminism: Reading the body in contemporary culture).
Conrad, P and Potter, D (2004) “Human growth hormone and the temptations of
biomedical enhancement” Sociology of Health and Illness 26 (2): 184-215
Gane, N (2006) “When we have never been human, what is to be done? Interview
with Donna Haraway” Theory, Culture and Society 23 (7-8): 135-15
Haraway, D (1991) “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, technology and socialistfeminism in the late twentieth century”. In Simians, Cyborgs and Women: the
Reinvention of Nature New York: Routledge; OR in Hopkins, P D (ed) (1998)
Sex/Machine: Readings in Culture, Gender and Technology Bloomington:
Indiana University Press (ch. 25).
Karpin, I and Mykitiuk, R (2008) “Going out on a limb: prosthetics, normalcy and
disputing the therapy/ enhancement distinction” Medical Law Review 16:
413-436
Parens, E (1998) “Is better always good? The enhancement project” Special
Supplement to the Hastings Centre Report January-February 1998
Further reading
Anderson, W T (2003) “Augmentation, symbiosis, transcendence: technology and the
future(s) of human identity” Futures 35: 535-546
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Ayers, R (1999) “Serene and happy and distant: an interview with Orlan” Body and
Society 5 (2-3): 171-184
Butryn, T (2003) “Posthuman podiums: cyborg narratives of elite track and field
athletes” Sociology of Sport Journal 20 (1): 17-39
Clarke, J (1999) “The sacrificial body of Orlan” Body and Society 5 (2-3): 185-207
Degrazia, D (2000) “Prozac, enhancement and self-creation” Hastings Center Report
30 (2): 34-40
Elliott, C (2004) Better Than Well: American Medicine Meets the American Dream
New York: WW Norton
Farnell, R (1999) “In dialogue with “posthuman” bodies: interview with Stelarc”
Body and Society 5 (2-3): 129-147
Frank, A (2003) “Surgical body modification and altruistic individualism: a case for
cyborg ethics and methods” Qualitative Health Research 13 (10) 1407-1418
Fukuyama, F (2002) Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology
Revolution London: Profile Books
Goodall, J (1999) “An order of pure decision: un-natural selection in the work of
Stelarc and Orlan” Body and Society 5 (2-3): 149-170
Gray, C H (ed.) (1995) The Cyborg Handbook London: Routledge
Gray, C H (2001) Cyborg Citizen: Politics in the Posthuman Age London: Routledge
Hayles, N K (2006) “Unfinished work: from cyborg to cognisphere” Theory, Culture
and Society 23 (7-8): 159-166
Henwood, F, Kennedy, H and Miller, N (2001) Cyborg Lives? Women’s
Technobiographies York: Raw Nerve Books
Katz, S and Peters, K R (2008) “Enancing the mind? Memory medicine, dementia and
the aging brain” Journal of Aging Studies 22: 348-355
Kirkup, G, Janes, L, Woodward, K and Hovenden, F (2000) The Gendered Cyborg: A
Reader London: Routledge
Lupton, D (1999) “Monsters in metal cocoons: ‘road rage’ and cyborg bodies” Body
and Society 5 (1) 57-22
McKibbin, B (2004) Enough: Genetic Engineering and the End of Human Nature
London: Bloomsbury
Miah, A (2003) “Be very afraid: cyborg athletes, transhuman ideals and
posthumanity” Journal of Evolution and Technology Vol 13
(http://jetpress.org/volume13/miah.htm)
Pitts-Taylor, V (2007) Surgery Junkies: Wellness and Pathology in Cosmetic Culture
New Brunswick; Rutgers University Press
Plant, S (1998) Zeros and Ones London: 4th Estate
Roache, R (2008) “Enhancement and cheating” Expositions 2 (2): 153-156
Schermer, M (2008) “On the argument that enhancement is ‘cheating’” Journal of
Medical Ethics 34: 85-88
Shabot, S (2006) “Grotesque bodies: a response to disembodied cyborgs” Journal of
Gender Studies 15 (3): 223-235
Shilling, C (2005) The Body in Culture and Society London: Sage (Ch. 8:
Technological Bodies).
Stelarc (1999) “Parasite visions: alternate, intimate and involuntary experiences”
Body and Society 5 (2-3): 117-127
Thacker, E (1999) “Performing the technoscientific body: RealVideo surgery and the
Anatomy Theater” Body and Society 5 (2-3): 317-336
Thrift, N (2006) “Donna Haraway’s dreams” Theory, Culture and Society 23 (7-8):
189-195
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Toffoletti, K (2007) Cyborgs and Barbie Dolls: Feminism, Popular Culture and the
Posthuman Body London: I B Taurus
Wolmark, J (1999) Cybersexualities Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press
Zurbrugg, N (1999) “Marinetti, Chopin, Stelarc and the auratic intensities of the
postmodern techno-body” Body and Society 5 (2-3): 93-115
Zylinska, J (2002) The Cyborg Experiments: the Extensions of the Body in the Media
Age London: Continuum
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Week 15: Presentations
The lecture and seminar times for this week will be used for the group presentations.
Week 16: Reading week
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Week 17: Makeover TV (Carol Wolkowitz)
TV reality show personal makeovers debuted on prime time television in 2001, to be
followed by other programmes offering more extreme and intrusive remedies for
perceived defects in embodied self-presentation. Such programmes demonstrate, first
of all, the centrality of contemporary media to pressures to improve the self. They also
offer numerous examples of the exacting discipline required to maintain a properly
gendered body, and they can also be argued to link gendered presentation to class and
other wider ideological forces. Such makeover programmes also raise, and not for the
first time, the question of whether we should see female (consumer) culture as a
source of pleasure or oppression, autonomy or normalisation.
Seminar questions
1. To what extent and in what ways does the personal makeover TV programme
represent a new departure?
2. What is meant by disciplinary power? How does it apply to reality TV
makeover programmes?
3. Are reality TV programmes as much to do with demonstrating the cultural
capital carried by the classed body as gendered self-presentation?
Key readings
“Reality Television: Fairy Tale or Feminist Nightmare” (2004) Feminist Media
Studies 4 (2). A set of very short papers edited by Moorti and Ross. The key reading
is the short essays by Moorti and Ross; Wood and Skeggs: Allatson; Deery and Meyer
and Kelly.
Recommended readings
Recommended readings on televised reality programmes
Banet-Weiser, S. and K. Portwood-Stacer (2006) “’I just want to be me again!’:
Beauty Pageants, Reality Television and Post-feminism” Feminist Theory 7
(2): 255-272. (Can be borrowed from CW)
Clarkson, J. (2005) “Contesting Masculinity’s Makeover: Queer Eye, Consumer
Masculinity, and ‘Straight-Acting’ Gays” Journal of Communication Inquiry
29: 235-255.
Gill, R. (2007) “Postfeminist Media Culture: Elements of a Sensibility” European
Journal of Cultural Studies 10(2); 147-166
Lewis, T. (2007) “’He Needs to Face his Fears with these Five Queers’: Queer Eye
for the Straight Guy, Makeover TV, and the Lifestyle Expert” Television &
New Media 8 (4): 285-311.
McRobbie, A. (2004) “Notes on What Not to Wear and Post-feminist Symbolic
Violence’ in L. Adkins and B. Skeggs (eds) Feminism after Bourdieu Oxford:
Blackwell, pp. 99-109.
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.
Recommended readings on other aspects of the (re)making of gendered embodied
self-presentation:
Coward, R. (1984) Female Desire London: Paladin.
Entwhistle. J. and E. Wilson (eds) (2001) Body Dressing Oxford: Berg. See especially
J. Entwhistle, ‘The Dressed Body” and H. Radner, “Embodying the Single
Girl in the 1960s”
Gimlin, D. (1996) “Pamela’s Place: Power and Negotiation in the Hair Salon” Gender
and Society 10 (5): 505-26.
Gimlin, D. (2002) Body Work: Beauty and Self-Image in American Culture Berkeley:
University of California Press
Radner, J. (1995) Shopping Around NY: Routledge. Preface and Chapter 5 Speaking
the Body: Jane Fonda’s Workout Book.
Theoretical background:
Bartky, S. (1990) “Foucault, Femininity and the Modernization of Patriarchal Power”
in Bartky, S. Femininity and Domination NY: Routledge. Also available in L.
Diamond and L. Quinby (eds) (1988) Feminism and Foucault Boston:
Northeastern University Press.
Bartky, S. (1990) “Foucault, Femininity and the Modernization of Patriarchal Power”
in Bartky, S. Femininity and Domination NY: Routledge. Also available in L.
Diamond and L. Quinby (eds) (1988) Feminism and Foucault Boston:
Northeastern University Press.
Skeggs, B. (2004) “Exchange, Value and Affect: Bourdieu and the ‘Self’” The
Sociological Review 52 (2): 51-95. Or Chapter 5 in L. Adkins and B. Skeggs
(eds) Feminism after Bourdieu Oxford: Blackwell.
Skeggs, B. (2002) “Technologies for telling the reflexive self” in Qualitative Research
in Action, ed. By T. May, pp. 340-74. London: Sage.
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Week 18: Disabled bodies and technologies of normalization
In this session, we will be exploring some of the technological / social interventions
designed to “normalise” disabled bodies. Drawing on a range of examples - including
facial surgery on children with Downs Syndrome, cochlear implants for deaf children,
genetic technologies of selection, the separation of conjoined twins, the medical
management of intersexed children – we will explore what these cases can tell us
about the categories of normal / abnormal, and think about how this challenges some
of the prevailing assumptions about (un)acceptable bodies.
Seminar questions
1. Why do attempts to have a deaf / Deaf child cause so much concern?
2. Kathy Davis argues that facial surgery on Downs Syndrome children raises a
problem of inauthenticity – what does this mean? How does this affect how
we think about more mainstream cosmetic surgery?
Key reading
Davis, K (2003) Dubious Equalities and Embodied Differences: Cultural Studies on
Cosmetic Surgery Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield (Chapter 7: A Dubious Equality)
Recommended Readings
Davis, D (1997) “Cochlear implants and the claims of culture? A response to Lane
and Grodin” Kennedy Institute of Ethics 7 (3): 253-258
Dreger, A D (2004) One of us: conjoined twins and the future of normal London:
Harvard University Press
Fausto-Sterling, A (2000) Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of
Sexuality London: Basic Books
Lane, H and Grodin, M (1997) “Ethical issues in cochlear implant surgery: an
exploration into disease, disability and the best interests of the child” Kennedy
Institute of Ethics 7 (3): 231-251
Shildrick, M (1999) “The body which is not one: dealing with differences” Body and
Society 5 (2-3): 77-92
Wendell, S (1996) The Rejected Body: Feminist Philosophical Reflections on
Disability London: Routledge
Further Readings
Barton, L and Oliver, M (eds.) (1997) Disability Studies: Past, Present and Future
Leeds: The Disability Press
Corker, M (1997) Deaf and Disabled, or Deafness Disabled? : Towards a Human
Rights Perspective Buckingham: Open University Press
Davis, L (1997) The Disability Studies Reader London: Routledge
Franklin, S and Roberts, C (2006) Born and Made: An Ethnography of Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis Princeton: Princeton University Press
Glover, J (2006) Choosing Children: Genes, Disability and Design Oxford: Clarendon
Press
Grealy, L (1995) Autobiography of a Face New York: Harper Perennial
Green, S E (2003) “What do you mean, ‘What’s wrong with her?’: stigma and the
lives of families of children with disabilities.” Social Science and Medicine 57: 13611374
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Hubbard, R (1997) “Abortion and disability: who should and who should not inhabit
the world”. In Davis, L (ed) The Disability Studies Reader London: Routledge
Hughes, B (2000) “Medicine and the aesthetic invalidation of disabled people”
Disability and Society 15 (4): 555-568
Jones, RB (2000) “Parental consent to cosmetic facial surgery in Down’s Syndrome”.
Journal of Medical Ethics 26: 101-2 (http://jme.bmjjournals.com)
Kerr, A and Shakespeare, T (2002) Genetic Politics: from Eugenics to Genome
Cheltenham: New Clarion Press
Lane, Harlen (1997) ‘Constructions of Deafness’, in Lennard J. Davis (ed), The
Disability Studies Reader, Routledge: New York and London
Rapp, R (1999) Testing Women, Testing the Foetus: the Social Impact of
Amniocentesis in America New York: Routledge
Shakespeare, T (ed.) (1998) The Disability Reader: Social Science Perspectives
London: Continuum Books
Vanezis, P (2002) “Saving faces: art and medicine working together” The Lancet 359:
267
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Week 19: Leaky bodies and their care
In focusing on the often intrusive and disciplinary technologies
of the gendered body, we should be careful to remember the
forms of ‘body work’ on which disabled and ill people depend.
In these cases much body work is devoted to maintaining,
rather than transforming, the client. Care of the elderly, in
particular, is often conceptualised as a form of ‘dirty work’
because it involves dealing with an open body that is not in
control of its body orifices or ‘leakiness’. What this means for
the cared-for individual, as well as those who care for her or
him and the relationship between them, needs to be integrated into our overall concern
for the practices of the body in contemporary society. Widding Isaksen suggests that
care of the leaky body is defined as woman’s work because of meaning of leakiness in
our society, while Anderson critiques the recruitment of migrant women specifically
do this kind of work.
Seminar questions
1. What is meant by the “leaky body”? How is it linked to gender ideology?
2. Why is care of the elderly or disabled so often assigned to racialised, migrant
or other low-status workers?
Key Readings
Widding Isaksen, L. (2002) “Masculine dignity and the dirty body” NORA 10 (3):
137-146.
Recommended readings
Anderson, B. (2000) Doing the Dirty Work?: The Global Politics of Domestic Labour
Zed/ Especially Chapter 2.
Ehrenreich, B. and A.R. Hoschschild (eds) Global Woman: Nannies, Maids and Sex
Workers in the New Economy London: Granta Books. Especially the articles
by Hochschild and Rivas.
Gimlin, D. (2007) “What is body work? A Review of the Literature” Sociological
Compass 1 (1): 353-370.
Isaksen, Lise Wilding (2005) “Gender and Care: The Role of Cultural Ideas of Dirt
and Disgust” in Morgan. D. and B. Brandth (eds) Gender, Bodies, Work
London: Ashgate.
Isaksen, L.W. (2000) “Towards a Sociology of (Gendered) Disgust: Perceptions of the
Organic Body and the Organization of Care Work” Berkeley: Centre for
Working Families. Accessed at
http://wfnetwork.bc.edu/Berkeley/papers/po2.pdf on 6 March 2006. Or Journal
of Family Issues, 29 (7): 791-811.
Jervis, L.L. (2001) “The Pollution of Incontinence and the Dirty Work of Caregiving
in a US Nursing Home”, Medical Anthropology Quarterly 15 (1): 84-99.
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Lawton, J. (1998) “Contemporary hospice care” Sociology of Health and Illness 2
(2): 121-43.
Longhurst, R. (2001) Bodies: Exploring Fluid Boundaries London: Routledge.
Price, J. and M. Shildrick (eds) (1999) Feminist Theory and the Body: a Reader
Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press
Murcott, A. (1993) 'Purity and Pollution: Body Management and the Social Place of
Infancy' in S. Scott and D. Morgan (eds) Body Matters London: Falmer Press.
Twigg, J. (2000) “Carework as a Form of Body Work” Ageing and Society 20(4):
389-41.
Twigg, J. (2006) The Body in Health and Social Care Palgrave Macmillan
Wolkowitz, C. (2006) Bodies at Work London: Sage. Chapter 7 Body Work as Social
Relationship or as Labour’ OR C. Wolkowitz (2002) “The Social Relations of
Body Work” Work, Employment and Society 16 (3): 497-510.
Wolkowitz, C. (2007) “Dirt and its Social Relations” in B. Campkin and R. Cox, (eds)
Dirt: New Geographies of Cleanliness and Contamination London: I.B. Tauris.
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Week 20: Conclusions
Weeks 23-24: Revision
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