Feminist Perspectives On The Body

Feminist Perspectives on the Body provides an accessible introduction to this extremely popular new area and is aimed at students from a variety of disciplines who are interested in gaining an understanding of the key issues involved. The author explores many important topics including: the Western world's construction of the body as a theoretical, philosophical and political concept; the body and reproduction; medicalisation; cosmetic surgery and eating disorders; the body in performance; the private and the public body; working bodies and new ways of thinking about the body.

This book focuses on the significance of the body in contemporary feminist scholarship. In recent years, the body has become a `hot item' in both contemporary social theory and research. This renewed interest has received a mixed reaction from feminists. While the body may be back, the `new' body theory often proves to be just as disembodied as it ever was. The body revival seems to be less an attempt to re-embody masculinist science than just another expression of the same condition which evoked the feminist critique in the first place: a flight from femininity and everything that is associated with it in western culture. Embodied Practices offers a critical appraisal of the recent `body revival', drawing upon insi

New developments in biotechnology radically alter our relationship with our bodies. Body tissues can now be used for commercial purposes, while external objects, such as pacemakers, can become part of the body. Property in the Body: Feminist Perspectives transcends the everyday responses to such developments, suggesting that what we most fear is the feminisation of the body. We fear our bodies are becoming objects of property, turning us into things rather than persons. This book evaluates how well-grounded this fear is, and suggests innovative models of regulating what has been called 'the new Gold Rush' in human tissue. This is an up-to-date and wide-ranging synthesis of market developments in body tissue, bringing together bioethics, feminist theory and lessons from countries that have resisted commercialisation of the body, in a theoretically sophisticated and practically significant approach.

First Published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

For centuries the biological sciences have dissected, measured, and probed the human body as a product of nature. But from a feminist perspective, the human body is a social production. Human bodies are shaped and controlled by the norms and expectations of gendered social orders, intersected by racial, class, religious, and age norms and expectations. The result is a gendered body produced for a gendered social world. In this concise text with readings, designed for undergraduate students, Lorber and Moore present feminist contributions to social and cultural studies of the human body, showing the construction of gendered bodies in different contexts. The authors argue that the ideology of the perfect body is a powerful means of social control for girls and boys as well as women and men. The authors show how children's bodies are gendered through games and sports - and shaped and modified throughout adulthood to meet social expectations. Each chapter includes a list of key concepts, three readings, recommended books and articles, and Internet sources. For the instructor, the book includes class exercises and a list of films with somatic themes.

This work comprises a collection of influential readings in feminist theory. It is divided into four sections: "Reading the Body"; "Bodies in Production"; "The Body Speaks"; and "Body on Stage".

The classic manifesto of the liberated woman, this book explores every facet of a woman's life.

Using various psychological theories, this book examines women's complex relations with their bodies and how attitudes toward the body affect women's sense of self. It also suggests ways to achieve a positive embodied self