Technologies Of The Gendered Body

This book looks at the representation of the body in culture from a feminist perspective. Subjects covered include bodybuilding, cosmetic surgery, and cyberculture.

In this era of ubiquitous information flow, heightened mobility and limitless consumer convenience, human interaction with new technologies has become increasingly seamless. In the process, the human body is effectively and steadily reduced to just another interface, or a “second life”, so to speak. What is easily forgotten during this translucent transaction is that being human also necessarily implies being embodied. In other words, to constitute a body in its non-negotiable physicality is still what it entails to be human (amongst other things). To live daily in and through the complicated and dynamic intersection between “mind” and “body”, psychology and physiology―also known as embodiment―is what makes us human.

The new edition of Gender Circuits explores the impact of new technologies on the gendered lives of individuals through substantive sociological analysis and in-depth case studies. Examining the complex intersections between gender ideologies, social scripts, information and biomedical technologies, and embodied identities, this book explores whether and how new technologies are reshaping what it means to be a gendered person in contemporary society.

As yet there has been relatively little published on women's activities in relation to new digital technologies. Virtual Gender brings together theoretical perspectives from feminist theory, the sociology of technology and gender studies with well designed empirical studies to throw new light on the impact of ICTs on contemporary social life. A line-up of authors from around the world looks at the gender and technology issues related to leisure, pleasure and consumption, identity and self. Their research is set against a backcloth of renewed interest in citizenship and ethics and how these concepts are recreated in an on-line situation, particularly in local settings. With chapters on subjects ranging from gender-switching on-line, computer games, and cyberstalking to the use of the domestic telephone, this stimulating collection challenges the stereotype of woman as a passive victim of technology. It offers new ways of looking at the many dimensions in which ICTs can be said to be gendered and will be a rich resource for students and teachers in this expanding field of study.

Somatechnics highlights the reciprocal bond between the sôma and the techné of 'the body' and the techniques in which bodies are formed and transformed as crafted responses to the world around us. Structured around the themes of the governance of social bodies, the gendering of sexed bodies and the techniques associated with the formation of the self, Somatechnics presents a groundbreaking study of body modification. Its contributions to the work of Spinoza, Nietzsche, Merleau-Ponty, Deluze and Guattari make it a must read for scholars of sociology, cultural and queer studies and philosophy.

In this time-honored manifesto, Arnold and Merton add their voices to the vital discussion of what real community is all about: love, joy, unity, and the great adventure of faith shared with others along the way. Neither writer describes (or prescribes) community here, but they do provide a vision to guide our search.

Women's work. Manning the machine. Bodies electric in an age of the mechanical. Such phrases highlight a crosshatched network of meaning-making in modernity. Technological developments in the concrete sense of devices and operations intersect with longer-standing conceptual architectures. The essay collection Machine: Bodies, Genders, Technologies explores key interstices of this evolving techno-cultural imagery through interdisciplinary dialogue. Literary and historical perspectives within American Studies are brought into conversation with Film, Gender, Media, and Transnational Studies. Contributions consider politics of the body from radical self-fashioning to infections of the body politic, the interrelation of gender and technology from the factory floor to the film screen, and imaginations of the technological between the mechanic and the machinic from nineteenth-century electroshocks to millennial avant-gardes.

How do cultural notions of gender affect what kinds of technologies are produced and for what purposes? How does technology affect gender roles, either by reinforcing them or destabilizing them? What is the significance of sex and gender in the use of technologies such as cosmetic surgery and reproductive procedures that manipulate the body? Does "sexual difference" have any implications for the development of technology? What does "gender" mean in a technologically influenced world? Technology--from personal computers and cyberspace to artificial wombs and sex reassignment surgery--has opened up the possibility that sex roles as well as the gendered notions we have of human identity are subject to radical change. This engaging anthology examines long-standing stereotypical associations of men with technology and women with nature and assesses the impact of technologies that have necessarily blurred distinctions between the sexes on these traditional views of gender. An illuminating and often unsettling picture of the ethical, moral, and legal issues that shape experience, culture, and identity in the late twentieth century emerges from this thought-provoking collection. Indiana Series in the Philosophy of Technology--Don Ihde, general editor