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Although listing a child for sale in the local paper's classified section is unthinkable, and it is illegal to sell organs in the United States, there is a proliferation of advertisements recruiting young women and men to sell eggs and sperm. These advertisements are placed by organized donation programs whose paying clients use reproductive technologies to conceive children, thereby creating a 21st century medical market in genetic material. Eggs and sperm are symmetrical bodily goods, each constituting one half of the reproductive material needed to create life, which allows for a comparative analysis of the structure and experience of egg and sperm donation. This paper draws on interviews conducted with staff and donors at four programs in California to analyze gendered bodily commodification in egg and sperm donation. I argue that if a reproductive cell's origin in a woman's body or a man's body determines its status as thing or person, product or service, commodity exchange or gift exchange, then these distinctions will shape the experiences of the women and men selling genetic material. This paper contributes to debates in the sociology of gender about the relationship between biological differences among women and men and the gendered norms attributed to these differences and debates in economic sociology about how social factors affect the expansion of the market. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will map a component of lived Fordist spaces in a global context through the notion of Everyday life. The everyday life within a city based in the steel industry, in essence an old industrial city, has been transforming. This paper questions the extent of this transformation in the lives and bodies of the city residents in relation to the discourse on the post-industrial subject. Much of the discourse on Post-Fordism among urban planners and their associated academics artificially create a post-industrial political subject. The application of this discourse to old industrial cities creates a contradictory moment where the Fordist political subject is expected to be disembedded from the economic infrastructure and social institutions of the historically industrial city. This paper will argue that the concept of the post-industrial subject ignores the continued dominance of Fordist historical, social, and spatial relations within the industrial urban subject and body. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines those etiological theories which have proposed that certain psychosocial factors, more commonly called stress factors, compose the key cause to coronary heart disease.The aim is to examine the tendency to look within individuals for explanations for their behavior and for CHD. The paper shows that there are three phases in this discussion: 1) the medical literature in the 1950s and 1960s that medicalized men?s cultural repertoire of violent behavior and linked aggression to CHD, 2) the research in the 1970s and 1980s that presented men?s emotional inexpressivity as a health risk, 3) during the past decade research has tended to naturalize aggression and to interpret it as the sign of the ?body?s own wisdom? when threatened by external environmental stressors. The body has been unmarked by gender in this medical or sociobiological discussion, although at issue has been the bodies of white middle-class men. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper starts with a contentious claim, namely, that an adequate sociology of the body must not simply engage with but fully incorporate the biological into its theorizing in a non-reductionist, non-determinist fashion. Questions as to why and how we should do so, and where we might look for profitable leads and exemplars are then addressed in the main part of the paper, with particular reference to medical sociology. The paper concludes with a recapitulation of these arguments and the (future) agendas they raise, in medical sociology and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes a conceptual framework for understanding differences among women in their commitment to their appearance. Based on life history interviews with 50 women between the ages of 18 and 35 years, this paper delineates a multi-faceted conception of appearance commitment that includes two broad dimensions: practices and ?emotion work.? In the sample of women interviewed, variation was found in both bodily practices (diet, exercise, makeup, apparel choices, etc.) and emotional preoccupation with appearance issues. Emotional preoccupation was found to consist of four key facets, including: comparisons with other women; awareness of others? appearance expectations; body-image; and the development of strategies for managing appearance itself and bodily concerns. Respondents spoke about these elements in ways that suggested they are aspects of an ?inner dialogue.? While social pressures are a key element of emotional preoccupation with appearance, such dialogues suggest that women critically reflect on pressures and consciously construct strategies for both bodily and emotion management. Such strategies are important examples of agency. Three categories of commitment to appearance (derived from the intersection of practices and emotional preoccupation) were found among women interviewed: minimalist, moderate, and enthusiast. This work may contribute to the existing body literature by describing the variation that exists among women in the salience of appearance to their identities. Moreover, the concept of appearance commitment that is developed here may also strengthen existing understandings of women?s body-image and participation in beauty practices by taking into account both actions and their cognitive/emotional underpinnings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the differences that younger, middle-aged, and older women with breast cancer experience, particularly in relation to their bodies. Given that aging bodies are paid little attention in our youth oriented society and even in sociological literature on the body, and given that the number of older women with breast cancer is on a significant rise, it is important to explore these experiences in order to legitimate and best treat older women. Data for this paper come from a qualitative study in which forty-two women, aged 30-88 with similar disease profiles, were intensively interviewed. Narrative data were then combed for common, emergent themes. This paper discusses the differences in the ways older and younger women discuss and value breasts, claim or objectify their bodies, and choose treatment for breast cancer. These findings indicate that more research on aged bodies is needed and have implications for health care providers in the treatment of older women. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to answer the question "what is beauty?" The author argues that nothing natural or man-made has beauty inherent in itself. Humans' conceptions of beauty are defined by society. The main argument of this work is that beauty is primarily a product of the habitus, leaving existential free will to explain individual differences in perception of beauty. The second half of the paper deconstructs the Western beauty Ideal using the theoretical framework put forth in the first section of the paper. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is part of a larger project that explores the idea that although we always visually perceive people as male or female, that split-second categorization has as much - if not more - to do with the social construction of our visual perceptions as the sensory stimuli provided by human bodies. Here, I draw on cognitive sociology, cognitive science and the sociology of knowledge, as well as eight interviews with transgender people, to present a preliminary conceptual foundation for my sociological analysis of the visual perception of sex. I also reflect on the productive questions raised by a view of sex as social for both the prevailing conceptual paradigm in gender scholarship, the sex/gender distinction, and for sociology more broadly, which still often takes the body as self-evident. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I examine the ways in which the metaphor of failure has dominated biomedical literature on vulvodynia, or persistent vulvar pain, until very recently. Based on a content analysis of articles in medical journals, I identify several phases of this metaphor-making: the dominance of heteronormativity as a foundational category for discussion of vulvar pain, its eclipse by metaphors of failed psychosexual development, and most recently, the emergence of a new "de-metaphorized" understanding of vulvar pain as another type of chronic pain syndrome rather than an index of gendered psychological pathology. I argue that this recent shift is a positive and emancipatory development and take issue with many of the tenets of postmodern medical anthropology and sociology, which valorize the conceptualization of bodily conditions as ways of articulating social and cultural injustices and problems. I contextualize my work on vulvodynia within the burgeoning feminist literature on the uneasy relationship between women and biomedical knowledge. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on interviews with women who were previously morbidly obese, who are now in normal weight ranges, this paper explores the life changes that accompany extreme weight loss. Corporal changes altered their presentation of self, magnified their feminine qualities and impacted some of their relationships. It also brought about feelings of euphoria and confusion as women rid themselves of a stigmatized large body and incorporated new experiences and feelings into their lives and identity. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is an inexplicable silence in the sociological literature concerning the multi-month period in a women's life connecting the events related to conception and those surrounding delivery. The research community seems utterly oblivious to or unconcerned with the myriad changes associated with living in a body which is undergoing dramatic transformations in appearance and function. Nor does the literature concern itself with the ways in which a pregnant women's social world perceives and responses to these changes or to the individual who is experiencing them. This paper examines the embodied experience of pregnancy in a Singaporean workplace context. It focuses, in particular, on the ways in which the presence of a pregnant body in this context challenges some fundamental societal ideas relating to gender, aesthetics, social roles and hierarchy. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sociologists have long recognized that social problems do not solely derive from objective conditions but from a process of collective definition (Blumer 1971; Mauss 1977). At the core of social problems are competitions and, specifically, framing competitions - struggles over the production of ideas and meanings (Benford and Snow 2000). This paper examines how cultural meanings about overweight and obesity are developed and promulgated. Through frame analysis of organizational materials, I document three competing frames - the medical frame, social justice frame, and market choice frame - produced by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), activists at the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance (NAAFA), and food industry representatives at the Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF), respectively. While each cultural producer uses different devices to disseminate their cultural message, there is notable and rather unexpected overlap between the signature elements of all three frames. All framers appeal to scientific research and sensible action, however uniquely defined. In turn, each frame has different outcomes for social equality and how society thinks of fat bodies. Using the "framing matrix" (Gamson and Lasch 1983; Gamson and Modigliani 1987), I explore each frame's key "signature elements" and discuss its social and cultural significance. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we introduce the concept of clinical life to capture a form of life produced in the pursuit of medical possibility. We describe clinical life as it is expressed by aged patients and their families in the wake of receiving life-saving cardiac procedures. Clinical life is made possible as people in the more affluent sectors of U.S. society infer specific promise about lengthened, restored life from possibility, and engage easily and naturally with what the clinic has to offer in the pursuit of the opportunities, desire, and growing obligation to extend life into ever-older ages. Our notion of clinical life embodies the changed experience of and expectations about one's body and future as the transformative and restorative potential of medical technologies becomes a significant point of reference for evaluating life and its worth. Clinical life is also existentially experienced in the wake of medical intervention as aging individuals subsequently manage, negotiate, and reflect upon the contours of an acceptable relationship with the world of the clinic. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What are the factors that influence or shape women?s body image? How does race and class affect girls? and women?s body image? In this paper I discuss the effects of race and class on women?s body image for African American and Chicana/Latina women. I explore how body image is affected by factors such as skin color, phenotype and socioeconomic status. I argue that as race is socially contructed, body image is gendered social construction of race. As a result, body image for women of color manifest differently than Whites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under new service work regimes in China, women?s bodies and their labor are subject to a process of feminization and sexualization that reflect dramatic changes to China?s gender politics. Female service workers? bodies are at once the objects of managerial interventions and disciplinary strategies that aim to produce a particular kind of serving body as well as the subjects of new, feminized subjectivities rooted in a sexualized bodily consciousness. In this paper I use the term ?embodification? to describe a process that marks young female bodies as emblems productive capitalism while and at the same time mapping the inefficiencies and backwardness of state socialism onto the bodies of middle-aged women. At the same time, the new, normative embodiment of the productive woman service worker stands opposed to a deviant, potentially threatening variant: the aggressively sexual young woman who represents the underbelly of capitalism. The ?embodification? of service work in China allows some women to sup from the ?rice bowl of youth? while others, and middle-aged women in particular, increasingly find their rice bowls left empty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adolescence is a crucial period when problems of adolescent girls? obesity emerge or become more pronounced and, independently, is a time when girls? experience excessive body image concern, rendering them vulnerable to social pressures for thinness. This paper explores the relationships among school context, academic performance, and adolescent girls? risk of obesity and body image using longitudinal data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) and the new high school transcript supplement to Add Health, the Adolescent Health and Academic Achievement (AHAA) study. Taking advanced mathematics courses indicates academic status (as well as the social context of academic track placement) and is associated with a lower risk of obesity, even when prior risk of obesity is held constant. Additionally, girls with higher GPAs have better body images even after controlling on their weight. These results suggest that social contexts that are associated with the formal course taking structure of the school may shape students? relationships with their weight and body image. For ASA, we will continue to assess the influence school context and sub-context by exploring multi-level and cross-level effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Yoga has increased in popularity in recent years and is highly visible in popular culture. This paper examines the reasons people in the U.S. practice yoga in and outside of yoga classes and how they envision the experience in relation to their physical and spiritual lives. Yoga is especially attractive to women as a search for meaning and salvation through body transformation and a search for value and voice in New Age spirituality. I attended yoga classes as a participant observer and surveyed other participants. My analysis explores the relationships between yoga, exercise, gender, and religion in the contemporary practice of yoga. Yoga is used for exercise and/or weight loss, the reduction of stress, improvement of mental functions, spirituality, and is associated with the New Age Movement. All of these contexts involve an investment in the process of transformation. The ethic of personal and social transformation, the communal nature of yoga classes, and the feminized presentations of yoga in popular media have contributed to yoga?s particular appeal for women. Also of interest in this discussion is the connection between yoga and religion and the pseudo-religious forms taken by exercise and weight-loss regimens in general. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

’Mixed-race’ bodies are a source of endless fascination in the popular imagination. They may encompass a range of racialised types but are determined by what they are not. Falling between the feared predatory ‘black’ body and the safe, unsexed ?white? body, the ‘exotic’ global body radiates subtle but powerful sexuality, it is the source of desire and unease, something to be admired and owned. How do those who are ‘mixed-race’ manage this discursive space which is constituted as a site of instability and uncertainty? For these people backgrounds it is a site of ambivalence, the source of strength and inauthenticity, a paradox which provides insights into the problematic nature of visible raciality. In this paper I use narrative and memory work to show how the revisioning of embodied experience operates as a form of recuperation of the indeteminability of the ‘mixed-race’ global body. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the relationship between alcohol use and body image and related eating and dieting behaviors among adolescent boys and gilrs. The data reveal that race differences in alcohol use are significant and influenced by unhealthy body images and dieting practices. While the gender differences in alcohol use found in these data reflect past research, the inclusion of other factors, such as past abuse, body image, and race add to the current understanding of alcohol use among adolescents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Feminist sociologists have long challenged and expanded mainstream definitions of work. More recently, sociologists of the body have raised awareness of the body as a social field upon which power relations are acted out. Our paper unites these two trends in an attempt to make explicit and critically analyze the invisible work women often do with their own and others’ bodies on the job. Using in-depth interviews with women office workers at a heterosexual men’s pornographic magazine, we highlight the "body work" and "embodied work" they engage in on a daily basis. First, we examine the discursive strategies these workers use to turn images of women’s bodies into mere products as a way of distancing themselves from the nude models ("body work"). Then we explore how these same workers manage their own bodies, as they carefully negotiate a professional identity in a workplace replete with hyper-sexualized images of other women’s bodies ("embodied work"). We conclude by suggesting that our case, rather than being somehow unique because of the sexual content of the job, is merely an extreme example of two types of body work which are likely practiced in other, more ordinary locations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Feminist methodologies, especially in qualitative studies conducted by and about women, often emphasize the importance of participants? ?lived experiences.? A vital aspect of the lived experiences of women is the complex relationship between female identity and the body, which has been explicated by feminism. This paper argues that vital to feminist methodology is an analysis of how a focus on participants? lived body experiences affect the researcher?s own identity in relation to her body. Based on in-depth interviews with female exotic dancers, whose livelihood depends on how successfully they showcase a sexualized body, this study revolves around the women?s embodied, lived experiences. It is in the spirit of feminist methodologies to study the impact of this research on the researcher. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is concerned with the relationships that hold between male bodies, masculinities, and ways of knowing. I focus in particular upon the eye, perhaps the least sexually differentiated part of the body, and ask after its role in producing the male, or the properly masculine body. After discussing the place of the body within contemporary theorizing on masculinities, with particular reference to R.W. Connell's work, I draw upon Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guatarri's notion of the Body without Organs and place it into a productive correspondence with Jacques Derrida's figure of the blind man. In this way, I aim to question the opposition between the biological and the social that tends to underpin gender theory, and to consider what possibilities this may open up for rethinking male bodies in relation to masculinities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Obesity is a major public health problem in our society. Weight changes associated with pregnancy are a risk factor for obesity. Much of what is known on the subject is from research that examined differences between Whites and African Americans. To date, no studies have investigated the extent to which childbearing is associated with obesity among Latinas. Methods: The analyses reported here are from the Hispanic HANES (1982-1984). Hispanic HANES is the largest and most comprehensive Latino health survey conducted in the United States. Results: There is a positive association between number of live births and Body Mass Index (BMI). That is, the higher the number of the live births the higher the BMI. These patterns are consistent across Latina groups. There is also a positive association between parity and overall weight gain, but only for Mexican American women. Parity is unrelated to overall weight gain for Puerto Rican and Cuban women. These noted relationships remained robust after adjusting for age, marital status, socioeconomic status, and cultural factors. Conclusions: Given the differences the higher fertility rate among Latinas compared to other women, this paper underscores the importance of understanding parity as a mechanism to greater body weight. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some social theorists have argued that both gender and sexual identity are accomplished through on-going and routine bodily performances. These bodily performances of gender and sexuality constitute a form of ?identity work,? or a means by which people construct and negotiate personal identities. The practices that produce these performances include beauty labor, defined as the time, money, and mental and physical energy that individuals invest in their physical appearance. In this paper, our primary aim is to understand how women construct and negotiate personal identities through their beauty labor practices using qualitative data from 85 in-depth interviews with women in a medium-sized Southwestern city. Our data suggest that investments in beauty labor and bodily satisfaction produce a sense of identity for most women. Some women deliberately perform limited beauty labor. For these women, not engaging in beauty labor is often a deliberate form of identity work, with different implications depending on whether they are ultimately satisfied or dissatisfied with their appearances. In contrast, some women engage in substantial beauty labor as a strategy for constructing or projecting a unique identity. Some of these women actively employ beauty labor to generate a positive self-image, while others feel thwarted by their inability to live up to a desired aesthetic. The relationships between beauty labor, satisfaction, and identity work, and with race and sexual orientation, are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While common-sense understandings depict chronic illness as a static condition, changing only when clearly degenerative, biographical osteoarthritis narratives are driven by images and metaphors of movement. This is especially important when considered in light of Hockey and James? argument concerning the relationship between ?movement metaphors? and the aged in Western culture. Narrative metaphors and images include the movement of pain across body regions, the limitations osteoarthritis places on movement across space and in time, the movement of the consequences of osteoarthritis outwards (to social relations) and inwards (to shape internal thoughts and dialogues), and movement as a moral mandate and evaluative standard. This paper suggests that these metaphors are used to sustain the practicalities of everyday life, social networks, and a moral order based on the necessity of movement and activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The research presented in this paper examines the influences of race, gender, and sexual or physical abuse on unhealthy eating and dieting practices among Black and White adolescents. Specifically, the project considers the intersection of race and gender on actual body size and perceived body size. The impact of past sexual or physical abuse emerges as a significant predictor of unhealthy dieting and eating behaviors for Whites but not for Blacks. While girls are more likely to have distorted body images and to engage in disordered eating and dieting, these differences are further explained with race and past sexual or physical abuse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increasingly the term ?epidemic? is being used to describe the current prevalence of fatness in the United States. Skyrocketing rates of obesity among all groups of Americans, particularly children, the poor, and minorities, have become a major public health concern. Indeed, it is difficult to open a newspaper or magazine without encountering a discussion of the ?expanding American waistline? and the health problems associated therewith. In this paper I use 751 New York Times articles on obesity to examine the media construction of the ?obesity epidemic?. I show that there is not one dominant discourse (i.e. medicine) constructing this epidemic, but that a layering of discourses becomes evident through an examination of the construction of the epidemic and the treatments recommended for its containment. Through a periodization and analysis of these articles, I examine the emergent and residual technologies of governance characterizing this epidemic. Through the identification and complication of three ?discursive pairings? arising from these articles, I suggest that undergirding these seemingly contradictory pairings and the technologies to which they give rise is a general location of the ?problem? of obesity within the individual. Obesity then is what I call a ?post-modern epidemic?, an epidemic in which unevenly medicalized phenomena lacking a clear pathological basis get cast in the language and moral panic of ?traditional? epidemics. I conclude with an analysis of how the construction of the ?obesity epidemic? relies on gendered and racialized expectations of women?s embodiment and role as mothers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Women's reproductive functions have attracted much attention from doctors, psychologists, psychiatrists, and pharmaceutical companies throughout the past century. This paper explores media images of women's reproductive functions in 32 print advertisements for menstrual, premenstrual and menopausal products collected between April 2001 and January 2003. The common theme among these advertisements is the power relations portrayed between women and their bodies. Women's bodies are portrayed as having power over women through messages of overt control, interference with daily activities and pain and suffering. The products advertised purportedly have the ability to overcome the power exerted by women's bodies. Therefore, women can control their bodies by using these products. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we show how a group of born males used coming out of denial stories to facilitate their transition to living as women. Central to these narratives were feelings of embodiment and cultural notions of gender. We show, for example, how stories about feeling awkward interacting as men and feeling unsatisfied when crossdressing for autoerotic activities were used to distance themselves from various masculinities. We also show how in their stories of having sex with men or women and stories about their changing bodies and desire for surgery, interviewees discursively used emotions to affiliate themselves with women. We conclude by discussing the relation between gender, the body, and emotion and the role of narrative in life course transitions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I speak of a type of monsters and monstrosities ? ones lurking beyond the safety of our contained bodies and our contained identities, at the interstices where our bodies meet the ?other.? How can the body, with its allegedly stable forms, structures, and functionings, be reconciled with notions of heterogeneity, discontinuity, reversions, incongruences, and dissonances? The question is critical for a study attempting to rethink the connection between eating practices and identity as it takes as its starting point the heterotopic nature of practice in general. For the body is that which is at the juncture of the two. For what I am interested in is to explore how constructionists, and more particularly those associated with poststructuralism, postmodernism, and feminism, those closer to articulating heterotopia, have developed ways of speaking, of understanding body and mind, that erase, if not the split between the two, at least the prioritization of one substance over the other and give the body as central a role as the mind in the constitution of consciousness, subjectivity, and identity. I am interested in seeing how these new visions of embodiment, visions that speak of an uncontainable body and an uncontainable subjectivity, give us the grounds for understanding embodiment itself as heterotopic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through the technological developments and hence . growing - technological concern about body especially in reproduction technologies created its reflection in the social scientific research on the non-ethical use of living body and body parts. These developments cannot reduce the addiction to body, conversely they increase. Surrogate motherhood, being ovum or sperm donors, being a marrow provider donor are some popular examples of these applications which were subjected many scientific and ethical discussions and created different scopes of inequalities even if they were awarded or not. A social and responsible state is not available in order to make of a claim the human right of a person who sells a part of her body to survive. Special tests, operations and other applications are not made, covered and/or seriously controlled by the state and any one claims of a right at the end of a nonhuman application or even a non-human result of that application. Nevertheless this paper claims and criticizes that governments were neglecting non-human effects of biotechnology products/services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do teenage girls diet? This is a far more complex question than it initially seems. Even the most obvious answer, to lose weight, is not always correct. Adolescent dieting is not solely about managing weight; it is a gendered social behavior that is associated with social status, peer esteem, and ego gratification among young women. In this paper, I examine dieting among adolescent girls and young adults. I present a theoretical framework for understanding dieting and status that takes in to account context-specific patterns. From this framework, I present a series of models predicting dieting as an outcome related to social roles, status, and female physical development during adolescence. I find that dieting is less common among adolescent girls who have alternative pathways to status, but this relationship does not persist in to adulthood once a woman leaves high school or college. I also find that the peer-centered environment of college prolongs adolescent dieting patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the symbolic systems at the core of contemporary cosmetic procedures. To do this, I look at the realm of popular culture, and more specifically the reality "make-over" show genre. I argue that it offers a site where discourses of disability are routinely invoked, explicitly and implicitly, in order to not only make sense of one's decision to undergo cosmetic surgery, but also to provide a justification for surgery. Because cosmetic surgery has been so heavily critiqued by the public and cultural critics alike, its practice, in the realm of medicine, which dedicates itself to health and well-being rather than outward physical appearance, at least in principle, must be justified in a way that is both medically and morally persuasive. In order to do this, these make over shows draw upon the rhetoric of "triumph over tragedy," a target of frequent discussion and criticism in the disability studies community. Both doctors and patients place the decision to undergo cosmetic surgery within a narrative framework that details how, before surgery, each participant's "average" body is abnormal and debilitating, which has lead to a life riddled with misery and difficulty. Once transformed, however, the patients are coded as attractive (i.e. normal), healthy, and able-bodied. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The trend toward reliance during pregnancy on various forms of biomedical knowledge has led some to label it as "authoritative" thereby eclipsing other sources of knowledge. However, other sources of knowledge - embodied, experiential, community, familial, local or religious - can also carry "authority" in women's medical decision making. This paper further interrogates assumptions about pregnant women's relative trust in and reliance on various sources of knowledge by examining the power, assessment and influence of different types of information that shaped the decisions of women who were offered amniocentesis because they had screened positive on a blood test that screens for birth anomalies. Our interview data reveal that the relationship between "expert" and "lay" sources of knowledge is often complex. In particular, we find that many women draw simultaneously on various sources of knowledge in making decisions about their prenatal care, and that information assessed as important from one knowledge source may enhance, rather than diminish, trust in other knowledge sources. This suggests that knowledge and related decision-making in the prenatal arena is contingent and dynamic, and that the (pregnant) body can be rendered both powerful and powerless in the face of advances in reproductive medicine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the birth of the first 'test-tube babies' thirty years ago, new reproductive technologies (NRT) have rapidly become a standard medical treatment. In Germany, the success of NRT coincides with a larger recent tendency to individualize risks and the responsiblity for the maintenance of one's own health before the background of a neoliberal restructuring of the welfare state.In my paper, I argue that bodies are more than just mute witnesses of these changes. In two ethnographic case studies in a conventional and an alternative clinic, I analyze the everyday practice of infertility treatment as an example of how new "reflexive self and body technologies" are mediated and put into practice within a medical setting.My results show that the body has an ambiguous role in infertility treatment: On the one hand, bodies are objectified through medical interventions and adoption of the medical gaze. At the same time, however, patients are now "experts responsible for themselves". Many aspects of everyday life which concern dealing with oneself and one's body - such as diet, movements, stress, and sexuality - come to be understood as medical problems. Patients become integrated into a "growing field of reflexive self technologies", which contains new uncertainties and new responsibilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the social construction of the obese body in Canadian law. I look at key tribunal and human rights decisions to argue that there are competing constructions. Obesity is seen as a weakness, sickness, and social pariah. These constructions contradict one another and consequently, leave the obese body as contentious. This leaves obese persons in a difficult social location, one that they may try to deny, or eliminate, rather than claim as an identity. Because of this it is unlikely that an obesity politic will emerge. Judicial activism and scholarly analysis may therefore be the only route to address this form of discrimination. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper elaborates on the concept of multiple, hierarchical femininities through an empirical investigation of the beliefs and meanings to which Asian American women adhere regarding beauty and physical attractiveness. We look specifically at the ways in which a sample of second generation Korean American college women negotiate hegemonic and subordinated femininities vis a vis their assumptions, strategies, and everyday thinking about racialized gendered norms pertaining to standards regarding physical appearance and beauty. While many scholars have investigated women's body image, beliefs and norms regarding beauty, the vast majority of this work has concerned white middle to upper class women. Few studies have focused on the experiences of racially marginalized women as they negotiate mainstream cultural standards regarding physical appearance and the perspectives of Asian American women are especially absent. These omissions continue to fuel a belief that the experiences of Asian Americans do not need to be examined because of assumptions surrounding their model minority status. Simultaneously, the absence of scholarship on this population continues to fuel conceptualizations of Asian Americans as foreigners despite their American citizenship, upbringing, and identity. Our exploration makes a significant contribution to the literature on the intersection of race, ethnicity and gender. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the similarities between the cosmetic surgery and tattoo industries and focuses on how each has transitioned itself from a disreputable and deviant industry to achieve varying degrees of mainstream acceptance and success. Using Event Structure Analysis, I model and compare the development of each industry based on linear historical narratives. The resulting models illustrate the importance of events within the narrative along with their relationship to each other. Findings suggest that the creation of industry-wide professional organizations is integral to changing the public perception of a given industry. Furthermore, findings show that the more hierarchical structure of the cosmetic surgery industry, as well as its integration into the medical industry, have helped it to thrive in a manner that contrasts sharply with the more disorganized structure of the tattoo industry. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main purpose of this paper is to capture the construction of the pregnant body weight in popular texts for pregnant women. Analyzing texts of five popular North American magazines and websites for pregnant women I reveal that in addition to various forms of social control that women are exposed to during pregnancy, a discourse on the pregnant body weight has developed. I examine the discourse in order to identify: (1) how the bodies of pregnant women are introduced to the readers of the pregnancy press; and (2) what is the context in which the pregnant body is discussed in terms of weight, shape, and appearance. I suggest that the emergence of the discourse on pregnant body weight is rooted in the recent visibility of pregnant celebrities in the public arena as well as in the expansion of the consumer market for pregnant women. I conclude that increasing public attention to pregnancy has led to the absorption of the pregnant body into the contemporary aesthetic image of femininity, one that is completely divorced from maternal body. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The following paper draws upon the "relational" turn in the study of pain to examine the paradoxical world of professional wrestling. Professional wrestling is a performance predicated upon the public affliction of pain, although the participants skillfully and relationally avoid it. Based on the first long-term ethnography of professional wrestling, the article explains the skills that wrestlers cultivate to handle a context of ever-present pain and injury and what these skills tell us about the meanings of pain that wrestlers come to share. In contrast to the popular notion of pain as harmful or adverse, wrestlers come to understand pain as having several positive meanings. I suggest that pain is attractive because it is given substantive meaning which encompasses pride and authenticity, sacrifice and protection, dominance and respect, and trust. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since its emergence as a form of protest out of the counter-cultural movements of the early 1970s, streaking has become most associated with the sporting arena. Streaking represents a complex irruption of the sporting event, a poke at the hierarchical structures of power, a playful performance that brings forth a range of taboos about nakedness in public places, about the sanctity of the playing arena, and about the links between sport and eroticism. While streaking has been the subject of many television documentaries, and has spawned numerous websites, it has yet to be subject to serious sociological scrutiny. How are we to understand the social significance of the streaker? Should we speak of different acts of streaking, of streaking as a differentiated practice, each with its own political and cultural meanings? In this paper we i) provide a history of streaking, distinguishing it from associated forms of nakedness such as naturism and nudism, ii) outline a typology of streaking to help unpack the complex and differentiated nature of streaking and its complex relationship to the public performance of whiteness, and iii) discuss the potential political significance of streaking and its importance for the sociologies of the body, culture and sport. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Liberal educators and advocates promote comprehensive sex ed as a response to the dangers that they believe lie in young people not having enough information about their bodies and options to be able to make responsible sexual decisions. While conservatives wrap youth and sexuality in mystery, science, flipcharts, and vocabulary terms are naturalism's wrapping paperâ?”the gilded paper and ribbons with which liberals and comprehensive sex ed wrap young people's bodies and sexuality. In this ethnographic study of two pubic middle school sex ed classes, I demystify the natural, examining the implicit lessons sex ed offers in race, gender, and sexual difference.Understanding the natural as ideological allows for an exploration of sex ed's multiple "unnatural" lessons about bodies. Discussions of erections and ejaculation support men's and boys' claims to pleasure, while the absence of clitorises in representations of female bodies helps to reduce sexuality to an issue of reproduction in women's and girl's lives. Teachers' consistent use of images of pink-skinned, slender, able-bodied, and conventionally modest female bodies affirms normatively racialized and gendered ideas about girls' and women's sexuality. Students' scornful responses to these discussions of female bodies and organs contain an implicit lesson that teachers routinely avoid discussing in sex edâ?”that even the most conventional female bodies elicit scorn and derision. Though classroom depictions of female sex and reproductive organs sexuality educators enact, reproduce, and sometimes challenge gender, racial, and sexual inequalities. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I critically examine Stephen Turner's (1994) critique of practice theory in light of recent neu-rophysiological discoveries regarding the "mirror neuron system" in the pre-frontal motor cortex of humans and other primates. I argue that two of Turner's strongest objections against the sociological version of the practice-theoretical account, the problem of transmission and the problem of sameness, are substantially undermined when examined from the perspective of recently systematized accounts of embodied learning and intersubjective action understanding inspired by these developments. In addition, I show that the practice-theoretical framework outlined by Pierre Bourdieu in the Logic of Practice and other works is, in contrast to Turner's portrayal of a confused hodgepodge of logical errors and empirical impossibilities, largely consistent with the latest neurophysiological evidence and as such fundamentally foreshadowed more recent understandings of the neurocognitive foundations of the perception, understanding and structure of the motor schemes productive of action in the world. Also in line with these newer neuroscientific developments, the practice-theoretical focus on the body as the central matrix generative of tacit understandings and analogical operations responsible for "higher order" systems of classification emerges as the key to solving some of the thorniest problems in the theory of action: eliminating to need to resort to unwarranted "collective object" explanations for the origins of shared presuppositional frameworks. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I draw on qualitative life-history interviews with twenty-eight blind people and thirty-seven transgender people in order to explore the concept of sexpectations. I define sexpectations as pre-existing cultural categories, affective investments, and rules of relevance that precede our perceptions of human bodies - whether visual or other sensory - and direct us to selectively perceive sex differentiated body parts. While socially efficient, selectively attending sex differences also operates as a form of "socio-mental control" (Zerubavel 1997: 51) that leads to distorted perceptions of bodies. At the same time, however, more proportionate perceptions are present - even if rarely emphasized - in the narratives of a not insignificant number of my respondents, suggesting the possibility of subcultural sexpectations and alternate perceptions of human bodies. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Much of the sociological research on menopause reflects the cultural assumption that menopause is an individual, biological event by documenting rates of physical changes, such as hot flashes, mood swings and vaginal dryness. Such research poses a social problem because it supports gendered assumptions that biology controls women's moods and behavior. It also bolsters the biomedical approach, which views drugs as the way to treat menopausal "symptoms." Meanwhile the larger social conditions that contribute to women's embodied experiences are overlooked. Based on 30 in-depth interviews with a diverse group, this paper uses an integrative analytical framework to understand how biology and culture affect menopause. The findings suggest that women's embodied experiences are less or more intense depending on medical care and various types of stress. An integrative approach illustrates how biology and culture interact in complex ways. The conclusion proposes social changes that could improve women's embodied experiences at menopause. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The body, as a primary signifier of gender and ethnicity, has potential to powerfully implicate one's ability to do science. This paper interfaces feminist science studies and performance studies frameworks to demonstrate how women of color physics majors at a major research university learn and actively resist the notion of "competent learner" as readily granted to men (and, to a much lesser degree, to nonminority women) but denied to them. Assuming gender and ethnicity as performative elements, the analysis demonstrates how some women of color maneuver their bodies and voices as strategically pliable tools to perform belonging and scientific knowledge by either complying with or disrupting locally acceptable norms of maleness, femaleness, and heterosexuality. Some examples of performance include deliberate and temporary clothing choices, hair styles, or weight gain; adjusting one's voice and manners of speaking to effect a performance imitative of male-associated knowledge when in mixed company, such as in homework study groups; and 'passing' as White. Based on a 7-year ethnographic study, the paper stresses recognition that embodied performances of competence are given consciously, that is, with full knowledge that they are, indeed, public performances of specific means for specific ends: to gain and maintain admission to the local academic physics community. In other subcommunities of the physics world, such as in the women's or ethnic minority support programs, as well as elsewhere on the campus, they openly embrace their marginalized statuses and work towards bringing more students like themselves into the physics fold. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT While the term affect has long been part of the psychological literature, and has a long history in the sociology of the emotions, it has recently been taken up by social theorists in media studies, gender studies, and political economy in a different register. These scholars have used affect to theorize relations between bodies and images in a media saturated age (Gibbs 2002, Massumi 2002), to find new ways to theorize information machines and living organisms (Sedgwick and Frank 1995), or as the basis for understanding new forms of capitalist accumulation (Clough 2002, Hardt & Negri 2000). This paper is specifically concerned with exploring how fashion models labor to produce affect. Using ethnographic evidence, I examine the affective production of fashion models and find that it is motivated both by tendencies toward control (of model?s bodies and personalities, for example) and tendencies toward uncontrol (in model?s working environments and responses to stimuli). While this tension between control/uncontrol arguably opens a space for creativity and innovation in the productive process, it also points toward a reterritorialization of the productive process, moving it into the body in an intensification of capitalist accumulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditionally, feminist theorists have theorized the body as a site of oppression, constraint, and victimization for women. In particular, the sexual objectification of women's bodies has been conceived by some feminists as an especially pervasive and damaging aspect of women's body experience in patriarchal societies (DeBeauvoir, 1952; Mackinnon, 1987; Young, 1980). Feminist theorists have explored the ways in which women internalize the male sexual gaze, learning to live in and experience their bodies primarily as objects positioned for the pleasure of men (Bartky, 1990; DeBeauvoir, 1952; Spitzack 1990) and have explored the mental health consequences of women's experience of self-objectification (Frederickson and Roberts, 1997). In this paper, I propose a new concept called bodily subjectivity which builds on the notion of self-objectification by positing its opposite: the idea that while women are primarily socialized to experience their body as-object, they can also experience their body as-subject or capacity. Drawing from the feminist sociology of sports literature and various other feminist theories of the body, I discuss three aspects of the emergent concept of bodily subjectivity: 1) body as capacity for power; 2) body as capacity for pleasure; and 3) body awareness. I also argue that because this type of body experience has been suppressed in women, both linguistically and experientially, it is particularly important to further develop a feminist discourse on bodily subjectivity and the conditions that foster it, so that women can begin to recognize, articulate, and live the female body as agent of power and pleasure, not just domination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research analyzes 30 interviews with a diverse group to understand how women experience their bodies and appearances after menopause in an androcentric and heterosexual culture. Women mostly focus on weight gain and gray hair but do so differently by sexual identity. Heterosexuals' accounts reflect accommodation to femininity and beauty norms; in contrast, lesbians and some heterosexual women of color redefine dominant understandings of femininity based on body acceptance or negotiation of body norms to attain self-acceptance and self-reliance. Future research is needed to illuminate the constraints and advantages of embodied aging for women by sexuality, race, and class. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current paradigms of identity, especially those found in Whiteness Studies, do not sufficiently explain the complex interaction and intersection of race, culture, and identity. Drawing on two years of extended fieldwork in the Steppin' dance scene in Chicago, I extend Bourdieu's theory of practice, particularly the role of the body in culture, to the study of race and identity. This article presents an alternative model for explaining racial identity, grounded in the competencies and embodied knowledges that one enacts in practice. This novel approach opens up new anti-essentialist possibilities for theorizing race and an anti-racist politics based in cultural labor. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]