The Politics of the Body (PDF)

Winner of the 2015 FWSA Book Prize

The body is a site of impassioned, fraught and complex debate in
the West today. In one political moment, left-wingers, academics
and feminists have defended powerful men accused of sex crimes,
positioned topless pictures in the tabloids as empowering, and
opposed them for sexualizing breasts and undermining their
natural function. At the same time they have been
criticized by extreme-right groups for ignoring honour killings and
other culture-based forms of violence against women.
How can we make sense of this varied terrain?

In this important and challenging new book, Alison Phipps
constructs a political sociology of women s bodies around key
debates: sexual violence, gender and Islam, sex work and
motherhood. Her analysis uncovers dubious rhetorics and paradoxical
allegiances, and contextualizes these within the powerful coalition
of neoliberal and neoconservative frameworks. She explores how
feminism can be caricatured and vilified at both ends
of the political spectrum, arguing that Western feminisms are now
faced with complex problems of positioning in a world where gender
often comes second to other political priorities.

This book provides a welcome investigation into Western politics
around women s bodies, and will be particularly useful to
scholars and upper-level students of sociology, political science,
gender studies and cultural studies, as well as to anyone
interested in how bodies become politicized.