Kathy Davis explores cosmetic surgery as a cultural phenomenon of late modernity. She critically engages with the notion of cosmetic surgery as a neutral technology and shows how it is implicated in the surgical erasure of embodied difference.

Technogenarians investigates the older person?s experiences of health, illness, science, and technology. It presents a greater theoretical and empirical understanding of the biomedical aspects of aging bodies, minds, and emotions, and the rise of gerontechnology industries and professions. A unique scholarly investigation into elders as technology users Emphasizes the need to put aging, science, and technology in the center of analyses of health and illness Explores the rise of gerontechnology industries and professions Offers a critical study of the transformation of aging bodies, minds, and emotions into medical problems in need of medical solutions Combines two scholarly areas - Science and Technology Studies and the Sociology of Aging, Health, and Illness - to produce innovative scholarship

Heyes' monograph in feminist philosophy is on the connection between the idea of "normalization"--which per Foucault is a mode or force of control that homogenizes a population--and the gendered body. Drawing on Foucault and Wittgenstein, she argues that the predominant picture of the self--a picture that presupposes an "inner" core of the self that is expressed, accurately or not, by the outer body--obscures the connection between contemporary discourses and practices of self-transformation and the forces of normalization. In other words, pictures of the self can hold us captive when they are being read from the outer self--the body--rather than the inner self, and we can express our inner self by working on our outer body to conform. Articulating this idea with a mix of the theoretical and the practical, she looks at case studies involving transgender people, weight-loss dieting, and cosmetic surgery. Her concluding chapters look at the difficult issue of how to distinguish non-normalizing practices of the self from normalizing ones, and makes suggestions about how feminists might conceive of subjects as embodied and enmeshed in power relations yet also capable of self-transformation. The subject of normalization and its relationship to sex/gender is a major one in feminist theory; Heyes' book is unique in her masterful use of Foucault; its clarity, and its sophisticated mix of the theoretical and the anecdotal. It will appeal to feminist philosophers and theorists.

This book examines British and American women's narratives of cosmetic surgery, exploring what those narratives say about the contemporary status of cosmetic surgery and 'local' ideas about its legitimate and illegitimate uses.

The Weight of Images explores the ways in which media images can train their viewers’ bodies. Proposing a shift away from an understanding of spectatorship as being constituted by acts of the mind, this book favours a theorization of relations between bodies and images as visceral, affective engagements that shape our body image - with close attention to one particularly charged bodily characteristic in contemporary western culture: fat. The first mapping of the ways in which fat, gendered bodies are represented across a variety of media forms and genres, from reality television to Hollywood movies, from TV sitcoms to documentaries, from print magazine and news media to online pornography, The Weight of Images contends that media images of fat bodies are never only about fat; rather, they are about our relation to corporeal vulnerability overall. A ground-breaking volume, engaging with a rich variety of media and cultural texts, whilst examining the possibilities of critical auto-ethnography to unravel how body images take shape affectively between bodies and images, this book will appeal to scholars and students of sociology, media, cultural and gender studies, with interests in embodiment and affect.

The fully revised and updated edition of Feminist Research Practice: A Primer draws on the expertise of a stellar group of interdisciplinary scholars who cover cutting-edge research methods and explore research questions related to the complex and diverse issues that deeply impact women’s lives. This text offers a unique hands-on approach to research by featuring engaging and relevant exercises as well as behind-the-scenes glimpses of feminist researchers at work. The in-depth examples cover the range of research questions that feminists engage with, including issues of gender inequality, violence against women, body image issues, and the discrimination of other marginalized groups. Written in a clear, concise manner that invites students to explore and practice a wide range of research, the Second Edition offers seven new chapters that reflect the latest scholarship in the field, a stronger focus on ethics, new examples that bring concepts to life, effective learning tools, and more.

Practices of cosmetic surgery have grown exponentially in recent years in both over-developed and developing worlds. What comprises cosmetic surgery has also changed, with a plethora of new procedures and an extraordinary rise of non-surgical operations. As the practices of cosmetic surgery have multiplied and diversified, so have feminist approaches to understanding them. For the first time leading feminist scholars including Susan Bordo, Kathy Davis, Vivian Sobchack and Kathryn Pauly Morgan, have been brought together in this comprehensive volume to reveal the complexity of feminist engagements with the phenomenon that still remains vastly more popular among women. Offering a diversity of theoretical, methodological and political approaches Cosmetic Surgery: A Feminist Primer presents not only the latest, cutting-edge research in this field but a challenging and unique approach to the issue that will be of key interest to researchers across the social sciences and humanities.

This unique book examines the relationship between wounding and sexuality, bringing together issues around sexuality, gender, power, violence and representations. Drawing on a range of disciplines including cultural and media studies, sociology and psychology, it explores social practices such as S&M, cosmetic surgery and 'extreme' sports.

This book addresses wide-ranging dilemmas that social researchers may face as a result of silences, neglected feelings, and blind-spots in their research. In every research endeavour, thoughts, intuitions, biases, feelings or sensations may be left aside as the researcher attempts to come to terms with the complexities of material and figure out what the ‘main issue’ is. Researchers may pay attention to their own emotional responses during the interview, but often only in their field notes. Rarely do feelings of shock, irritation, boredom or, for that matter, amusement, excitement and delight find their way into the analysis itself. In addition, researchers are all susceptible to blind-spots, often unaware of what is being avoided in research or omitted from it. However, reflection about precisely these gaps or silences may prove essential for developing new and interesting questions as well as comprehensive, responsive, and responsible research practices. In this volume, an international, cross-disciplinary cohort of researchers think critically about the silences, neglected feelings, and blind-spots in their own work, and offer insights for enhancing research practices. As such, it will appeal to scholars across the social sciences with interests in research methods and methodology.

Objectification is a foundational concept in feminist theory, used to analyze such disparate social phenomena as sex work, representation of women's bodies, and sexual harassment. In this work, Cahill argues that the notion should be abandoned by feminist theorists due to its reliance on outdated philosophical assumptions, such as the centrality of autonomy and rationality to both subjectivity and ethics. Instead, she suggests working towards an ethics of sexuality based upon the recognition of difference.