embodying class, ‘race’ and gender week 16 embodiment & feminist theory
TRANSCRIPT
Embodyingclass, ‘race’ and gender
Week 16Embodiment & Feminist Theory
Recap
• Considered how feminist theory developed the division between sex and gender to expose and challenge the social construction of masculinity and femininity
• Considered bodies as sites of purity and pollution
• Considered how postmodernism has argued against any form of ‘natural’ body, but argues that the sexed body arises from discursive understandings
Outline
• Look at the interrelationships between embodied class, ‘race’ and gender
• Consider how femininity is a classed position (Skeggs)
• Consider how bodies become racialised (Ahmed)
Classifying Bodies?
• At the beginning of the module you all agreed that these pictures were of women in different social classes. Why?
Embodying Class
• Bourdieu argued that social class is not just an economic position or identity but becomes embodied– Economic capital
• money other assets
– Cultural capital • dispositions of mind and body, cultural goods,
institutionalized state
– Social capital • through group membership/networks
– Symbolic capital • the legitimation of the above
Cultural capital and Habitus
• The embodied part of cultural capital is not genetic, but arises though the acquisition of one’s place in world though the family.
• Bourdieu uses the example of ‘taste’ in the acquisition of habitus
• So the food or cultural activities we enjoy are ones we were raised to consider enjoyable
Lacking in taste?
• But ‘taste’ is not just different but also often hierarchal – Dress/food/activities are all classed.
Classed Society
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0DUsGSMwZY&NR=1
Working-class femininity
• Skeggs has argued that the ideas of femininity are based on the norms of white middle-class women
• 19th association between behaviour appearance and moral purity led to particular ideas about femininity
• Respectability became key marker
Working-class femininity
• Skeggs agues that working-class women are ‘aware’ of their generally devalued position
• They take steps to become ‘respectable’ through femininity– Occupations
– Appearance
Working-class femininity
• Femininity can be the only cultural capital that they can use to improve their situation
• But their habitus marks them in such a way that its use may heighten their position as working-class
Working-class femininity
• Coleeen McLoughlin
• ‘Queen of Chavs’?
• Jade Goody
• ‘Essex Girl’
Working-class femininity
• To what extent to you agree that working-class women have devalued bodies?
Racialised bodies
• Ahmed has argued that the history of colonialism is key to understanding racialised bodies
• The subjugation of peoples from around the word was premised on the notion that their bodies were not the same as ours
Slaves and Servants
• Non-white bodies were positioned and investigated to prove their ‘lack’ – Compared to animals – In need of instruction like children
• Scientists investigated
and ‘proved’ their position
Racialised bodies
• Science gradually disproved the idea of separate races
• But the markers of race continued to position some as the ‘other’
• Non-white bodies continue to be positioned as different/dangerous
• http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=ROn_9302UHg
Pathologised bodies
• In 1991, Police officers in Los Angeles viciously beat motorist Rodney King.
• But the incident was caught on video.
Racialised vision
• Four officers were tried but found not guilty
• The jury agreed that the beaten man was a source of danger
• Butler argues that this is only possible because our field of visibility is racialised
• The jury identified the police as protecting them from the threat of the Black body
Pathologised Bodies
• Some racialised bodies become positioned as more deviant than others
Summary
• Bodies are always marked by social divisions, through both appearance and the physical body
• Skeggs argues that the habitus of working-class women leads to their devaluation
• Ahmed argues that the historical positioning as ‘others’ contributes to the racialisation of bodies today
Next week
• Continue to look at embodied social divisions
• Introduce the social model of disability
• Look at how gender impacts on the ageing body