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