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 car
