Gender and Bodies
- LAST REVIEWED: 26 February 2020
- LAST MODIFIED: 26 February 2020
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199756384-0236
- LAST REVIEWED: 26 February 2020
- LAST MODIFIED: 26 February 2020
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199756384-0236
Introduction
Scholars from various disciplines (anthropology, gender studies, history, philosophy, and sociology, among others) have written about gender and bodies. The interdisciplinary nature of this topic has resulted in scholarship on many different aspects of the body across the life course. The works included here are foundational to knowledge about the gendered body and particularly the sociology of the body. Moreover, they exhibit intersectionality and begin with the assumption that social constructs such as race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, age, and dis/ability intersect with gender to shape life experiences, social outcomes, and self-concept. While there are many areas that fall under the topic of gender and bodies (such as medicalization, sport, disability, gendered violence, sexual practices, and eating disorders) this article focuses particularly on theory and research on the social construction of female and male bodies, as well as bodies that disrupt sex, gender, and sexuality binaries, i.e., intersex and LGBTQ Bodies. Specifically, there is an abundance of scholarship that examines how social and cultural structures patrol normative femininities and hegemonic masculinities thereby reinforcing binary understandings of sex and gender. Nonetheless, there is some work that emphasizes the undoing of gender, social activism, and embodied resistance. Writings on gendered constructs and the body also examine how some bodies are privileged over others, showing a body hierarchy based on, for example, beauty, skin tone, and body size that furnishes some people with physical capital while disadvantaging others. Finally, the article acknowledges research and theory that engages labor-related processes about the body; the body as a modification project (including body building, tattooing, and Cosmetic Surgery); and the role of medical and other technologies on gendered bodies and lives.
Journals
Because gender and the body touch on many facets of social life, theoretical and empirical work in this area appears in a wide range of journals. These include sexuality journals (e.g., Sexualities, Sexuality & Culture, Transgender Studies Quarterly); culture journals (e.g., Poetics, Signs, Theory, Culture & Society); disability journals (e.g., Disability & Society, Disability Studies Quarterly); and health journals (e.g., Journal of Health and Social Behavior, Social Science & Medicine, Sociology of Health and Illness). Notably, scholarship on gender and bodies is published in the leading body studies journal, Body & Society, as well as leading gender journals such as Gender & Society and Men & Masculinities. As work in this area tends to be qualitative, empirical research can also be found in Qualitative Research and the Journal of Contemporary Ethnography.
Body & Society. 1995–.
Based in the UK, Body & Society is a peer-reviewed journal in the field of body studies. It is expressly open to theoretically diverse and innovative research that exhibits a critical approach to the body. Scholarship is interdisciplinary.
Gender & Society. 1987–.
The official journal of Sociologists for Women in Society, Gender & Society is a peer-reviewed journal that publishes theory-driven sociological research on all aspects of gender dynamics in contemporary society—micro, meso, and macro. Scholarship is both national and international and exhibits methodological diversity, including statistical analyses, content analyses, qualitative interviews, and ethnography. It also publishes reviews of new books in the field.
Men & Masculinities. 1998–.
A peer-reviewed journal in the field of masculinity studies, Men & Masculinities publishes empirical and theoretical scholarship that addresses the role of men and masculinities in contemporary society. Articles are interdisciplinary and grounded in critical theoretical perspectives such as feminist theory and queer theory.
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Article
- Actor-Network Theory
- Adolescence
- African Americans
- African Societies
- Agent-Based Modeling
- Aging
- Analysis, Spatial
- Analysis, World-Systems
- Anarchism
- Anomie and Strain Theory
- Arab Spring, Mobilization, and Contentious Politics in the...
- Asian Americans
- Assimilation
- Authority and Work
- Bell, Daniel
- Biosociology
- Bourdieu, Pierre
- Careers
- Caste
- Catholicism
- Causal Inference
- Chicago School of Sociology
- Children
- Chinese Cultural Revolution
- Chinese Society
- Citizenship
- Civil Rights
- Civil Society
- Class
- Cognitive Sociology
- Cohort Analysis
- Collective Efficacy
- Collective Memory
- Community
- Comparative Historical Sociology
- Comte, Auguste
- Conflict Theory
- Conservatism
- Consumer Credit and Debt
- Consumer Culture
- Consumption
- Contemporary Family Issues
- Contingent Work
- Conversation Analysis
- Corrections
- Cosmopolitanism
- Crime, Cities and
- Criminology
- Cultural Capital
- Cultural Classification and Codes
- Cultural Economy
- Cultural Omnivorousness
- Cultural Production and Circulation
- Culture and Networks
- Culture, Sociology of
- Democracy
- Demography
- Development
- Deviance
- Discrimination
- Doing Gender
- Du Bois, W.E.B.
- Durkheim, Émile
- Economic Globalization
- Economic Institutions and Institutional Change
- Economic Sociology
- Education
- Education and Health
- Education Policy in the United States
- Educational Policy and Race
- Elites
- Emotions
- Empires and Colonialism
- Entrepreneurship
- Environmental Sociology
- Epistemology
- Ethnic Enclaves
- Ethnicity
- Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis
- Exchange Theory
- Families, Postmodern
- Family
- Family Policies
- Fascism
- Feminist Theory
- Fertility
- Field, Bourdieu's Concept of
- Food
- Forced Migration
- Foucault, Michel
- Frankfurt School
- Friendship
- Gender
- Gender and Bodies
- Gender and Crime
- Gender and Education
- Gender and Health
- Gender and Incarceration
- Gender and Professions
- Gender and Social Movements
- Gender and Work
- Gender Pay Gap
- Gender, Sexuality, and Migration
- Gender Stratification
- Gender, Welfare Policy and
- Gendered Sexuality
- Genocide
- Gentrification
- Gerontology
- Ghetto
- Global Inequalities
- Globalization and Labor
- Goffman, Erving
- Habit
- Health
- Historic Preservation
- Housework
- Human Trafficking
- Identity
- Immigration
- Indian Society, Contemporary
- Institutions
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- Internet
- Intersectionalities
- Intersex
- Interview Methodology
- Job Quality
- Justice
- Knowledge, Critical Sociology of
- Labor Markets
- Latino/Latina Studies
- Law and Society
- Law, Sociology of
- Leisure
- LGBT Parenting and Family Formation
- LGBT Social Movements
- Life Course
- Lipset, S.M.
- Management
- Markets, Conventions and Categories in
- Marriage and Divorce
- Marxist Sociology
- Masculinity
- Mass Incarceration in the United States and its Collateral...
- Mass Media
- Material Culture
- Mathematical Sociology
- Mead, G.H.
- Medical Sociology
- Mental Illness
- Methodological Individualism
- Middle Classes
- Migration
- Military Sociology
- Money and Credit
- Morality
- Motherhood
- Multiculturalism
- Multilevel Models
- Multiracial, Mixed-Race, and Biracial Identities
- Nationalism
- Non-normative Sexuality Studies
- Norms
- Occupations and Professions
- Organizations
- Paid Work
- Panel Studies
- Parsons, Talcott
- Policing
- Political Culture
- Political Economy
- Political Sociology
- Popular Culture
- Positivism
- Poverty
- Power
- Proletariat (Working Class)
- Protestantism
- Public Opinion
- Public Space
- Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA)
- Race
- Race and Sexuality
- Race and Violence
- Race and Youth
- Race in Global Perspective
- Race, Organizations, and Movements
- Racism
- Rational Choice
- Relationships
- Religion
- Religion and the Public Sphere
- Residential Segregation
- Revolutions
- Role Theory
- Rural Sociology
- Scientific Networks
- Secularization
- Sequence Analysis
- Sex versus Gender
- Sexual Identity
- Sexualities
- Sexuality Across the Life Course
- Simmel, Georg
- Single Parents in Context
- Skill
- Small Cities
- Social Capital
- Social Change
- Social Closure
- Social Construction of Crime
- Social Control
- Social Darwinism
- Social Disorganization Theory
- Social Epidemiology
- Social History
- Social Indicators
- Social Mobility
- Social Movements
- Social Network Analysis
- Social Networks
- Social Policy
- Social Problems
- Social Psychology
- Social Stratification
- Social Theory
- Socialization, Sociological Perspectives on
- Sociolinguistics
- Sociological Approaches to Character
- Sociological Research on the Chinese Society
- Sociological Research, Qualitative Methods in
- Sociological Research, Quantitative Methods in
- Sociology, History of
- Sociology of Manners
- Sociology of Music
- Sociology of War, The
- Sports
- Status
- Suburbanism
- Survey Methods
- Symbolic Boundaries
- Symbolic Interactionism
- The Division of Labor after Durkheim
- The State
- Tilly, Charles
- Time Use and Childcare
- Time Use and Time Diary Research
- Tourism, Sociology of
- Transnational Adoption
- Trust
- Unions and Inequality
- Urban Ethnography
- Urban Growth Machine
- Urban Inequality in the United States
- Values
- Veblen, Thorstein
- Violence
- Visual Arts, Music, and Aesthetic Experience
- Wallerstein, Immanuel
- Wealth
- Weber, Max
- Welfare, Race, and the American Imagination
- Welfare States
- Whiteness
- Women’s Employment and Economic Inequality Between Househo...
- Work and Employment, Sociology of
- Work/Life Balance
- Workplace Flexibility