The Politics of the Body: Gender in a Neoliberal and Neoconservative Age

Winner of the 2015 FWSA Book PrizeThe body is a site of impassioned, fraught and complex debate inthe West today. In one political moment, left-wingers, academicsand feminists have defended powerful men accused of sex crimes,positioned topless pictures in the tabloids as empowering, andopposed them for sexualizing breasts and undermining theirnatural function. At the same time they have beencriticized by extreme-right groups for ignoring honour killings andother culture-based forms of violence against women.How can we make sense of this varied terrain?In this important and challenging new book, Alison Phippsconstructs a political sociology of womens bodies around keydebates: sexual violence, gender and Islam, sex work andmotherhood. Her analysis uncovers dubious rhetorics and paradoxicalallegiances, and contextualizes these within the powerful coalitionof neoliberal and neoconservative frameworks. She explores howfeminism can be caricatured and vilified at both endsof the political spectrum, arguing that Western feminisms are nowfaced with complex problems of positioning in a world where genderoften comes second to other political priorities.This book provides a welcome investigation into Western politicsaround womens bodies, and will be particularly useful toscholars and upper-level students of sociology, political science,gender studies and cultural studies, as well as to anyoneinterested in how bodies become politicized.