(Un)Disciplined Bodies: A Foucauldian Analysis of Women’s Rugby

2006 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 229-247 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Frances Chase
Keyword(s):  
Physical Nature ◽  
The Body ◽  
Competitive Sport ◽  
Field Observations ◽  
Female Bodies ◽  
Foucauldian Analysis ◽  
Rugby Players

Foucault’s notions of disciplinary processes, power, and docile bodies are used in this article to understand the complexity of the body and physicality in women’s rugby. Drawing on data from 30 interviews and field observations with 94 female rugby players, I investigate the multiple and complex ways in which the female rugby body is disciplined. These women resisted disciplinary processes of femininity but, at the same time, were willing participants in disciplinary processes of competitive sport. They and their bodies are shaped by multiple and competing discourses and disciplinary processes. The women in this study were drawn to rugby because of the physical nature of the game, became fully invested in competitive athletics, and resisted notions of ideal female bodies.

scholarly journals POWER RELATIONS ON FEMALE BODY IN SENO GUMIRA AJIDARMA’S SHORT STORY

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 52
Author(s):  
Sulistya Ningtyas
Keyword(s):  
Short Story ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Lower Class ◽  
Literary Work ◽  
The Body ◽  
Self Awareness ◽  
Train Station ◽  
Female Bodies ◽  
Street Prostitutes ◽  
Foucauldian Analysis

This study explored the practice of power relations and the panopticon as a disciplinary mechanism in Seno Gumira Ajidarma’s Istana Tembok Bolong short story. ‘Istana tembok bolong’ in this literary work refers to a place near a train station that is separated from the outside area by a perforated wall, which turns to be a palace for the lower class of society occupying the space. By using Foucauldian analysis, this study examined the case of ‘selling matches’ as the central issue of the story being discussed. This phenomenon that occurred in Yogyakarta in the 1970s became the media of the manifestation of power over street prostitutes. The results showed that power relations operate as a means to control the body, particularly female bodies. This is because female bodies become commodities as a result of capitalism. However, in a certain situation, these street prostitutes can also hold power in a way how their bodies are enjoyed. Besides, social norms outside the palace function as a panopticon that makes the inhabitants have self-awareness as they feel constantly monitored. Penelitian ini mengeksplorasi praktik relasi kuasa dan panoptikon sebagai mekanisme pendisiplinan dalam cerita pendek Istana Tembok Bolong karya Seno Gumira Ajidarma. ‘Istana tembok bolong’ dalam karya sastra ini merujuk pada sebuah tempat di dekat stasiun kereta api yang terpisahkan dari area luarnya oleh dinding yang berlubang, yang dianggap sebagai istana oleh masyarakat kelas bawah yang menempati ruang tersebut. Dengan menggunakan analisis Foucauldian, penelitian ini melihat fenomena ‘jual korek api’, yang merupakan isu utama dari cerita yang dibahas di sini. Fenomena yang terjadi di Yogyakarta pada tahun 1970-an tersebut menjadi media perwujudan kuasa terhadap pekerja seks jalanan. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa relasi kuasa beroperasi sebagai alat untuk mengendalikan tubuh, terutama tubuh perempuan. Hal ini karena tubuh perempuan menjadi komoditas sebagai akibat dari kapitalisme. Namun, dalam situasi tertentu, pekerja seks jalanan tersebut juga dapat memegang kekuasaan terkait bagaimana tubuh mereka dinikmati. Selain itu, norma-norma sosial di luar istana berfungsi sebagai panoptikon yang membuat penghuninya memiliki kesadaran diri karena mereka merasa terus-menerus diawasi.

Updating long-held assumptions about fat stigma: For women, body shape plays a critical role

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jaimie Krems ◽  
Steven L. Neuberg
Keyword(s):  
Body Shape ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
The Body ◽  
Theoretical Assumption ◽  
Obesity Stigma ◽  
Obese Female ◽  
Three Samples ◽  
Female Bodies ◽  
Different Parts ◽  
Fat Stigma

Heavier bodies—particularly female bodies—are stigmatized. Such fat stigma is pervasive, painful to experience, and may even facilitate weight gain, thereby perpetuating the obesity-stigma cycle. Leveraging research on functionally distinct forms of fat (deposited on different parts of the body), we propose that body shape plays an important but largely underappreciated role in fat stigma, above and beyond fat amount. Across three samples varying in participant ethnicity (White and Black Americans) and nation (U.S., India), patterns of fat stigma reveal that, as hypothesized, participants differently stigmatized equally-overweight or -obese female targets as a function of target shape, sometimes even more strongly stigmatizing targets with less rather than more body mass. Such findings suggest value in updating our understanding of fat stigma to include body shape and in querying a predominating, but often implicit, theoretical assumption that people simply view all fat as bad (and more fat as worse).

Visual body processing’s associations to Body Mass Index and internalization of societal beauty ideals

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Valentina Cazzato ◽  
Elizabeth Walters ◽  
Cosimo Urgesi
Keyword(s):  
Body Mass Index ◽  
Body Mass ◽  
Visual Processing ◽  
The Body ◽  
Configural Processing ◽  
Cultural Ideals ◽  
Beauty Ideals ◽  
Female Bodies ◽  
Processing Mechanisms ◽  
Attention To Detail

We examined whether visual processing mechanisms of the body of conspecifics are different in women and men and whether these rely on westernised socio-cultural ideals and body image concerns. Twenty-four women and 24 men performed a visual discrimination task of upright or inverted images of female or male bodies and faces (Experiment 1) and objects (Experiment 2). In Experiment 1, both groups of women and men showed comparable abilities in the discrimination of upright and inverted bodies and faces. However, the genders of the human stimuli yielded different effects on participants’ performance, so that male bodies and female faces appeared to be processed less configurally than female bodies and male faces, respectively. Interestingly, altered configural processing for male bodies was significantly predicted by participants’ Body Mass Index (BMI) and their level of internalization of muscularity. Our findings suggest that configural visual processing of bodies and faces in women and men may be linked to a selective attention to detail needed for discriminating salient physical (perhaps sexual) cues of conspecifics. Importantly, BMI and muscularity internalization of beauty ideals may also play a crucial role in this mechanism.

BODY PRACTICES OF WOMEN IN THE LIGHT OF FEMINIST DEBATES

2018 ◽  
pp. 129-156 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Female Body ◽  
Sense Of Self ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
The Body ◽  
Social Regulation ◽  
Critical Study ◽  
Phenomenological Tradition ◽  
Academic Feminism ◽  
Female Bodies ◽  
Body Practices

The paper provides an analysis of the structuralist and phenomenological traditions in interpretation of female body practices. The structuralist intellectual tradition bases its methodology on concepts from social anthropology and philosophy that see the body as ‘ordered’ by social institutions. Structuralist approaches within academic feminism are focused on critical study of the social regulation of female bodies with respect to reproduction and sexualisation (health and beauty practices). The author focuses on the dominant physical ideal of femininity and the means for body pedagogics that have been constructed by patriarchal authority. In contrast to theories of the ordered body, the phenomenological tradition is focused on the “lived” body, embodied experience, and the personal motivation and values attached to body practices. This tradition has been influenced by a variety of schools of thought including philosophical anthropology, phenomenology and action theories in sociology. Within academic feminism, there are at least three phenomenologically oriented strategies of interpretation of female body practices. The first one is centred around women’s individual situation and bodily socialization; the second one studies interrelation between body practices and the sense of the self; and the third one postulates the potential of body practices to destabilize the dominant ideals of femininity and thus provides a theoretical basis for feminist activism. The phenomenological tradition primarily analyses the motivational, symbolic and value-based components of body practices as they interact with women’s corporeality and sense of self. In general, both structuralist and phenomenological traditions complement each other by focusing on different levels of analysis of female embodiment.

Embodiment in Ezekiel

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rhiannon Graybill
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Bodies ◽  
The Body ◽  
The People ◽  
Female Bodies ◽  
Constructing Meaning ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter shows how embodiment plays an important role in constructing meaning in the book of Ezekiel. The text contains a number of bodies, including human bodies (Ezekiel, the people of Judah), supernatural or divine bodies (Yahweh, the cherubim, various divine messengers), metaphorical bodies (the female bodies in Ezekiel 16 and 23), foreign bodies (various foreign nations), and animate “dry bones” in Ezekiel 37. The body is central to the practice of prophecy in the book. It is likewise fundamental to performances of gender and to the negotiation of the relationship between Yahweh and the people, including Ezekiel himself. Focusing on the body also highlights the significance of masculinity in the text, as well as its instability.

Gendered Secularization and the Body Policing of Muslim Women

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raissa Killoran
Keyword(s):  
Muslim Women ◽  
The State ◽  
The Body ◽  
Religious Expression ◽  
Women's Bodies ◽  
Cultural Symbols ◽  
Religious Symbols ◽  
Female Bodies ◽  
The Many ◽  
A Site

The many usages of the term ‘secularism’ have generated an ambiguity in the word; as a political guise, it may be used to engender anti-religious fervor. Particularly in regards to veiling among female Muslim adherents, the attainment of a secular state and touting of the necessity of dismantling religious symbols have functioned as linguistic shields. By calling a “burka ban” necessary or even egalitarian secularization, legislators employ ‘secularization’ as jargon for political ends, enacting a stance of supremacy under the semblance of progress. Secularization has come to function as a political tool - in the name of it, governments may prescribe which cultural symbols are normative and which are of ‘other’ cultures or religious origins. As such, the identification of some religious symbols as foreign and others as normative is a usage of secularization for normalization of dominant religious expression. In this, there is an implicit neocolonialism; by imposing standards of cultural normalcy which are definitively nonMuslim, such policies attempt to divorce Muslims from Islam.  Further, I intend to investigate the gendered aspect of secularization politics. By critiquing clothing and body policing of women, I will demonstrate how secularization projects use the female body and dress as a site for display. By rendering the female physically emblematic of the honor and virtue of an ‘other’ culture, those enacting secularization norms target women’s bodies to act as visual exhibitions of the dominant culture’s hegemony. Here, we see gendered secularization at work - female bodies become controlled by the antireligious zeal of the state, while the state carries out this control on the predicate that it is the religious group enacting unjust control. As such, the policing of female Muslim bodies is symbolic of the policing of Islam as a whole; it acts as an illustration of an imposed, gendered secularization project.

Mechanobiology and Adaptive Plasticity (MAP) Theory as a Potential Confounding Factor in Predicting Musculoskeletal Foot Function

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Greg Quinn
Keyword(s):  
Physical Nature ◽  
Theoretical Models ◽  
The Body ◽  
Adaptive Plasticity ◽  
Form And Function ◽  
Complex Processes ◽  
Kinetic Information ◽  
Foot Function ◽  
Clinical Variation ◽  
And Function

There are many theoretical models that attempt to accurately and consistently link kinematic and kinetic information to musculoskeletal pain and deformity of the foot. Biomechanical theory of the foot lacks a consensual model: clinicians are enticed to draw from numerous paradigms, each having different levels of supportive evidence and contrasting methods of evaluation, in order to engage in clinical deduction and treatment planning. Contriving to find a link between form and function lies at the heart of most of these competing theories and the physical nature of the discipline has prompted an engineering approach. Physics is of great importance in biology and helps us to model the forces that the foot has to deal with in order for it to work effectively. However, the tissues of the body have complex processes that are in place to protect them and they are variable between individuals. Research is uncovering why these differences exist and how these processes are governed. The emerging explanations for adaptability of foot structure and musculoskeletal homeostasis offer new insights on how clinical variation in outcomes and treatment effects might arise. These biological processes underlie how variation in the performance and utilisation of common traits, even within apparently similar sub-groups, make anatomical distinction less meaningful and are likely to undermine the justification of a 'foot type'. Furthermore, mechanobiology introduces a probabilistic element to morphology based on genetic and epigenetic factors.

Cartesian Scientia and the Human Soul

Vivarium ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 418-442 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lilli Alanen
Keyword(s):  
Physical Nature ◽  
The Body ◽  
Natural Phenomenon ◽  
Human Soul ◽  
Important Place ◽  
New Science

AbstractDescartes's conception of matter changed the account of physical nature in terms of extension and related quantitative terms. Plants and animals were turned into species of machines, whose natural functions can be explained mechanistically. This article reflects on the consequences of this transformation for the psychology of human soul. In so far the soul is rational it lacks extension, yet it is also united with the body and affected by it, and so it is able to act on extended matter. The article examines Descartes's concept of scientia and his different uses of nature, and argues that there is much more continuity between Aristotelian and Cartesian psychology than is usually recognized when it comes to an explanation of the functions of the embodied human soul. If this makes psychology unfit for inclusion in the new science of nature, its object is still a natural phenomenon and has an important place within scientia as Descartes conceived of it.

scholarly journals Shaping Toronto: female economy and agency in the corset industry, 1871-1914

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alanna M. M. McKnight
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
The Body ◽  
Fashion History ◽  
Women's Bodies ◽  
The Gaze ◽  
Female Consumers ◽  
Private And Public ◽  
Female Bodies ◽  
The Relationship

In amplifying the contours of the body, the corset is an historical site that fashions femininity even as it constricts women’s bodies. This study sits at the intersection of three histories: of commodity consumption, of labour, and of embodiment and subjectivity, arguing that women were active participants in the making, selling, purchasing and wearing of corsets in Toronto, a city that has largely been ignored in fashion history. Between 1871 and 1914 many women worked in large urban factories, and in small, independent manufacturing shops. Toronto’s corset manufacturers were instrumental in the urbanization of Canadian industry, and created employment in which women earned a wage. The women who bought their wares were consumers making informed purchases, enacting agency in consumption and aesthetics; by choosing the style or size of a corset, female consumers were able to control to varying degrees, the shape of their bodies. As a staple in the wardrobe of most nineteenth-century women, the corset complicates the study of conspicuous consumption, as it was a garment that was not meant to be seen, but created a highly visible shape, blurring the lines between private and public viewing of the female body. Marxist analysis of the commodity fetish informs this study, and by acknowledging the ways in which the corset became a fetishized object itself, both signaling the shapeliness of femininity while in fact augmenting and diminishing female bodies. This study will address critical theory regarding the gaze and subjectivity, fashion, and modernity, exploring the relationship women had with corsets through media and advertising. A material culture analysis of extant corsets helps understand how corsets were constructed in Toronto, how the women of Toronto wore them, and to what extent they actually shaped their bodies. Ultimately, it is the aim of this dissertation to eschew common misconceptions about the practice of corsetry and showcase the hidden manner in which women produced goods, labour, and their own bodies in the nineteenth century, within the Canadian context.

scholarly journals Fitness and body composition profiling of elite junior South African rugby players

2009 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 38 ◽  
Author(s):  
J Durandt ◽  
S Du Toit ◽  
J Borresen ◽  
T Hew-Butler ◽  
H Masimla ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Body Composition ◽  
South African ◽  
Body Fat ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
Rugby Union ◽  
The Body ◽  
Upper Body ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Sprinting Speed ◽  
Rugby Players

Objective. The aim of this study was to describe the body composition, strength and speed characteristics of elite junior South African rugby players. Design. Cross-sectional. Setting. Field study. Subjects. Rugby players (16 and 18 years old, N = 174) selected for the South African Rugby Union National Green Squad. Outcome measures. Body composition, 10 m and 40 m speed, agility, 1RM bench press, underhand pull-ups, push-ups, multistage shuttle run. Results. The under-16 players were on average shorter (175.6 ± 5.7 v. 179.2 ± 6.7 cm), weighed less (76.5 ± 8.2 v. 84.8 ± 8.3 kg) had less upper body absolute strength (77.1 ± 11.8 kg v. 95.3 ± 16.7 kg) and muscular endurance (41 ± 12 v. 52 ± 15 push-ups) and aerobic fitness (87.1 ± 19.4 v. 93.5 ± 15.3 shuttles) than the under-18 players. There were no differences in body fat, sprinting speed (10 m and 40 m) or agility between the two age groups. There were differences between playing positions, with the props having the most body fat, strongest upper bodies, slowest sprinting speed, least agility and lowest aerobic capacity compared with players in the other positions. Conclusion. This study provides data for elite junior rugby players and can be used to monitor the progression of players after intervention while also assisting with talent identification for the different playing positions. South African Journal of Sports Medicine Vol. 18 (2) 2006: pp. 38-45

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