Images of the Female Body in Émile Zola's Novels

2021 ◽  
pp. 301-317
Author(s):  
Irina David
Keyword(s):  
Female Body ◽  
Social Roles ◽  
Literary Work ◽  
Social Practices ◽  
The Body ◽  
French Society ◽  
Social Construct ◽  
The Social ◽  
Women's Role ◽  
And Behavior

The aim of this chapter is to highlight how the female body and the social practices that it is subject to are depicted in Émile Zola's literary work as indicators of dominating perceptions in 19th century patriarchal French society with regard to social roles in general and women's role in society in particular. Rather than focusing on an anatomic, biological analysis of the body, the discussion will turn to the body as a social construct, as metaphor for the overall treatment of women as beings whose appearance and behavior have to constantly be regulated for them to no longer constitute a threat to the male-centric society they live in.

scholarly journals Det sociale som performativitet – et praksisteoretisk perspektiv på analyse og metode

2008 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 49-68 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bente Halkier ◽  
Iben Jensen
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Theory ◽  
Practice Theory ◽  
Theoretical Perspective ◽  
Social Practices ◽  
The Body ◽  
Sociological Research ◽  
Research Fields ◽  
The Social ◽  
Life Analysis ◽  
Sociology Of Food

Artiklen introducerer de nyeste internationale forsøg på at syntetisere teoretiske elementer fra blandt andre Bourdieu, Butler og Giddens til praksisteori. Praksisteori er en særlig form for kulturteori, hvor det sociale placeres i performative processer. Forfatternes position fremhæver, at praksisteori bør ses som en særlig analytisk optik, kaldet et praksisteoretisk perspektiv. Derfor kan perspektivet tilpasses analytisk til specifikke empiriske forskningsfelter med hver deres viden, begreber og diskussioner. Et sådant praksisteoretisk perspektiv ser derfor også sociale praksisser som multirelationelle konfigurationer. Artiklen fremhæver tre områder, hvor et praksisteoretisk perspektiv i særlig grad bidrager til sociologiske epistemologiske diskussioner, nemlig i relation til krop, agency og normativitet. Ud fra forfatternes to forskellige sociologiske forskningsfelter (mad-sociologi og interkulturel kommunikation) viser og diskuterer artiklen de konkrete analytiske og metodiske fordele ved at anvende et praksisteoretisk perspektiv. Af disse kan nævnes, at man kan lave hverdagslivsanalyse uden at privilegere fænomenologi; man kan arbejde socialkonstruktivistisk uden at privilegere diskurs; man kan nytænke agency begrebet som empirisk kategori; og man kan tænke magt som konventionalitet. ENGELSK ABSTRACT: Bente Halkier & Iben Jensen: The Social as Performativity. A Practice-theoretical Perspective on Analysis and Method The article introduces recent international attempts to synthesize theoretical elements from among others Bourdieu, Butler and Giddens into a practice theory. Practice theory is a particular type of cultural theory in which the social is placed in performative processes. The authors argue that practice theory should be seen as a particular analytical approach, called a practice theoretical perspective. This perspective can be adapted analytically to specific empirical research fields, each representing its own assemblages of knowledge, concepts and discussions. Hence, such a practice theoretical perspective sees social practices as multi-relational configurations. The article emphasizes three areas, in which a practice theoretical perspective contributes to epistemological sociological discussions; the areas of the body, agency and normativity. The article demonstrates and discusses the concrete analytical and methodological advantages of using a practice theoretical perspective in relation to two different sociological research fields: sociology of food and intercultural communication. Some of these advantages are that it is possible to do everyday life analysis without privileging phenomenology; it is possible to work social constructivist without privileging discourse; it is possible to rethink the concept of agency; and power can be thought of as conventionality. Key words: Practice theory, cultural theory, performativity, epistemology, qualitative methods.

scholarly journals La vejez y el deporte como objeto de representaciones sociales (The old age and the sport like object of social representations)

Retos ◽  
2015 ◽  
pp. 118-121
Author(s):  
Luis Javier Ruiz Cazorla ◽  
José Luis Chinchilla Minguet ◽  
Manuel Ruiz Cazorla
Keyword(s):  
Physical Education ◽  
Old Age ◽  
Social Representations ◽  
The Elderly ◽  
Social Function ◽  
Social Practices ◽  
Social Representation ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Social ◽  
El Sistema

En el presente trabajo analizamos la función social de la Educación Física y el deporte respecto a las personas mayores. Se trata de una relación mediatizada por las representaciones sociales que los agentes implicados poseen sobre la vejez, el cuerpo, la salud y el deporte, no exentas de estereotipos y prejuicios que condicionan sus prácticas sociales. Constituye un problema social y a la vez un reto para las instituciones erradicar las prácticas sociales de exclusión a que dan lugar. Para ello resultan imprescindibles dos pasos. En primer lugar denunciar los contenidos de las representaciones sociales sobre la vejez y las actividades físico-deportivas que favorecen la exclusión social, especialmente desde el Sistema Educativo y los medios de comunicación. En segundo lugar promover los medios materiales y condiciones estructurales necesarias para el cambio social.Palabra clave: Vejez, deporte, educación física, representación social, función social.Abstract: In the present work we analyzed the social function of the Physical Education and the sport with respect to the elderly people. One is a relation hyped by the social representations that the implied agents own on the old age, the body, the health and the sport, nonfree of stereotypes and prejudices that condition their social practices. It constitutes a social problem and simultaneously a challenge for institutions to eradicate the social practices of exclusion to that they give rise. For it two steps are essential. In the first place to denounce the contents of the social representations on the sport old age and activities physical that favor the social exclusion, especially from the Educative System and mass media. Secondly to promote the average materials and necessary structural conditions for the social change.Key words: Old age, sport, physical education, social representation, social function.

scholarly journals BODY IDENTITY IN BOHUMIL HRABAL’S NOVEL “I SERVED THE KING OF ENGLAND”

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bokshan Halyna
Keyword(s):  
Literary Work ◽  
Scientific Paper ◽  
The Body ◽  
Mirror Reflection ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Binary Opposition ◽  
History Of The Body ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Aesthetic

The purpose of the paper is to examine the specificity of the modeling of the character-narrator’s body identity in B. Hrabal’s novel “I Served the King of England”. Firstly it stresses on the body-centered nature of the narration in this literary work, in which the evolution of personality is represented as “a history of the body”. The study focuses on the techniques of restructurizing “the body scheme” and the manifestation of psychophysiological transgression caused by the existing “archetypal canons”. It traces the correlation of the semantics of the body identity with the aesthetic categories of the beautiful and the ugly and with gender differentiation. The paper also considers gastronomy as one of the aspects of bodiliness in B. Hrabal’s novel. It details the poetics of grotesque which manifests itself in the descriptions of the body emphasizing its objectiveness. The study looks at the Rabelaisian traditions followed by the writer in the depiction of the scenes connected with eating both everyday food and exotic dishes. The research underlines that the body in B. Hrabal’s novel is displayed as a genetic data medium, visualized through physical characteristics, that highlights the social arrangement of the body identity problems. It pays attention to the social function of a human face in archaic societies originally interpreted in the novel. The research determines the peculiarities of the space marking of the body in the literary work and its correlation with the binary opposition “top–bottom”. It looks at the formation of the body identity by means of a mirror reflection and the image of the double. The conclusions of the research emphasize the specificity of the modeling of the body identity in the novel of the Czech writer. The results of this scientific paper can be used in further research on B. Hrabal literary prose and in comparative studie

The Body as an Accumulation Strategy

1998 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 401-421 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Harvey
Keyword(s):  
Recent Literature ◽  
The Body ◽  
Body Politics ◽  
Major Focus ◽  
Social Construct ◽  
Moral Agents ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
A Site ◽  
Political Economic

The body has become a major focus of attention—both theoretically and politically—over the past twenty years. In much of this literature it is presumed that the body is some kind of social construct at the same time as it is a locus and a measure of both the material and the social world we inhabit. The author situates this idea against the background of Marx's representations—too often by-passed in recent literature—in order to show how Marx's concept of variable capital contains a theory of body formation under capitalism at the same time as it lays the groundwork for understanding how political persons act as moral agents to try to change the conditions under which laboring occurs. The struggle for a living wage in Baltimore is then used as a concrete example of how this form of body politics operates under contemporary conditions, illustrating how the body that is to be the measure of all things is itself a site of political-economic contestation over the very forces that create it.

Justin Martyr Invents Judaism

2001 ◽  
Vol 70 (3) ◽  
pp. 427-461 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Boyarin
Keyword(s):  
Social Practices ◽  
Political Context ◽  
Rabbinic Literature ◽  
The Political ◽  
History Of Christianity ◽  
Historical Information ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Traditional Patterns ◽  
And Behavior

The historiography of Judaism in the rabbinic period (together with its implications for the history of Christianity) had been, until quite recently, founded on the assumption that the kind of historical information that rabbinic legends could yield was somehow directly related to the narrative contents that they displayed, which were understood as more or less reliable depending on the critical sensibility of the scholar. This scholarship was not, of course, generally naïve or pious in its aims or methods. A recurring question within such research had to do with the question of the credibility of a given text or passage of rabbinic literature or the recovery of its “historical kernel.” For the method or approach that I take up, all texts are by definition equally credible, for the object of research is the motives of the construction of the narrative itself, that is taken to attest to the political context of its telling or retellingrather than to the context of the narrative's content. All texts inscribe the social practices within which they originate, and many also seek to locate the genealogy of those social practices in a narrative of origins, producing a reversal of cause and effect. This reversal is a mode of narration that is particularly germane to the project of replacing traditional patterns of belief and behavior (“We have always done it this way”) with new ones that wish nevertheless to claim the authority, necessarily, of hoary antiquity—in short, to the invention of orthodoxies.

Gems, Cameos, and Social Practice

2021 ◽  
pp. 357-383
Author(s):  
Jörn Lang
Keyword(s):  
Social Interactions ◽  
Social Status ◽  
Social Group ◽  
Social Practice ◽  
Social Practices ◽  
Functional Approach ◽  
The Body ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Social ◽  
Individual Protection

This chapter focuses on the social practice of Roman images in the form of engraved gems and cameos. They were carried along on the body of their owner, so that the way they were perceived was highly flexible. The function of the representations was thus not limited to spatially fixed contexts of perception and could potentially function in all social configurations in which their wearer interacted socially. This essay aims to consider gems and cameos as objects within social spheres of activity. The starting point is the use of the objects. This makes it possible at least to limit the social interactions into which the images were integrated. Following upon this functional approach and an overview of common pictorial motifs, examples of possible ways these representations were concretely integrated to social practices will be shown. To this end, both outwardly directed functions such as social status or affiliation with a social group as well as actor-oriented aspects such as personal commemoration or the desire for individual protection are considered.

The Bohairic Acts of the Martyrs as a Genre of Religious Discourse

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ewa D. Zakrzewska
Keyword(s):  
Social Practices ◽  
Religious Discourse ◽  
Read Aloud ◽  
Main Function ◽  
Intended Audience ◽  
The Social ◽  
Linguistic Behavior ◽  
And Behavior ◽  
Attitudes And Behavior ◽  
The Church

This chapter examines the function of the Acts of the Martyrs preserved in Bohairic, which played a very influential role in the life of the Church at times, despite their historical inaccuracies. It takes a closer look at the social practices in which these texts functioned and interprets them as manifestations of religious discourse, where the term “discourse” is used in a broad sense to refer to human linguistic behavior appropriate in given social circumstances regardless of the mode (oral or written). It suggests that that the Acts of the Martyrs, which were intended to be read aloud during the liturgical commemoration of a martyr, were essentially persuasive texts: their main function was to influence the attitudes and behavior of their intended audience. The purpose of the present analysis is to reconstruct the strategies by which the realization of this persuasive aim was made possible.

Moral Regulation and Media Representations of the Female Body

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Cossins
Keyword(s):  
Female Body ◽  
Media Representations ◽  
Male Body ◽  
Social Significance ◽  
Moral Regulation ◽  
The Social ◽  
Women And Girls ◽  
Multiple Media ◽  
And Behavior ◽  
Media Formats

The literature on sexualization is replete with controversial debates surrounding the sexualization of the female body in multiple media formats and how various scholars have sought to understand the social significance of this phenomenon. These debates not only focus on the sheer extent of the sexualization of the female body compared to the male body but also on the types of sexualization in terms of the use of the female body for commercial purposes. Debates range from those with a protectionist theme focused on protecting young women and girls from the damaging effects of sexualization, to those that advocate the imposition of a stricter moral standard for female dress and behavior to feminist debates about the agency of women and girls who freely choose to sexualize their bodies.

scholarly journals Body Image, Weight, and Self-Concept in Men

2015 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 252-258 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elliot Montgomery Sklar
Keyword(s):  
Body Image ◽  
Body Weight ◽  
Management Practices ◽  
The Body ◽  
Self Concept ◽  
Healthy Weight ◽  
Limited Extent ◽  
The Social ◽  
And Behavior ◽  
Existing Data

In the traditional debate between biological and environmental determinants of body weight, the body has most often been explored in terms of its anatomical, genetic, or hormonal influences on personality, experience, and behavior. While obesity has been identified as a threat to our public health, correlating attitudes toward body image and self-concept have been explored within women to a limited extent, and even less so in relation to men. Consequently, men’s body image will be discussed in light of current literature reveals for women. For men, as for women, as the social pressure to attain an “ideal” physique increases, the discrepancy between that ideal and one’s body increases as well. This dynamic is more readily recognized for women than for men. As men are socialized not to discuss their body image concerns, negative self-concept and esteem may reinforce behaviors resulting in weight gain. In recent years, the proliferation of media has served to reinforce messaging related to one’s body. This review of existing data and literature suggests that body image and self-concept are related to body weight in men (as with women) and need to be addressed as part of healthy weight management practices.

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