Published titles
2006
The Single Woman
A Discursive Investigation
- By Jill Reynolds
The increase in numbers of single people has been described as one of the greatest social phenomena of western society. Most women will spend periods of their lives alone, without a committed partner relationship. Yet there is still a degree of social stigma attached to this status. Single women are a crucial group for study in relation to perceived changes in family life and relationships. This book provides a new understanding of what is often taken-for-granted – female single identity.
In an examination of extracts from her interviews with women aged 30 to 60 years and living alone, Jill Reynolds explores how women deal with this potentially stigmatized identity. She focuses on identity and self-representation through consideration of discourse and the conversational moves made by the participants. Her analysis highlights that the culturally available and familiar resources for understanding singleness are highly polarized. Single women weave their way through the extreme contrasts of a denigrated or an empowered identity. Thus, while most participants give very positive accounts, they also pay attention to widespread social expectations that success in life involves a long-term committed relationship.
This book makes an important contribution to the understanding of the lives of single women and represents a challenge to the considerable literature on gender and family life which has inadequately theorized singleness. It will be of great interest to academics and students in social psychology, sociology, social work and social policy. It will also be of particular interest to students of gender studies, qualitative research, narrative studies, conversation analysis and discourse analysis.
Published April 30th 2008 by Routledge.
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Accounting for Rape
Psychology, Feminism and Discourse Analysis in the Study of Sexual Violence
- By Irina Anderson, Kathy Doherty
- Series Editor: Jane Ussher
Accounting for Rape presents an original perspective on the subject of rape, focusing on both female and male sexual violence. The authors investigate everyday beliefs about rape, to examine how blaming the victim and the normalization of rape are achieved by people in a discussion about sexual violence. They synthesize discursive psychology and a feminist standpoint to explore precisely how rape and rape victimhood are defined in ways that reflect the social, political and cultural conditions of society.
By analysing conversational data, Anderson and Doherty suggest that the existing social psychological experimental research into rape and rape perception fails to analyse the subtlety and political significance of rape supportive reasoning. Accounting for Rape provides a critical interrogation of the dominant theories and methodologies, focusing on:
- How the gender and sexual orientation of alleged victims and perpetrators is crucial to social participants when making sense of a rape report and in apportioning blame and sympathy
- How arguments that are critical of alleged victims are built in ways that are 'face saving' for the participants in the conversations, and how victim-blaming arguments are presented as 'common sense'.
- The potential of applying this approach in both professional and academic contexts to promote attitude change.
The book will be of great interest to those studying social and clinical psychology, cultural studies, sociology, women's studies and communication studies.
Published November 29th 2007 by Routledge.
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Sanctioning Pregnancy
A Psychological Perspective on the Paradoxes and Culture of Research
- By Harriet Gross, Helen Pattison
Pregnancy provides a very public, visual confirmation of femininity. It is a time of rapid physical and psychological adjustment for women and is surrounded by stereotyping, taboos and social expectations. This book seeks to examine these popular attitudes towards pregnancy and to consider how they influence women’s experiences of being pregnant.
Sanctioning Pregnancy offers a unique critique of sociocultural constructions of pregnancy and the ways in which it is represented in contemporary culture, and examines the common myths which exist about diet, exercise and work in pregnancy, alongside notions of risk and media portrayals of pregnant women. Topics covered include:
- Do pregnant women change their diet and why?
- Is memory really impaired in pregnancy?
- How risky behaviour is defined from exercise to employment
- The biomedical domination of pregnancy research.
Different theoretical standpoints are critically examined, including a medico-scientific model, feminist perspectives and bio-psychosocial and psychodynamic approaches.
Published May 3rd 2007 by Routledge.
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The Capacity to Care
Gender and Ethical Subjectivity
- By Wendy Hollway
- Series Editor: Jane Ussher
Wendy Hollway explores a subject that is largely absent from the topical literature on care. Humans are not born with a capacity to care, and this volume explores how this capacity is achieved through the experiences of primary care, gender development and later, parenting.
In this book, the author addresses the assumption that the capacity to care is innate. She argues that key processes in the early development of babies and young children create the capability for individuals to care, with a focus on the role of intersubjective experience and parent-child relations. The Capacity to Care also explores the controversial belief that women are better at caring than men and questions whether this is likely to change with contemporary shifts in parenting and gender relations. Similarly, the sensitive domain of the quality of care and how to consider whether care has broken down are also debated, alongside a consideration of what constitutes a ‘good enough’ family.
The Capacity to Care provides a unique theorization of the nature of selfhood, drawing on developmental and object relations psychoanalysis, as well as philosophical and feminist literatures. It will be of relevance to social scientists studying gender development, gender relations and the family as well as those interested in the ethics of care debate.
Published October 12th 2006 by Routledge.
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Managing the Monstrous Feminine
Regulating the Reproductive Body
- Series Editor: Jane Ussher, Jane Ussher
Managing the Monstrous Feminine takes a unique approach to the study of the material and discursive practices associated with the construction and regulation of the female body. Jane Ussher examines the ways in which medicine, science, the law and popular culture combine to produce fictions about femininity, positioning the reproductive body as the source of women's power, danger and weakness.
Including sections on 'regulation', 'the subjectification of women' and 'women's negotiation and resistance', this book describes the construction of the 'monstrous feminine' in mythology, art, literature and film, revealing its implications for the regulation and experience of the fecund female body. Critical reviews are combined with case studies and extensive interview material to illuminate discussions of subjects including:
- the regulation of women through the body
- regimes of knowledge associated with reproduction
- intersubjectivity and the body
- women’s narratives of resistance.
These insights into the relation between the construction of the female body and women's subjectivity will be of interest to those studying health psychology, social psychology, medical sociology, gender studies and cultural studies. The book will also appeal to all those looking for a high-level introduction to contemporary feminist thought on the female body.
Published December 15th 2005 by Routledge.
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Body Work
The Social Construction of Women's Body Image
- By Sylvia K. Blood
Are scientific 'facts' about body image enough to define conceptions of normality
Reassessing Experimental Psychology from a critical perspective, Sylvia Blood demonstrates how its research into Body Image can be misused and prone to misuse. Classifying women who experience distress and anxiety with food, eating and body size as suffering 'body image disturbance' or 'body image dissatisfaction', it can reproduce dominant assumptions about language, meaning and subjectivity. Experimental psychology's discourse about body image has recently become more widely influential, becoming popularised through domains such as women’s magazines, in which psychological experts provide 'facts' about women's 'body image problems', and offer advice and psychological treatments.
With acute cross-disciplinary awareness Body Work: The Social Construction of Women's Body Image exposes the assumptions at work in the methods and status of experimental approaches. Penetrating beyond the usual dichotomy between experimental and popular psychology, this book illuminates some of the ways in which women's magazines have embraced experimental psychology's treatment of the issue. Drawing on her experience in Clinical Psychology, Sylvia Blood highlights the damaging effects of uncritically experimental views of body image. She goes on to elaborate not only an alternative model of discursive construction but also the implications of such a theory for clinical practice.
Merging theory and clinical experience, Sylvia Blood exposes the fallacies about women’s bodies that underpin experimental psychology's body image research. She demonstrates the dangerous consequences of these fallacies being accepted as truths in popular texts and in the talk of 'everyday' women.
Published July 14th 2005 by Routledge.
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Gender Talk
Feminism, Discourse and Conversation Analysis
- By Susan A. Speer
- Series Editor: Jane Ussher
Gender Talk provides a powerful case for the application of discursive psychology and conversation analysis to feminism, guiding the reader through cutting edge debates and providing valuable evidence of the benefits of fine-grained, discursive methodologies. In particular, the book concentrates on discourse and conversation analysis, providing a full account of these methodologies through the detailed study of data from a variety of settings, including focus groups, interviews, and naturally occurring sources. Providing a thorough review of the relevant literature and recent research, this book demonstrates how discourse and conversation analysis can be applied to rework central feminist notions and concepts, ultimately revealing their full potential and relevance to other disciplines. Each chapter provides an overview of traditional feminist research and covers subjects including:
* Sex differences in language: conversation and interruption
* Reformulating context, power and asymmetry
* Gender identity categories: masculinity and femininity.
This unique and thought-provoking application of discursive and conversation analytic methodologies will be of interest to students and researchers in social psychology, sociology, gender studies and cultural studies.
Published July 7th 2005 by Routledge.
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Beauty and Misogyny
Harmful Cultural Practices in the West
- By Sheila Jeffreys
- Series Editor: Jane Ussher
Should western beauty practices, ranging from lipstick to labiaplasty, be included within the United Nations understandings of harmful traditional/cultural practices? By examining the role of common beauty practices in damaging the health of women, creating sexual difference, and enforcing female deference, this book argues that they should.
In the 1970s feminists criticized pervasive beauty regimes such as dieting and depilation, but some ‘new’ feminists argue that beauty practices are no longer oppressive now that women can ‘choose’ them. However, in the last two decades the brutality of western beauty practices seems to have become much more severe, requiring the breaking of skin, spilling of blood and rearrangement or amputation of body parts. Beauty and Misogyny seeks to make sense of why beauty practices are not only just as persistent, but in many ways more extreme. It examines the pervasive use of makeup, the misogyny of fashion and high-heeled shoes, and looks at the role of pornography in the creation of increasingly popular beauty practices such as breast implants, genital waxing and surgical alteration of the labia. It looks at the cosmetic surgery and body piercing/cutting industries as being forms of self-mutilation by proxy, in which the surgeons and piercers serve as proxies to harm women’s bodies, and concludes by considering how a culture of resistance to these practices can be created.
This essential work will appeal to students and teachers of feminist psychology, gender studies, cultural studies, and feminist sociology at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels, and to anyone with an interest in feminism, women and beauty, and women’s health.
Published June 23rd 2005 by Routledge.
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Woman's Relationship with Herself
Gender, Foucault and Therapy
- By Helen O'Grady
This innovative contribution to feminist debates about gender and the self will be of interest to students and researchers in social psychology, feminist psychology, mental health studies and gender studies, and to practitioners in psychological therapies and counselling psychology.
Published February 4th 2005 by Routledge.
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Just Sex?
The Cultural Scaffolding of Rape
- By NICOLA GAVEY
Winner of the Association for Women In Psychology 2006 Distinguished Publication Award!
The past two decades have witnessed a significant shift in how rape is understood in Western societies. This shift in perception has revealed the startling frequency of occurrences of date rape, obscuring the divide between rape and what was once just sex. Just Sex? combines an overview of the existing literature with an analysis of recent research to examine the psychological and cultural implications of this new epidemic. The result is the conclusion that feminist theory on sexual victimisation has gone both too far and not far enough. The reader is presented with a challenging and original perspective on the issues of rape, sex and the body, incorporating subjects including:
* rape as a social problem
* the social constructionism of sex, subjectivity and the body
* heterosexuality under the microscope
This book succeeds in making a valuable contribution to feminist and social contructionist work on rape that will be of interest to those studying psychology, gender studies, cultural studies and sociology.
Just Sex? The Cultural Scaffolding of Rape was selected as a 2005 winner of AWP's (Association for Women in Psychology) distinguished publication award.
Published December 9th 2004 by Routledge.
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The Psychological Development of Girls and Women
Rethinking Change in Time
- By Sheila Greene
Greene's approach places primary importance on temporality itself and on the competing discourses on time, age and development which play an active role in the construction of the lives of girls and women. Essential but often neglected insights from the more compelling developmental and feminist theories are woven together within a theoretical framework that emphasises temporality, emergence and human agency. The result is a liberating theory of women's psychological development as constantly emerging and changing in time rather than as static and fixed by their nature, socio-cultural context and personal history.
The Psychological Development of Girls and Women will be essential reading for students and researchers in the psychology of women, developmental psychology and women's studies.
Published November 21st 2002 by Routledge.
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Gender, Language and Discourse
- By Ann Weatherall
Gender, Language and Discourse uniquely examines the contribution that psychological research - in particular, discursive psychology - has made to answering these questions. Until now, books on gender and language have tended to be from the sociolinguistic perspective and have focused on one of two issues - sexism in language or gender differences in speech. This book considers both issues and develops the idea that they shouldn't be viewed as mutually exclusive endeavours but rather as part of the same process - the social construction of gender. Ann Weatherall highlights the fresh insights that a social constructionist approach has made to these debates, and presents recent theoretical developments and empirical work in discursive psychology relevant to gender and language.
Gender, Language and Discourse provides the most comprehensive and up-to-date discussion of the gender and language field from a psychological perspective. It will be invaluable to students and researchers in social psychology, cultural studies, education, linguistic anthropology and women's studies.
Published August 1st 2002 by Routledge.
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Being Married, Doing Gender
A Critical Analysis of Gender Relationships in Marriage
- By Caroline Dryden
Published December 10th 1998 by Routledge.
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The Menstrual Cycle
- By Anne Walker
Women's own experiences in different cultures are contrasted with medical textbook descriptions and the "normal" is found to be rather elusive.
This book will be read by discourse analysts, doctors, nurses and any woman who has felt curious about her menstrual cycle and its possible effects.
Published July 31st 1997 by Routledge.
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