THE DISABLED BODY,GENEALOGY AND UNDECIDABILITY

The received history of the disabled body is deeply problematized by a genealogy – inspired initially by Foucault – that disrupts the notion of a continuous development of ideas and images, and shifts the focus to competing, fractured and discontinuous discourses culturally embedded in particular historical periods. Following Foucault's explication of the emergence of modernist normativities and the operation of power/knowledge, disability scholarship has charted a break between early religiously-inspired models concerned with a god-given nature, a medical model that pathologizes the disabled body and, more recently, the social model of disability that effects a politicization of the problematic. Yet consistent with a Foucauldian analytic, even the latter resistant discourse gives rise to its own normativities and generates new resistances. Alongside the return of the disabled body to challenge the hegemony of socio-cultural determinations, I offer, then, a further complication. Where previous approaches speak to external discursive power – albeit embedded in the individual consciousness – as the motor of change, I seek to supplement and reconfigure the problematic by engaging with the operation of psychic elements. Within the historically contextualized transformations in the meaning of disability, there is, I argue, another current of interior and less accessible responses, which not only challenge the privileging of periodization in historical thought, but also disorder the alternative Foucauldian approach. Where his analysis is concerned with the multifarious mobilizations of the binary of self and other, a more specifically deconstructive approach seeks to uncover the other as an interior attribute of the embodied self. This essay plays over some historical moments and brings them together with postmodernist and psychoanalytic theory to show how binary differences are constantly undone by the irreducible différance of the disabled body.     

Students' Use of Self: Teaching Implications

Social workers acknowledge that they bring more than their professional skills and knowledge to practice, hence the emphasis in many social work programs on enhancing students' self knowledge. After a general overview of self‐knowledge activities for students, the gap between insight and practice is highlighted. The empirical literature is reviewed to find specific and purposeful self enactments, defined as functional ways in which workers intentionally apply their self to practice. Located within professional boundaries, such self enactments potentially form the basis upon which students might consider how to apply their own personal self.     

CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY WITHOUT SUBJECTS AND OBJECTS:

Retracing my own research experience in creating a sociological narrative about a famous industrial engineer and mother, I describe how I began to question modernist images of self, interests, and power. As I reflected on how best to characterize Gilbreth's management of women, I began to see that may notion of how to write critical, historical biography rested heavily on a binary, modernist conceptual foundation. My research experience rocked this foundation by convincing me that we should see selves as multiple and interests as malleable, and that we should broaden our conception of power to include disciplinary power which circulates through people rather than belonging to them. The paper concludes by affirming the merits of new ways of writing about people that acknowledge their multiple selves without sacrificing the political strength of modernist language.     

Intersectional Approach to Top Executive White‐Collar Offenders’ Discourses: A Case Study of the Martha Stewart and Sam Waksal Insider Trading Scandal

Employing a feminist intersectional approach, the current study analyzes how the intersected social identities of homemaker extraordinaire Martha Stewart and Sam Waksal, the former CEO of ImClone, manifest in their gendered discursive strategies during the insider trading scandal. Findings indicate gendered performance could be better understood from a social learning process perspective, which dictates that individuals learn from public reactions to their past acts and adjust their presentations of self to achieve their career goals. Our findings also highlight gender transgression includes not only the demeanors associated with acts but also the role individuals take against the socially constructed gendered expectations.     

TOOLS AND TOYS : Communicating gendered positions towards technology

With the rising importance of technology in the information and knowledge society, the gender-technology relationship is ever more important when thinking about gender equality. Gender researchers have shown not only that the use and design of technologies is gendered, but that people also position themselves in relation to technology, based on certain gendered assumptions about technology in societies. This article looks at how people working in quintessential information and knowledge society professions, namely information communication technology (ICT) work, position themselves in relation to technology. Using a social constructivist framework and a discourse analysis, it shows how gender differences are achieved in communication: men tend to describe technology as a toy, while women tend to describe technology as a tool. In some instances this pattern is broken, which opens up the opportunity to rethink the gender binary. This article argues that the way in which people position themselves in relation to technology continues to be gendered, which may threaten gender equality in the information and knowledge society, and it also indicates that there is the possibility of change.     

“The risk of age”? Early detection test,prostate cancer and practices of self

Drawing on Rose and Novas’s concept of “biological citizenship” and Michel Foucault's "practices of self", this paper reflects on how men become agents of their own therapeutic regimens, and yet internalise messages of risk and practices of self within early detection of prostate cancer discourses in the late 20th century. In doing so, it traces the ways in which concepts of age, gender and risk converge at the problematic site of prostate cancer and preventative health strategies, both of the state and the medical profession. Analysing how insecurities have simultaneously resulted in over-promoting and over-diagnosing risk, thereby blurring the lines between normal and pathological states of health and aging, the paper finishes with a critical discussion on how men have adopted self-surveying and attuned themselves to risk discourses. Suggestions are made for future research on comparative gender studies on embodied concepts of self and cancer screening and the relation between differential aging, risk management and the concept of the body.     

The production of trans illegality: Cisnormativity in the U.S. immigration system

Drawing from critical scholarship on immigrant illegality and transgender studies, this paper examines how trans immigrants may be more prone to vulnerabilities in the U.S. immigration system. Cisnormativity, a hierarchical system of power that structures legal, administrative, and policing systems, produces the “hypervisibility” of gender variance. We add to migration scholarship by analyzing how cisnormativity can intersect with the production of immigrant illegalities and can render trans immigrants as hypervisible and, where possible, attend to the ways in which, paradoxically, trans subjectivity is also erased. Trans immigrants can be more susceptible to arrest, criminal prosecution, detention, deportation, blocked paths to citizenship, or adjustment of status. With trans studies' insights on the criminalization of gender variance and administrative documentation, we investigate the particularities of visibility for trans immigrants as they inform legalities and social exclusions. We end with a call for more empirical research on the experiences of trans immigrants and the complex inclusions and exclusions that structure U.S. immigration policy.     

Gender identity and lexical variation in social media

We present a study of the relationship between gender, linguistic style, and social networks, using a novel corpus of 14,000 Twitter users. Prior quantitative work on gender often treats this social variable as a female/male binary; we argue for a more nuanced approach. By clustering Twitter users, we find a natural decomposition of the dataset into various styles and topical interests. Many clusters have strong gender orientations, but their use of linguistic resources sometimes directly conflicts with the population‐level language statistics. We view these clusters as a more accurate reflection of the multifaceted nature of gendered language styles. Previous corpus‐based work has also had little to say about individuals whose linguistic styles defy population‐level gender patterns. To identify such individuals, we train a statistical classifier, and measure the classifier confidence for each individual in the dataset. Examining individuals whose language does not match the classifier's model for their gender, we find that they have social networks that include significantly fewer same‐gender social connections and that, in general, social network homophily is correlated with the use of same‐gender language markers. Pairing computational methods and social theory thus offers a new perspective on how gender emerges as individuals position themselves relative to audiences, topics, and mainstream gender norms.     

THE TRANSFORMATION OF GENDER INTO CONVERSATIONAL ADVANTAGE

This article examines the relationship between gender and conversational power by treating as problematic the process through which a social position is transformed into conversational advantage. Using symbolic interactionism, it is argued that conversational power is exercised over the course of a role performance and is affected by the identities of the interactants and the context in which interaction occurs. This argument is evaluated by using conversational data from a same-sex dyadic role-playing exercise and by measures of gender identity. Findings indicate that regardless of a person's sex, the more "male like" his/her gender identity, the more likely he/she is to challenge statements made by alter. Concerning context, the more assertive alter's behavior, the more likely ego is to act in a similarly assertive manner. The relevance of these findings for the broader study of self, society, and conversational behavior is discussed.     

“My Dog's Just Like Me”: Dog Ownership as a Gender Display

Based on interviews with twenty‐six dog owners in northeast Georgia, this article examines how people rely on gender norms to organize their relationships with their dogs. Owners use gender norms to (1) select what they consider to be suitable dogs, (2) describe their dogs' behaviors and personalities, and (3) use their dogs as props to display their own gender identities. Although these findings are specific to dog owners, they suggest ways individuals may attempt to display gender in other relationships characterized by a power imbalance.     

The Industry of Illegal Migration: Social Network Analysis of the Brazil‐US Migration System

In this article, we analyse the process of migration by applying a social network methodology. Using the personal network approach, we focus on a case study of the Brazil‐US migration system to analyse the formation of the so‐called “industry of illegal migration”. We suggest that in migration systems, brokerage evolves not only because of historical and cultural changes, but also because the changes emerge within a structured environment in which brokerage can thrive, and this, in turn, causes the social networks to support and produce specialized actors (individuals and organizations) embedded in the “right positions” of the social structure in the migration process. In this particular case study, we suggest that brokerage seems to take place through gender‐oriented networks and the personal experience and structural power of returned migrants. These returned migrants usually have more varied social contacts and types of relationships from which they can obtain richer information about the migration system.     

Dimensions of Precariousness in an Emerging Sector of Self‐Employment: A Study of Self‐Employed Nurses

Changing economic ideologies and a new emphasis on entrepreneurial opportunities have led to a rise in self‐employment in Canada, especially among women. Although some people benefit from self‐employment, it is considered to be a precarious form of employment. Despite a growing body of literature on gender and self‐employment, there is more to learn about its precarious nature across industries and types of entrepreneurs. This ethnographic study examines the experiences of self‐employed nurses in order to better understand self‐employment in professional caring work. In some ways, these nurses' experiences fit with what is known about female self‐employment but this specific sector highlights how precariousness can take different forms across different areas of work. In particular, this study reveals new insights about the complexity and ambiguity of precariousness.     

Mafias,Markets, Mules: Gender Stereotypes in Discourses About Drug Trafficking

Popular and political discourses about drug trafficking are premised on a gender binary based on sexist stereotypes. Simply put, popular and political discourses about drug trafficking tend to describe men as the brains and women as mere bodies. Academic research on drug mules and drug trafficking tends to rely on, rather than problematise, this gender binary, limiting contemporary enquiry and knowledge about drug trafficking. Furthermore, this gendered binary informs anti‐drug trafficking policy international in harmful ways.     

It's All About Power: Integrating Feminist Family Studies and Family Communication

Feminist family studies bring a framework of power and intersectional analysis to unpack the issue of gender in families. Moving beyond the concept of gender as either benign or simply one of difference between men and women, a feminist perspective offers a way of conceptualizing the multiple contexts in which families are situated and where conflict and care inevitably comingle. A feminist lens has challenged family scholars to investigate and understand individuals, relationships, family structures, communities, and society in more complex and contested ways. We argue that feminist family studies offers insights for the discipline of family communication in order to contextualize the ways in which family dynamics are theorized and studied.     

The Influence of Social Context on Partnerships in Canadian Health Systems

Partnerships, collaboration, joined‐up government; these terms have become common elements of global health and social policy discourse. The terms may be pervasive but there remain significant challenges to collaborative ways of working. We argue that some of these challenges arise from a failure to account explicitly for the influence of social context. Between 1999 and 2001 we conducted a comparative case study of partnerships in Canadian health systems in which we examined specifically the roles of social context and gender. Social structures directly linked to formalized health systems are embedded in social institutions based on patriarchal and bureaucratic practices that do not traditionally support the relational practices required for the development of partnerships. While individuals within such organizations may have the knowledge, skills and commitment to collaborate, in such an environment, tremendous resource expenditures are required to achieve and maintain collaborative advantage.     

Factors that Influence Body Dissatisfaction: Comparisons across Culture and Gender

This study examined the relationship between attachment style, differentiation of self, and body dissatisfaction across culture and gender. The sample consisted of 115 Caucasians (85 females, 29 males) with a mean age of 22.2 years (SD = 5.81) and 119 Chinese individuals (93 females, 26 males) with a mean age of 22.8 years (SD = 2.35). Participants completed online self-report measures of body satisfaction, attachment style, and differentiation of self. Results indicated that high attachment anxiety and less differentiation of self were associated with lower body satisfaction for women but not for men of either cultural group. There were no significant cultural or gender differences in terms of overall body satisfaction; however, there were differences with regard to preoccupation with weight and self-perceived weight. It was concluded that culture had little impact on body dissatisfaction in the present sample but that the factors that shape body dissatisfaction differed by gender.     

Organizational interventions and the creation of gendered knowledge: US universities and NSF ADVANCE

Universities are sites of both elite knowledge production and reproduction of intersecting gendered inequalities. The US National Science Foundation (NSF) ‘Increasing the Participation and Advancement of Women in Academic Science and Engineering Careers’ (ADVANCE) programme uses universities’ role as self‐reflective knowledge producers to design changes promoting gender equality. This knowledge is shaped by the institutional context of its production: NSF as a funder of scientific research; US universities as participants in highly competitive markets; managerialism as a condition of modern higher education systems; and separation of basic from applied research in the hierarchy of science. The tensions and underlying power dimensions of these contexts reveal local challenges that ADVANCE interventions navigate and the broader politics shaping what and how ADVANCE discovers. Yet, as a learning‐oriented intervention, ADVANCE changes over time to create and incorporate more gendered knowledge about inequalities, to legitimize feminist understandings of organizations, and to challenge the division between fundamental and applied knowledge.     

Medieval Silence and Modern Transsexuality

Psychoanalysis and science respond to the transsexual claim of wrongful embodiment with radically different models of treatment. Yet both disciplines construct the figure of the transsexual from a heteronormative and patriarchal perspective. The 13th-century text Le Roman de Silence, which deals with the gender transformation of its heroine, Silence, is similarly biased. Moreover, this romance theorizes a relationship between gender and the body that closely parallels the psychoanalytical and scientific discourses about transsexuality. Silence's social isolation confirms the varying levels of dislocation that transsexed individuals, both male and female, attribute to their condition, but her powerlessness to determine her own gender identity is more akin to the modern treatment of intersex children. The ambiguity surrounding Silence's return to femininity at the end of the romance, however, suggests that the medieval author can see beyond the binary system of gender that structures his society and that continues to structure ours.     

SMOOTHING MACHINES AND THE CONSTITUTION OF SOCIETY

I ask the reader to imagine society as a production of‘smoothing machines’. Smoothing machines mark the surfaces of bodies, and in the social sense, they are markings of the body that indicate status, generally in terms of purity or perfection. The socius, Deleuze and Guattari write, is a coding machine, and codes smooth social relations of power. Elias Canetti, in his work on crowds, discovers an internal connection between smoothness, social power, and the body for him the first aspect of power is the smoothness of the teeth, and he traces modern forms of social control and violence to eating and incorporation. In his darkest vision, ‘everything is going smoothly’ comes to mean that everything is in our power, and power is equated with paranoia and the naked will to survive. Many contemporary disciplinary technologies take the form of smoothing the body, understood as‘fitting’ the body to a model of subjectivity and a functional regime. Not all smoothing machines facilitate social control, however. As Deleuze and Guattari suggest, many also generate lines of flight or escape. For every smoothing machine that forms a Subject and submits it to power, there are others that set it free.     

Diversification as a New Disciplinary Power: Gender and Sexual Subjectivity in Postmodernity

Nowadays, the power of gender and sexuality works not only to reinforce and reconstruct the essentialized norms but also, in direct opposition, to deconstruct these norms. The new disciplinary power and its discourse encourages people to have diverse and fluid self/body images. This article aims to discuss the new characteristics of gender and sexual self-image, body, discourse, and social images in postmodern society through a comparison with Foucault's arguments. This article also briefly mentions how these phenomena have spread through society and questions whether recent social movements really go beyond the style of the former one, which is based on sharing the same identity.