the Female Body GOVERNING

WOMEN’S STUDIES / CULTURAL STUDIES
Drawing on Foucault’s notion of governmentality, this collection
explores relations between the intimate governance of bodies and
political governance. The contributors offer empirically grounded
yet theoretically sophisticated case studies showing how gendered,
racialized, and socioeconomic agendas structure medical and
scientific practices. Developing and utilizing a poststructuralist
feminist framework, the chapters investigate emerging gendered
discourses and practices around health, such as breast cancer
charities, lifestyle genetic testing, new reproductive technologies,
and the development and marketing of various psychotropic and
hormonal drugs. This will be a key reader for anyone interested
in the social implications of cutting-edge medical technologies.
“The essays in this collection argue for a richer understanding of
personal choice and clearly point to the ways women’s choices and
understandings of body and ‘self’ are mitigated by social forces.
This is an important work for scholars of women’s studies and science
and technology studies.”
— april herndon, winona state university
Lori Reed is an independent scholar living in Washington, dc.
Paula Saukko is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Loughborough
University in the United Kingdom. She is the author of The Anorexic
Self: A Personal, Political Analysis of a Diagnostic Discourse, also published by
SUNY Press, and Doing Research in Cultural Studies: An Introduction to
Classical and New Methodological Approaches.
cover: colberg visual communication design
state university of new york press
www.sunypress.edu