Governing the Female Body: Gender, Health, and Networks of Power

A feminist and Foucauldian analysis of a variety of emerging gendered discourses.

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.

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.