Alison Phipps 
The Politics of the Body 
Gender in a Neoliberal and Neoconservative Age

Winner of the 2015 FWSA Book Prize

The body is a site of impassioned, fraught and complex debate in
the West today. In one political moment, left-wingers, academics
and feminists have defended powerful men accused of sex crimes,
positioned topless pictures in the tabloids as empowering, and
opposed them for sexualizing breasts and undermining their
natural function. At the same time they have been
criticized by extreme-right groups for ignoring honour killings and
other culture-based forms of violence against women.
How can we make sense of this varied terrain?

In this important and challenging new book, Alison Phipps
constructs a political sociology of women s bodies around key
debates: sexual violence, gender and Islam, sex work and
motherhood. Her analysis uncovers dubious rhetorics and paradoxical
allegiances, and contextualizes these within the powerful coalition
of neoliberal and neoconservative frameworks. She explores how
feminism can be caricatured and vilified at both ends
of the political spectrum, arguing that Western feminisms are now
faced with complex problems of positioning in a world where gender
often comes second to other political priorities.

This book provides a welcome investigation into Western politics
around women s bodies, and will be particularly useful to
scholars and upper-level students of sociology, political science,
gender studies and cultural studies, as well as to anyone
interested in how bodies become politicized.

Spis treści

Acknowledgements vii

Introduction 1

1 Neoliberalism and Neoconservatism: Framing the Politics of the Body 7

2 Sexual Violence and the Politics of Victimhood 20

3 Gender and Islam in a Neoconservative World 49

4 The Commodified Politics of the Sex Industry 76

5 The New Reproductive Regimes of Truth 102

Conclusion 132

Notes 139

Bibliography 143

Further Reading 184

Index 200

O autorze

Alison Phipps is Senior Lecturer in Sociology and Director of Gender Studies at the University of Sussex, UK. Between 2009 and 2012, she was Chair of the Feminist and Women’s Studies Association of the UK and Ireland.