Call For Papers
Annual Meeting of the Association of American Geographers
April 15-19, Boston, MA
Gendered spaces of body and emotional work
Organisers: Emma Wainwright, Fiona Smith and Elodie Marandet, Centre for Human Geography, Brunel University, London
The body and emotions are key components of a diverse and varied range of occupations in the service sector. Recently, Wolkowitz (2002 and 2006) has used the term 'body work' to conceptualise the experiences of those whose paid work involves the "care, adornment, pleasure, discipline or cure" of others' bodies. In so doing, she stresses labour that involves intimate and often messy contact with the body through touch or close proximity. Importantly, resonating through this conceptualisation of body work is the issue of gender; body work has been and continues to be undertaken primarily by women, and is based upon a sexual division of labour that assigns to women the care of bodies and the spaces they inhabit (Smith, 1988). In employment areas defined as body work, the actual corporeal process of handling bodies is generally apportioned to those on the lower rungs of the job-ladder (Oerton, 2004; Twigg, 2000). Clear examples of this are epitomised by the low status and wages associated with a host of 'body work' professions including care work, childcare and beauty therapy.
This bodily emphasis also needs to provide room for the emotional; the more intimate the contact and handling of bodies, the more necessary the sensitive handling of emotions. Attention has been drawn, for example, to the physicality and emotionality of carework (Twigg, 2000; Milligan, 2000 & 2003) and nursing (van Dongen and Elema 2001; Savage, 2000). Moreover, Black (2002) and Sharma and Black (2001), focusing on the emotional labour of beauty therapy, have found that therapists define their work in terms of work with feelings as well as with the body, stressing the importance of what it does to make their clients feel better, linking the corporeal and emotional spheres.
Drawing on current conceptualisations of body work and emotional labour, and the more recent integration of the two through the concept of aesthetic labour (Witz et al, 2003), this session will explore the processes of work and training for work to identify the underlying gendered constructions, negotiations and reciprocity of the body and the emotional (of both self and other). Papers are welcome which explore a range of spaces of work and/or training, and draw upon varied theoretical positions and substantive research findings.
Please send abstracts of no more than 250 words to
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by October 19th
Elodie Marandet
Research Fellow
Centre for Human Geography
School of Sport and Education
Brunel University
Uxbridge, UB8 3PH (UK)
Tel +44 (0) 1895 266 097
Fax +44 (0) 1895 269 736
http://www.brunel.ac.uk/about/acad/ges/staff/elodie_marandet <https://owa1.brunel.ac.uk/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=https://owa1.brunel.ac.uk/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.brunel.ac.uk/about/acad/ges/staff/elodie_marandet>
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