Body Exchanges: Material Culture, Gender and Stereotypes in the Making

Author: Marcoux, Jean-Sébastien

Source: Home Cultures, Volume 1, Number 1, 1 March 2004 , pp. 51-60(10)

Publisher: Berg Publishers

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Abstract:

In the line of recent works on the relationship between body and gender, this article examines the bodily investment of gender construction. Grounded in an ethnographic fieldwork, it focuses on the ways in which gender relations in North America are constructed through the manipulation of objects, via body exchanges. It shows that physicality cannot simply be taken as a given on which genders are imposed. It is used to maintain sexual differences in a normative fashion. In attempting to understand this economy of body exchanges, this article calls for a broadening of our understanding of gender stereotypes. In doing this, it challenges the idea that changes of consciousness may not have reached the level of practices. It reveals instead that people are not fooled. They may even engage into these relations with a certain degree of irony.

Document Type: Research article

DOI: 10.2752/174063104778053608

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