Social CONTROL: Study Guide

Deviant Bodies

Bodies Body work

Julia Coffey (2016) investigates the bodily concept of ‘health’ and how it is inextricably
linked both to the bodily performance of gender ideals and an increased public emphasis
on individual management and responsibility in the pursuit of a ‘healthy’ body.

Deviant Bodies What constitutes bodily deviance?

Sociologists have described two types of physical deviance, including (1) violations of
aesthetic norms (what people should look like, including height, weight, and the absence or
presence of disfigurement) and (2) physical incapacity, which would include those with a
physical disability (Goode, 2005).

The body as an “unfinished project inscribed by culture and

developed in social relations” (Anleu) is a particular focus of
feminist theorists and activists
French philosopher and feminist Simone de Beauvoir (1908-
1986) wrote The Second Sex back in 1949
‘The terms masculine and feminine are used symmetrically only
Simone as a matter of form … man represents both the positive and the
neutral, as is indicated by the common use of man to designate
de human beings in general; whereas woman represents only the
Beauvo negative, defined by limiting criteria, without reciprocity’
ir (Beauvoir 2011, p.144).
To understand what she means, keep in mind the title of the book,
The Second Sex.
By calling women ‘the second sex’, de Beauvoir argues that the
norm is to be male, while to be female is to be an ‘other’.
In our terminology for this unit, her argument is that to have a
female body is in a sense to be deviant.

So De Beauvoir is suggesting that understandings of the sexes are not like

this:

Male Neutral Female

They are more like this:

Male/Neutral Female

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 Social CONTROL: Study Guide

This is part of what de Beauvoir

Think about the range of male
terms used as though they are
gender neutral (eg. man,
manmade, mankind, manpower).
means when she writes about
men as neutral (normal) and
women as second, or ‘other’ or
negative (or in our terminology
for this unit, deviant).

NOTE that this idea of

seemingly opposite concepts
like male/female actually
operating with a neutral/deviant
status might also work with
other body categories, e.g.
heterosexual/ homosexual,
black/white

Goffman and stigma

Canadian sociologist ‘The term stigma, then, will be used to refer to an attribute that
Erving Goffman is deeply discrediting, but it should be seen that a language of
relationships, not attributes, is really needed. An attribute that
(1922-82) offers a
stigmatises one type of possessor can confirm the usualness of
sociological definition another, and therefore is neither creditable nor discreditable as
of the concept of a thing in itself’ (Goffman 1963, p. 2).
‘stigma’.

What are some types The seven main types of stigma include public, self, perceived,
of stigma? label, structural, health practitioner, and associative. It
involves assigning people with certain traits and can have
harmful effects on mental health.
Labelling theorists  Like Goffman (unlike normative theorists) are not all that
interested in which norm was broken, why or by whom.
 They are much more interested in the social audience –
the society around the norm-breaker.
 So this is a kind of theory which looks closely at social
interaction and the ways in which it creates meanings.
(In this case, meanings to do with bodies.)
Stigmatisation casting an individual into the category of outsider, other than
involves: normal, or not quite human’ (Roach Anleu 2006, p. 101).

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What are some  Shaved head woman

examples to unpack?  Heavily tattooed man
 Overweight middle-aged woman
 Skinny boy
What repairing is  Goffman noted that repair can take the form of an attempt to
expected? disguise or change a stigmatising feature (e.g. a nose job) or
it can involve an endeavour to succeed despite that feature
(e.g. a quadriplegic person becoming an athlete).
 However, ‘Once a person with a stigma attains a high
occupational, political or financial position, a new career
(representing their category) is likely to be thrust on them –
which again attests to their deviance and to the
homogenising effect of a stigma’ (Roach Anleu 2006,
p.102).
How does the ‘In some cases it will be possible for him to make a direct
stigmatised person attempt to correct what he sees as the objective basis of his
failing, as when a physically deformed person undergoes plastic
respond to his
surgery, a blind person eye treatment, an illiterate remedial
situation? education, a homosexual psychotherapy’ (Goffman 1963, p.4)

When is such repair What often results is not the acquisition of fully normal status,
is possible? but a transformation of self from someone with a particular
blemish into someone with a record of having corrected a
particular blemish’ (Goffman 1963, p. 4-5).

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