545 - Section on Body and Embodiment Paper Session. Embodiment and Social Movements

Session Submission Type: Paper Session 100min

Description

This session, co-sponsored by the Sections on Body & Embodiment and Collective Behavior & Social Movements, calls attention to the importance of bodies in the study of social movements, and the place of social protest in the study of embodiment. Although the body has been integral in many movements’ tactical repertoires, scholars have often treated activists’ bodies as given and overlooked the strategic ways in which bodies are used in acts of protest. Conversely, scholars interested in bodies and embodiment have seldom explicitly explored how physical bodies figure in efforts to foment social change. This session highlights the reciprocal relationship between bodies and social movements. In what ways have bodies aided (or hindered) social movement actors? How have social movements influenced bodies and embodiment? How have bodies served as sources of collective identity, contributed to movements’ tactical repertories, shaped movement framing, and influenced the outcomes and consequences (bodily and otherwise) of efforts to create social change?

Sub Unit

• Section on Body and Embodiment / Embodiment and Social Movements

Session Organizer

• Nancy A. Naples, University of Connecticut

Presider

• Laura M. Carpenter, Vanderbilt University

Individual Presentations

• Embodied Activism, Transformational Leadership and Courage - Mary Margaret Fonow, Arizona State University; Suzanne Franzway, University of South Australia

• Out of Touch, Out of Time: Older Queer Women’s Engagement with Fat Acceptance Movements - Natalie Ingraham, University of California at San Francisco

Discussants

• Laura M. Carpenter, Vanderbilt University

• Sharon Preves, Hamline University