Globalized and Re-Traditionalized? Instagram, Body, Gender and Norms

• In Event: 3255 - Section on the Sociology of Body and Embodiment Refereed Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 2. Gender, Embodiment, and Reproduction

Abstract

The paper explores re-traditionalizing processes of gender framed through the social network of Instagram. I argue that Instagram simultaneously serves as a space of visualization and re-creation of new forms of “acceptable” behavior and lifestyles, but also imposes new globalized visions on sexual identity that leads to a localized conflict and resentment online. Instagram proposes new norms and codes of practice through advertising and global fashion trends. Growing neoliberal trends in Russia and Kazakhstan, on the one hand, force the acceptance of global norms of consumption and also sexualization. But on the other hand, some online users’ fear of losing their “national culture” in these global trends pushes them to police gendered norms and bodies of local Instagram influencers, many of whom are female and LGBTQ bloggers.

Author

• Diana T. Kudaibergenova, University of Cambridge