1st Edition

Embodied Power Demystifying Disembodied Politics

By Mary Hawkesworth Copyright 2016
202 Pages
by Routledge

202 Pages
by Routledge

202 Pages
by Routledge

Embodied Power explores dimensions of politics seldom addressed in political science, illuminating state practices that produce hierarchically-organized groups through racialized gendering—despite guarantees of formal equality. Challenging disembodied accounts of citizenship, the book traces how modern science and law produce race, gender, and sexuality as purportedly natural characteristics,... Read more

1. Embodied Power  2. Conceptual Practices of Power  3. The Science and Politics of Bodies  4. From Race and Sex to Racialization, Gendering, and Sexualization  5. Ways of Seeing  6. Revisioning Power, Reclaiming Politics

Biography

Mary Hawkesworth is Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Women's and Gender Studies at Rutgers University.

As it challenges us to question taken-for-granted assumptions of our discipline, Embodied Power urges us to think beyond the constraints of conventional social science. Hawkesworth presents a convincing argument that until political science takes race, class and gender seriously it cannot fully understand contemporary politics. A must-read for scholars in all subfields of political science as well as those seeking more just solutions to today’s problems.

-- J. Ann Tickner, American University

This book is a manifesto for intersectionality as a process-based form of analysis and way of seeing the world. Hawkesworth disposes of the mystifications that constitute the 'standard' methodologies of political science, but goes well beyond mere critique. Her work sets in place a practical alternative to all-too-familiar methodological individualisms and raced-gendered nationalisms.

-- Terrell Carver, University of Bristol

Once again, Mary Hawkesworth has crafted a lucid and compelling account of racing-gendering processes and the material occlusions and power relations they produce in the United States. Embodied Power belongs in the canon of political science and should be required reading for all political scientists. It certainly will be for all of my future students.

-- Ange-Marie Hancock, University of Southern California