The wheelchair is an unmistakeable sign of bodily damage. It is the universal symbol of disability. How then do wheelchair users feel about themselves? How do they manage their relationship with others? How do people maintain a satisfactory self-image in the face of the highly visible chair and its associated symbolism? Some people will always see the wheelchair as a tool, just like any other piece of equipment that they may use to get a job done. However, for other people, wheelchair is more than just a tool; it becomes embodied, it becomes a part of them.

The wheelchair is an unmistakeable sign of bodily damage. It is the universal symbol of disability. How then do wheelchair users feel about themselves? How do they manage their relationship with others? How do people maintain a satisfactory self-image in the face of the highly visible chair and its associated symbolism? Some people will always see the wheelchair as a tool, just like any other piece of equipment that they may use to get a job done. However, for other people, wheelchair is more than just a tool; it becomes embodied, it becomes a part of them.

The literature concerning the relationship between black women and beauty has revealed conflicting findings: some argue that black women are negatively affected by ‘white’ beauty ideals while others argue for the existence of an alternative ‘black’ beauty standard. The purpose of this research is to describe and analyze young African American women’s awareness of beauty standards and their perception of themselves with relation to these standards, examine whether beauty standards are negotiable, and explore how perceptions of self affect daily social interactions. Data were collected through in-depth interviews with black females between the ages of eighteen and twentyive that were current students in one of three colleges in Mississippi (N = 21). Results reveal that context is an important element for understanding how black women relate to and use beauty standards. Their understanding of beauty standards and the expectations of others dictates how they manage/present themselves in a variety of situations.

This research explores the controversial nature of the pro-anorexia (pro-ana) websites. While previous studies have been conducted on the nature of these websites, it is essential to uncover the motivating factors behind maintaining a pro-ana identity. The purpose of my research is two-fold; a) uncover the definition of the idealized female body within the pro-ana websites, drawing connections between the idealized female body as conceptualized within our current society, and within the pro-ana websites; b) to demonstrate the core values held by pro-ana users that enable them to pursue their goal of achieving the idealized female body. <p> The theoretical framework for this thesis is based upon the work of feminist scholar Susan Bordo. Specifically, her analysis of the idealized female body within Western culture acted as the lens through which pro-ana websites were examined. A five step critical discourse analysis approach put forth by Norman Fairclough was implemented to guide the research and data analysis. Textual data was collected from three different pro-ana websites over the period of one week. In addition to discourse analysis, a brief content analysis was used to distinguish the common themes of posting topics. <p> From the results of the content analysis, the definition of the idealized female body according to the pro-ana users was created. In addition, the three underlying values held by pro-ana users during their pursuit of the idealized body -- discipline, self-surveillance and drive emerged from the data collection and analysis. It is important to distinguish that an underlying need to maintain constant control is present. <p> As the existing literature on this topic is still undergoing development, the results of this study offer key insights into the underlying motivations of those users found within pro-ana websites. It is clear that further research is needed in order to distinguish new and desperately needed approaches to treating eating disorders as they are only becoming more prevalent within society.

This research explores the controversial nature of the pro-anorexia (pro-ana) websites. While previous studies have been conducted on the nature of these websites, it is essential to uncover the motivating factors behind maintaining a pro-ana identity. The purpose of my research is two-fold; a) uncover the definition of the idealized female body within the pro-ana websites, drawing connections between the idealized female body as conceptualized within our current society, and within the pro-ana websites; b) to demonstrate the core values held by pro-ana users that enable them to pursue their goal of achieving the idealized female body. <p> The theoretical framework for this thesis is based upon the work of feminist scholar Susan Bordo. Specifically, her analysis of the idealized female body within Western culture acted as the lens through which pro-ana websites were examined. A five step critical discourse analysis approach put forth by Norman Fairclough was implemented to guide the research and data analysis. Textual data was collected from three different pro-ana websites over the period of one week. In addition to discourse analysis, a brief content analysis was used to distinguish the common themes of posting topics. <p> From the results of the content analysis, the definition of the idealized female body according to the pro-ana users was created. In addition, the three underlying values held by pro-ana users during their pursuit of the idealized body -- discipline, self-surveillance and drive emerged from the data collection and analysis. It is important to distinguish that an underlying need to maintain constant control is present. <p> As the existing literature on this topic is still undergoing development, the results of this study offer key insights into the underlying motivations of those users found within pro-ana websites. It is clear that further research is needed in order to distinguish new and desperately needed approaches to treating eating disorders as they are only becoming more prevalent within society.

The inextricable link between muscularity and masculinity has been increasingly accentuated over the past fourty years, resulting in behaviours that can become unhealthy from a variety of perspectives. Gender is often enacted through manipulating and altering morphologies which can ultimately affect the way one perceives her or his own body. This thesis introduces the term megamusculinity, embodying the links between corporality, muscularity and masculinity. Primarily affecting men, megamusculinity is an exemplar of gender performance where one follows strict dietary and exercise regimens in the pursuit of (gross)muscularity. Much of the academic discussion of gender and body perception focuses primarily upon body size. Shifting the emphasis from body size to regimes of the self, this analysis posits megamusculinity and eating disorders as parallel pursuits, not antithetical realms of extreme morphologies. Foucauldian logic will be blended with Anthony Giddens’ structuration theory to examine megamusculinity as gender performativity with a multitude of social underpinnings. In a world where rules and resources (following Giddens’ articulation of structures) shape everything individuals do, what is occurring in the case of megamusculinity is individuals are actively creating a hypertrophied reality by negotiating their way through the disciplinary constraints of various social structures. This thesis builds upon the psychological construction of muscle dysmorphia as a clinical disorder and introduces megamusculinity, situated not as a “personal trouble of milieu” but a “public issue of social structure” (Mills 1959: 8). In doing so, this thesis will demonstrate that the body perception disturbances of certain men are influenced by experiences with particular social factors/institutions, and positions megamusculinity parallel to eating disorders by focusing upon the regimes of the self involved in altering one’s morphology. / Thesis (Master, Sociology) -- Queen's University, 2010-12-22 20:42:33.636

An overarching goal of my dissertation is to delineate social systemic processes as first and foremost embodied, experiential processes. I argue that such processes manifest through and depend upon the organism’s affective integration with her environment. Whereby, I delineate concepts like alienation and agency as manifesting through an affective intelligibility. Symbolic alienation, then, represents a circumstance in which institutional narratives purport moral or aesthetic truths that denigrate and deny the organism’s affective understanding of a circumstance. Agentic growth refers to the organism’s affective adaptation to an environment. Such growth follows from the process of working through experiential discordance (i.e., the disturbance of experiential flow or continuity) and manifests as a new-found sense of trust and understanding. Experiential discordance is an unavoidable occurrence because the organism-environment relationship is a dynamic one. If the organism is unable to mitigate and repair such discordance, she will face the threat of traumatization. Furthermore, those who disrupt the conventional-institutional organization or channeling of experience take on the character of dirt and thereby represent a dirty Other. If institutions react to the troubling, dirty Other by means of systemic repression, rather than genuine communication and reintegration, then said dirty Other takes on the character of shit. In such a circumstance, the presence of the dirty Other likely reveals deep, social systemic inadequacies and thereby ruptures the collective’s existential confidence and praxeological competence.

Thesis advisor: Stephen J. Pfohl / Using qualitative data from semi-structured interviews with vegans of diverse backgrounds and body types, this study aims to investigate how vegans understand their own bodies and the bodies of others in relation to their consumptive practices and habits. The context of fatphobia in vegan activist spaces and communities surrounds this research as a tension within veganism that helps to elucidate the ways vegans use and engage with their bodies, further helping to understand not only vegan embodiment but also how fat vegans navigate these tensions with their own bodies. Vegans often engage with veganism as a tool for better understanding their own bodies and the social identities their bodies are associated with. This reflexivity causes them to not only concern themselves with how they relate to their own bodies but also with how others view and perceive their bodies. Thus, vegans respond to anxieties and fears about these perceptions by constructing their bodies in opposition to the stereotypes others apply to them (unhealthiness, preachiness, militancy, etc.). This may result in the exclusion of some bodies which are socially understood as fitting these roles (such as fat bodies as unhealthy) and, further, the ethical nature of vegan practices also causes these bodies to be seen as immoral or especially indulgent. This research helps to understand more precisely how vegans act as bodies in promoting their veganism and how they sometimes exclude other bodies in their attempts to defend vegan bodies. / Thesis (MA) — Boston College, 2023. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Sociology.

This is a theoretical and exploratory study of the social construction of the lived experience I am calling "ableness."  Through the repetition of behaviors and practices performed by able-bodied people, the representation of the able body has come to appear natural and unconsciously taken for granted, as they do not have to think about their bodies in interaction with everyday objects. I argue that this able-bodied solipsism is heightened in advanced industrial societies where discourses and practices created by Human-Factors Engineering compile knowledge based on the assumption that the able body is the norm. This knowledge is then employed in the fabrication of everyday items. Through an examination of theoretical perspectives on impaired bodies, a history of human-factors engineering, and an ethnography of how able bodies interact with their everyday surroundings, I intend to uncover the assumptions underlying the social construction of "ableness" and able-bodied solipsism.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-06-02T20:39:20Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 5881.pdf: 1708503 bytes, checksum: 235dc3e49e320f440a59cd0cb246fe68 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-03-31 / This monograph of completion of the course focuses on the social construction of the body in the environment of the gym. The proposal in general terms, is studying it in their everyday social profiles, delineate aspects of its components and establish some relationships between the gym, the subject and society, seeking to understand these relationships, especially with respect to the amount of this establishment to the current historical moment. The gym configures itself as a "no place", a social and a individual link between the parties and all that there is a large confluence of factors in that environment. On the other hand, there are still some traditional characteristics that perpetuate through the gym. Thus, there is the subject that it uses for the cult of the body, moved or not by social imperatives, and also the one who need it to survive, either through clinical or financial imperatives. These types of subject originate social niches that mediate an exchange of interest result of a universe that hovers between the imperatives of social and individual needs. / Esta dissertação versa, principalmente, sobre a construção social do corpo no ambiente da academia de ginástica. A proposta, em termos gerais, é estudá-lo em seus aspectos cotidianos, observando os perfis sociais dos seus frequentadores e estabelecendo algumas relações entre a academia de ginástica, o sujeito e a sociedade. A preocupação principal no decorrer de toda a pesquisa foi a de tecer uma argumentação fundamentalmente marcada pelas impressões dos indivíduos a respeito do universo das academias de ginástica e suas relações, buscando demonstrar os aspectos que os nativos entendem que sejam relevantes nas suas interações para podermos interpretá-los a partir dos conceitos da sociologia. A pesquisa foi desenvolvida em três academias de ginástica da cidade de São Carlos (SP) e buscou compreender um indivíduo em particular entre os seus freqüentadores, o qual que considerávamos como sendo o bodybuilder ou fisiculturista. A princípio, tomávamos esses termos como análogos e, no entanto, a pesquisa empírica demonstrou que não o são, nem desde a perspectiva teórica, seja da sociologia do corpo ou da educação física, nem do ponto de vista dos frequentadores das academias de ginástica. Esse nó do campo chamou a atenção para o fato de que, não obstante o corpo seja uma noção social e culturalmente construída, é preciso levar em consideração que cada indivíduo constrói a subjetividade do seu próprio corpo e a submete a cultura e a sociedade do momento em que vive.