Bodies in Crisis—new book from CSWS fellowship winner

Sutton, Barbara. 2010. Bodies in Crisis: Culture, Violence, and Women’s Resistance in Neoliberal Argentina (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press).

Bodies in Crisis bookcover

Bodies in Crisis bookcover

Barbara Sutton received funding from the Center for the Study of Women in Society to pursue the research on which this book is based. Winner of the 2004 CSWS Jane Grant Dissertation Fellowship, Sutton earned her Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Oregon (2004). She also has a law degree from the National University of Buenos Aires (1993), Argentina. Sutton is an assistant professor of women’s studies at the University of Albany, SUNY, affiliated with the departments of sociology and Latin American, Caribbean, and U.S. Latino Studies.

From the publisher: “Born and raised in Argentina and still maintaining significant ties to the area, Barbara Sutton examines the complex, and often hidden, bodily worlds of diverse women in that country during a period of profound social upheaval. Based primarily on women’s experiential narratives and set against the backdrop of a severe economic crisis and intensified social movement activism post-2001, Bodies in Crisis illuminates how multiple forms of injustice converge in and are contested through women’s bodies. Sutton reveals the bodily scars of neoliberal globalization; women’s negotiation of cultural norms of femininity and beauty; experiences with clandestine, illegal, and unsafe abortions; exposure to and resistance against interpersonal and structural violence; and the role of bodies as tools and vehicles of political action.”

“Through the lens of women’s body consciousness in a Global South country, and drawing on multifaceted stories and a politically embedded approach, Bodies in Crisis suggests that social policy, economic systems, cultural ideologies, and political resistance are ultimately fleshly matters.”

Read more about Barbara Sutton’s research for this book in the Spring 2004, CSWS newsletter (p. 10).