JS-68
Violence Taking Place across the Bodies of Women

Thursday, 19 July 2018: 15:30-17:20
Location: 206C (MTCC NORTH BUILDING)
RC54 The Body in the Social Sciences (host committee)
RC29 Deviance and Social Control

Language: English

This session seeks not to detail criminal and violent activities, but rather to analyze the conflict between our bodily integrity against our desire to see the world. Tourism, indeed, is a social and cultural phenomenon centred around dream of alternatives to everyday life.

For us, for women, there is a different tourist map of the globe, one in which we are told to consider the length of our skirts and the cuts of our shirts, the time of day in which we choose to move around, and the places we deem “safe.”

But what is the reality of violence against women now in the places we want to go — and should we be avoiding whole cities because of this risk, as some women are doing? Even the statistics aren’t conclusive. Reports of rape in all countries are hampered variously by corruption and a cultural willingness to ignore violence considered “normal,” even close to home.Experts note that this trend, so to speak, is amplified by the media, which makes individual incidents seem part of a larger pattern. Nor they cannot know whether attacks on female tourists are actually increasing. It is possible that violence is on the rise in part because more women than ever are traveling alone, and are venturing ever farther off the beaten path? About this last topic, we should very deeply reflect.

Session Organizer:
Ladan RAHBARI, Centre for Research on Culture and Gender, Ghent University, Belgium
Oral Presentations
Beauty Practices As Harmful Cultural Practices? Study of Female University Students in Iran
Ladan RAHBARI, Centre for Research on Culture and Gender, Ghent University, Belgium; Chia LONGMAN, Centre for Research on Culture and Gender, Ghent University, Belgium
Capitalism and the Body
Georgina MURRAY, Griffith University, Australia; Marco ÖCHSNER, Griffith University, Australia