Touch in Holistic Massage: Ambiguities and Boundaries

Purcell, Carrie

doi:10.1007/978-1-137-02191-5_11

Cited by 4 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…Fourth, the relatively hidden location of the spaces in which body work is performed is consequential for power relations between worker, client and employer. For instance, where the physical proximity to clients and patients required by body work locates it in privatized spaces, whether in the home, salon backroom or behind a screen in a hospital, workers are particularly vulnerable to workplace assaults: whether the sexual harassment found in nail salons or massage (Kang, ; Purcell, ), or the violence experienced by hospital and other health care staff (Holmes et al , ) . The risk of harassment may be exacerbated by the domestic connotations of body work where recipients critically appraise treatment as falling short of the limitless concern for others expected of women (Baines and Cunningham, ).…”

Section: Body Work As Materials Labourmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Feminization of Body Work

Cohen¹,

Wolkowitz²

2017

Gender Work & Organization

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This article explores the relationship between 'body work' and gender, asking why paid work involving the physical touch and manipulation of others' bodies is largely performed by women. It argues that the feminization of body work is not simply explicable as 'nurturance', nor as the continuation of a pre-existing domestic division of labour. Rather, feminization resolves dilemmas that arise when intimate touch is refigured as paid labour. These 'body work dilemmas' are rooted in the material nature of body work. They are both cultural (related to the meaning of inter-corporeality) and organizational (related to the spatial, temporal and labour process constraints of work on bodies). Two sectors are explored as exemplars: hairdressing and care work. Synthesizing UK quantitative data and existing research, the article traces similarities and differences in the composition of these sectors and in how gender both responds to and reentrenches the cultural and organizational body work dilemmas identified.

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Section: Body Work As Materials Labourmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Feminization of Body Work

Cohen¹,

Wolkowitz²

2017

Gender Work & Organization

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“…Following Waskul's and Vannini's idea, we can see various forms of viable strategies through which the body contact between the participants in delicate social worlds (Unruh 1979) remains nonsexual. Comparable studies of swimming pools (Scott 2010), nude beaches (Douglas, Rasmussen, and Flanagan 1977), saunas (Edelsward 1991), or massages (Purcell 2013) have pointed to ways in which people claim their personal space and draw physical and verbal boundaries around their bodies to protect themselves and others from potential (sexual) intrusion. Through her ethnographic work in swimming pools into how the swimmers' bodies are performatively regulated, Susie Scott (2010, 163) showed the dramaturgical strategies swimmers follow to "create a civilized (desexualized) reading of the body."…”

Section: Cuddle Party: the Bounded Space Of Nonsexual Touchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Touch Me if You Can: Intimate Bodies at Cuddle Parties

Mayr

2022

Journal of Contemporary Ethnography

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This article is based on ethnographic fieldwork, focusing on the processes and practices of cuddle parties. Data was collected from a combination of participant-observation, interviews, and diaries aimed to understand and interpret this unique form of intimate interaction. By disentangling bodily disciplines and dramaturgical (self-)presentations, this study explores how and to what extent cuddle party participants embody safe and nonsexual touch experiences in forms of “playful” interaction rituals. Alongside the chance for participants to explore bodies, with permission, this study concludes that cuddle parties are experiential, bounded playgrounds where both intimacy and touch are (re)created in the context of loosened normative, relational, and sexual constraints.

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“…Here the most basic and messy elements of body work are found in the lowest status occupational roles, with distance from the body tending to increase as one ascends occupational hierarchies (Twigg, 2000;Twigg et al, 2011). Others have explored body work in relation to improving the appearance and beautification of the bodies of others; for example, hairdressers (Cohen, 2010), beauticians (Kang, 2013) and the giving of pleasure, for example, through massage (Purcell, 2013) or sex work (Chen, 2018). Body work also includes the low status work of dealing with messy, unattractive bodily waste, such as work undertaken by lavatory cleaners or undertakers (Jordan et al, 2019;Twigg, 2000).…”

Section: Body Work Labourmentioning

confidence: 99%

Betwixt and Between: The Invisible Experiences of Volunteers’ Body Work

Venter

2022

Work, Employment and Society

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Prevailing dualisms of work as formal, paid employment on the one hand or informal, unpaid domestic labour on the other, means volunteering is often overlooked. Although academic interest in voluntary labour is growing, it remains inadequately theorised in the sociology of work. A more sociological meaningful understanding of volunteering is needed. Through an analysis of voluntary body work labour, this article advances theorisation of volunteering as work in two ways. Firstly, the article invokes a total social organisation of labour approach to overcome the paid/unpaid work dichotomy. Secondly, it grounds this theorisation empirically by drawing on the volunteers’ insights into their delivery of body work labour to shed new light on the complex ways in which volunteers frame labour within wider social relationships.

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Touch in Holistic Massage: Ambiguities and Boundaries

Cited by 4 publications

References 26 publications

The Feminization of Body Work

The Feminization of Body Work

Touch Me if You Can: Intimate Bodies at Cuddle Parties

Betwixt and Between: The Invisible Experiences of Volunteers’ Body Work

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