Carol Wolkowitz is a Reader in the Department of Sociology. Her research has involved a number of different areas of gender studies. She has a long-standing interest in gender in Indian history and politics, stemming from her doctoral research on women politicians' careers in South India. Since then much of her work has focused on gender and employment. She is co-author of two books on homeworking and home-located work, Homeworking Women: Gender, Class and Racism at Work (1995) and Homeworking: Myths and Realities (1987). In 2006 she published Bodies at Work (Sage), exploring 'body work' and the relation between embodiment, gender and the labour process. Her other publications include the Glossary of Feminist Theory (1997), with Terry Lovell and Sonya Andermahr, and several articles exploring the use of personal narratives to understand women's roles in the American communities established by the Manhattan Project during the Second World War. She was also co-editor of Of Marriage and the Market: Women's Subordination in International Perspective (1981 and 1985). Besides supervising PhD theses on a wide range of topics, she teaches a postgraduate module on Sex, Gender and Power and the visual methods component of the MA qualitative methods module. At undergraduate level she convenes Sexuality and Society and co-teaches Visual Sociology
After reading this book it will be more difficult to "do" the sociology of work and the sociology of the body in the absence of the other. In some quite exquisite ways it throws down a challenge which practitioners in both fields will find difficult to ignore' - Paul Stewart, former editor of Work, Employment and Society, University of the West of England Bodies at Work provides the first full-length, accessible account of the body/work relation in contemporary western societies. Bringing together fields of sociology that have hitherto developed mainly along separate lines, the book demonstrates the relevance of concepts developed in the sociology of the body for enriching our understanding of changing patterns of work and employment. Bodies at Work begins by establishing key concerns in both the sociology of the body and the sociology of work. Drawing on existing research, the author proceeds to examine a wide range of employment sectors: industrial employment; customer relations; health practice; care work; the beauty industry; and sex work. The contribution of feminist theory and research is highlighted throughout, and analyses of photographs help the reader conceptualise the changing nature of the body/work relationship over time. Bodies at Work helps readers think more clearly and creatively about how work relations shape bodily experience.
