The starting point of Ann Oakley’s fascinating book is the fracture of her right arm in the grounds of a hotel in the USA. What begins as an accident becomes a journey into some critical themes of modern Western culture: the crisis of embodiment and the perfect self; the confusion between body and identity; the commodification of bodies and body parts; the intrusive surveillance and profiteering of medicine and the law; the problem of ageing; and the identification of women, particularly, with bodies – from the intensely ambiguous two-in-one state of pregnancy to women’s later transformation into unproductive, brittle skeletons. Fracture mixes personal experience (the author’s and other people’s) with ‘facts’ derived from other literatures, including the history of medicine, neurology, the sociology of health and illness, philosophy, and legal discourses on the right to life and people as victims of a greedy litigation system. The book’s genre spans fiction/non-fiction, autobiography and social theory.
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Ann Oakley is a leading feminist sociologist and writer. She is Professor of Sociology and Social Policy at the Institute of Education, University of London and has published more than 30 books, including The Sociology of Housework, From here to maternity and Gender on planet earth. She has also written 7 novels, one of which, The Men’s Room, was made into a BBC TV series.
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