Don't Be a Whore, That's Not Ladylike

Discursive Discipline and Sorority Women’s Gendered Subjectivity

Datos Bibliográficos

ID2385667
AutoresLisbeth A Berbary (0000-0002-4129-9470, University of Memphis, TN, USA)
Año2012
Volumen18
Número7
Páginas606-625
Fecha de publicación2012-09-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaQualitative Inquiry (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 1077-8004 • E-ISSN: 1552-7565
EditorialSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/1077800412450150
OpenAlexW2164000995
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas19
Referencias citadas15

While multiple and competing understandings of sororities exist in popular culture, academic research on sororities tends to homogenize the experience of sorority women, simplifying their existence to a quantitative understanding of specific behaviors such as those associated with binge drinking, eating disorders, and heterosexuality. Specifically, it ignores processes of discursive discipline that converge to disseminate social expectations, maintain dominant discourse, conceal processes of social control, and limit possibilities for gendered subjectivity. Therefore, in order to provide a more complex understanding of sorority women's gendered subjectivity and to produce research cognizant of cultural discourse, this study explored sorority women's experiences through an ethnographic lens informed by poststructural theory. Represented by creative analytic practice as an ethnographic screenplay, this research provides contextualized insight into societal relationships of power and gender as they produce and reproduce specific historical and cultural regimes. In particular, I contextualize the experiences of sorority women, explore the dissemination and discipline of femininity within the sorority, and show how such discipline relates to Foucauldian theorizations

Epistemology · Ethnography · Femininity · Feminism · Power (physics · Sociology · Subjectivity · Anthropology · Fashion and Cultural Textiles · Gender Studies · Gender, Feminism, and Media · Social and Cultural Dynamics