Sophie Woodward

Bio: Sophie Woodward is an academic researcher from University of Manchester. The author has contributed to research in topics: Feminism & Sustainable clothing. The author has an hindex of 14, co-authored 30 publications receiving 879 citations. Previous affiliations of Sophie Woodward include University College London & Nottingham Trent University.

Why Women Wear What they Wear

Abstract: Introduction Chapter 1: Understanding Women and their Wardrobes. Chapter 2: Hanging Out in the Home and the Bedroom. Chapter 3: But What Were You Wearing? Clothes and Memories. Chapter 4: Looking Good, Feeling Right: The Aesthetics of Getting Dressed. Chapter 5: Looking in the Mirror: Seeing and Being Seen. Chapter 6: Mothers, Daughters, Friends: Dressing in Relationships. Chapter 7: Fashion: Making and Breaking the Rules. Chapter 8: Dressing up and Dressing Down: Can you Wear Jeans? Conclusion.

The sustainable clothing market: an evaluation of potential strategies for UK retailers

Abstract: Purpose – This paper aims to investigate consumers' perspectives on sustainable clothing consumption and to examine ways in which this information could influence retailers' policies.Design/methodology/approach – Qualitative research was conducted using focus groups, home tasks and workshops with 99 participants. The sample represented different groups of consumers in relation to their sustainability behaviour.Findings – Focus group participants had a limited awareness of the sustainability impacts of clothing. Where participants displayed pro‐environmental behaviour, this was not necessarily intentional, but was largely a response to other influences. The respondents' maintenance and disposal of clothes were found to be influenced mainly by existing habits and routines, which usually take precedence over awareness of sustainable practice. The research indicated that consumers could be persuaded to change their behaviour in relation to sustainability by being encouraged and enabled to reflect more on thei...

Object interviews, material imaginings and ‘unsettling’ methods: interdisciplinary approaches to understanding materials and material culture

Abstract: This article aims to explore the possibilities and limitations of contemporary qualitative methods for understanding materials and material culture and how these can be expanded through interdisciplinary approaches. Taking the case study of an interdisciplinary project into old jeans, the article first considers the use of object interviews and life histories to explore how people ‘speak’ the material. Second, it develops the possibilities afforded by inventive material methods, such as socio-archaeological approaches of ‘material imaginings’. Finally, the article discusses the interdisciplinary project through the dialogues that took place around the methods of design and of textile technology and the data produced. Focusing upon dialogues offers a means of exploring the tensions and also connections between methods as a site for expanding qualitative understandings of materials as ‘live’ and vibrant. It aims to widen the remit of qualitative research methods to incorporate the material.

Gender Studies and Interdisciplinarity

Abstract: In this article we consider the example of gender studies as an interdisciplinary field, and argue that gender studies, and women’s studies, from which gender studies developed, has a distinctive engagement with interdisciplinarity. By thinking about the trajectory of women’s studies, feminist thinking and gender studies, we suggest that this has always been an interdisciplinary field of study. We trace both the shifts and continuities in thinking between different iterations of feminist thinking to consider the three core fields of: gender, sex and sexuality; intersectionality and activism; theory and methods. The article aims to open up debate over what the constructive possibilities are of a focus upon gender, and what the relationship is between theory and activism. This article is published as part of an ongoing collection dedicated to interdisciplinary research.

Postmodern Subjects, Postmodern BodiesThinking Fragments: Psychoanalysis, Feminism, and Postmodernism in the Contemporary WestYearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural PoliticsGender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity

Abstract: Preface (1999) Preface (1990) 1. Subjects of Sex/Gender/Desire I. 'Women' as the Subject of Feminism II. The Compulsory Order of Sex/Gender/Desire III. Gender: The Circular Ruins of Contemporary Debate IV. Theorizing the Binary, the Unitary and Beyond V. Identity, Sex and the Metaphysics of Substance VI. Language, Power and the Strategies of Displacement 2. Prohibition, Psychoanalysis, and the Production of the Heterosexual Matrix I. Structuralism's Critical Exchange II. Lacan, Riviere, and the Strategies of Masquerade III. Freud and the Melancholia of Gender IV. Gender Complexity and the Limits of Identification V. Reformulating Prohibition as Power 3. Subversive Bodily Acts I. The Body Politics of Julia Kristeva II. Foucault, Herculine, and the Politics of Sexual Discontinuity III. Monique Wittig - Bodily Disintegration and Fictive Sex IV. Bodily Inscriptions, Performative Subversions Conclusion - From Parody to Politics

Understanding the appeal of user‐generated media: a uses and gratification perspective

Abstract: Purpose – User‐generated media (UGM) like YouTube, MySpace, and Wikipedia have become tremendously popular over the last few years. The purpose of this paper is to present an analytical framework for explaining the appeal of UGM.Design/methodology/approach – This paper is mainly theoretical due to a relative lack of empirical evidence. After an introduction on the emergence of UGM, this paper investigates in detail how and why people use UGM, and what factors make UGM particularly appealing, through a uses and gratifications perspective. Finally, the key elements of this study are summarized and the future research directions about UGM are discussed.Findings – This paper argues that individuals take with UGM in different ways for different purposes: they consume contents for fulfilling their information, entertainment, and mood management needs; they participate through interacting with the content as well as with other users for enhancing social connections and virtual communities; and they produce their...