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Pricing Bodies: A Feminist New Materialist Approach to the Relations Between
the Economic and Socio-Cultural
Contribution to Adkins, Lisa and Lehtonen, Turo-Kimmo (Eds) (2018) ‘Price’, Special
Issue of Distinktion: Journal of Social Theory, 19: 2.
Rebecca Coleman
Sociology Department, Goldsmiths, University of London, London, SE14 6NW, UK.
rebecca.coleman@gold.ac.uk
Abstract
Arguments that the economic and socio-cultural should be understood as relational
and intertwined, and that price involves a reciprocal relationship between the
economic and socio-cultural, are increasingly prevalent in the social sciences. I
develop these notions of relationality and reciprocation through a feminist new
materialist perspective, which emphasises the entanglement of and intra-action
between what might usually be seen as independent and autonomous entities. To do
this, I focus on a range of recent body-image initiatives, led by government,
corporate and non-profit organisations, which aim to improve girls’ and young
women’s levels of confidence and self-esteem. I explore how feminist theory tends to
see such initiatives in terms of the expansion of the economic sphere into the socio-
cultural, which involves a tainting or contamination of embodiment and feeling.
Rather than dispute these arguments, I take seriously theories and practices from
cultural economy that see the economic and socio-cultural as co-constitutive. I
augment these ideas with a feminist new materialist approach and argue that the
economic and socio-cultural are in intra-active relations: they do not precede or exist
apart from each other. In doing so, I consider how body-image initiatives can be
understood as phenomena produced through these entangled intra-active relations,
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and offer an understanding of pricing as a simultaneously socio-cultural and
economic process, where value and values become. I also raise questions regarding
how, ethically and politically, boundary making and unmaking can be conceived, and
how despite being in entangled relations, asymmetries between economic and socio-
cultural relations may be approached.
Keywords
body-image; ethics; entanglement; feminist new materialisms; phenomena; price;
pricing
Pricing Bodies:
A Feminist New Materialist Approach to the Relations
Between the Economic and Socio-Cultural
Arguments that the economic and socio-cultural should be understood not as
separate spheres but as relational and/or intertwined are increasingly prevalent in the
social sciences (e.g. Callon 1998, 2007, MacKenzie, Muniesa and Siu 2007, Bennett,
McFall and Pryke 2008, Adkins and Lury 2012, Deville 2015)
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. This paper aims to
contribute to such arguments by drawing on some of the theories of price, which see
a reciprocal relationship between the economic and socio-cultural (Zelizer 1985), and
propose that quantity and quality, value and values, capital and bodies are co-
constitutive (e.g. Muniesa 2007, Caliskan 2007, Adkins and Lehtonen 2018). I take
up and develop these notions of reciprocation and co-constitution through a feminist
new materialist perspective, which emphasises the entanglement and transformation
of and intra-action between
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what might usually be seen as independent and
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autonomous entities, and which raise issues regarding how, ethically and politically,
boundary making and unmaking can be conceived and approached (e.g. Barad
2007, Coole and Frost 2010, Coleman 2009). My aim is to both draw on and develop
the theories of price and cultural economy
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discussed here through a feminist new
materialist perspective.
Exactly how such relations and entanglements function and play out are empirical
problems; this paper focuses on a range of recent body-image initiatives for girls and
young women as a productive case study to examine them further. Such initiatives
have proliferated since the early 2000s – for instance in the UK Labour government’s
Body Image Summit (2000) and the Conservative and Liberal Democrat
government’s Body Confidence campaign (2010-2015) as well as more widely in
what Sarah Banet-Weiser (2015) calls Girl Empowerment Organisations (GEOs); the
‘variously corporate, non-profit and state-funded’ organisations in the USA that aim to
empower girls through improving levels of confidence, self-esteem, education and
skills and that often have an international development focus (2015: 182, see also
Koffman and Gill 2013, Koffman et al 2015). I suggest that such initiatives have
tended to be seen in feminist theory in terms of the politically dubious expansion of
the economic sphere into the socio-cultural, where feelings such as self-confidence
and self-esteem become subject to calculation and commodification (e.g. Banet-
Weiser 2015, Koffman and Gill 2013, Koffman et al 2015, McRobbie 2009). Such
theories therefore try to disentangle the economic and socio-cultural, so that feelings
and girls’ and young women’s bodies remain outside of such calculations.
This paper does not dispute these arguments so much as to take seriously theories
of cultural economy that see the economic and socio-cultural as co-constitutive, and
from the feminist new materialisms that see the economic and socio-cultural as
entangled. I propose that body-image initiatives be conceived as phenomena
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produced through processes whereby the symbolic and material, quantities and
qualities, capital and bodies, measure and value, and calculation and feeling become
entangled. Both ‘phenomena’ and ‘entanglement’ are concepts drawn from the work
of feminist new materialist Karen Barad (2007), which account for how the world is,
ontologically, relational, processual and transformative. Further, these concepts
attend to the ethics and politics of how particular materialities (in this case, bodies in
the body-image initiatives) are made, or cut, through specific practices. I expand on
these ideas below. Throughout the paper is a concern with how feeling – both the
specific bodily feelings of confidence and self-esteem and the affective appeal of
doing good more generally – are involved in price and pricing. In these senses, the
paper seeks to contribute both to feminist accounts of body-image initiatives and
related processes and to contemporary debates about the ethical or moral economy
(Arvidsson 2009, Shamir 2008) and price and pricing. A central question it explores
is what a feminist new materialist approach might offer to understandings of body-
image initiatives, price and pricing and the relations between the economic and
socio-cultural.
Body-image initiatives: The move of the economic into the socio-cultural
In June 2000, the UK Labour government held a Body Image Summit to examine
links between a rise in young women reporting eating disorders, self-harm,
widespread dieting and a more general dissatisfaction with their bodies, and images
in the media and fashion industries. The Body Image Summit responded explicitly to
a British Medical Association report, ‘Eating Disorders, Body Image and the Media’
(2000) which argued that:
The media provide particular examples of role expectations and images of
beauty which may influence young people’s perceptions of acceptable body
image. The images of slim models in the media are a stark contrast to the
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body size and shape of most children and young women who are becoming
increasingly heavier (BMA 2000).
In particular, the report notes the role of media images in creating low self-esteem
that can assist in the development of eating disorders:
In recent years the socially represented ideal body has become increasingly
thin, and much thinner than the average objective body shape of the
population, putting pressure on women to view their bodies as fatter and
heavier. Research has shown that girls with low self esteem at age 11-12
were at significantly greater risk of developing severe signs of eating
disorders and other psychological problems at age 15-17 (BMA 2000).
Announcing the Summit in April 2000, and taking on the language used by the BMA,
Tessa Jowell, the Minister for Women at the time who organised and chaired the
Summit, commented that, ‘For many, poor body image can lead to low levels of self
esteem, for some it is dangerous, leading to eating disorders and other forms of self-
abuse’. She went on to note that, ‘I am concerned that girls may not be fulfilling their
potential because of their lack of confidence about themselves’ (Jowell, quoted in
BBC 2000).
One of the central ways that ‘potential’ is understood and mobilised in this initiative is
in terms of economic potential; that is in terms of what a bolstering or improvement of
girls’ and women’s confidence, self-esteem and general feelings about their bodies
could contribute to their ability to succeed at school and in work, and thus to the
economy more widely. Jowell was careful not to imply that the summit would result in
regulations of the media and fashion industries that would restrict their economic
potential, remarking on ‘the important contribution these industries make to the