Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons^™

Contesting Sphere Boundaries Online: Private/Technical/Public Discourses In Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome Discussion Groups, Kittie E. Grace

Department of Communication Studies: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The internet is fast becoming a means for people to obtain information, creating a unique forum for the intersection of the public, technical, and private spheres. To ground my research theoretically, I used Jürgen Habermas’s sphere theory. Habermas (1987) explains that the technical sphere colonizes the private sphere, which decreases democratic potential. In particular, the internet is a place for altering technical colonization of the private and public spheres.

My research focuses on women’s health because it is a particularly useful case study for examining sphere tensions. Historically, the biomedical health establishment has been a powerful agent of colonization, resulting …

Forming Bodies And Reforming Healthcare: The Co-Construction Of Information Technologies And Bodies Through The Imperative For Self Care, Scout Calvert

UNL Libraries: Faculty Publications

Care work and technological work are markedly striated by sex; the sites where they overlap are few. What happens when the labor of care meets up with information technologies? It makes good methodological sense to look at largely feminized environments that are also increasingly technological. Gender, Health, and Information Technology in Context, edited and with contributions by Ellen Balka, Eileen Green, and Flis Henwood, is a welcome contribution to the body of evidence about the socio-technical co-construction of technology, health, and gender. The volume houses nine studies, bookended by an astute introduction and conclusion by the editors. Each study …