UCL Anthropology

Kaori O’Connor’s new book ‘Lycra: How A Fiber Shaped America’, part of Routledge’s new Creative Teaching and Learning in Anthropology series, was launched in America on April 1, with UK publication immanent. She will be talking about the book on BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour on 21st April with other media planned, and spoke on Lycra at the recent Pasold-Wellcome 2011 Conference and at the British Sociological Conference at the LSE 6-8 April 2011.

Lycra, the stretch fibre invented and developed by E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company (Dupont) provides a unique lens through which to see changing beliefs about health, medicine, gender, the body and society in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and the book demonstrates how synthetic textiles take on and carry symbolic meaning in complex large-scale cultures just as they do in traditional ones. Focussing on the women of the Babyboomer cohort born between 1945-1965, it throws light on the new midlife, and emerging patterns of wellness and consumption among this demographically and socially significant group. Based on extensive longitudinal fieldwork, the study also incorporates in-depth research on archival sources, a rapidly developing medium of anthropological investigation.

“There are few better ways to comprehend the dynamic processes of global capitalism as they affect our everyday lives than to follow a designated commodity. Lycra reveals strong, interactive relationships between a technologically innovative textile industry and changing gendered notions of what makes the human body look and feel good.” – Jane Schneider, City University of New York Graduate Centre.

‘This book is a welcome addition to the literature on The Anthropology of Stuff and to cultural anthropology courses. The subject of Lycra offers a starting point for investigating a range of processes that transcend the categories of attractiveness, cultural expectations and ideas of gender appropriateness. In this sense, the “stuff” of Lycra serves as a provocative metaphor illuminating larger changes in notions of female beauty and identity, at the same time as revealing deeper transformations in the economy and culture”. – Mary King, Sociology and Anthropology, Northeastern University.

Routledge: 978-0-415-80437-0 (paperback), also available in hardback and as ebook.

For more info see also: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/anthropology/staff/k_oconnor