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Palgrave Macmillan

Pole Dancing, Empowerment and Embodiment

  • Book
  • © 2010

Overview

Authors:
  1. Samantha Holland

    1. Leeds Metropolitan University, UK

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Table of contents (12 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-viii
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  2. Introduction

    • Samantha Holland
    Pages 1-7

  3. Towards a Feminist Ethnography

    • Samantha Holland
    Pages 8-24

  4. From Circus and Sex .…

    • Samantha Holland
    Pages 25-42

  5. … to Fitness and Leisure

    • Samantha Holland
    Pages 43-59

  6. What is a Pole Class?

    • Samantha Holland
    Pages 60-77

  7. What Not to Wear

    • Samantha Holland
    Pages 78-91

  8. Diversity and Empowerment?

    • Samantha Holland
    Pages 92-109

  9. ‘A Thing of Beauty’

    • Samantha Holland
    Pages 110-129

  10. The Pole Community: Opening Closed Minds

    • Samantha Holland
    Pages 130-142

  11. Case Study 1: ‘Empowering Women with Confidence’

    • Samantha Holland
    Pages 143-159

  12. Case Study 2: Power Moves and Everyday Bodies

    • Samantha Holland
    Pages 160-176

  13. Conclusion: A Positive Active Identity?

    • Samantha Holland
    Pages 177-187

  14. Back Matter

    Pages 188-212
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Keywords

About this book

This book provides an international, multi-disciplinary empirical account of pole classes and how they fit into wider discourses about bodies and gender, and age and fitness. In particular, the book explores how women initiate agency and espouse liberation and empowerment through something as seemingly problematic as pole classes.

Reviews

'This book pays much needed attention to a fascinating phenomenon emerging from striptease culture and the mainstreaming of sex...Holland's cutting-edge ethnography illuminates brilliantly the complexities of feminized and embodied empowerment swirling around these poles, as women from all walks of life explore this new form of exercise and self-expression. 'Poler' is now a new word in my vocabulary!' - Catherine M. Roach, Associate Professor, New College, University of Alabama, USA

'Pole Dancing, Empowerment and Embodiment is accessibly and appealingly written...[offering] a fresh perspective and much needed empirical contribution to current debates around the sexualisation of culture.' - Sociological Research Online

Authors and Affiliations

  • Leeds Metropolitan University, UK

    Samantha Holland

About the author

SAMANTHA HOLLAND is Research Fellow, Leeds Metropolitan University, UK. Her research focuses on gender, ageing, and non-mainstream leisure and subcultures. Her publications include Alternative Femininities: Body, Age and Identity and Remote Relationships in a Small World (edited).

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