The Body Unburdened

Drawing on research that combines an ethnography of a new group of women from popular classes intoday's Turkey and a study of vigilante violence against these women, including interviews and courtfiles, The Body Unburdened offers a compelling explanation for the surge of hostility against women inthe global era. It chronicles the journey of the New Woman from the neoliberal global era to thepopulist moment in the twenty-first century to show how the New Woman has gone from being adesirable employee in the global service economy to a precarious body that faces the risk of violence inthe right-wing populist moment. The book argues that those emotional and embodied capacities, whichhad made the New Woman attractive to service employers, catapulted her into the center of highlycontentious politics as both a feminist icon of resistance and the target of violent hostility during thereign of Turkey's government.