The social control of young women’s clothing and bodies: A perspective of differences on racialization and sexualization

Abstract

Public discourses and culturalist research often present patriarchal social control as the key element of minority youth’s family relations. They focus on conflicts related to young women’s sexual reputation when discussing Muslims and nonwestern minorities. Social control is often connected to honor-related violence and applied to assumptions of how young women are oppressed by their family members. In this article, we problematize such a connection and approach social control as a broad phenomenon that shapes social life and is exercised by several actors. The article elaborates a perspective of differences on social control, building on feminist theories of intersectionality, and distinguishing between different dimensions of social control (formal/informal, public/private). This theoretical framework is then applied to the empirical analysis of different elements of social control related to young women’s clothing and bodies. It is argued that the framework enables examination of the multifaceted dyna...