Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in
Palgrave Macmillan

How Handedness Shapes Lived Experience, Intersectionality, and Inequality

Hand and World

  • Book
  • © 2023

Overview

Authors:
  1. Peter Westmoreland

    1. St. Petersburg College, St. Petersburg, USA

    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

  • Explores handedness as a philosophical project for the first time
  • Engages literature from a range of fields, including cognitive science, sociology, and political science
  • Proposes that if we explore the intersectional impact of handedness, we can better understand what it is to be human

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this book

Log in via an institution
eBook USD 16.99 USD 99.00
Discount applied Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book USD 129.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book USD 129.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Other ways to access

Licence this eBook for your library

Institutional subscriptions

Table of contents (8 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xvii
    Download chapter PDF

  2. Introduction: The Lived Experience of the Left

    • Peter Westmoreland
    Pages 1-25

  3. A Phenomenology of Handedness

    • Peter Westmoreland
    Pages 27-55

  4. Act Like a Right-Hander: Right Hand Bias in Norms of Proximate Space Inhabitation

    • Peter Westmoreland
    Pages 57-85

  5. The Phenomenology of Asymmetry and Distinguishing Left and Right

    • Peter Westmoreland
    Pages 87-132

  6. Throwing Like a Left-Hander: Impacts of Handedness on Athletic Performance

    • Peter Westmoreland
    Pages 133-158

  7. Sexism Caught Right-Handed: The Norms of Intersecting Gender and Handedness Theory (NIGHT )

    • Peter Westmoreland
    Pages 159-180

  8. Harms of Handedness

    • Peter Westmoreland
    Pages 181-213

  9. Liberation in the Dexteronormative Society

    • Peter Westmoreland
    Pages 215-224

  10. Back Matter

    Pages 225-228
    Download chapter PDF
Back to top

Keywords

About this book

This book delivers philosophy’s first sustained examination of handedness: being left-handed, right-handed, etc. It engages literature from phenomenology and continental philosophy, analytic philosophy, laterality studies, cognitive science and psychology, gender studies and feminist philosophy, sociology, political science, and more to provide a systematic accounting of the nature of handedness, its basis in lived experience, its effects on bodily performance, its role in varieties of inequality, and its part in oppression and liberation.
As a radical asymmetry in the body, handedness plays a key role in human flourishing. It informs both personal bodily movement and social life, from handshakes and high fives to high tech tools made for one hand or the other. Moreover, with left-handers making up just 10% of the population, handedness presents a significant inequality in lived experience. To live and live well, we must understand handedness.

Reviews

“This is an excellent laterality book that deserves to be read and read again. … For those interested in rethinking the very basis of what handedness means to develop new theoretical models of handedness, Westmoreland’s book certainly is worth a read. It has been a long time since I have so found so many new impulses to think about my research in a single text.” (Sebastian Ocklenburg, Laterality, June 2, 2023)

Authors and Affiliations

  • St. Petersburg College, St. Petersburg, USA

    Peter Westmoreland

About the author

Peter Westmoreland is a professor in the Ethics Institute at St. Petersburg College, USA. His work has appeared in journals such as the British Journal for the History of Philosophy and Laterality. His co-edited volume Silence, implicites et non-dits chez Rousseau/ Silence, the Implicit and the Unspoken in Rousseau was published in 2020.

Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: How Handedness Shapes Lived Experience, Intersectionality, and Inequality

  • Book Subtitle: Hand and World

  • Authors: Peter Westmoreland

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-23892-5

  • Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham

  • eBook Packages: Religion and Philosophy, Philosophy and Religion (R0)

  • Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-031-23891-8Published: 14 March 2023

  • Softcover ISBN: 978-3-031-23894-9Published: 15 March 2024

  • eBook ISBN: 978-3-031-23892-5Published: 13 March 2023

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: XVII, 228

  • Number of Illustrations: 6 b/w illustrations

  • Topics: Social Philosophy, Phenomenology, Cultural Studies, Gender Studies, Medicine/Public Health, general, Philosophy of Mind

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Back to top

Search

Navigation