Showing papers in "Body & Society in 2015"
TL;DR: The authors argue that current approaches risk depopulating affecting scenes, mystifying affective contagion, and authorizing questionable psychobiological arguments, and suggest that the concept of affective practice offers a more promising social psychological grounding.
Abstract: This article explores the psychological logics underpinning key perspectives in the ‘turn to affect’. Research on affect raises questions about the categorization of affective states, affective meaning-making, and the processes involved in the transmission of affect. I argue that current approaches risk depopulating affecting scenes, mystifying affective contagion, and authorizing questionable psychobiological arguments. I engage with the work of Sedgwick and Frank, Thrift, and Ahmed to explore these points and suggest that the concept of affective practice offers a more promising social psychological grounding. Notions of affective practice are more commensurate with trends in contemporary psychobiology, explain the limits on affective contagion, and emphasize relationality and negotiation, attentive to the flow of affecting episodes. A practice approach positions affect as a dynamic process, emergent from a polyphony of intersections and feedbacks, working across body states, registrations and categoriz...
289 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the relationality between women's bodies and selfies on NSFW (Not Safe For Work) tumblr blogs is explored, and the authors consider the way selfie practices engage with normative, ageist and sexist assumptions of the wider culture in order to understand how specific ways of looking become possible.
Abstract: This article explores the relationality between women’s bodies and selfies on NSFW (Not Safe For Work) tumblr blogs. We consider the way selfie practices engage with normative, ageist and sexist assumptions of the wider culture in order to understand how specific ways of looking become possible. Women’s experiences of their bodies change through interactions, sense of community and taking and sharing selfies. This article provides an empirical elaboration on what sexy selfies are and do by analysing interviews, selfies and blog content of nine women in the NSFW self-shooters community on tumblr. For our participants, self-shooting is an engaged, self-affirmative and awareness raising pursuit, where their body, through critically self-aware self-care, emerges as agentic, sexual and distinctly female. Thus, this is a reading of selfies as a practice of freedom.
178 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors explored the sensory dimensions of intense embodiment, particularly the touch of heat, and found that heat has highly proprioceptive elements and is experienced as both a form of touch and a distinct perceptual mode, dependent upon context.
Abstract: In recent years, calls have been made to address the relative dearth of qualitative sociological investigation into the sensory dimensions of embodiment, including within physical cultures. This article contributes to a small, innovative and developing literature utilizing sociological phenomenology to examine sensuous embodiment. Drawing upon data from three research projects, here we explore some of the ‘sensuousities’ of ‘intense embodiment’ experiences as a distance-running-woman and a boxing-woman, respectively. Our analysis addresses the relatively unexplored haptic senses, particularly the ‘touch’ of heat. Heat has been argued to constitute a specific sensory mode, a trans-boundary sense. Our findings suggest that ‘lived’ heat, in our own physical-cultural experiences, has highly proprioceptive elements and is experienced as both a form of touch and as a distinct perceptual mode, dependent upon context. Our analysis coheres around two key themes that emerged as salient: (1) warming up, and (2) thermoregulation, which in lived experience were encountered as strongly interwoven.
81 citations
TL;DR: This paper explored a theoretical legacy that underpins the ways in which many social scientists come to know and understand obesity, in attempting to distance itself from essentialist discourses, and explored the theoretical legacy of obesity.
Abstract: This article explores a theoretical legacy that underpins the ways in which many social scientists come to know and understand obesity. In attempting to distance itself from essentialist discourses...
66 citations
TL;DR: The convergence of medicine, morality and popular iconography as they are embedded in the imageries, imaginaries and representational economies of the cancer culture industry is considered.
Abstract: Cancer has long been a cultural touchstone: a metaphor of devastation and a spectre of social as well as bodily anomie and loss. Yet recent years have witnessed significant transformations in perceptions of cancer, particularly in perceptions of the cancer patient. This paper is concerned with the ‘struggles of subjectivity’ emergent in this transvalued cancer culture. Explored from the standpoint of the ‘bad patient’, and drawing on media and cultural methodologies, the paper will consider the convergence of medicine, morality and popular iconography as they are embedded in the imageries, imaginaries and representational economies of the cancer culture industry. Of particular concern in this context are the (re)composures of the patient, as liminal figure, caught between clinical imperative and cultural fantasy.
43 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors formulate an emplaced model of disability wherein bodies, social expectations and built form intersect in embodied experiences in specific environments to increase or decrease the capacity of disabled children to act in those environments.
Abstract: Building on Deleuze’s theories of the becoming of bodies, and notions of the geographic maturity of the disabled body we formulate an emplaced model of disability wherein bodies, social expectations and built form intersect in embodied experiences in specific environments to increase or decrease the capacity of disabled children to act in those environments. We join a growing effort to generate a more comprehensive model of disability, which moves beyond a binary between the individual and the social. Drawing on in-depth case studies conducted with 13 physically disabled children, we consider the intersections between their primary environments (homes, schools and neighbourhoods) and the multiple subjectivities they embody. Ultimately we make a case about the importance of responsive, situated models of subjectivity for the development of adaptations, and that physical and social adaptations must respond to these children’s complex and varied needs and desires.
36 citations
TL;DR: Way in which gender has significance for understanding blood relations, and how the blood economy is gendered is examined, to examine both how donation policies and the manufacturing and use of blood products produces gendered blood relations.
Abstract: In 2003 the UK National Blood Service introduced a policy of ‘male donor preference’ which involved women’s plasma being discarded following blood collection. The policy was based on the view that data relating to the incidence of Transfusion-Related Acute Lung Injury (TRALI) was linked to transfusion with women’s plasma. While appearing to treat female donors as equal to male donors, exclusion criteria operate after donation at the stage of processing blood, thus perpetuating myths of universality even though only certain ‘extractions’ from women are retained for use in transfusion. Many women in the UK receive a plasma-derived product called Anti-D immunoglobulin which is manufactured from pooled male plasma. This article examines ways in which gender has significance for understanding blood relations, and how the blood economy is gendered. In our study of relations between blood donors and recipients, we explore how gendered bodies are produced through the discursive and material practices within blood services. We examine both how donation policies and the manufacturing and use of blood products produces gendered blood relations.
29 citations
TL;DR: This article presented an analytical perspective on the embodiment of viscerality to provide a more nuanced understanding of how these experiences blur distinctions of cultural continuity and how an ecology of the body shapes the cultural politics of tradition in India.
Abstract: Nationalism can be closely associated with powerful feelings about the relationship among cultural heritage, identity and embodied experience. Almost by definition this relationship is expressed in terms of continuity, distinctiveness and the purity of tradition, to an extent that nationalistic sentiments can be said to be ‘visceral.’ Contrasting the way in which the body is implicated in nature cure and Ayurveda, two forms of medicine closely linked to nationalism in India, this article presents an analytical perspective on the embodiment of viscerality to provide a more nuanced understanding of how these experiences blur distinctions of cultural continuity and how an ecology of the body shapes the cultural politics of tradition in India.
28 citations
TL;DR: The field of human organ transplantation, and most particularly that of heart transplantation where the donor is always deceased, is one in which the rhetoric of hope leaves little room for any exp...
Abstract: The field of human organ transplantation, and most particularly that of heart transplantation where the donor is always deceased, is one in which the rhetoric of hope leaves little room for any exp...
22 citations
TL;DR: In most common law jurisdictions worldwide, an offender's remorse is a mitigating factor in sentencing as mentioned in this paper and it matters whether or not a person who has committed a crime is truly sorry for what they hav...
Abstract: In most common law jurisdictions worldwide, an offender’s remorse is a mitigating factor in sentencing. It matters whether or not a person who has committed a crime is truly sorry for what they hav...
20 citations
TL;DR: This paper revisited the epistemic roots of the body image while also engaging the rich contemporary literature from a body studies perspective in order to situate the narratives of amputees about the relationship between dismemberment, prosthetization, phantom limb syndrome, and body image.
Abstract: The body image with respect to physical disability has long been a woefully under-theorized area of scholarship. The literature that does attend to the body image in cases of physical abnormality or functional impairment regularly offer poorly articulated or problematic definitions of the concept, effectively undermining its historic analytic scope and depth. Here, I revisit the epistemic roots of the body image while also engaging the rich contemporary literature from a body studies perspective in order to situate the narratives of amputees about the relationship between dismemberment, prosthetization, phantom limb syndrome, and body image. Stories about living with artificial, fleshy, phantomed, and residual limbs unquestionably reveal a number of peculiarities unique to amputees. However, they also offer a distinctively productive ingress into the analytic utility of a ‘re-visioned’ conceptualization of the body image more broadly speaking. Indeed, the body image can function as a robust investigative ...
TL;DR: Body & Society as mentioned in this paper presents five selected case studies focusing on the contexts of transplantation, psychiatry, amputation and war, and a transvalued media ecology of cancer to offer meditations on a number of interlinked questions, including entanglement of biomedical governance with the nexus of estrangement, which can denote both the distancing of otherness and self-division.
Abstract: This introductory article provides a contextual and theoretical overview to this special issue of Body & Society. The special issue presents five selected case studies – focusing on the contexts of transplantation, psychiatry, amputation and war, and a transvalued media ecology of cancer – to offer meditations on a number of interlinked questions. The first of these is the entanglement of biomedical governance – political/economic as well as self-disciplinary – with the nexus of estrangement, which can denote both the distancing of otherness and self-division. Second is the realm of feeling, of phantasmatic projection and of the ways in which the biopolitical becomes reciprocally, discursively, enmeshed in a wider cultural imaginary. Third is the shifting terrain of gender and feminist politics, a key dimension of which is the necessary reworking of feminist thought in the wake of a radically altered biomedical and biotechnological landscape. Under the rubric of Estranged Bodies, the collection considers themes of dissolution and the fragility of the body/subject read through bodily catastrophe, radical body modification and extreme medical intervention. Also considered is the notion of assemblage – the provisional coming together of disparate parts – which encourages a rethinking of questions of reconstituted, displaced and re-placed bodies.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examine several key aspects of maternity homes for "unwed mothers" in order to understand the overwhelming phenomenon of single mothers giving up their babies for adoption in South Korea.
Abstract: This article examines several key aspects of maternity homes for ‘unwed mothers’ in order to understand the overwhelming phenomenon of single mothers giving up their babies for adoption in South Ko...
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors contextualize such agency in the analysis of the ambivalence of these women toward surrogacy and the violence of local kinship systems, and suggest that informal surrogacy interacts and shapes the self.
Abstract: Rather than being a form of explicitly commodified reproduction, informal surrogacy is practiced (and interpreted) in a working-class community in Beijing as part of local affective life, viewed in terms of gifting, favors, filial piety, and family concerns. Through this practice a particular form of biopower, articulated in affective terms, limits some women to serving as instruments of reproduction. Unlike the common western assumption of a physical body as separate from the experiencing subject, the Chinese body has a subjective, experiential dimension. This subjective body harbors an agency with the potential to transform the power exercised on it and to impact the circumstances of the surrogate’s life. I contextualize such agency in the analysis of the ambivalence of these women toward surrogacy and the violence of local kinship systems. Through analyzing how surrogates use their bodies to transform codes, forces and reform the self, the article suggests that informal surrogacy interacts and shapes l...
TL;DR: It is concluded that while home HIV tests appear to expand consumer rights, they are in fact the vanguard of a new form of self-testing that carries a moral urgency to protect one’s own body and to manage societal risk.
Abstract: This article examines the home rapid HIV test as a new practice of US biocitizenship. Via an analysis of discourse surrounding self-diagnostics, I conclude that while home HIV tests appear to expand consumer rights, they are in fact the vanguard of a new form of self-testing that carries a moral urgency to protect one’s own body and to manage societal risk. In addition, these tests extend biomedical authority into the private domain, while appearing to do the exact opposite. Furthermore, access to these tests may be stratified, contradicting the intent expressed by the manufacturer to reach populations in need of it most and reinforcing stigma against them. Lastly, diagnostics such as the rapid home HIV test represent new obligations for surveillance of one’s own health and that of others. The new public health effort to test the population at large has given rise to a new ‘risky’ population: the untested bodies.
TL;DR: In this paper, a genealogy of the condition hystero-epilepsy in order to show the precarity of dominant bio-psychiatric ideology in the present is presented.
Abstract: This article explores illness as an assemblage of bodies, discourses, and practices by tracing a genealogy of the condition hystero-epilepsy in order to show the precarity of dominant bio-psychiatric ideology in the present. I read Siri Hustvedt’s case study of her own nervous condition with and against other histories of nerves, including Charcot’s treatment of hystero-epilepsy in the 1870s, Foucault’s treatment of hysteria, simulation, and the ‘neurological body’ presented in his lectures in 1974, and Elizabeth Wilson’s recent treatment of the Freudian concept of ‘somatic compliance.’ I assemble this eclectic hystero-epileptic archive not in order to present a definitive history of hystero-epilepsy, but rather to think about how illness is made, unmade, and remade in the clinic and narrative.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors focus on the manner in which transplant technologies construct their publics in gendered and sociallistic ways, and the controversies that this family of technologies has given rise to are both readable and read as embedded in and expressive of wider forms of conflict and contestation.
Abstract: Organ transplantation has been central to debates on medical technologies and their complex biopolitical consequences, new forms of medical governance and new opportunities for capital. Attending to transplantation has also opened up new ways of thinking about, acting on and living ‘in’ the body, raising important questions about what it means to be embodied under particular cultural conditions. The specific ways in which a technology like transplantation puts the body parts of some at the disposal of the bodies of others has served to (re)write bodily boundaries, commoditise body parts and reorganise the social relations of exchange, care and responsibility. The controversies that this family of technologies has given rise to are both readable and read as embedded in and expressive of wider forms of conflict and contestation. Putting these controversies and their entanglements centre-stage, this article focuses on the manner in which transplant technologies construct their publics in gendered and sociall...
TL;DR: In this article, the authors conducted ethnographic research at the Amputation and Reha Institute in Colombia, where they found that the country has one of the highest rates of landmine injury in the world.
Abstract: Colombia, a country at civil war for over 50 years, has one of the highest rates of landmine injury in the world. This article is based on ethnographic research conducted at the Amputation and Reha...
TL;DR: The face embodies for the individual the sense of identity, that is to say, precisely the place where someone recognizes himself and where others recognize him as mentioned in this paper.From the outset the face is meaning,...
Abstract: The face embodies for the individual the sense of identity, that is to say, precisely the place where someone recognizes himself and where others recognize him. From the outset the face is meaning,...
TL;DR: In this article, a distinction between field analysis and life world analysis is introduced to encapsulate the difference between analysing habitus in relation to an individual field and examining individual habits in relation with multiple fields.
Abstract: This commentary reflects on Loic Wacquant’s interpretation of the concept of habitus as developed in his response to critics of his article published in this journal, Homines in Extremis. His comments on collective habitus and fieldless habitus in particular are deemed questionable, not just on the grounds that they break from the relational logic of Bourdieu’s sociology but because they sit uneasily with findings unearthed in a diverse array of empirical studies. Some constructive comments are offered on notions he rejects or obscures, and a distinction between ‘field analysis’ and ‘lifeworld analysis’ is introduced to encapsulate the difference between analysing habitus in relation to an individual field and examining individual habitus in relation to multiple fields.