Social Bodies

Social Bodies PDF Author: Helen Lambert
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 9781845455538
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 198

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Book Description
A proliferation of press headlines, social science texts and "ethical" concerns about the social implications of recent developments in human genetics and biomedicine have created a sense that, at least in European and American contexts, both the way we treat the human body and our attitudes towards it have changed. This volume asks what really happens to social relations in the face of new types of transaction - such as organ donation, forensic identification and other new medical and reproductive technologies - that involve the use of corporeal material. Drawing on comparative insights into how human biological material is treated, it aims to consider how far human bodies and their components are themselves inherently "social." The case studies - ranging from animal-human transformations in Amazonia to forensic reconstruction in post-conflict Serbia and the treatment of Native American specimens in English museums - all underline that, without social relations, there are no bodies but only "human remains." The volume gives us new and striking ethnographic insights into bodies as sociality, as well as a potentially powerful analytical reconsideration of notions of embodiment. It makes a novel contribution, too, to "science and society" debates.

Social Bodies

Social Bodies PDF Author: Helen Lambert
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 9781845455538
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 198

Get Book Here

Book Description
A proliferation of press headlines, social science texts and "ethical" concerns about the social implications of recent developments in human genetics and biomedicine have created a sense that, at least in European and American contexts, both the way we treat the human body and our attitudes towards it have changed. This volume asks what really happens to social relations in the face of new types of transaction - such as organ donation, forensic identification and other new medical and reproductive technologies - that involve the use of corporeal material. Drawing on comparative insights into how human biological material is treated, it aims to consider how far human bodies and their components are themselves inherently "social." The case studies - ranging from animal-human transformations in Amazonia to forensic reconstruction in post-conflict Serbia and the treatment of Native American specimens in English museums - all underline that, without social relations, there are no bodies but only "human remains." The volume gives us new and striking ethnographic insights into bodies as sociality, as well as a potentially powerful analytical reconsideration of notions of embodiment. It makes a novel contribution, too, to "science and society" debates.

Social Bodies

Social Bodies PDF Author: Helen Lambert
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 1845458974
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 194

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Book Description
A proliferation of press headlines, social science texts and “ethical” concerns about the social implications of recent developments in human genetics and biomedicine have created a sense that, at least in European and American contexts, both the way we treat the human body and our attitudes towards it have changed. This volume asks what really happens to social relations in the face of new types of transaction – such as organ donation, forensic identification and other new medical and reproductive technologies - that involve the use of corporeal material. Drawing on comparative insights into how human biological material is treated, it aims to consider how far human bodies and their components are themselves inherently “social.” The case studies – ranging from animal-human transformations in Amazonia to forensic reconstruction in post-conflict Serbia and the treatment of Native American specimens in English museums – all underline that, without social relations, there are no bodies but only “human remains.” The volume gives us new and striking ethnographic insights into bodies as sociality, as well as a potentially powerful analytical reconsideration of notions of embodiment. It makes a novel contribution, too, to “science and society” debates.

Social Bodies

Social Bodies PDF Author: David G. Horn
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400821452
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 203

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Book Description
Using as his example post-World War I Italy and the government's interest in the size, growth rate, and "vitality" of its national population, David Horn suggests a genealogy for our present understanding of procreation as a site for technological intervention and political contestation. Social Bodies looks at how population and reproductive bodies came to be the objects of new sciences, technologies, and government policies during this period. It examines the linked scientific constructions of Italian society as a body threatened by the "disease" of infertility, and of women and men as social bodies--located neither in nature nor in the private sphere, but in that modern domain of knowledge and intervention carved out by statistics, sociology, social hygiene, and social work. Situated at the intersection of anthropology, cultural studies, and feminist studies of science, the book explores the interrelated factors that produced the practices of reason we call social science and social planning. David Horn draws on many sources to analyze the discourses and practices of "social experts," the resistance these encountered, and the often unintended effects of the new objectification of bodies and populations. He shows how science, while affirming that maternity was part of woman's "nature," also worked to remove reproduction from the domain of the natural, making it an object of technological intervention. This reconstitution of bodies through the sciences and technologies of the social, Horn argues, continues to have material consequences for women and men throughout the West.

A Traffic of Dead Bodies

A Traffic of Dead Bodies PDF Author: Michael Sappol
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691186146
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 445

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Book Description
A Traffic of Dead Bodies enters the sphere of bodysnatching medical students, dissection-room pranks, and anatomical fantasy. It shows how nineteenth-century American physicians used anatomy to develop a vital professional identity, while claiming authority over the living and the dead. It also introduces the middle-class women and men, working people, unorthodox healers, cultural radicals, entrepreneurs, and health reformers who resisted and exploited anatomy to articulate their own social identities and visions. The nineteenth century saw the rise of the American medical profession: a proliferation of practitioners, journals, organizations, sects, and schools. Anatomy lay at the heart of the medical curriculum, allowing American medicine to invest itself with the authority of European science. Anatomists crossed the boundary between life and death, cut into the body, reduced it to its parts, framed it with moral commentary, and represented it theatrically, visually, and textually. Only initiates of the dissecting room could claim the privileged healing status that came with direct knowledge of the body. But anatomy depended on confiscation of the dead--mainly the plundered bodies of African Americans, immigrants, Native Americans, and the poor. As black markets in cadavers flourished, so did a cultural obsession with anatomy, an obsession that gave rise to clashes over the legal, social, and moral status of the dead. Ministers praised or denounced anatomy from the pulpit; rioters sacked medical schools; and legislatures passed or repealed laws permitting medical schools to take the bodies of the destitute. Dissection narratives and representations of the anatomical body circulated in new places: schools, dime museums, popular lectures, minstrel shows, and sensationalist novels. Michael Sappol resurrects this world of graverobbers and anatomical healers, discerning new ligatures among race and gender relations, funerary practices, the formation of the middle-class, and medical professionalization. In the process, he offers an engrossing and surprisingly rich cultural history of nineteenth-century America.

The Body and Social Theory

The Body and Social Theory PDF Author: Chris Shilling
Publisher: SAGE
ISBN: 9780761942856
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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Book Description
Praise for the First Edition: `Essential to any collection of work on the body, health and illness, or social theory' - Choice `Sophisticated … and acutely perceptive of the importance of the complex dialectic between social institutions, culture and biological conditions' - Times Higher Education Supplement `Chris Shilling has done us all a splendid service in bringing together and illustrating the tremendous diversity and richness of sociological thinking on the topic of human embodiment and its implications' - Sociological Review This updated edition of the bestselling text retains all the strengths of the first edition. Chris Shilling: provides a critical survey of the field; demonstrates how developments in diet, sexuality, reproductive technology, genetic engineering and sports science have made the body a site for social alternatives and individual choices; and elucidates the practical uses of theory in striking and accessible ways. In addition, new, original material: explores the latest feminist, phenomenological and action-oriented approaches to the body; examines the latest work on `body projects' and the relationship between the body and self-identity; and outlines a compelling theoretical framework that provides a radical basis for the consolidation of body studies.

Acting Bodies and Social Networks

Acting Bodies and Social Networks PDF Author: Bianca Maria Pirani
Publisher: University Press of America
ISBN: 076184998X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 439

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Book Description
This book analyzes the complex interactions of body, mind and microelectronic technologies. Internationally renowned scholars look into the nature of the mind - a combination of thought, perception, emotion, will and imagination - as well as the ever-increasing impact and complexity of microelectronic technologies.

The Body: A Very Short Introduction

The Body: A Very Short Introduction PDF Author: Chris Shilling
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0191059498
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 154

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Book Description
The human body is thought of conventionally as a biological entity, with its longevity, morbidity, size and even appearance determined by genetic factors immune to the influence of society or culture. Since the mid-1980s, however, there has been a rising awareness of how our bodies, and our perception of them, are influenced by the social, cultural and material contexts in which humans live. Drawing on studies of sex and gender, education, governance, the economy, and religion, Chris Shilling demonstrates how our physical being allows us to affect the material and virtual world around us, yet also enables governments to shape and direct our thoughts and actions. Revealing how social relationships, cultural images, and technological and medical advances shape our perceptions and awareness, he exposes the limitations of traditional Western traditions of thought that elevate the mind over the body as that which defines us as human. Dealing with issues ranging from cosmetic and transplant surgery, the performance of gendered identities, the commodification of bodies and body parts, and the violent consequences of competing conceptions of the body as sacred, Shilling provides a compelling account of why body matters present contemporary societies with a series of urgent and inescapable challenges. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

The Social Body

The Social Body PDF Author: Nick Crossley
Publisher: SAGE
ISBN: 9780761966401
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 184

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Book Description
This book explores both the embodied nature of social life and the social nature of human bodily life. It provides an accessible review of the contemporary social science debates on the body, and develops a coherent new perspective. Nick Crossley critically reviews the literature on mind and body, and also on the body and society. He draws on theoretical insights from the work of Gilbert Ryle, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, George Herbert Mead and Pierre Bourdieu, and shows how the work of these writers overlaps in interesting and important ways which, when combined, provide the basis for a persuasive and robust account of human embodiment. The Social Body provides a timely review of the theoretical approach

Children’s Bodies in Schools: Corporeal Performances of Social Class

Children’s Bodies in Schools: Corporeal Performances of Social Class PDF Author: S. Henry
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137442638
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 139

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Book Description
Bringing together sociology of the body with powerful examinations of educational theory and social class, Henry examines how children's experiences of school and pedagogy are shaped by their bodies and the ideas of social class and class identity that their bodies carry.

Heavenly Bodies

Heavenly Bodies PDF Author: Ola Sigurdson
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
ISBN: 146744622X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 683

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Book Description
Deep and wide study of 2,000 years of Christian thought on the human body Does Christianity scorn our bodies? Friedrich Nietzsche thought so, and many others since him have thought the same. Ola Sigurdson contends, to the contrary, that Christianity — understood properly — in fact affirms human embodiment. Presenting his constructive contributions to theology in relation to both historical and contemporary conceptions of the body, Sigurdson begins by investigating the anthropological implications of the doctrine of the incarnation. He then delves into the concept of the gaze and discusses a specifically Christian "gaze of faith" that focuses on God embodied in Jesus. Finally, he weaves these strands into a contemporary Christian theology of embodiment. Sigurdson's profound engagement with the whole history of Christian life and thought not only elucidates the spectrum of Christian perspectives on the body but also models a way of thinking historically and systematically that other theologians will find stimulating and challenging.